Chato answered him with an authoritative, level tone, pointing down at Sarah, then at the tracks leading back through the canyon. His posture was rigid, brooking no debate. Though he was young, there was a natural, commanding dignity in his bearing that silenced the older man.
The grizzled warrior grunted, spat into the dust, and turned his horse around, keeping watch down the canyon.
Chato walked back to Sarah and pointed toward his own horse—a lean, deep-chested bay with a painted white circle around its left eye.
"You cannot stay in the dry stone," Chato said, his voice firm. "The wolves who hunt you will find this water before the sun turns red. They have iron shoes on their horses."
"Wolves?" Sarah echoed, a fresh shiver of fear running down her spine. "Dutch Carpenter... and Deputy Brennan."
"Men who take," Chato said with contempt, spitting the words out as if they tasted of foul water. "They follow your blood-trail in the sand. You come with us."
Sarah hesitated, her gaze darting from the young warrior to the towering red cliffs. Every story she had ever heard in the mercantile, every newspaper clipping read aloud on the saloon porches, screamed at her that going with the Apache was a fate worse than death. They spoke of captives tied to cactus, of women never seen again, of infants slaughtered in the cradle.
Yet, behind her lay Dutch Carpenter, who had smashed her front door with an iron boot, and Deputy Brennan, who looked at her with hungry, predatory eyes and intended to claim her like a piece of abandoned property.
Before her stood this young warrior, holding her dead husband’s pocket watch with reverent care, speaking of Thomas as a brother.
She looked down at her swollen belly, feeling the fragile life kicking within her.
"Will you protect him?" Sarah asked, her voice clear despite her tears. "My child. Will you swear it?"
Chato met her eyes directly. He drew a line across the red earth between them with the toe of his moccasin, then touched his chest.
"A debt to Thomas Mitchell is written in the bone," Chato answered solemnly. "While Chato draws breath, the child walks under the sky."
He reached out his hand to help her up.
Sarah took it. His grip was rough and unyielding as oak, but his pull was gentle, supporting her weight as her stiff, swollen legs nearly buckled beneath her. With infinite patience, he guided her toward the bay pony, lifting her carefully onto the flat deerskin pad that served as a saddle.
For the first time since the mine whistle had blown three months ago, Sarah felt the terrifying weight of complete solitude lift from her shoulders, replaced by an uncertain, perilous hope.
The trail did not follow the canyon floor for long.
Barely a mile from the spring, Chato led the party up an impossible incline—a narrow goat path carved into the sheer face of the red sandstone cliffs. The bay pony moved with uncanny surefootedness, picking its way through loose shale and crumbling caliche where a single misstep would have sent rider and mount plummeting hundreds of feet into the gorge below.
Sarah clutched the horse’s coarse mane with both hands, burying her face against its warm, sweaty neck to keep from looking at the yawning abyss to her right. The rhythmic, jolting climb sent waves of dull pain through her lower back and pelvis, but she bit her lip until she tasted blood, determined not to cry out.
Ahead of them, the two older scouts rode with their bodies canted forward, sweeping the ridges with tireless, hawk-like intensity. Whenever a horse’s iron shoe struck a rock with too loud a click, the older scarred warrior, whose name Sarah would later learn was Nalyce, would glance back with an expression of cold disgust. He clearly viewed her presence as a dangerous encumbrance that slowed their pace and left a trail broad enough for cavalry to follow.
Chato, however, walked on foot, leading her pony by a rawhide hackamore. He moved with a soundless, fluid grace that seemed impossible for a man traversing broken rock. Whenever the horse stumbled on a steep switchback, his strong hand shot out, steadying the animal’s shoulder before Sarah could lose her balance.
As the sun reached its zenith, the arid furnace of the low country began to change.
The blistering heat gave way to a thinner, cooler air scented with the sharp, sweet resin of ponderosa pine and juniper. The towering red cliffs softened into rolling ridges carpeted with high mountain grasses, mountain mahogany, and dense thickets of scrub oak. They were climbing into the Sierra Bonita, a rugged, isolated range that rose like an island of green above the surrounding desert floor—a sanctuary where the cavalry dared not venture without an entire battalion and pack trains of artillery.