A little settlement.
Adobe walls.
Children running.
Gunshots.
White men wearing strips of red cloth around their arms.
Cole opened his eyes.
His breathing had quickened.
Nantan watched him.
“What do you remember?”
“Nothing.”
“You remember.”
“I said nothing.”
The chief gave an order.
One of the warriors brought forward a cloth bundle.
He opened it.
Inside lay a small wooden horse.
Crude.
One leg broken.
Cole stopped breathing.
He knew it.
He had dreamed of that horse for years.
A toy beside a sleeping mat.
A woman’s laughter.
Someone telling him the horse needed four legs because even brave horses fell when they tried to stand on three.
Cole reached for it.
His fingers trembled.
“Where did you get this?”
Isadora answered in Apache.
Nantan translated.
“She carved it for you.”
Cole looked at the old woman.
His knees nearly gave way.
“No.”
Isadora spoke again.
Nantan’s voice softened.
“She says you broke the leg the morning before the men came.”
Cole stared at the toy.
A memory returned with brutal clarity.
He was sitting in dust.
Crying over the wooden horse.
A woman crouched beside him.
Not Eliza Maddox.
Dark hair.
Brown skin.
Gentle eyes.
She kissed his forehead.
Then bells.
Horses.
Screaming.
Cole dropped the toy.
“Who were the men?”
No one answered immediately.
Nantan looked toward the chief.
The chief looked at Isadora.
At last, Nantan spoke.
“Men from Red Mercy.”
Cole knew the name.
Everybody in southern Arizona did.
Red Mercy had once been a mining settlement thirty miles north, until a fire destroyed most of it twenty-eight years earlier.
Silas Maddox had lived there.
Silas Maddox had become wealthy there.
Cole felt sick.
“Who led them?”
Nantan’s gaze did not move from his face.
“Silas Maddox.”
Cole struck her before he even realized his hand had moved.
Not with a fist.
His palm caught her shoulder and shoved her backward.
Several warriors instantly drew knives.
Cole drew his revolver.
Dust screamed behind him.
The chief shouted.
Everything stopped on the edge of bloodshed.
Cole’s pistol trembled.
“You’re lying.”
Nantan straightened.
“Yes,” she said calmly. “That is what I thought you would say.”
“My father saved me.”
“No.”
“He found me after an Apache attack.”
“No.”
“He raised me.”
“Yes.”
The answer silenced Cole.
Nantan took one slow step forward.
“He raised you because when his men attacked our camp, one of them saw a child hiding beneath a burned wagon.”
Cole’s breathing became ragged.
“He could have killed you.”
Another step.
“Instead, Silas took you.”
Cole pointed the revolver at her.
“Stop.”
“He told people Apache raiders had murdered a white family and that he rescued their son.”
“Stop.”
“He gave you his dead nephew’s name.”
“Stop!”
His voice echoed off the rocks.
Nobody moved.
Nantan stared at the barrel of the gun.
Then at Cole.
“If you want me silent, shoot me.”
Cole’s arm shook harder.
The elderly Isadora walked through the warriors.
She came directly toward him.
He lowered the revolver instinctively.
She reached up.
Her fingers touched his cheek.
Cole could not move.
She whispered something.
Nantan translated.
“She says you have your mother’s eyes.”
The revolver fell from Cole’s hand.
Night descended over the desert.
Cole sat alone beside a low fire.
