Chapter 3
The Hour of the Dust
Dawn came up over Stone Creek Basin the color of old iron, and the northern horizon went black with riders.
Nate had been up an hour. The woman slept by the well under his blanket, breathing shallow and steady, her hand curled around the tin ladle. He had checked the wound as best he could β the ball had gone clean through the flesh of her side, and the bleeding had stopped. Then he stepped onto the porch with his coffee and saw them.
They filled the north horizon. Nate stood very still and counted as best he could, and gave up counting at a hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred, give or take. They were coming down the long slope from the ridge in no hurry at all, and they were coming in a formation he had never seen: a wide curving line, horn to horn, like a half-moon drawn in the dust.
He set the coffee down, brought out the Winchester and stood it by the door, and went back out and stood on the porch steps, empty-handed, and watched them come.
They stopped at the edge of the ranch, a hundred yards out, in a single movement that rippled along the line like wind through wheat. The horns of the half-moon curved forward, enclosing yard, well, and cabin. Three hundred riders, and the only sound in Stone Creek Basin was the wind and the breathing of horses.
Nate did the only thing he could think of. He walked down the porch steps, out past the corral, and stood in the open yard with his hands at his sides, where every one of them could see him.
A rider detached from the center of the line and came forward at a walk. He was old β gray braid down his back, something bundled at his belt that might have been a prayer bundle. He rode a paint pony with white stockings and carried no rifle, and the way the half-moon held its breath told Nate who he was.
The old man stopped his pony ten paces from Nate. For a long moment the two of them looked at each other across the dust: the rancher, fifty-four, unshaven, his coffee going cold on the porch; and the elder, gray braid lifting in the morning wind, his face carved by the same sun that carved the mesas.
"You are the water man," the old man said, in English as clear as a struck bell. "You keep the well."
"I am Nate Gentry. This is my ranch. The well is mine."
"Kanoa," the old man said. "I have come for the well."
Nate's hands did not move. "It's not for sale."
Kanoa's eyes went to the woman sleeping by the stone lip, to the blanket, to the ladle in her hand. His face did not change, but something in his shoulders did.
"Deya," he said quietly. Then, to Nate: "She lives?"
"She lives. She was crawling to the well when I found her at first light. I gave her water. Nothing more."
Kanoa was silent. Behind him, three hundred riders waited in the half-moon, motionless as stone.
"The company men," Kanoa said at last. "Cerro Blanco. They have bought the water of this basin, ranch by ranch. They have papers that say the wells belong to them β every spring, every seep, every stone well. They have put their brass disc on your gate." His eyes flicked to the gate post, where a small brass disc, stamped with the letters C B & L, had been nailed the month before. "They shot Deya. They shot her young cousins β the scouts Tayo and Itza β and left them in the arroyo east of here. They shoot any of our people who come near the water."
Nate said nothing. He had not known about the cousins. He had not known, until this moment, that the brass disc on his gate meant anything at all.
"I have not come to burn your ranch," Kanoa said. "I have come to take the well out of the company's hands before they take it for good. If the well is yours, water man, then keep it. But if it is theirs β " He spread his hands to take in the half-moon, the three hundred riders, the whole black horizon. "Then it must not be theirs."
Deya stirred in her sleep and made a small sound, and Kanoa's head turned toward her like a compass needle finding north.
Nate said nothing about the cousins. His eyes stayed on Kanoa.
"You'll have your water," he said. "The well never fails. But you'll drink as guests, not as conquerors. That is my price."
Then the elder inclined his head, once.
"We will see," he said. "We will see what kind of man you are."