"Cole! Maverick Cole! If you’re alive down there, grab your guns! McCall’s regulators have crossed the creek, and they’re burning everything with an Indian brand on it!"
The two riders who broke through the cottonwood fringe at the eastern bend were not Apache scouts.
As their horses skidded to a halt in the loose river gravel, splashing spray into the pale starlight, Maverick recognized the broad-brimmed straw hats and grease-stained buckskin leggings of Sonora vaqueros. One of them, an older man with graying stubble and a bandolier of .44-40 cartridges slung across his chest, was clutching his left bicep where dark blood soaked through his sleeve. The other was barely twenty, his face pale beneath trail dust, his eyes darting frantically toward the dark wall of the eastern canyon.
Maverick lowered the muzzle of his Henry rifle three inches, but kept the butt pressed firmly into his shoulder pocket. "Who sent you into this valley?" he demanded in Spanish, his voice low, gravelly, and flat against the rushing sound of the river.
The older vaquero swung down with a groan, his boots striking the turf with a dull thud. "Señor Cole? You are Maverick Cole?"
"I am. Talk quick, or my finger finishes what's left of your night."
"We rode for Don Rafael’s outfit on the San Pedro," the man wheezed, leaning his hip against his lathered gelding. "Rafael sold out three days ago to Vance McCall. McCall’s foreman, a butcher named Silas Vance, brought forty hired men out of Tombstone and Texas. They aren't just driving steers, señor. They brought two supply wagons loaded with dynamite, repeating carbines, and kerosene. Silas Vance told every hand in the bunkhouse that the territorial marshal in Prescott has turned his eyes away. They have orders to clear the canyon from the twin spires all the way to the western rim—burn every lodge, butcher every pony, and hang any man who stands on a deed that isn't stamped with McCall’s brand."
Behind Maverick, a shadow moved.
Hesper stepped forward into the edge of the hearth glow. She had not put the veil back over her face; instead, she had bound her long black hair behind her neck with a strip of rawhide and carried a short-stocked 1866 Winchester carbine—the brass-framed "Yellow Boy"—cradled across her forearm. Her dark eyes swept over the two wounded riders with cold, diagnostic precision.
The younger vaquero looked at her face in the moonlight, saw the pale, jagged furrow of the burn across her cheek, and flinched back against his horse’s shoulder, crossing himself with a quick, trembling thumb.
Hesper’s jaw hardened, but her voice was as cold as mountain ice. "How many rifles crossed the dry wash before you turned your mounts?"
The older rider swallowed, keeping his eyes carefully on her boots rather than her face. "Twelve men on the forward scout, señora. Silas Vance rides with them himself. They caught us three miles past the spires when we refused to lead them through the night trail. They put a bullet in my arm and left our spare pack-mules dead in the sand. They are moving slow because of the boulders, but they know the water is here. By dawn, their main column will reach the mouth of the gap."
Maverick walked to the edge of the bank, looking east.
Between the two towering spires of red sandstone that guarded the eastern entrance, the canyon pinched down to a bottleneck barely sixty yards wide. The river ran hard through that slot, churning over jagged limestone ledges that would force any mounted company to drop into a single-file line. If a man wanted to stop an army with half a dozen rifles, that notch was the only place in forty miles where the earth gave him an even wager.
"How far behind are the twelve forward riders?" Maverick asked.
"An hour," the young vaquero whispered. "Maybe less. They have two Apache renegades from the reservation scouting the brush for them—men who know the smell of a dry campfire."
Maverick turned to Hesper. "Get on Bramble. Ride down to your father’s village. Tell him to move the women, the children, and the horse herds into the high caves on the north mesa. Tell Goyathlay to bring every warrior who has a rifle and twenty rounds of lead to the eastern notch."
Hesper did not move. Her chin came up, and her dark pupils caught the ember light like polished flint. "My father already knows the guns are coming, Maverick. When three shots are fired near the spires, the scouts on the high ridge send smoke or mirror flash within five minutes. If I ride to the village, Goyathlay will say you ran like a dog and sent a woman to beg for his help."
"I don't give a damn what Goyathlay says about my skin!" Maverick barked, stepping close to her. "This isn't about pride, Hesper! Those men coming through that pass aren't cattle drovers looking for strays. They're bounty hunters and border ruffians. They get paid by the scalp and the acre. If they catch you here—"