"Chato!"
The screech came from the darkness twenty paces to the left of the lodge. It was Tah-zay. The medicine man stumbled through the brush, his painted staff clutched in one fist, his face contorted in frantic terror. A bullet had clipped his wolf-tooth necklace, scattering the polished fangs into the pine needles.
"The white woman has brought the shadow!" Tah-zay screamed in the Apache tongue, spitting blood where he had bitten his lip. "They are burning the lower lodges! Goyahkla is surrounded at the red rocks! Cast the white child into the dirt! Give the wolves their blood before they burn us all!"
Chato did not turn his head, but his voice was like iron scraped against limestone. "Go back to your stones, old man. Beat your drum for the dead. If your feet bring you one pace closer to this threshold, my rifle will speak to your belly before it speaks to the white men."
Tah-zay froze, seeing the cold, unblinking death in the young warrior’s eyes. Cursing bitterly, the shaman scrambled back into the darkness toward the medicine ridge, leaving Chato alone to guard the lodge.
"Tazhi," Sarah gasped, struggling to sit upright as she clutched the baby tightly against her ribs. The effort sent a sickening wave of dizziness through her skull, but the instinct to protect her son burned away the exhaustion. "Is there a way out? A path into the rocks?"
"No path," Tazhi replied grimly. The old woman had retrieved a short-barreled percussion shotgun from beneath a pile of cured skins, cocking the twin hammers with a dull, heavy click. "The canyon behind us is sheer granite. A hawk can fly, but a woman with fresh blood cannot climb. We stay. We feed the earth."
A sudden shout rose from the path leading up from the creek.
"In here! The squaw shacks!"
Through the billowing white smoke, three figures materialized beneath the pines. They were tall, ragged men with broad dusters and revolvers drawn. The man in the center was tall and gaunt, with a ragged yellow beard, pale, watery eyes, and an old military cap pulled low over his brow. Across his cheek ran a long, puckered saber scar—Eli Carpenter.
"I see 'em!" Eli roared, his voice thick with whiskey and bloodlust. "Dutch’s blood is on these red devils! Kill every whelp in the brush!"
Eli leveled his Colt at the entrance of the wickiup.
Before he could pull the trigger, Chato lunged forward out of the shadow of the doorway.
He did not fire his rifle; the close quarters under the low pine boughs left no room to bring the long barrel to bear. Instead, Chato swung the walnut stock of the Winchester with the full force of his shoulders, smashing it into the face of the outlaw to Eli’s right. The man’s jaw shattered with the sound of a dry branch snapping underfoot, and he collapsed into the pine needles without a cry.
Eli Carpenter cursed violently, pivoting to bring his revolver to bear on Chato’s chest.
From inside the lodge, Tazhi stepped forward, leveled her heavy twin-barreled shotgun through the smoke, and pulled the front trigger.
BOOM.
The roar of the twelve-gauge filled the narrow clearing with blinding flame and a cloud of sulfur smoke. The heavy charge of buckshot caught the third outlaw square in the chest, lifting him off his feet and throwing him backward into the brush five yards away.
The recoil drove Tazhi back against the willow poles of the lodge, but the old woman stood her ground, her jaw set like flint as she reached for the second trigger.
Eli Carpenter ducked the blast, rolled through the pine needles, and sprang to his feet, lunging straight for Chato with a twelve-inch bowie knife drawn from his belt.
Chato dropped the empty Winchester and drew his iron hunting blade. The two men collided in the red dust before the threshold, their bodies slamming together with brutal, jarring force.
Sarah pulled the buffalo robe over her infant son, shielding his tiny body with her own chest, her right hand reaching down to the dirt floor until her fingers found the heavy, jagged chunk of granite that Tazhi used to weigh down the door flap. Her vision was razor-sharp despite her agony; if the outlaw broke through Chato, she would cave his skull in before he laid a finger on her child.
The fight outside was silent and savage.
Eli Carpenter was older, heavier, and possessed the desperate, frenzied strength of a cornered beast. He drove Chato backward toward the wickiup wall, his heavy forearm pressed against the young warrior’s throat, forcing his head back. The gleaming steel edge of the bowie knife hovered inches above Chato’s collarbone, trembling as both men strained every tendon in their arms.