"Stay back!" Thorpe shrieked, his arrogant bravado completely shattered. "I work for the territory! I've got legal authority!"
Ethan stepped past Whitehawk, his face white from loss of blood, his teeth bared in a cold, deadly grimace. He raised his Colt, leveling the muzzle straight between Ben Thorpe’s bloodshot eyes.
"Your authority just expired, Thorpe," Ethan whispered.
Before Thorpe could pull his trigger, the clear, brassy notes of a military bugle ripped through the morning air from the southern pass:
Tarantara! Tarantara!
The charge call of the Fifth United States Cavalry.
The shrill, brassy notes of the cavalry bugle cascaded down the sheer walls of Cañada del Oro, rebounding off the red sandstone until it sounded as though a dozen horns were blowing at once.
Ben Thorpe froze, his bloodshot eyes widening in horror as the southern mouth of the wash began to vibrate beneath the rhythmic, ground-shaking thunder of iron-shod hooves. The dust that had begun to settle after the catastrophic wagon explosion was churned into a blinding, golden cloud by the advance guard of forty United States Cavalry troopers.
They rode two abreast, sitting upright in their high-backed McClellan saddles, their blue wool service coats grayed by eighty miles of forced march. Carbine boots slapped against stirrup leathers; sabers clinked rhythmically in steel scabbards; and riding at the head of the column, flanked by an orderly carrying the swallow-tailed red-and-white guidon of Company C, was Captain Marcus Baylor.
Behind the mounted column came two light pack mules bearing the disassembled bronze components of mountain howitzers, their artillery crews keeping pace with the cavalry escort.
"Form line!" Baylor’s voice cut through the canyon like a saber slash. "Company... front into line! Carbines at the carry! Halt!"
With the flawless precision of veteran regulars, forty cavalrymen swung their mounts into a wide semi-circle across the bed of the wash, effectively sealing off the lower canyon. Forty Springfield trapdoor carbines clicked to full cock simultaneously—a sound that made the surviving mercenaries drop their weapons into the sand and throw their hands into the air without waiting for an order.
Thorpe stood alone in the center of the wash, his smoking Colt dangling limply from his trembling right hand, his face caked in soot and grease. He looked from the drawn circle of Apache lances behind him to the bristling wall of federal carbines in front of him. Every road of escape had vanished.
Captain Baylor touched his spurs to his mount’s flank, walking the sleek cavalry sorrel forward until he was ten paces from Thorpe. The officer’s gray eyes were like chips of glacial ice as he looked at the blackened crater, the overturned carriage of the bronze Gatling gun, and the lifeless body of Kaelen lying across the severed powder fuse.
"Drop the sidearm, Mr. Thorpe," Baylor said, his voice quiet, flat, and lethal. "You drop it right now, or my sergeant will put a .45-70 ball through your breastbone."
Thorpe’s jaw worked frantically. A desperate, sneering defiance tried to surface through his panic. "Baylor... you're making a mistake! These red devils attacked our mineral claim! They blew our freight wagons! We were defending territorial property under the authority of Governor Safford!"
Baylor did not raise his voice. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew an iron pair of military swivel handcuffs, tossing them onto the gravel at Thorpe’s boots.
"Your authority was locked in the guardhouse at Fort Grant yesterday morning, Thorpe," Baylor said. "Jason Vance has confessed to the full conspiracy. Every ledger, every forged patent, and every bribe paid to Judge Miller is in the hands of the United States Marshal for the Arizona Territory. You are under military arrest for illegal possession of automatic ordnance, unauthorized detonation of munitions on unceded territory, and the murder of an allied tribal subject."
Thorpe looked down at the iron cuffs, then over his shoulder at Ethan Walker.
Ethan was leaning heavily against a red sandstone boulder, his canvas coat soaked in dark crimson down the left sleeve. His face was pale as tallow from the bullet wound through his collarbone, but his right hand still held his Colt level with Thorpe's heart. Beside Ethan stood Ayana, her obsidian eyes burning with a grief so profound, so terrible, that Thorpe reflexively stepped backward toward the troopers.
"You let this drover set me up!" Thorpe screamed, his voice cracking into hysteria as two burly cavalry corporals dismounted and pinned his arms behind his back. "He’s a renegade! He belongs at the end of a rope!"
"Silence the prisoner," Baylor ordered coldly.