She did not glance at Kaelen, the fearless horseman who had risked his neck. She did not glance at Tahzay, the archer who could split willow twigs at a hundred paces. She did not look at the piles of silver ornaments, the woven blankets, or the strings of prized horses waiting in the lower pasture.
With slow, measured steps, Ayana walked away from her father’s seat. Her moccasins made no sound as she crossed the red dust of the arena floor. Her obsidian eyes were locked straight ahead, completely unyielding, carrying a luminous intensity that parted the onlookers before her.
She walked straight past the circle of suitors.
She walked straight past the council elders.
She halted six paces from the great cottonwood tree where Ethan Walker stood pressed against the bark.
Ethan felt his stomach plummet into his boots. He looked around instinctively, convinced beyond all doubt that some high-ranking Apache elder or hidden medicine woman had quietly walked up behind him in the shadows. But there was nothing behind him except the gnarl of the tree and the solid sandstone cliff.
When he looked back, Ayana raised her slender, bronze-skinned arm. Her index finger pointed directly at the frayed pocket of his faded canvas work shirt.
She looked him square in the eye and spoke in clear, unhurried English:
"I choose him."
The words hung in the twilight air like a suspended executioner’s axe.
For three seconds, nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Even the canyon wind seemed to pause among the cottonwood boughs, unwilling to disturb the terrifying quiet that had fallen over the assembly.
Then, the basin erupted into pandemonium.
A collective roar of outrage tore from the throats of the assembled suitors. Kaelen surged forward, his face twisted in savage disbelief, his fingers clamped around the hilt of his bone-handled skinning knife. Tahzay, the marksman, stepped into the open dirt with his bow half-drawn, shouting an accusation in a voice choked with fury. Women cried out, shielding their children, while the gray-haired elders leaped to their feet, gesturing violently toward the platform where Chief Whitehawk sat.
To be passed over for a brother warrior was a bitter pill; to be passed over for an uninvited, dust-caked white drifter who possessed neither clan, nor reputation, nor honor on their lands was an insult that demanded blood.
Ethan Walker felt every hair on his arms stand on end. The air felt charged with iron and gunsmoke. He instinctively shifted his weight onto the balls of his boots, his hands still raised at shoulder height, knowing that if the mob charged, he would not live long enough to clear leather on his revolver.
"Hold on, ma'am," Ethan said, his voice trembling slightly before he managed to force it down into a flat, steady register. "I... I reckon there’s been some kind of tremendous mistake here."
Ayana did not lower her arm. Her dark eyes did not waver by a fraction of an inch from his face. "There is no mistake."
"There has to be," Ethan insisted, leaning forward, desperation bleeding into his tone. "Miss, look at me. I'm a trail hand. I chased a runaway pack horse into this canyon because the damn animal was carrying my flour and my bedroll. I don't know who you are, I don't know what this gathering is, and I sure as hell didn't come here to cause a riot. You need to pick one of these boys before someone gets killed."
A faint, fleeting shadow of amusement crossed Ayana’s lips—so subtle that only a man staring directly into her face could have caught it. "I know why you came. You came for your horse."
"Then you understand I ain't part of this," Ethan pleaded.
"You are here," she replied simply, her voice like water running over smooth stones. "That is enough."
Before Ethan could argue further, the thunderous voice of Chief Whitehawk cracked across the arena like an anvil being struck with a sledgehammer.
"TOV-HO!" the chief roared in his native tongue.
The command carried so much raw, primeval force that the advancing warriors halted instantly. Kaelen froze ten feet from Ethan, his teeth bared, his chest heaving, his knife half-drawn from its scabbard. Tahzay slowly lowered his bow, though his eyes burned with hatred.
Chief Whitehawk stepped down from the wooden platform. His movements were slow, deliberate, and carried the crushing weight of half a century of rule. He walked through the parting crowd of his people, his long buckskin fringe brushing the red dirt, his face carved into lines of stone.
He stopped directly between his daughter and Ethan.
The chief stood half a head shorter than Ethan, but his presence was so immense, so heavy with authority, that Ethan felt dwarfed. The old man smelled of wood ash, sweetgrass, and old cured leather. His eyes, dark as midnight pools, surveyed Ethan from the frayed brim of his Stetson down to the split leather of his boots.