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chamber . Your choice, he says .
    She walks over until she's close enough to gaze into the pit maybe six or seven feet across and sees the fire burning a sullen red and blue within, sees the long-handled iron scoop which lies beside it and closes her eyes as Ryan takes the baby from her arms and hears it begin to cry again perhaps from the loss of her and she is crying too as he tells her she can go back to her work now and she is halfway down the hill moving slowly when the baby 's crying stops abruptly and all she hears is wind in the hills and the bleating of the goats in the yard.
    Her own tears linger off and on all day long— she feels as though she has lost her own child or a brother — and only stop when lying in her bunk late at night she peers through the weathered wooden slats of the wall to their sleeping quarters and sees Celine with a group of others throwing sand over one of the bonfires, her little sister looking tired and bruised and beaten. But alive .

EIGHT

    "Get up, Bell. She's gone, goddammit!"
    It was Mother, storming into the cabin.
    "What? What's going on?"
    "She took my horse, goddammit. She took the goddamn roan."
    "How...?"
    "My horse and Hart's Winchester. Gear and saddle too."
    He kicked her blankets off into a corner.
    "The girl did?"
    "Jesus, Bell. Who the hell do you think I'm talking about? The Mex! The goddamn woman!"
    I couldn't believe she'd have the strength to saddle a horse and ride. Not the way she was wounded. Then I remembered what I'd seen last night.
    "Where's Hart?"
    "Outside. If I were you I'd check my clothes, see what's missing. You're the smallest and I doubt she rode outta here naked. I liked that horse, goddammit."
    He was right. A shirt and a pair of trousers were missing from my pack. Not the best of what I had but not the worst either. It was nothing compared to Mother's horse or Hart's rifle but enough so that I felt somewhat betrayed by her too. If she'd asked I'd have given them freely. But she hadn't.
    Hart was sitting on the porch in his boots and long johns, smoking a cigarette and twirling his dice. I sat down next to him with a cup of coffee looking out into the corral at the two new restless mustangs there. The day was already hot and clear. I sipped the coffee and considered.
    "Last night, Hart? By the fire?"
    "Yes. What about it?
    "Hell, I don't know. I don't know what to say. It was pretty damn amazing, wouldn't you say? She was..."
    "She was healing, Bell. Healing the old way. How'd you like it?"
    "All things told? I didn't. Truth is she scared me." He smiled but there wasn't any humor in it.
    "You've got good instincts, son. You ever have serious dealings with a Mex, you hold on tight to those instincts."
    He got up and tossed away the cigarette and turned toward the cabin.
    "So what're we gonna do?"
    He stopped and seemed to ponder that a moment. "Well, Mother's got other horses but I haven't got another Winchester. So I guess we go on after her."
    I considered telling him he could have mine. That's how much I liked the prospect of this enterprise. But I didn't.

    We trailed her all morning and into the afternoon, past flowering yucca and greasewood, prickly pear and tall saguaro, through scrub thick and thin and over grass and owl's clover. We saw a pair of jackrabbits in full rut and hawks riding the thermals high above. In the mostly dry dusty terrain her tracks were clear. To Mother and Hart if not to me.
    You want to tell me what the hell she's doing? Mother said.
    Mother, you know what she's doing , Hart said. Going right back to where she came from .
    It was late afternoon before we found her lying beneath a gnarled clump of trees propped up against one of them, the roan tethered beside her and Hart's Winchester lying across her lap. She looked bad, exhausted — nearly as bad as when first we first saw her — and some of her wounds had begun bleeding again beneath my shirt and Mother's dressings. She said nothing when we reined in and only glared