Another disappeared.
“Stay low!”
The Apache women needed no instruction.
Two grabbed the wounded woman and pulled her into cover.
Another seized the fallen woman’s rifle.
Cole fired again.
Then heard hoofbeats.
The six warriors who had shadowed them swept around the southern ridge.
The attackers broke almost immediately.
Three escaped.
One did not.
He lay wounded in the sand, clutching his thigh.
Cole approached him.
The man wore plain clothes.
No badge.
No uniform.
Cole kicked away his revolver.
“Who sent you?”
The stranger spat.
Cole crouched.
“Wade Maddox?”
The man’s eyes changed.
That was answer enough.
Cole grabbed his shirt.
“Where is he?”
The wounded gunman laughed through clenched teeth.
“You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“You’re riding straight to him.”
Cole froze.
The man grinned.
“Fort Vane belongs to your brother.”
They reached the fort near sunset.
Cole considered turning away.
But where could they go?
Twenty-two witnesses were now being hunted.
They needed telegraph access.
They needed soldiers who were not corrupt.
They needed evidence beyond the burned invoice and iron plate.
Cole decided the only way out was forward.
Fort Vane sat beneath a low ridge surrounded by cottonwoods, adobe walls glowing red in the evening light.
Soldiers appeared on the parapet.
Rifles lifted.
Cole raised a white cloth.
“My name is Cole Maddox! I need to speak with the commanding officer!”
The gate eventually opened.
Captain Horace Bell emerged.
Cole knew him.
That worried him immediately.
Bell had drunk at his father’s table when Cole was a boy.
“Cole Maddox.”
Bell smiled.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
Cole did not smile.
“These women witnessed the poisoning of an Apache water source. Several people died. Men attacked us on the road.”
Bell’s eyes moved over the group.
His expression revealed nothing.
“You brought twenty-two Apache women to my fort to accuse Americans of poisoning a spring?”
“I brought witnesses.”
Bell glanced toward the stamped plate Cole held.
His eyes stopped on it for half a second too long.
Cole saw it.
Bell saw that Cole had seen it.
The captain’s smile vanished.
“Bring them inside.”
Something in Cole’s stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“For protection.”
The fort gates opened wider.
Soldiers surrounded the women.
Too many soldiers.
Cole turned toward them.
“Wait.”
Rifles came up.
Captain Bell stepped backward.
“Cole.”
“What are you doing?”
“Saving you from an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
Soldiers seized Cole’s rifle.
Another pulled his revolver.
The women were forced against the wall.
Isana screamed as a soldier dragged her from her mother.
Cole lunged.
A rifle butt struck his stomach.
He dropped to one knee.
Then a voice came from the shaded doorway of the officers’ building.
A voice Cole had not heard in three years.
“You always did have terrible timing, little brother.”
Cole looked up.
A man stepped into the evening light.
