Goyathlay pointed the steel barrel of his Winchester straight at Maverick’s chest.
"And while our blood drains into the sand of the San Pedro," Goyathlay roared, "our chief brings a white wolf into our cradle! He gives him our eastern water! He gives him the daughter of the high house! He thinks a white man's scrap of paper will stop Vance McCall’s lead!"
The crowd parted like grass before a scythe. Every eye turned to Maverick.
Maverick did not move his rifle, but his thumbs remained resting lightly across the receiver of his Henry. He looked from Goyathlay’s shaking rifle barrel to Lobo Negro’s impassive face.
"Put the gun down, Goyathlay," Maverick said. His voice was low, flat, and carried the terrible calm of a man who had faced down drunk gunfighters in Abilene and Dodge City. "I didn't shoot your brother, and I didn't steal your horses."
"You are of their blood!" Goyathlay took three aggressive strides toward him, his rifle coming up to his shoulder. "Your skin is their skin! You sit in our valley like a tick on an elk’s ear, fattening yourself on our grass while we bury our dead!"
"I said put the rifle down," Maverick repeated, his voice dropping an octave.
Before Goyathlay could pull the trigger, a figure lunged out from the shadow of the chief's lodge.
It was Hesper.
She was wearing her dark buckskin veil, but she moved with the ferocious speed of a she-cougar protecting a den. She did not grab Goyathlay’s rifle; she stepped directly between the muzzle of the Winchester and Maverick’s chest, planting her moccasined feet into the dirt and facing the warrior.
"Shoot, then, Goyathlay!" she cried, her voice ringing off the rock walls of the canyon like an iron chime. "Shoot through the daughter of your chief to kill a man who has done nothing but sweat over pine logs! Show the village how brave the Iron Lance is when he stands before a woman!"
Goyathlay stopped. The barrel of his rifle wavered an inch from the dark leather of her veil.
"Step aside, scarred one," Goyathlay snarled through clenched teeth. "You are nothing in this camp. You are a woman whom no man would take until this scavenger was dragged from the desert to claim you."
Hesper did not flinch. "He took me without fear! He looked upon my face without running! Which of you can say the same? When the fire took my skin five winters ago, you—Goyathlay—were the first to turn your pony and ride away from my father’s fire because you were afraid a scarred woman would bring bad medicine to your lodge!"
A collective gasp went through the assembled women. Two elders nodded in silent remembrance.
Goyathlay’s face darkened with blood-red shame. His finger tightened on the trigger, his knuckles whitening with murderous fury.
"Enough!"
Lobo Negro’s voice struck the gathering like a thunderclap.
The chief stepped forward, his eyes burning with an authority that even Goyathlay dared not openly defy. He laid the palm of his hand over the barrel of Goyathlay’s Winchester and forced it downward until the iron muzzle pointed into the dirt.
"Taza will be buried on the high ledge with his weapons and his medicine," Lobo Negro decreed. "We do not shed tribal blood over the dead before the mourning fire is lit. And Maverick Cole is of this valley now. The river gave him to us. The fire bound him to my daughter. If any man among you wishes to kill him, he must first come to my lodge and take my silver medallion from my throat."
The chief’s gaze swept over the warriors. None met his eyes.
Goyathlay spat into the dirt at Maverick’s stirrup, turned on his heel, and stalked away toward the horse lines, his young men trailing behind him like a pack of sulking wolves.
Maverick looked down at Hesper.
She was still standing in front of his horse, her shoulders trembling beneath the deerskin dress, her chest heaving with adrenaline. She looked up at him through the narrow slits of her mask for a long, silent second, then turned and walked swiftly toward the river, disappearing among the weeping willows before he could speak a single word.
That night, there was no drumming in the valley.
The village was shrouded in a heavy, suffocating grief. On the high limestone ledge overlooking the southern narrows, a solitary pyre burned, sending the spirit of young Taza into the cold night sky. The wailing of his mother and sisters rose and fell like the wind through the rimrock needles, lonely and desolate.
At the eastern homestead, Maverick did not sleep.
He sat on a flat oak stump fifty paces from his half-built cabin, wrapped in his heavy canvas coat, his Henry rifle resting across his knees. A small tin pot of black coffee simmered on three flat stones over a bed of coals.