By mid-afternoon, they reached a high mountain pass.
Chato paused, allowing the horses to blow. Sarah sat upright, her hands trembling as she wiped the grime and sweat from her brow.
Looking back toward the south, she could see the vast, shimmering expanse of the valley floor spread out below like a painted canvas. Somewhere down there, lost in the yellow dust and heat shimmer, was the tiny speck of Silver Creek and the smoking ruins of her cabin. She could see two tiny threads of dust creeping along the base of the foothills—riders, searching the wrong canyons, heading east toward the San Carlos reservation road.
Carpenter’s men had lost her trail.
"They look where the land is flat," Chato said quietly, following her gaze. He unhooked a deerskin canteen from his pack and handed it up to her. "Men with iron minds think the earth is a straight line. They do not know the high places."
Sarah drank greedily. The water was icy and tasted faintly of pine needles and wild mint. "How much farther?" she whispered, her voice husky.
"Beyond the singing water," he replied, pointing toward a distant, jagged crest where gray plumes of woodsmoke mingled with the clouds. "The camp of Goyahkla."
Sarah stiffened at the name. Goyahkla.
In the settlements, that name was whispered with dread, though the white men had their own word for him: Geronimo. The fiercest war leader of the Bedonkohe Apache, a man whose very name caused the settlers in Tucson to bolt their shutters and keep loaded Winchesters beside their beds.
"Is he... will he allow me to stay?" she asked, her stomach tightening with dread.
Chato looked down at the earth, his jaw hardening. "It is not Goyahkla who will ask for your blood. It is Tah-zay, the medicine man of the White Mountain people. He sees white eyes in his visions, bringing the blue coats and the coughing sickness." He met her gaze with fierce conviction. "Do not speak unless I tell you. Do not look away from their eyes. An Apache respects courage; they despise those who bend like wet grass."
Sarah nodded, drawing a ragged breath. She had lived on the frontier long enough to know that fear was a luxury she could no longer afford. For her child, she would face whatever demons dwelt upon this mountain.
They rode on through the pine forests for another two hours as the afternoon shadows lengthened into deep violet streaks across the needles.
The trail suddenly opened into a vast, hidden amphitheater cradled between three soaring granite peaks. A rushing mountain creek cut through the center of the meadow, its waters crystal-clear and bordered by lush green clover.
Scattered throughout the grove were dozens of wickiups—domed lodges made of bent saplings covered with brush, bear grass, and buffalo hides. Smoke rose from cooking fires in lazy spirals, carrying the savory smell of roasting venison, mescal roots, and parched corn.
As the horses entered the clearing, the camp fell into an abrupt, eerie silence.
Women carrying clay water ollas paused mid-stride, their dark eyes widening in disbelief. Children playing near the stream with miniature bows dropped their playthings and scrambled behind the lodges, peeking out with wide, wary eyes. Old men sitting on blanket-covered logs, smoking thin cigarettes rolled in oak leaves, ceased their conversation, their weather-beaten faces turning toward the white woman like carved masks of flint.
Sarah sat as upright as her exhausted spine would permit, her hands resting flat against her swollen abdomen. She felt hundreds of eyes boring into her—eyes full of bitter memory, grief, and unhealed wounds. Many of these people had lost mothers, fathers, and children to the soldiers at Camp Grant; to them, her pale skin was the color of the butchers who hunted them like wolves.
Chato led the horse directly into the center of the circle, halting before the largest lodge, where a council fire crackled in a ring of gray river stones.
Four men sat around the flames.
In the center sat an older man with broad, heavy features, deep lines etched around a mouth that seemed incapable of smiling, and eyes that held the sorrow and rage of an entire dying nation. He wore a simple calico tunic and a deerskin vest decorated with trade beads.
Goyahkla.
Beside him stood an older man with graying, wild hair and a necklace of wolf teeth, holding a painted wooden staff wrapped in snake skin. His gaze settled upon Sarah with immediate, venomous hatred.
This was Tah-zay.
Chato stopped, crossed his arms over his chest, and bowed his head slightly toward the council fire.
"I bring a guest to our fires," Chato announced in the ringing tongue of his people, his voice cutting through the tense silence of the meadow.