Ethan’s eyes widened. He had stumbled directly into the heart of a sacred sanctuary. And right before he could pull back into the safety of the stone corridor, his worn boot heel slid on loose gravel, snapping a dead juniper branch with a sound that cracked through the canyon like thunder.
The sharp snap of the dried juniper branch sliced through the canyon amphitheater like the crack of an Enfield musket.
In an instant, the ambient murmurs of the gathering—the low voices of clan mothers, the soft shifting of feet on red sand, the crackle of burning cedar logs—died into absolute, suffocating silence. A hawk circling lazily on a high thermal overhead let out a solitary, piercing scream, and down below, two hundred human beings turned their faces toward the narrow rock fissure as if yanked by a single invisible cord.
Ethan Walker felt every drop of blood in his veins turn to slush.
He did not possess the reckless daring of frontier gunfighters who sought out gunfights in saloons, nor did he harbor any romantic illusions about the harsh realities of the southwestern borderlands. He had seen what Apache war parties did to freight outfits that violated their hunting ranges; he had seen the sun-bleached bones of prospectors who had ventured too far into the Chiricahua strongholds. Standing on this high terrace, silhouetted against the bright orange sandstone by the dying light of the afternoon sun, he was as exposed as a rabbit pinned beneath an owl’s talon.
Instinct screamed at him to throw himself backward into the dark cleft of rock, sprint back to where Dutch was tethered, swing into the leather saddle, and ride his horse until the beast’s lungs burst. But Ethan had spent enough time around wild animals and dangerous men to know the fatal consequences of panic. To run now would turn him into prey. A man running away triggered an instinctive reflex in every hunter carrying a bow; an arrow would take him between the shoulder blades before he could clear twenty yards of slickrock.
So Ethan did not run. He stood completely still, breathing slowly through his nose, his boots anchored into the loose red shale of the terrace.
Down in the arena, the reaction was instantaneous and deadly. A half-dozen young braves, their tempers already rubbed raw by hours of ceremonial tension and wounded pride, sprang into action without waiting for an elder’s command. Sinew-backed ash bows were raised in fluid, practiced arcs. Arrows tipped with serrated black obsidian were nocked to strings pulled taut to the ear. Further along the circle, three seasoned warriors drew long, wicked Mexican steel blades from rawhide sheaths, their eyes fixed upon Ethan’s chest with lethal focus.
Ethan knew that one false twitch of his fingers would turn him into a pin-cushion.
Slowly, deliberately, moving with the agonizing slowness of molasses poured on a winter morning, Ethan lifted both arms away from his sides. He took great care not to let his right hand drift anywhere near the holster of his Colt .45. He raised his open palms to shoulder level, fingers spread wide to show they carried no rifle, no knife, and no trickery. Then, keeping his eyes downcast in a posture that conveyed neither defiance nor cowardly terror, he reached up with his left fingertips, lifted his dust-caked Stetson from his brow, and held it firmly against the breast of his patched work shirt.
"Easy now," Ethan said aloud. His voice was husky, scratched raw from trail dust and a day without water, but he kept the pitch low, even, and calm, the way a drover speaks to a spooked longhorn. "I’m sorry to intrude on your ground. I didn't come looking for trouble. My pack horse broke his tether north of here, and I followed the tracks into this draw. I didn't know folks were gathered here."
None of the young warriors lowered their weapons. To them, his words were merely the guttural, incomprehensible chattering of an outsider, an invader from the race of men who built stone forts, cut down ancient pinon groves, and laid iron rails across sacred hunting valleys.
Two young braves began to stalk up the switchback path leading to the high terrace. They moved with silent, feline grace, their bows held ready to loose. Ethan stayed frozen, feeling a cold drop of sweat trace a slow, burning path down through the grime along his temple.
At the center of the council circle, Chief Whitehawk slowly raised his right arm.
He did not shout. He did not leap to his feet. He merely lifted an open palm, but the authority radiating from the old patriarch was absolute. The two ascending braves stopped immediately in their tracks, their boots hovering over the stone steps. Across the arena, the drawn bowstrings eased by half an inch, though the points remained aimed squarely at Ethan's heart.