The desert had forgotten what rain felt like.

For forty-two days, the sky above the southern territory had remained a hard, endless blue, so bright that looking toward the horizon without squinting made a man's eyes ache. The mountains appeared farther away than they really were, floating above the land like dark ships on a sea of heat.

The cattle had stopped wandering.

They simply stood beneath whatever shade they could find, ribs showing beneath dusty hides, heads lowered against the sun.

The jackrabbits had disappeared.

The birds had become scarce.

Even the rattlesnakes seemed reluctant to waste their strength.

And the water holes that had once dotted the valleys had become circles of cracked mud.

Eli Mercer knew the signs.

He had lived in the desert long enough to understand that the land never announced its final warning.

It simply became quieter.

Then one morning, the silence broke.

Eli was riding west along the edge of a dry wash when he saw something moving beyond the ridge.

At first, he thought it was a herd of cattle.

Then he saw people.

Dozens of them.

They were traveling slowly across the open ground, following a trail that seemed to lead nowhere.

Eli pulled his horse to a stop.

He lifted the old brass spyglass hanging from his saddle.

His stomach tightened.

There were women.

Children.

Elders.

Warriors.

And horses so thin that Eli could see the sharp lines of their bones from several hundred yards away.

An Apache group.

They were exhausted.

One child was being carried by a woman whose steps had become unsteady.

Another child walked beside an older man, holding his hand.

A horse stumbled.

Two men rushed to catch it.

Eli lowered the spyglass.

He knew what they were looking for.

Water.

There wasn't any water in that direction.

Not for many miles.

He looked behind him.

Then toward the mountains.

His eyes settled on a narrow line of red cliffs.

There was water there.

Not much.

But enough.

Eli had discovered it fourteen years earlier when he was barely more than a boy.

His father had been dead for two years.

His mother had already passed.

Eli had been traveling alone when a wounded mule disappeared into a narrow canyon. He followed it and found a spring hidden beneath a shelf of limestone.

The water came from deep underground.

Cold.

Clear.

Almost impossible to find unless you knew exactly where to look.

Eli had never told anyone.

Not because he believed the water belonged to him.

Because he had watched what happened whenever men learned there was something valuable beneath the desert.

They fought.

They lied.

They killed.

So Eli had kept the location to himself.

But now he was looking at children who might not survive another day.

He sighed.

"All right, girl," he whispered to his horse. "I suppose secrets don't mean much when people are dying."