Down below, the blast had wrought total devastation on Thorpe’s front line.
The Gatling gun was blown off its timber carriage, thrown thirty feet into the dry wash, its bronze barrels twisted and blackened by the heat. The six mercenaries covering the main gap were knocked flat, their clothes singed, their weapons scattered across the sand.
Ben Thorpe had been shielded from the direct blast by the overhang of the cave, but the concussion had thrown him violently into the shale bank. Covered in blood and soot, his clothes smoking, the mercenary leader struggled to his hands and knees, shaking his head in a daze.
On the upper ledge, Ethan fought his way back to consciousness.
His head was pounding with blinding agony, and a warm trickle of blood was running down from his left ear. He dragged himself back to the rim, his fingers closing around the cold steel receiver of his Winchester.
Through the swirling, sulfurous smoke in the wash below, he saw Thorpe stumbling toward the remaining fuse line leading into the undercut cave—the fuse that would ignite the thirty kegs packed beneath the mountain foundation!
Ethan levered a cartridge into the Winchester’s chamber. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, trying to steady his blurred vision, lining up the iron sights with Thorpe’s broad, leather-clad back.
Crack!
A gunshot rang out from the opposite ridge—not from Thorpe, but from the surviving sharpshooter who had spotted Ethan’s match.
The bullet struck Ethan in the left shoulder.
The impact spun him around like a top. A searing, white-hot lance of pain exploded through his collarbone, tearing through muscle and chipping bone. Ethan cried out, dropping the rifle, his boots sliding dangerously toward the precipice. He fell onto his back, his left arm hanging limp and useless, his vision graying as he clutched his bleeding chest.
Down in the wash, Thorpe reached the fuse line. He pulled a brass lighter from his vest, flicked the wheel, and touched the yellow flame to the tarred hemp.
The fuse caught with a vicious, hissing crackle, the bright spark racing along the dry sand toward the mouth of the powder cave.
"Die in your hole, you red bastards!" Thorpe screamed, stumbling backward toward his horse.
Ethan stared down from the ledge through a haze of agony, unable to reach his rifle, watching the spark race toward the doom of two hundred innocent souls.
Then, from the red gateway above the wash, a figure charged through the smoke.
It was not Ethan. It was not Tahzay.
It was Kaelen.
The young Apache warrior—the suitor whose pride had been shattered, who had spent three days nursing his wounded honor—ran with the blinding speed of a mountain hawk. He carried no bow, no lance, and no shield. In his right hand, he carried only his broad, heavy skinning knife.
He did not run toward safety. He sprinted directly toward the hissing fuse.
"Kaelen! No!" Whitehawk’s voice roared from the barricade, but the young brave did not slow his stride.
Kaelen threw himself onto the gravel bank right at the mouth of the undercut cave. With a wild, desperate sweep of his blade, he slashed at the racing spark. The steel blade severed the burning hemp three inches before it reached the first bag of black powder, stamping the hissing ember into the damp sand with his bare moccasin.
The mountain was saved.
But from the brush twenty yards away, Ben Thorpe leveled his heavy Colt revolver with cold, trembling fury.
BANG.
The heavy .45 slug struck Kaelen dead in the center of his chest.
The young warrior’s body jerked violently backward. He fell onto the sand, his hand still clamped around the severed fuse, his dark eyes looking up toward the high red bluffs he had spent his life defending. A faint, proud smile touched his lips as his breath left him, his blood seeping into the ancient crimson earth of his ancestors.
Thorpe turned to flee toward his horse, cocking his pistol to fire again.
"THORPE!"
A voice like a mountain thunderclap echoed from the mouth of the gateway.
Chief Whitehawk stepped out into the open wash, his long buckskin coat trailing behind him. Beside him strode Tahzay, Ayana, and thirty warriors, their weapons leveled, their eyes burning with the terrifying, primeval fury of an entire nation unleashed.
Behind them, climbing down the fractured chimney with his right hand clutching his Colt .45 and his left arm bound in a bloody serape, Ethan Walker hit the canyon floor.
Thorpe backed away, his boots stumbling against the splintered wheel of the destroyed powder wagon. He raised his revolver, his hand shaking violently as he looked at the ring of steel, bone, and stone closing in around him.