Elias smiled.
"Pleasure to meet you, Ren."
She looked toward him.
"Do you really want the river so badly?"
He considered.
"Yes."
"Why?"
He looked at the watch in his hand.
Then toward the distant cottonwood trees.
"Because I've spent most of my life trying to find a place nobody can take away from me."
Ren became still.
She watched him for a moment.
Then whispered, "So have I."
On the following morning, Elias met the woman everyone called Willow Song.
She was an elderly Apache healer and respected adviser who lived near the western edge of camp.
Her hair had gone almost entirely silver, and her hands were marked by age, but her eyes remained sharp.
She spoke several languages, having spent much of her life dealing with traders, officials, missionaries, and the shifting political boundaries imposed upon the region.
She found Elias repairing a damaged wagon wheel.
"You have your father's hands," she said.
He looked up.
"Beg pardon?"
She studied the way he held the iron fitting.
"Patient hands."
Elias frowned.
"Did you know my father?"
The old woman paused.
Then glanced toward the watch chain visible beneath his vest.
"Let me see that."
Elias touched the chain.
"My watch?"
She nodded.
He withdrew it.
The broken gold case flashed in the sunlight.
Willow Song held out her hand.
Elias hesitated.
Then placed the watch in her palm.
She turned it over.
Examined the cracked crystal.
Then opened the back.
Her expression changed.
She stared at the engraving.
A small mountain.
A winding line representing a river.
And beneath them, the initials T.W.
Willow Song's fingers began trembling.
"Where did you get this?"
Elias felt a strange chill.
"My father."
She looked up sharply.
"His name?"
"Thomas Whitlock."
The older woman closed her eyes.
For several moments, she said nothing.
Then she whispered something in Apache.
Elias did not understand the words.
But he understood the emotion.
Recognition.
Grief.
And fear.
He leaned forward.
"You knew him?"
She nodded slowly.
"Yes."
Elias's heartbeat quickened.
"Where?"
"Here."
He stared.
"Here?"
She looked toward the river.
"Twenty years ago."
For a moment, the sounds of the camp seemed to disappear.
Elias heard only his own breathing.
His father had been here.
On this same ground.
Beside this same river.
The man whose disappearance had shaped his entire childhood had once stood where Elias now stood.
He swallowed.
"What happened to him?"
Willow Song looked toward the chief's shelter.
Then back at Elias.
"Come with me."
Inside her shelter, Willow Song placed the watch on a woven mat.
She sat opposite Elias.
For a long time, she studied him.
Then she began telling him about Thomas Whitlock.
His father had not come west merely to claim land.
He had been employed as a surveyor by a territorial development office.
His assignment involved mapping a proposed freight and military supply route through the red mountains.
At first, the work seemed ordinary.