She reached into her soul and gathered every scrap of fury, love, and stubborn frontier grit she possessed. She bore down with everything that remained in her exhausted body.
A scream tore from her throat—a sound of pure, unbridled power that drowned out the gunshots and the wind.
And then, through the smoke and the shadows of the trembling wickiup, came another sound.
High, clear, and furious.
The first cry of a newborn child, staking its claim upon the wild Arizona earth.
The newborn’s cry rose thin and sharp, piercing through the dense haze of pine woodsmoke that filled the wickiup. It was a defiant, furious sound, cutting directly across the dull thud of heavy lead slugs striking the living timber of the surrounding ponderosa pines.
Sarah collapsed backward onto the thick bed of elk hides, her breath coming in shallow, shuddering gasps that rattled deep within her chest. Her skin was drenched in cold sweat, her hair plastered in dark, matted strands across her temples and cheeks. Every muscle from her jaw down to her heels trembled violently, seized by the bone-deep tremors of utter physical depletion. Yet despite the darkness swimming at the periphery of her vision, her gaze remained fixed upon the small bundle cradled in Tazhi’s weathered, blood-smeared hands.
The old Apache matriarch worked with rapid, surgical certainty. Using a polished flake of black obsidian, she severed the umbilical cord, tying it off tight with a thread of boiled deer sinew. With two fingers wrapped in clean mountain moss, she cleared the newborn’s mouth and nostrils of fluid, then wiped the pale vernix and crimson smear from his tiny limbs using a warmed trade blanket.
"A man-child," Tazhi pronounced, her raspy voice cutting through the rising din of battle outside. She held the baby upright for a single breath before laying him directly upon Sarah’s bare chest. "Broad in the rib, long in the thigh. He did not choke on the smoke. He took the mountain air without fear."
The moment the warm, wet weight of her son settled against her breast, Sarah’s trembling ceased. Her hands, shaking only moments before, steadied as they cupped his tiny, rounded skull and the fragile curve of his spine. He was warm, impossibly small, and covered in fine, dark hair that curled against his scalp exactly like Thomas’s had when he came home from the tunnels with sweat dripping from his brow.
Tears spilled from the corners of Sarah’s eyes, carving pale streaks through the grime and soot on her face. "Thomas," she whispered, her voice barely carrying above the hiss of the embers. "Thomas James Mitchell. You have a name. You have a place under the sun."
The child rooted against her skin, let out one more small, indignant shriek, and quieted, his miniature fist curling tightly around Sarah’s index finger.
The brief moment of sacred peace was violently shattered by the splintering crack of a rifle shot just outside the lodge door.
THWACK.
A high-velocity slug ripped through the deerskin covering of the entryway, severing two bent willow ribs of the wickiup and spraying pulverized bark and dry needles down upon the hides.
Chato did not flinch. Standing framed in the triangular opening of the lodge, his back to the women, he raised his Winchester to his shoulder. His bronze chest was painted with horizontal bands of charcoal, and his dark eyes were narrowed into twin slits of lethal concentration. Through the smoke, he tracked a muzzle flash near the creek bed sixty yards below.
CRACK.
The rifle kicked against Chato’s shoulder. Down by the watercress pool, a burly man wearing a buffalo-hide vest and a flat-brimmed gambler's hat spun sideways with a choked yell, dropping his Henry carbine and tumbling face-first into the rushing water.
"They have reached the inner meadow," Chato said in English, working the brass lever of his weapon with a sharp, metallic flick that ejected the spent shell casing into the dirt. "Eli Carpenter brought hard men from the border. They have killed two of our young men at the lower barricade. They are pushing toward the council fire."
Outside, the gunfire was growing into a steady, deafening roar. Eli Carpenter—the younger, deadlier brother of the slain Dutch Carpenter—had not brought drunks or greenhorns from the mining camps. He had assembled a pack of hardened border renegades, scalp hunters, and disgraced former cavalry irregulars who knew how to fight at night. They had advanced up the rocky draw under the cover of the crimson moon, using black powder smoke and the roar of the mountain creek to mask their approach until they were within carbine range of the sleeping wickiups.
From the northern ridge, Goyahkla’s voice boomed above the gunfire—a deep, resonant roar that seemed to rise from the granite foundations of the mountain itself. The war leader was directing his fighters to flank the attackers from the high scree, cutting off their retreat back down the narrow pass.