"The white man speaks of fear," Tahzay sneered, his lip curling back over his teeth. "Because his heart is soft like beef tallow."
"I speak of arithmetic," Ethan snapped back, his voice dropping into a hard, dangerous whisper. "I’ve seen twelve Confederate cavalrymen charge a Union battery at Glorieta Pass. They were brave men, too. And in three seconds, all twelve of them were nothing but red mist and meat. You want to honor your people? You do it by keeping them alive to see tomorrow's sunrise, not by feeding their blood to an iron machine."
Ayana placed her hand firmly on Tahzay’s forearm. The young warrior flinched as though burned by hot iron, but the cold authority radiating from the chief’s daughter checked his temper.
"The drover is right," Ayana said, her dark eyes scanning the canyon floor below. "To die in a charge when you cannot strike your enemy is not valor. It is madness. My father sent us to see their strength, not to give them our scalps. Ethan, you know the ways of these men. How do they move? Who feeds them?"
Ethan pulled himself backward down the rocky shelf, out of the direct line of sight of any sharp-eyed lookout below. The others followed him into the narrow juniper thicket where the horses were tethered.
"Vance is a businessman first and a killer second," Ethan explained, crouching beside a flat slab of red shale and using a sharp stone to sketch the terrain. "An operation of this size eats supplies like a herd of locusts. Those miners need flour, beans, salt pork, drill bits, and dynamite caps. And more than that, Vance has thirty hired guns down there who won't sleep in the dirt for less than three silver dollars a day, paid in hard coin."
He tapped the stone sketch with his forefinger.
"A supply wagon runs between Tucson and this camp once every seven days. It follows the dry creek bed through Cañada del Oro. If they're blasting next week, the next shipment will carry the blasting caps and the payroll. Without caps, their dynamite is useless—just sticks of greasy sawdust that won't blow a rabbit out of a hole. And without payroll, half of Vance's gunmen will saddle up and ride back to the Tucson saloons before Sunday night."
Chato nodded slowly, his ancient eyes gleaming with understanding. "You strike the belly to kill the snake."
"Exactly," Ethan said. "We don't attack the fortified camp. We take the wagon before it ever reaches the red bluffs. But we need to know the route, the escort, and the exact day."
"I know who carries the paper," Ayana said quietly, stepping closer to Ethan.
Ethan looked at her. "What paper?"
"Three suns ago, a rider left the camp below," Ayana explained, her gaze steady and piercing. "He did not ride toward Tucson. He rode west, toward the stage station at Rattlesnake Wells. He carried a leather pouch bearing the eagle stamp of your government. My brother-in-spirit, Tonkay, followed his tracks to the stage road."
Ethan took off his Stetson and rubbed the back of his neck, his mind racing through the dangerous implications. "A courier. Carrying the dispatch to the territorial marshal's office. If Vance has official backing, there'll be a legal writ of eviction in that pouch. A paper claiming this whole range is public domain open for mineral patent."
"If they have this paper," Tahzay asked, his suspicion flaring again, "does that mean the blue-coat soldiers will ride to protect them?"
"Yes," Ethan answered honestly. "If Vance can show that Apache warriors attacked an authorized mineral claim, Captain Baylor at Fort Grant will have no choice. He'll march two companies of the Fifth Cavalry into your valley with mountain howitzers, and Washington will call it a pacification campaign."
Ethan stood up, adjusting his gun belt and looking down at Dutch, who stood patiently in the shade, his ears flicking back and forth.
"We need to see what's in that dispatch," Ethan said. "We intercept that courier at Rattlesnake Wells before he boards the westbound stage. If we get our hands on Vance’s mining patents and his ledger, we’ll know which judges he bought, when his payroll is rolling, and how much time your father has."
Tahzay stepped up, blocking Ethan’s path to his horse. "And how do we know this is not a trick? You ride to the stage station. You meet your own people. You tell the sheriff where our women and children sleep, and you lead the soldiers into our sanctuary."