Chato nodded, a grim smile of absolute approval carving deep lines into his young face.
He raised his hand and gave the signal. Two young warriors slid down the rawhide ropes into the gorge to carry out the sentence.
Sarah closed her fingers over Thomas’s pocket watch, feeling its tiny, mechanical heartbeat ticking steadily against her palm. She looked out over the vast, endless sea of blue ridges that stretched toward the horizon—a wild, fierce, and beautiful country that had offered her sanctuary when her own people had abandoned her.
For the first time, she did not fear the future. The debt was paid, the wolves were broken, and in the heart of the Apache mountains, her child was finally safe.
The dry air inside Devil’s Gate was heavy with the sulfuric stink of spent black powder and the sharp, coppery odor of blood soaking into parched caliche clay. A thin film of white dust, pulverized from the shattered limestone boulders, hung in the still air like grave clothes, settling slowly upon the bodies of the fallen outlaws.
Down in the bottom of the rocky chasm, Charles Brennan remained on his knees. His breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps as he cradled his ruined right arm against his chest. His hand was a mangled knot of torn flesh and shattered bone, dripping dark crimson through fingers clamped tight in agony. His face was gray, drained of all color save for the livid red scratches left by flying shale. He looked up at the towering canyon rim with eyes glazed by shock, staring at Sarah Mitchell as if she were an apparition risen from a shallow grave.
Two young Chiricahua warriors, their faces streaked with soot and yellow river clay, dropped down the final fifteen feet of rock via braided rawhide lariats. They landed soundlessly on their moccasins, raising no more dust than falling leaves.
Brennan flinched violently, scrambling backward on his heels until his spine struck the cold, unyielding face of the fallen boulder. "Stay back," he croaked, his voice cracking into a high, pathetic whine. "I’m a sworn officer of the territory... I have jurisdiction... You touch me, and the federal marshals will hang every one of you from the cottonwoods at Fort Lowell..."
The warriors did not answer. To them, his words were nothing more than the senseless barking of a crippled coyote.
The taller of the two, a youth named Delshay whose older brother had been killed by freight guards two summers prior, stepped forward without haste. He drew an iron hunting knife from a sheath lined with brass tacks. Brennan let out a choked shriek and squeezed his eyes shut, bowing his head against his knees and preparing for the cold bite of steel across his throat.
Instead, the blade moved with clinical precision. Delshay caught the collar of Brennan’s wilted linen shirt and sliced downward in one swift motion, cleaving the corduroy vest down the center. He caught the edges of the silver deputy’s star, twisted it with his fingers until the iron pin snapped with a brittle crack, and tossed the tin badge into the dirt.
Next came the gun belt. Delshay cut the rawhide tie that bound the empty leather holster to Brennan’s right thigh, then sheared through the heavy doubled harness leather at the buckle. The belt, holding fifty unspent cartridges in neat loops, fell into the dust.
The second warrior knelt by Brennan’s boots. Brennan tried to kick out with his left leg, but the warrior caught his heel in an iron grip, twisting the ankle just enough to leverage the man flat onto his back. With two quick slashes of his knife, the warrior cut the boot strings, yanked off the fine riding boots of calfskin leather, and tossed them up toward the ledge where other scouts were gathering the spoils. He stripped away the wool socks as well, leaving the former deputy’s pale, soft feet bare against the jagged stones.
Brennan wept openly now—humiliated, broken, and helpless. "Sarah!" he screamed upward, his voice echoing off the sheer cliffs. "For the love of God, Sarah, don't leave me out here like this! Give me a horse! Give me water! You know what Carpenter was going to do to you... I was trying to save you from him! I only wanted to protect you!"
On the shelf three hundred feet above, Sarah stood beside Chato. The wind caught her hair, whipping dark strands across her cheeks, but her eyes never wavered.
"Protect me?" she whispered, though the words were carried away by the mountain draft.
She remembered the way he had cornered her against the pine counter of Henderson’s store, his eyes roaming over her body like a drover appraising stock. She remembered the crash of her cabin door splintering under Carpenter's boots, and the outlaw’s voice declaring that Brennan had promised them three hundred dollars in gold and a clear road out of the territory.