Chato looked down at her. "He barks for mercy. Does the white woman wish to give him an iron slug to end his noise?"
"No," Sarah answered, her voice dropping into a flat, steady cadence. "Let him have what he left me. He gave me no horse, no water, and no roof. Let the road teach him what he chose to forget."
Chato turned toward the edge of the rim and shouted a single command down into the chasm.
Delshay reached down, took Brennan by the collar of his ruined coat, and hauled him upright. The deputy cried out as his bare soles met the razor-sharp chips of basalt. Delshay shoved him toward the southern opening of the pass—the narrow cut that led out of the high mountains and back down into the scorching, waterless flats of the San Pedro valley.
"Go," Delshay said in English, pointing with the blood-smeared tip of his blade toward the desert below. "Walk to the white town. If you look behind, the lead finds your spine."
Brennan stumbled forward, clutching his mangled wrist to his chest. Every step on the flint gravel brought a fresh hiss of pain from his lips. He took ten paces, hesitated, and glanced back over his shoulder. High on the cliffs, the black silhouettes of twenty Apache rifles were leveled directly at his head.
Whimpering, the former deputy stumbled into a desperate, shambling trot, his bare feet leaving small, dark smears of blood across the white limestone trail as he fled toward the blazing furnace of the valley below.
Beside Sarah, Chato lowered his carbine. "He will walk twenty miles before he finds the stage road," Chato observed quietly. "The sun will take his skin. The stones will eat his feet. If he lives, he will live as a beggar who remembers the mountains every time he looks upon his hand."
Sarah looked away from the fleeing figure and turned her gaze toward the canyon floor, where the bodies of Dutch Carpenter and his outlaws were being stripped of their rifles, ammunition, and cartridge belts. The horses—five sturdy trail mounts—were already being rounded up by the younger men, their nostrils flaring as they caught the unfamiliar scent of Apache leather and pine smoke.
The two Mexican trackers who had guided the outlaws remained on their knees beside a dead mule, their heads pressed to the earth, murmuring frantic prayers in Spanish and clutching cheap tin crosses hanging from their necks.
Chato called down to Nalyce, who stood over the two men with a cocked Winchester. After a brief exchange in their native tongue, Nalyce prodded the two trackers with his rifle barrel, pointed toward the southern trail, and tossed them a single rawhide canteen of water.
The two men scrambled to their feet, crossed themselves frantically, and took off running down the canyon behind Brennan, grateful beyond measure to escape with their scalps intact.
The battle of Devil's Gate was over. It had lasted less than ten minutes. The gang that had terrorized the ranches of Silver Creek, murdered prospectors in their camps, and burned the homes of those who defied them had ceased to exist.
Sarah felt a sudden, deep tremor run through her knees. The fierce adrenaline that had carried her to the cliff’s edge and kept her spine straight before the council fire vanished like smoke in the high wind. Her vision swam with bright specks of white light, and she swayed sideways.
Chato caught her instantly, his strong arm supporting her waist before she could strike the rock.
"The fight is done, sister," he said softly, his voice devoid of the harsh edge it carried in battle. "You have stood before the council and you have seen your enemies broken. Now you rest."
He helped her turn away from the precipice, guiding her slowly along the upper game trail that led back toward the hidden sanctuary of the Bedonkohe.
As they walked through the fragrant shade of the ponderosa pines, Sarah reached into the pocket of her deerskin dress and pulled out Thomas's silver pocket watch. She ran her thumb over the scratched metal case, feeling the steady, unbroken ticking inside.
Tick-tick-tick.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Back in Silver Creek, Martha Henderson would be sweeping the dust from the mercantile porch, and the men at the assay office would be talking about the weather and the price of copper. None of them knew that the wilderness they feared so deeply had just delivered the justice their laws were too cowardly to enforce.
Sarah held the watch against her swelling belly.
"We're going to live," she whispered against the wind. "Both of us."