The two men—the veteran cavalry commander who had spent his youth fighting the Confederacy and his middle age hunting the Apache, and the young bronze warrior who had never known a master—stood eye to eye across the narrow wooden desk. There was no hatred between them; there was only the cold, mutual recognition of men who understood the terrible, unyielding arithmetic of the frontier.
Major Howard drew a silver watch from his pocket—an army-issue timepiece with a heavy hunting case—glanced at the dial, and looked at Chato.
"Seventy-two hours," Howard said, holding up three fingers. "Tell Goyahkla that my scouts will hold the line at the mouth of Devil's Gate until the third sundown. After that, my pickets will advance to the high springs. If his lodges are still within the territory of the United States, I must do my duty."
Chato met the major’s pale eyes. He nodded once, a sharp, decisive gesture.
"Goyahkla does not sleep when the sun is up," Chato replied in his low, guttural English. "Before the second moon rises, our fires will be in the mountains of Sonora. The blue coats will find only cold ash and dry bone."
He turned his gaze toward Sarah. The rigid, warrior’s posture softened, the hard lines around his mouth relaxing into an expression of profound, brotherly tenderness. He knelt before her, resting his right hand upon the arched pine hood of the cradleboard.
"You go to the white town, sister," Chato said softly. "The blue coats will keep the wolves away with their iron guns. But remember the high places. Remember that Bih-chin-te has a clan among the rocks."
Sarah felt a tightness in her throat that made it impossible to speak for several heartbeats. She reached out with her free hand, taking Chato’s calloused, battle-scarred fingers into her own.
"I will never forget, Chato," she whispered, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "When he is old enough to hold the reins, I will bring him to the edge of the red canyon. I will show him the mountain that gave him his name. And I will teach him that his father’s honor was saved by a brother of the Bedonkohe."
Chato pulled a small object from the pouch at his belt. It was a smooth, polished oval of turquoise, pierced with a rawhide thong and carved with the simple silhouette of a mountain hawk in flight. He tied the stone securely to the headpiece of the cradleboard, beside the red eagle feather.
"The stone will keep his eyes clear," Chato said. "It will tell the wind that he walks under the shadow of the eagle."
He rose smoothly to his feet, turned on his heel, and walked to his roan pony. Without looking back, he vaulted onto the deerskin pad, raised his Winchester once above his head in silent salute, and wheeled the animal toward the jagged maw of Devil's Gate.
Behind him, the ten Apache warriors wheeled their mounts in unison, their ponies’ hooves kicking up small clouds of white limestone dust as they vanished into the cool shadows of the gorge, ascending back into the high sanctuaries of the Sierra Bonita like spirits returning to the stone.
Major Howard watched them disappear, then turned to Sarah, offering his gloved hand with formal, gentlemanly courtesy.
"Mrs. Mitchell," the major said softly. "The ambulance wagon is prepared. It is time to return to your people."
Sarah looked down at the tiny turquoise hawk dangling beside the red eagle feather, then looked at the blue-coated soldiers waiting by the trail.
"They are not my people, Major," Sarah said as she rose to her feet, holding her son tight against her breast. "Not anymore. But I will ride in your wagon."
Two days later, the dust of the San Pedro trail hung like a yellow shroud over the single street of Silver Creek.
The town had changed little in the three months since Sarah had fled through the night. The sun still beat down upon the pine false-fronts with the fury of an iron furnace, the wagons still creaked past the saloon doors, and the red dust still settled into every seam of clothing and every bucket of water drawn from the town well.
Yet an eerie, unnatural quiet gripped the settlement as the military column marched past the blacksmith’s forge.
At the head of the detachment rode Major Alexander Howard and twenty troopers of the 6th Cavalry, their sabers clinking rhythmically against their brass scabbards. Behind them came the heavy, sprung-wheel ambulance wagon, its canvas curtains drawn back to reveal Sarah Mitchell sitting on the bench, dressed in her clean deerskin garments, holding her son in his Apache cradleboard upon her lap.
Townspeople spilled out from the saloons, the assay office, and the mercantile, their faces pale with shock and disbelief.
Martha Henderson stood on the porch of the general store, her apron clutched in both hands, her mouth hanging open as if she had seen the dead rise from the red caliche of the graveyard. Men took off their slouch hats, staring in stunned silence at the widow who had been reported murdered, scalped, and burned to ash across every newspaper from Santa Fe to San Francisco.