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way to behave. Today it was also prudent because Red Sleeves’ third wife was not happy, and when she wasn’t happy no one was.
    Red Sleeves had captured her on a raid when she was a beautiful thirteen-year-old. That she was Mexican wouldn’t have mattered if she had accepted her position as the least important wife. But being third, or even second, wasn’t in her nature. The resentment of Red Sleeves’ first two wives had simmered for forty years.
    Earlier that day, She Who Has Become Old had fallen asleep with her hair draped over a boulder to dry. Someone had worked the spiny seeds of the come-along bush into it. Her Mexican slaves had spent all afternoon combing them out. Everyone heard about it. Wife number one or wife number two had probably done it, but few of the women liked her, so the choice of pranksters was large. Cheis had reason to avoid Red Sleeves’ camp, all right.
    â€œPeople say that your little sister is good with horses.” Cheis smiled in Sister’s direction.

    Sister felt her cheeks grow hot at the attention. She bent her head over the grind stone.
    â€œShe has horse magic,” Broken Foot said.
    â€œYou should have seen her ride in Janos,” added Loco.
    While Loco told the story of the wild horse race, Sister scooped the cornmeal into a gourd bowl. She worked deer grease into it and added dried gooseberries, pinon meal, and water. She patted handfuls of the stiff dough into flat cakes and laid them on the stone in the coals.
    â€œWill you make a charm for my horse, little sister?” Cheis asked.
    Sister glanced at her brother. He raised one eyebrow, maybe as surprised as she was that Cheis would ask a favor from a child. Sister started to answer when a woman’s voice sounded from the darkness. A boy’s yelp followed it.
    â€œGet out of my way, you little lizard.”
    Consternation passed so quickly over Cheis’s face that Sister only thought she saw it. He stood abruptly and almost broke into a trot so he would be out of sight when She Who Has Become Old appeared.
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    THE SUN WAS POISED TO SET WHEN RAFE, ABSALOM, AND Caesar reached the Santa Rita mines. Until its abandonment thirteen years earlier, the Santa Rita had been a Mexican outpost. After the United States’ victory over Mexico three years ago, the territory changed hands, and a few dozen Americans had arrived to dig for the silver recently found there.
    They gave the impression that working for silver rather than taking it at gunpoint was a new proposition for them. The Mexicans they had hired were mostly outlaws from the states of Sonora and Chihuahua. They, too, looked capable of slitting a man’s throat for the gold in his teeth. Rafe kept his pistols ready whenever he came here.
    A rattler slithered from among rocks and headed for a nearby mine shaft. Its dappled pattern of light and dark
looked like sunlight and shadows on water as it flowed into the darkness.
    Absalom nodded at the pole notched along its twenty-five-foot length. “Is that what the peons used to climb to the surface?”
    â€œNope. Apache slaves. They worked on their knees in holes as black as a scalp hunter’s heart. They broke up the rock with picks, put the chunks in those bags, and carried them out on their backs.”
    â€œI imagine even Apaches fell off them now and then.”
    â€œHell yes. Didn’t matter, though.” Rafe started the wagon forward again. He raised his voice so Absalom could hear him over the rattle of the trace chains, the complaints of the axles, and the miners’ dogs, barking and howling like the chorus of a Greek tragedy. “The mine owners could always buy more Apache slaves in Chihuahua City. They still can, for that matter.”
    Rafe stopped at the blacksmith shop. “Rogers,” he called.
    A hulking lad appeared from the back of the shed. He wore a greasy leather apron over a pair of wool trousers with the cuffs rolled up.