Kaelen’s eyes flashed with murderous fury. His knuckles turned white against his knife hilt, and for a split second, Ethan prepared to dodge the lunge and drive his boot into the warrior’s knee.
"KAELEN!"
The voice was not Chief Whitehawk’s, but Ayana’s.
She walked out from the shadow of the cottonwood grove, dressed in a riding tunic of soft buckskin, carrying a short ash bow and a quiver of flint-tipped arrows across her shoulder. Her expression was cold and imperial, commanding the immediate deference of every man in the vicinity.
"Go to the southern ridge," Ayana ordered Kaelen in their native tongue, her voice cutting like an obsidian blade. "My father commanded you to watch the pass, not to snap like a mangy dog at our guest."
Kaelen’s face darkened with shame and fury. He glanced at Ethan, then back at Ayana, his pride battered before his peers. He gave a curt, stiff nod, turned on his heel, and stalked away toward the horse corrals, kicking up plumes of red dust with every stride.
Ayana watched him leave before turning her gaze to Ethan. "He is bitter. He spent three moons preparing gifts for yesterday. He believed my father’s lodge would be his."
"I can't say I blame him," Ethan admitted, taking Dutch’s reins and checking the cinch on the horse's saddle. "A man doesn't like having the rug pulled out from under him, especially in front of his friends. You made a lot of enemies yesterday, Ayana. And you gave most of them my name."
"A warrior who cannot bear disappointment is not ready to lead a clan," she replied dismissively. "Saddle your gray horse, Ethan Walker. My father has chosen three scouts to ride with us. We go to the southern ridge."
Ethan quickly inspected Dutch’s shoes, tightened the saddle cinch, and secured his canvas bedroll and canteen behind the cantle. He left his pack horse and his provisions in the care of an elderly Apache woman whom Ayana had designated, trusting that under the chief's protection, his goods were safer than they would be in any border town livery stable.
Within ten minutes, a small party of five riders assembled at the southern exit of the hidden amphitheater. Chief Whitehawk did not ride with them; the defense of the village and the maintenance of tribal peace required his presence in the council. Instead, the patrol was led by Tahzay—the marksman who had shattered the willow targets the day before—accompanied by an older, scarred scout named Chato, Ayana, Ethan, and an eager young brave named Tonkay.
They rode in single file through a tortuous sandstone defile where the red cliffs rose three hundred feet above their heads, blocking out the morning sun. The trail climbed steadily, winding through treacherous slickrock slopes and narrow shelves littered with loose shale. Ethan was impressed by the sure-footedness of the Apache ponies; they scrambled up the near-vertical rock faces with the agility of bighorn sheep. Dutch, bred for the open plains, had to strain and dig with his hindquarters to keep pace, but the gray gelding proved his mettle, never losing his footing.
Tahzay rode at the front, setting a punishing pace, deliberately choosing the steepest inclines to test the white man’s endurance. Ethan said nothing, adjusting his weight in the stirrups, leaning forward to spare his mount’s back, absorbing the jarring ascents with the quiet endurance of a seasoned drover.
By mid-morning, the narrow defile opened onto a high, windswept promontory that jutted out over the vast southern desert like the prow of a stone ship.
"Dismount," Tahzay commanded abruptly in broken English, dropping the reins of his pony and melting into the scrub brush near the rim.
Ethan dismounted, looped Dutch’s reins over a dwarf juniper, and followed Ayana and Chato on hands and knees through a dense thicket of mountain mahogany. Crawling to the very edge of the thousand-foot drop, Ethan looked through a gap between two red boulders.
The view took his breath away, but not because of the dramatic desert vista.
Three miles below, in the wide, sandy mouth of a canyon that led toward the Tucson freight road, an armed camp had been established.
Through the shimmering heat distortion, Ethan counted seven large canvas wall tents, a fortified horse corral made of cedar pickets, and a massive mound of gray, pulverized rock spilling down the slope of a red bluff. Dozens of men—small as ants from this altitude—were moving about with wheelbarrows and pickaxes. Near the mouth of a newly blasted mine adit stood an iron steam boiler, chugging out thick, oily plumes of black coal smoke that drifted across the pristine blue sky like a greasy smear.