His entire life felt like a coat someone had suddenly turned inside out.

Across camp, children slept.

The boy who had collapsed earlier was drinking broth.

Dust grazed nervously near the rocks.

Cole held the broken wooden horse.

Silas Maddox.

He remembered Silas teaching him to shoot.

Silas standing beside him when Cole buried his first dog.

Silas punching a ranch hand for calling Cole a coward.

Silas sitting drunk beside the fireplace every November, refusing to explain why he hated that month.

Had all of it been false?

Or was the truth worse?

Could a monster love a child?

Cole wished desperately that the answer were no.

Nantan sat beside him.

For several minutes neither spoke.

Finally Cole asked, “Why twenty-two?”

She looked toward the women.

“They remember the attack.”

“All of them?”

“Some were children. Some lost husbands. Some lost parents.”

Cole swallowed.

“Why bring them forward?”

“Because words from one person can be called a lie.”

Her gaze turned to him.

“Twenty-two memories are harder to bury.”

Cole looked down at the wooden horse.

“What happened to my mother?”

Nantan did not answer.

That told him enough.

He closed his eyes.

“How?”

“Trying to reach you.”

His jaw tightened.

“Silas?”

“We do not know whose bullet.”

Cole rubbed both hands over his face.

“Why would he do it?”

Nantan picked up a stick and drew a winding line through the dirt.

“A river.”

Then a circle.

“A spring.”

Another line.

“A mining road.”

“Silver?”

“Copper. Later silver.”

She drew several small marks.

“Silas and four other men learned there was ore beneath land near our water. They wanted people gone.”

Cole stared at the crude map.

“So they attacked a camp.”

“They attacked several.”

“But why pretend Apache killed white settlers?”

“To make revenge look like justice.”

Cole felt bile rise in his throat.

There were stories he had heard since childhood.

Settlers killed near Red Mercy.

Retaliation raids.

Posses.

Families disappearing.

All started, according to Silas, because “savages drew first blood.”

Cole whispered, “How many?”

Nantan’s face hardened.

“Enough.”

He looked toward the chief.

“Who is he?”

“My father. Taza.”

Cole studied the older man.

“Why didn’t he tell me himself?”

“Because he was afraid.”

Cole almost laughed.

“Of me?”

“No.”

Nantan looked at him.

“Of what you would become if he told you before you remembered enough to choose the truth yourself.”

At dawn, Taza gathered the group.

They were moving south.

Cole expected them to tell him to leave.

Instead Nantan walked toward him holding his empty canteen.

“There is water six miles from here.”

Cole looked toward the horizon.

“If there’s water, why were you dying?”

Her expression changed.

“There was water.”

She handed him the canteen.

“Come.”

They traveled for three hours.

The sun rose.

Dust remained uneasy.

Every mile, the horse grew worse.

At last they reached a narrow canyon.

Cole smelled it before he saw it.

Something metallic.

Rotten.

Wrong.

Taza led them around a bend.

A spring emerged from beneath dark stone.

But no birds drank from it.

No tracks surrounded it.

A dead rabbit lay near the edge.

Cole crouched.

The surface carried an oily rainbow sheen.

His stomach tightened.

“Poison.”

Nantan nodded.

Cole dipped a stick into the water.

Blue-green residue coated the stone beside the spring.