Three weeks passed in the hidden valley of the Sierra Bonita, and with each turning of the sun, the mountain shifted from the fiery gold of early summer into the deep, lush emerald of the monsoon season.
Every afternoon, great towers of dark purple thunderheads gathered over the granite spires, grumbling with distant lightning before unleashing torrents of cold, sweet rain that washed the scent of pine resin and wet stone through every corner of the camp. The creeks swelled into roaring ribbons of white water, and the wild clover in the high meadow grew knee-high to the ponies.
Sarah sat on a broad, sun-warmed granite slab outside Tazhi’s wickiup, working with an iron needle and a thread made from split deer sinew.
Her fingers, once soft and pale from domestic work in Missouri and Silver Creek, were becoming calloused and brown. She was sewing small moccasins from scraps of smoked elk hide that Tazhi had given her—tiny shoes no longer than her thumb, lined with the soft, downy fur of mountain rabbits.
Beside her, Tazhi sat sorting through bundles of dried roots that she had gathered from the high northern slopes before the rains began. The old woman worked with silent, rhythmic efficiency, separating the sweet osha roots from the bitter stems of wild tobacco and the dark tubers of snake-root.
Across the camp, the hostility that had met Sarah’s arrival had not disappeared entirely, but it had cooled into a cautious, distant tolerance.
The warriors no longer watched her with hands resting on their knives. When she walked to the creek with her clay water jug, the young women did not scatter; they simply stepped aside, observing her with wide, quiet eyes. They saw that she did not weep, that she carried her heavy pregnancy without complaining, and that she rose at dawn to help Tazhi scrape hides and gather firewood. In the harsh crucible of the high mountains, usefulness and endurance were the only currency that earned respect.
Only Tah-zay remained untouched by the change.
The medicine man still passed her lodge with his head turned away, muttering curses into his wolf-tooth necklace. Several times Sarah had caught him watching her from the crest of the medicine ridge, where he burned cedar smoke and cast dried bones into the dirt to divine the future. To Tah-zay, she remained a walking omen of doom—a pale ghost whose presence would inevitably bring the cavalry to their hidden sanctuary.
"Do not mind the old owl," Tazhi said suddenly, without lifting her gaze from her roots. She spoke in her broken blend of English and Spanish, pointing a gnawed root toward the ridge. "Tah-zay thinks the spirits only speak through his nose. He forgets that Goyahkla is the war leader, and Goyahkla remembers the miner's bread."
"I don't wish to bring danger to your people, Tazhi," Sarah said, setting her needle down and pressing her hand to her back.
The pain in her lumbar region was growing constant now. She was nearing the beginning of her eighth month, and the baby hung low and heavy in her pelvis, making every movement a deliberate labor. Her ankles were thick, and her breath came short even when she walked across the flat clearing.
"Danger is already here, daughter," Tazhi replied, her voice dropping into a somber rasp. "The blue coats do not need a white woman to find our camps. They have maps drawn by the rail-iron men. They have Apache scouts from the San Carlos agency who sell their own brothers for ten silver dollars and a sack of moldy flour. The world of our fathers is shrinking like an old pond in the summer."
She paused, looking out over the valley where several young boys were swimming their horses across the swollen stream, laughing and splashing in the spray.
"Soon, there will be no high places left," the old woman murmured, her dark eyes filled with ancient sorrow. "The iron road will cut through the red stone, and the cattle of the white men will eat the grass of the spirits. If your child is born under this sky, he will be among the last to see our people free."
Sarah looked down at the tiny elk-skin moccasin in her lap. The thought struck her with profound weight. Back in the settlements, people spoke of the Apache as mindless savages, beasts who lived only to burn and kill. Yet here, inside the circle of lodges, she had seen fathers carry their toddlers on their shoulders with tender pride; she had seen old women share their last handful of parched corn with orphaned cousins; she had seen Chato spend three hours repairing a wooden doll for a crippled girl who could not walk.
The evil she had fled was not here in the high wilderness. The evil was down in Silver Creek, wearing a deputy’s star and a preacher’s collar, ready to starve a widow for an acre of rock.