"The white woman has the tongue of a hawk," Goyahkla murmured in English, loud enough for all to hear. He turned his heavy gaze upon Tah-zay. "She does not cry like a wounded doe. She tells us what we already know: wolves do not leave a trail because they are given meat. They only leave when the pack leader is hung from a tree."
Goyahkla rose to his feet. The sheer presence of the man commanded instantaneous, absolute silence throughout the clearing.
"We do not flee from seven outlaws in our own mountains," Goyahkla declared, switching to his native tongue as his hand came down upon the stock of his Winchester. "We will go down to the narrow place. We will let the wolves walk into the jaws of the stone. Chato! Take ten men. Let the mountain show them what happens to those who hunt women under the shadow of the Sierra Bonita."
The sun had past the meridian, casting long, razor-sharp shadows across the mouth of Devil's Gate—a treacherous, razor-thin fissure where the canyon walls rose three hundred feet of sheer, polished limestone on either side. Here, the trail narrowed to barely the width of two horses abreast, choked with jagged basalt boulders and loose shale that rattled like dry bones with every step.
Down below, the sound of labored horse breathing and the clatter of iron shoes against stone echoed hollowly off the canyon walls.
Dutch Carpenter rode in the lead, his slouch hat pulled low over his scarred brow, a half-burned cigar clenched between his yellow teeth. His greasy duster was coated in gray alkali dust, and his eyes darted nervously between the looming cliffs above.
"I don't like this, Brennan," Carpenter growled, reigning his lathered mount in behind a shoulder of red rock. "We're four miles deep into Apache country. If Geronimo's band is up on those rims, we're riding straight into a slaughterhouse."
Deputy Charles Brennan pulled his horse up beside Carpenter. Brennan looked distinctly worse for wear; his corduroy vest was stained with sweat, his clean linen collar was wilted and gray, and his eyes burned with an unhinged, feverish obsession. His Colt revolver was unholstered and resting against his thigh, the hammer cocked.
"Shut your sniveling mouth, Dutch," Brennan spat, his voice hoarse from two days of dust and cursing. "The trackers found her calico scrap half a mile back. She’s on foot, carrying thirty pounds of child, and she’s bleeding from both heels. She can’t have made it to the top. She’s holed up in one of these caves waiting to die."
"And what if the redskins found her first?" one of Carpenter’s men asked from behind, his hands white upon the reins of his nervous mount. "What if she’s already hanging by her heels over a slow fire?"
"Then we find her carcass and we tear that satchel off her!" Brennan snarled, turning in his saddle to glare at the outlaws. "Thomas Mitchell didn't die without telling her where that ledge was. That ore was running seventy percent pure silver, you fools! Fifty thousand dollars sitting in a dry tunnel, and all we have to do is take it from a half-starved widow! Move your horses!"
The seven riders nudged their mounts forward into the narrow neck of the gorge. The air in the crevasse was dead, cold, and heavy with the scent of stagnant water and old stone.
High above them, hidden in the crevices of the limestone cliffs like eagles perched among the clouds, lay the Apache.
Chato lay flat upon a flat shelf of rock, his skin smeared with gray mud and pine needles, blending so perfectly with the stone that an observer twenty feet away would have seen only rock. Beside him, Nalyce held a heavy iron pry bar, its point wedged beneath a massive, three-ton boulder of balanced limestone. Behind them, hidden in the brush, eight more warriors lay with their Winchesters trained on the canyon floor.
Sarah sat twenty yards back in a deep crevice, her back against the cool rock, holding her breath. Chato had insisted she stay in the high camp, but Sarah had refused to remain behind while men fought for her life. She needed to see the end of Charles Brennan. She needed to know that the shadow hanging over her child’s future was finally obliterated.
Chato raised two fingers.
Down on the canyon floor, Brennan’s horse suddenly snorted, throwing its head back and refusing to advance. The animal’s ears were pinned flat, smelling the scent of hidden men.
"What's wrong with that damn beast?" Carpenter cursed, raising his quirt.
Before the leather could strike the horse’s flank, a sound like a rifle shot echoed from the top of the cliff.
CRACK.
Nalyce threw his entire weight onto the pry bar.
The massive limestone boulder groaned, shifted an inch, and then tore free from its ancient earthen cradle. It plummeted through the empty air, smashing into the canyon wall halfway down, shattering into a thousand jagged fragments of flying stone before crashing into the trail fifty feet ahead of Carpenter’s horse with the force of an artillery shell.