Chapter 2
: The Old Friend
The trail held true for six miles, and that was its own kind of message. Twice it crossed hardpan, and twice Caleb found it again without dismounting, the shod prints of Dulcie β who favored her left forefoot since a stone bruise the year before β clear in the softer ground beyond. The thieves had ridden easy, in no fear of pursuit. By the time Flint topped the last rise above Ojo Azul, the sun stood full over the valley and the spring shone below like its name, a blue eye open in the rock.
Caleb reined in under the cottonwoods and let the scene settle. He had known this place all his life. The basin was a bowl of pale stone, worn smooth by water and centuries, and the spring rose in its center deep and cold, feeding a creek that wandered west through grass his father had called the best natural pasture in Arizona Territory. Tasin's camp stood on the north side as it always had, lodges in good order, cook smoke rising straight, children carrying water in tin pails, an old woman scraping a hide in the shade.
What did not belong was the barrier.
Across the mouth of the basin someone had set new posts into the old stone and strung fresh-cut timber and wire between them, a gate of sorts, raw yellow wood bright against the weathered rock. It was not Apache work, and it was not rancher's mending. It was built to be seen. Two canvas tents stood beyond it, and a wagon, and a rope corral strung between iron pins driven into ground that had never taken a stranger's iron before.
In the rope corral, heads up and ears turning at Flint's approach, stood Dulcie, Pet, and Rooster.
Caleb felt the anger come up plain and hot, and made himself sit still through it, the way his father had taught him to sit through a horse's first bucking. The horses were unhurt. They had been watered and picketed with feed, and Rooster was already trying to work his rope loose with his teeth.
He rode down slowly, hands visible, rifle still in its boot. Near the lodges an older boy recognized him, grinned and called out, and the word went ahead of Caleb in Apache to the shade of the largest lodge.
Chief Tasin came out to meet him on foot, as he always had, because Samuel Wren's son was not a guest to be received sitting down. Sixty-three years had silvered the chief's braids and lined his face deep, but his back was straight and his eyes missed nothing.
"Caleb Wren," Tasin said, in his careful, dry English. "You ride early. Your horses also rode early. Earlier than you, I think."
"You've seen them, then," Caleb said, swinging down. They clasped forearms, Apache fashion and Wren fashion at once, a greeting their fathers had made between them in 1868 when Samuel came with his tripod and chain and Tasin, who could have refused him the valley, chose instead to walk it with him.
"Since before the sun," Tasin said. "Company men brought them in the dark and put them in that corral they built without asking whose ground receives the iron." His mouth twitched, which in Tasin was close kin to a smile and closer kin to contempt. "They said the horses were strays found wandering. They said this as they tied them with company rope, on company orders, beside a company gate. My young men counted the lies. There were more lies than horses."
"They're mine," Caleb said. "Taken from my corral in the night. The gate chain lifted, a man smoking while he worked."
"Then the lie was also a message," Tasin said quietly. "A man who steals in the dark and pens the theft in the open wants the owner to come and see it. I told my people to leave the horses fed and the men unharmed, until you came. It is your quarrel they have arranged." He turned toward the company tents. "They have also arranged a quarrel with us, which is larger. They have put their wood across the water, Caleb. Across Ojo Azul. As if a spring could be shut like a store."
Caleb looked again at the barrier, and saw the fresh sign wired to its gate, painted letters still tacky in the sun, though he was too far to read them. A spring that had watered Apache and settler, traveler and livestock, without asking any man's name, now had a gate on it.
"When did the posts go in?" he asked.
"Three days past," Tasin said. "The men came with the wagon and built it while our hunters were north. They were polite. Men who are stealing slowly are often polite." He laid a hand briefly on Caleb's shoulder, light and sure. "Your father stood in this basin with me and wrote in his book that this water was for all who thirst. I have kept his words the way I keep my own. Come. Drink first, as a guest should. Then we will ask these polite men to explain their gate, and your horses standing in the wrong corral."