The man shrieked in pain, dropping his gun and sliding off his saddle into the snow bank.
Caleb turned his head in shock.
Goyah was standing near the mouth of the cave, leaning his back heavily against the granite wall to keep his weight off his bad leg. In his hands was a massive hickory longbow he had kept wrapped in canvas inside his pack, another arrow already notched to the cord, drawn back to his ear.
Goyah offered Caleb a quick, fierce flash of teeth—a warrior's grin—before releasing the second arrow.
The shaft whistled through the trees, striking the saddle horn of another rider, scaring the man’s horse into a frantic, bucking frenzy that threw the rider into a boulder.
With Goyah providing deadly covering fire from the high ground, Caleb stepped out from behind his tree.
He levered his Winchester rifle with smooth, rapid precision. BANG. CRACK-SLIDE. BANG.
His rounds struck the remaining two riders, knocking one from his saddle and shattering the rifle stock of the last man, who turned his horse in pure terror and fled down the mountain trail as fast as the horse could plunge through the drifts.
Silence descended back over the mountain slope.
The blue gun smoke drifted slowly through the sunlit pine trees, smelling sharply of sulfur and burnt powder. Down in the clearing, three horses stood shivering in the snow, while the wounded men lay groaning in the drifts.
Caleb walked slowly down the slope, his rifle held ready, until he stood over Vance.
The scarred leader was lying on his back, his breath rattling wetly in his chest, his eyes wide with disbelief as he looked up at the man standing above him.
"You... you killed me... for a savage..." Vance choked out, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips.
Caleb looked down at him, his face as cold and unyielding as the granite peaks above them.
"No, Vance," Caleb said softly. "I killed you for what you did at Tonto Basin."
Vance's eyes went dark, his head slumping sideways into the white snow.
By noon, the quiet of the mountain forest had fully returned.
Caleb had rounded up the stray horses belonging to the scalphunters. He disarmed the three wounded men, binding their injuries with rough canvas strips, and tied them securely to their saddles.
"Take 'em down to the settlement fort," Caleb told the uninjured rider who had surrendered. "Tell the marshal you ran into a man who doesn't like murderers in his mountains."