Searchers found a burned wagon.
Blood.
Two dead teamsters.
Apache tracks.
No body.
Everyone assumed Wade had been taken and killed.
Cole had spent months hunting rumors.
He found nothing.
Eventually grief became anger.
Anger became exhaustion.
And Cole left Tucson.
He never went home.
Now, beneath a sky crowded with stars, an Apache woman approached his fire.
She was perhaps thirty.
A scar crossed one side of her chin.
She sat without asking.
After a moment, she spoke.
“You are his brother?”
Cole looked up sharply.
Her English was careful but clear.
“You speak English.”
“My husband traded horses in Tucson.”
“What happened to him?”
The woman stared into the fire.
“Your brother happened.”
Cole’s chest tightened.
“You knew Wade?”
“I saw him.”
“That’s impossible.”
She looked at him.
“Why?”
“He’s dead.”
“No.”
The answer came without hesitation.
Cole leaned toward her.
“Three years ago.”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
She reached beneath her dress and removed a folded scrap of paper.
She handed it over.
Cole unfolded it.
An invoice.
Half burned.
The date at the top was six weeks earlier.
Near the bottom was a signature.
W. Maddox.
Cole stared at the handwriting.
He knew every curve.
Every careless downward stroke.
Wade.
Alive.
The woman watched him.
“Your brother told the other men the Apache would be blamed.”
Cole could barely hear her.
“Blamed for what?”
“The dead water.”
“Why?”
She shook her head.
“I do not know.”
Cole stared into the darkness.
His brother was alive.
And apparently murdering people.
By sunrise, Cole had made his decision.
He would take the twenty-two witnesses to Fort Vane.
The journey took two days.
The chief sent six warriors with them, but they remained far enough behind that anyone watching from a distance might believe Cole traveled only with women.
Cole understood why.
A group of Apache warriors approaching an Army post might be fired upon before anyone asked questions.
The women moved quickly despite exhaustion.
Some rode horses.
Others walked.
The little girl came too, refusing to leave her mother.
Her name, Cole learned, was Isana.
She spent most of the first day glaring suspiciously at Dust.
Eventually Dust lowered his head and allowed her to touch his nose.
By the second afternoon, she was riding in front of Cole.
“You like him?” Cole asked.
Isana nodded solemnly.
“He bites.”
Her eyes widened.
Cole grinned.
Dust flicked one ear backward.
The girl laughed.
It was the first time Cole had heard any child from the group laugh.
Then a rifle cracked.
The woman riding ten yards ahead dropped from her horse.
“DOWN!”
Cole grabbed Isana and threw himself from Dust.
A second bullet tore through his saddle blanket.
Women scattered toward the rocks.
Gunfire erupted from the ridge.
Cole crawled behind a boulder, shoved Isana toward her mother, and fired.
A man on the ridge jerked backward.
