"We build three stone barricades across the channel—not out of brush that can burn, but out of solid river boulders two feet thick. In front of the barricades, we bury five kegs of blasting powder that Horace Finch brought from the mining stores in Tucson. We lay a powder train to the high ledges. When his lead wagon reaches the center marker, we blow the channel behind him, drop the boulders from the cliff face to seal his retreat, and trap his cannons in a pen where his guns can't elevate high enough to hit the cliff tops."
Lobo Negro studied the sand map for three long minutes. He traced the line of the river, looked up at the towering red cliffs that rose on either side of the eastern bend, and then looked at Maverick Cole.
"It is the strategy of the mountain rattlesnake," the old chief said, a slow, terrible smile touching his weathered lips. "You do not strike the bear while he is walking through the open forest. You let him put his head into the hollow log, and then you strike his tongue."
For thirty-six hours, the valley worked without sleep.
Women and children hauled baskets of heavy river stones up the winding goat trails to the cliff ledges above the flood channel, piling them into immense, precarious deadfalls that could be released with a single stroke of an iron pry bar. The young men dug five deep pits across the gravel channel, carefully laying the wooden kegs of black blasting powder, packing them with broken quartz and iron scraps to act as shrapnel, and tamping the earth with wet clay to direct the force of the blast upward.
From each keg, a line of waterproof mining fuse was run through hollow elderberry reeds, snaking up the cliff face to the observation post where Maverick and Hesper would stand.
At the homestead, the newly built cabin was transformed into an inner redoubt. The heavy pine window shutters were closed and barred from within, slotted with three-inch rifle ports that gave an overlapping field of fire across the river shallows. Behind the cabin, in the deep limestone caves near the mountain spring, the non-combatants—the elderly, the nursing mothers, and the children—were gathered under the protection of ten veteran warriors armed with bows and shotguns.
On the second evening, as the sun was bleeding away behind the western mountains, Maverick walked the perimeter of the defenses one last time.
The air was dead calm. The cottonwood leaves hung motionless on their stems, and the river ran with a low, mournful murmur that sounded like the singing of an ancient funeral dirge.
He climbed the notched log ladder to the high limestone shelf above the horseshoe bend, where Hesper stood watching the eastern trail through a brass naval telescope Maverick had traded from a sailor in Galveston ten years before.
She lowered the glass as his boots struck the stone.
"They have reached the dry wash," she said, her voice steady as the granite beneath their feet. "Six wagons. Two big guns on heavy wheels, pulled by eight mules each. I counted forty-two men on horseback. Vance McCall rides at their head on a black horse with a silver-mounted Mexican saddle."
Maverick took the glass and leaned against the breastwork.
Through the circle of ground lenses, the desert six miles out was bathed in the harsh, yellow glare of the setting sun. The dust column was massive, rising fifty feet into the still air. He saw the black stallion; he saw the bulky, broad-shouldered figure of Vance McCall, wearing a high-crowned beaver hat and carrying a Winchester across his pommel. And behind the second wagon, his arm in a sling, his face wrapped in bloody bandages, rode Silas Vance, his yellow eyes burning with the vengeful madness of an animal that had been whipped.
Beside Silas Vance rode a third man—a lean, wiry figure whose long black hair was tied with a red bandana, riding a dun pony with its ears pinned back.
Maverick lowered the telescope, his jaw tightening until the enamel of his molars ground together.
"Goyathlay," Maverick whispered.
Hesper went rigid. "He is with them?"
"He’s leading their scout line," Maverick said, handing her the brass tube. "He’s showing them the path around the bog-holes. He sold the last secret of this valley to buy his revenge."
Hesper raised the glass to her eye. For three long seconds, she watched the traitor riding beside the men who had murdered Taza and tried to burn her people. When she lowered the telescope, her face was completely devoid of fear, sorrow, or hesitation. It was the face of an avenging spirit carved from the red stone of the canyon.
"Then he will die in the channel with them," she said, her voice dropping into a register of cold, absolute finality. "My father gave him his life at the boundary stones. He threw it into the dirt to lick the boots of a Texas cattle thief. Tomorrow, the ravens will pick his eyes."