“I mean it.”
“She ain’t deaf, Jesse.” He shoots me a look, but Liluye’s already moved on from the matter.
“If you need water,” she says, “use the spring. What runs in the marsh is brackish and stale. And be smart. Not all of the tribe was pleased by your arrival. They worry you will violate Mother Earth in your quest for gold. If so many men were not away, I imagine they would track you.”
“How many times I gotta explain I ain’t after gold?” I says. “It ain’t even Jesse’s greatest concern no more neither.”
He ain’t told me this, but he don’t speak otherwise, so I reckon it’s true.
“It is complicated,” Liluye says. “We hear ‘White Eyes’ speak of gold and can only think bad things. It is all we know from experience. Be careful.”
“You got it, boss.” I give her a small salute.
“What is that? I have seen it among White Eyes but never understood.”
“A sign of recognition. A way to say, ‘I hear you, I respect you, I acknowledge yer words.’”
Her mouth twitches into a pinched sorta smile.
“If I don’t see you again, thanks for everything, Liluye. I hope you’s found what you were looking for.”
“You too, Kate Thompson.”
We shake like we ain’t two souls on opposing sides of a battlefield.
“Liluye,” Jesse says, tipping his hat.
She nods, quiet.
And just like that, the Apache girl exits my life as unexpectedly as she joined it.
Jesse and me hike hard. He’s doing well despite the injury. That or he’s just hiding the struggle.
By the time we get back to the valley, the sky’s lightened plenty. On flat desert plains it’d be above the horizon, but I reckon we got another hour or so till it’s high enough to shine over the canyon ridge.
Where the trail divides, we take the left fork, moving closer to the horse-head. I lead, Jesse on my tail and the burros trailing us. The back of my neck is tingly, my fingers itching to pull my pistol. I got a notion a Rose Rider is waiting round every bend, fixing to send us to hell. Or the ghost shooter, camped somewhere in the rocky terrain, getting us in his sights, aiming to finish what he started yesterday. But when I scan ’long the ridge, there’s no sign of a flashing barrel. The canyon is eerily quiet today. With each step, Weavers Needle grows, reaching into the sky taller than seems possible.
’Bout a half hour later, I point to a steep but small mesa located between the canyon path we took and the one we didn’t. “If’n we climb this, we’ll be able to see the horse-head to the southeast,” I says. “And we should be high enough to view everything to the dead south.”
“The light will hit somewhere in those hills?”
“It should. I’m almost positive this were the vantage point the journal said to use—the ridge between these two canyons.”
Jesse checks the sky. “We better hike fast.”
Nearly to the summit, we have to leave the burros. Jesse ties ’em to a scraggly tree growing from between rocks and takes his binoculars and his notebook with him.
He gives me a boost up the ledge that were impossible for the donkey. I pull myself up and am greeted with an unobstructed view of the Superstitions. The horse-head rock stands proud on the eastern ridge, and Weavers Needle pierces the sky a bit farther south. From here I can see she’s tall, but not in the way I imagined. She’s a spire rising outta an already massive mountainside. While hiking—when I couldn’t see that mountain—I just pictured her an endless obelisk, a sword that climbed and climbed and climbed.
“Kate. A little help?”
I extend a hand to Jesse and help haul him atop our small mesa. The sky is a golden red, the sun moments away from breaking over the horse-head. We couldn’t’ve cut it closer.
The mine supposedly sits in the shadow of Weavers Needle. This early in the morning, the Needle’s shadow stretches away from us, toward the west, and the sun rising over the ridge is lighting up land directly before us, to the south. Jesse and I agree that the clue must be referencing the late afternoon sun, when the Needle’s shadow will grow back this way, overlapping the same land to the south. So for now we choose to focus solely on the horse-head clue.
Jesse pulls out his binoculars and examines the rock form.
“Couple more minutes, I reckon. Wanna look?” He passes me the binoculars.
The sun’s crawling slower than a slug, blocked by the back of the horse’s head. Each minute feels like twenty, each new glint of light a tease. And then, finally, it breaks over the neck of the horse, sending light between the two pointy ears and down into the land before us.
The sun marks a larger area than I’d’ve hoped for. Could be ’cus we’re standing in a different perch than the mapmaker, or maybe ’cus we’s trying to use the horse-head clue in June when the journal claimed it useful in late summer.
I scan the lit-up earth through the binoculars. The sun’s shining on the southern end of a smaller mountain. Or maybe it’s just a big hill. What looks like a rough foot trail carves ’long the edge of it, but that ain’t in the sunlight.
Beside me, Jesse’s pencil scratches in his notebook. I peer over his shoulder and see a sketch of the terrain, an oblong circle marking the area the sun kissed. On the opposite page is a rough drawing of a girl, captured in profile. Her hat is tipped low, dark hair hanging to her chin. Her eyes are squinting, as if looking into glaring light. She seems angry and cold. But also determined. The pattern of her flannel matches mine.
I turn away, feeling like I’s seen something private, and study our destination. Already the sun’s rising higher, marking a larger and wider area as it climbs above the horse-head and into the sky.
“Maybe we can cut down the other side of this mesa and head straight for the hillside,” I says. “Prolly the fastest route.”
“Also the most rugged and the easiest to get turned round in.” Jesse pulls out his compass and gauges our current location and where we reckon the mine might be at. “Almost due southwest.” He clips the compass shut and slips it into his pocket, then does the same with his notebook. “I’ll keep us on course. I just hope there ain’t a chasm or some giant obstacle we can’t make out waiting to turn us round.”
“And the burros?” I says. “We gonna ditch all the gear?”
“If we have to. But let’s try climbing down a few feet, then going round. We can prolly get past this mesa without going over the true summit.”
We take one last look at our destination to the southwest, then scramble down to retrieve the burros. As Jesse unties the ropes, a gunshot cracks in the distance, rattling the still morning. Both our faces snap toward the sound, which is still ringing somewhere on the other side of the ridge we need to cross.
“Rose?” he says.
“Or that ghost shooter.”
“There ain’t no ghost shooter.”