Locono spat onto the dust between them.
"If you lie," the chief said softly, "we do not shoot you. We tie you to a flat rock in the sun at the mouth of the canyon, and we let the sun drink your eyes before you die. You understand this?"
Caleb looked at the old man, then at the parched faces of the women standing near the dry wickiups, watching him with dark, silent eyes.
"I understand," Caleb said. "Give me two men who know how to swing a sledge, three pickaxes, and six hours of daylight."
By four in the afternoon, the heat at the base of the red cliff was like standing before an open furnace door.
Caleb had shed his canvas jacket and his grey wool shirt. He stood in his undershirt, his chest and arms dark with soot and sweat, holding a sixteen-pound steel sledgehammer he had taken from his own pack mule’s shoeing kit.
Beside him stood two young Apache warriors. They were sweat-slicked and broad-shouldered, their long dark hair tied back with strips of rawhide. For three hours, they had followed Caleb’s directions without a word of complaint, driving steel wedges into a narrow horizontal seam eight feet up the limestone face.
"Hit it here," Caleb said, tapping a cold chisel he had set into a fracture in the grey stone. "Hard. Don't worry about breaking the point; worry about splitting the seam."
The larger warrior—a young man with a hawk-like nose named Taza—swung his hammer in a full, smooth circle. The steel hit the chisel with a ringing CRACKthat echoed through the narrow canyon like a pistol shot.
A fine white powder dusted their faces, sticking to the sweat on their foreheads.
"Again," Caleb said.
CRACK.
A hairline crack, no wider than a blade of grass, began to run down the limestone face, snaking toward the dark shale beneath.
The whole camp had gathered fifty yards back—women holding small children, old men leaning on smooth ash walking sticks, young boys sitting perched on the high boulders like buzzards. They didn't cheer or talk. They watched with a deep, desperate silence that made the ring of the hammer sound small against the massive red walls of the Dragoon range.
Caleb knew the risks of what he was doing. Hydrostatic pressure in desert limestone was a fickle, dangerous thing. If he had misread the dip of the mountain's strata, if the underground pocket had dried out during the previous autumn, or if the water had seeped down into the deeper limestone caverns below the valley floor, he was a dead man. The Apaches wouldn't kill him out of hatred; they would kill him because in a country where water meant life, a man who promised water and failed was a liar who stole their last hopes.
He stepped up to the rock, took the heavy sledgehammer from Taza’s hands, and wiped his brow with the back of his dirty forearm.
He swung his shoulders, letting the weight of the sixteen-pound head do the work.
CLANG.
The hammer bounced off the grey stone, stinging his elbows.
He adjusted his stance, planted his boots wide in the red dirt, and brought the sledge down with everything he had—locking his back, driving his hips forward, hitting the exact point where the seam met the softer shale beneath.
THUD-CRACK.
A piece of limestone the size of a wagon wheel sheared off the face, crashing down into the dirt at Caleb’s feet.
Behind the fallen slab, the rock was not light grey. It was black.
Caleb didn't move. He lowered the sledgehammer, his chest heaving, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
For three seconds, nothing happened. The canyon was dead silent, save for the dry wind rattling the mesquite leaves overhead.
Then came a sound that made every horse in the camp lift its ears.
It was a low, gurgling sigh—a sound like a deep breath being drawn through a wet straw. A bubble of green slime popped out of the dark crack, followed by a hiss of trapped air that smelled of wet moss, dark earth, and ancient cold stone.
A single stream of water, thick as a man's wrist, shot three feet out from the rock face, splashing down onto the flat red limestone below.
It wasn't muddy. It wasn't warm. It was clear, ice-cold mountain water that had been trapped in the granite heart of the Dragoons since the snows of three winters past.
For five seconds, no one moved. The Apaches stood frozen, staring at the white foam splashing over Caleb’s boots.
Then, a young girl—no more than five years old, with huge dark eyes and a shriveled leather cup in her tiny hand—darted out from behind her mother’s skirt. She ran to the rock face, stuck her hand into the cold stream, and brought it to her face, laughing as the water splashed over her chin and down her dirty tunic.
The camp broke into a low, rushing roar of voices. Women ran forward with earthenware jugs, willow baskets lined with pitch, and shriveled leather water bags. They didn't push or shove; they moved with an urgent, reverent order, filling every vessel until the cold water overflowed into the red dirt, turning the dry dust into a rich, dark mud that smelled of life.
Locono walked slowly through the crowd of his people. He didn't look at the water first. He walked right up to Caleb, who was leaning against his sledgehammer, wiping the sweat from his eyes.
The old chief reached out, dipped his fingers into the cold stream running off the limestone ledge, and brought them to his mouth. He drank slowly, his eyes closed.