“Yes, I know.” A lump in her throat prevented her from saying more, and she took comfort as he held her hard against him, the thud of his heartbeat a steady rhythm beneath her cheek.

The next day, a line of squalls moved across the mountains, rendering the pass slippery and dangerous. Steve took them up into the rocks off the trail, picking a spot carefully in case of a rockslide.

“Sometimes the ground gets too soft, and boulders the size of a two-story building come crashing down the slope, taking everything in the path along with them. A rockslide can bury an entire village in minutes. I saw it once, from a ledge overlooking a valley. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do but watch as people tried to run. Few escaped. It was over too quick. Later, we could hear the cries of those trapped in the rubble, and pulled out the ones we could find.”

He said it dispassionately, but she had a sudden image of him pulling aside jagged rocks and digging through the mud to rescue those trapped. It was an image that contrasted sharply with some in her memory, of him facing a man in the street, drawing his revolver so fast it was a blur, killing without evincing regret. Two completely different images of the same man. Could he be both?

She thought then of Matt Cooper, who had taught her how to use a knife when she was a soldadera forced to follow the army with Tom Beal, and his careless kindnesses when it was convenient for him. And she remembered, too, that Steve had killed him for it, for using her as he had, even though Matt had been the only man who was kind to her during those long, wretched days of torment.

There was a kind of justice in it that she appreciated, though she’d felt a faint sense of regret when he told her.

They rode on again when the rain stopped. It was drier up higher into the mountains, where the air was thinner and it was harder to breathe. The view was breathtaking, a network of yawning canyons patchworked with furiously twisting rivers across a landscape ribbed with green-and-brown hills. Fresh-scrubbed by the rains, emerald-green basins cradled picturesque villages, the missions tiny white beacons of hope when seen from such a high altitude.

The ride down was more harrowing than the arduous ascent, as the trail seemed to drop through narrow gorges rimmed by steep spirals of rock that made her think of stalagmites. In places, no sunlight could get through. The walls were so high that only a thin ribbon of light could be seen high overhead.