Chato shook his head, a grim smile touching the corners of his lips. "Greed makes men blind, Sarah. Brennan believes Thomas cached gold dust from the vein he discovered before the rock fell. He told Carpenter that if they find you, they find the map to the vein. And Brennan wants you."
"The council gathers again," Nalyce said to Chato in their native tongue, though the urgency in his voice needed no translation. "Tah-zay speaks to the young men. He says the white woman has brought the wolves to our sheepfold. He says if we do not throw her down the canyon, the blue coats from Fort Lowell will follow the outlaws and bring the Gatling guns."
Chato’s jaw set like iron. "Tah-zay smells danger and acts like an old woman whose basket has fallen into the fire. Goyahkla will decide, not the medicine man." He looked down at Sarah, his eyes steady and reassuring. "Come. You must stand before the circle. Let them see you walk without trembling."
Leaning upon Chato’s offered arm, Sarah stepped out of the lodge into the blinding brilliance of the mountain morning.
The council fire had been stoked with thick logs of mountain oak, sending a thick column of white smoke drifting up toward the granite spires. Nearly forty warriors were gathered in a wide semicircle, their rifles and lances glinting in the morning sun. Among them stood Tah-zay, his face painted with ashes and yellow ochre, waving his snake-wrapped staff toward the southern ridge.
"Hear the wind!" Tah-zay was shouting, his voice carrying the fervor of a prophet foretelling doom. "The crows gather on the lower rocks! Seven white wolves ride with iron shoes, and behind them come the wagons of the soldiers! For fifty winters our grandfathers bled to keep this sanctuary hidden from the white eye! Will we sell the bones of our children for the widow of a dead miner?"
A chorus of angry shouts rose from the younger warriors. Several stepped forward, brandishing their carbines, their faces dark with the desire to wash their spears in blood.
In the center sat Goyahkla. The great war leader had not moved. He sat upon a buffalo robe, smoking a long pipe carved from red pipestone, his heavy, lined face completely impassive as the angry storm raged around him.
Chato led Sarah directly into the center of the clearing, stopping ten paces from the council fire. Sarah stood straight, her chin raised, refusing to bow under the weight of dozens of hostile glares. She felt the child move within her, a strong, rhythmic push against her ribs that gave her an unexpected surge of defiance.
Tah-zay whirled upon them, pointing the gnarled tip of his staff straight at Sarah's chest. "She brings our death, Goyahkla! Let me take her to the cliff! Let the rocks have her, and let her wolves eat her bones!"
The crowd surged forward, the air thick with tension so volatile that a single spark could ignite a massacre.
Sarah had had enough.
She took a step forward, pulling her arm free from Chato’s grasp. The suddenness of her movement startled the warriors into a momentary silence.
"You call yourselves warriors!" Sarah’s voice rang out across the amphitheater, clear, sharp, and ringing with the unyielding strength of a frontier woman who had buried her own dead with an iron shovel. "You speak of bravery, yet you tremble before seven thieves and a crooked lawman!"
A stunned hush fell over the entire camp. Even the women grinding corn by the lodges stopped, staring at the white woman who dared to shout at the council of war.
Chato quickly translated her words into the Apache tongue, his voice booming with unmistakable pride and amusement.
Tah-zay sputtered, his eyes bulging with outrage. "She insults the warriors of the Bedonkohe!"
"I speak the truth!" Sarah cried, turning her gaze toward Goyahkla. "Those men down there did not come because of this child, nor did they come for the glory of a fight! They came because they are cowards who prey on the weak! If you throw me to them, you do not buy peace—you show them that the great Goyahkla is afraid of a drunken deputy and a handful of horse thieves!"
Goyahkla slowly lowered his pipe. A thin ribbon of blue smoke drifted from his lips. He looked at Sarah, his ancient, sorrow-laden eyes studying her fierce expression, her clenched fists, and the heavy swell of her belly.
For the first time since Sarah had laid eyes on him, a faint, genuine gleam of respect appeared in the old chieftain's eyes.