Klay looked at the rioters one by one. If any of you come onto my land again, badge or no badge, there will be consequences. He let the words settle. And I won't apologize for a single one of them. Then he fixed his eyes on Vance Crow.
Go home, Vance. For a long moment, no one moved. Then slowly Vance turned his horse. The others followed. Cal Drury and Seth Caine were the last to leave.
No one said another word. The Apache riders on the ridge waited until Vance's group disappeared along the northern road. Only then did they turn their horses and ride silently back toward the Sacramento mountains. No ceremony, no announcement. They had come.
They had stood their ground. And when the matter was finished, they left. Clay stepped back inside the cabin and lowered himself into a chair because his legs had finally decided they were done holding him upright. Nia placed the tea back into his hands. "Going out there like that was foolish," she said. "You're still sick."
"Probably. You could have sent me." "No," Klay answered. "I couldn't." She looked at him over the rim of her own cup.
She did not seem surprised. It was more the look of someone who already understood what she was seeing, but had not yet decided whether it needed a name. She gave it none. Not that day. Instead, she sat in the chair beside his cot and remained there through the rest of the afternoon.
She made sure Clay finished the tea. She made sure he ate something by nightfall. And before darkness settled fully over the ranch, she adjusted the fire until it burned at exactly the right level to keep the cabin warm through the night. 2 days after Vance Crow and his riders had left, Clay had recovered enough to sit outside beneath the pale winter sun. There was one question that had stayed in his mind ever since he had seen the Apache riders lined along the southern ridge.
How many were there? 14," Nia answered. Then she explained, "Apache elders, friends of my father and their sons, younger warriors, too. Two of Toma's cousins, Yaro and Kirro, and a woman named Sa. She was his oldest student.
She traveled farther than any of the others to come here." Nia paused. "Sella knows more about plants than I do. If my father had remained with the main band, she would have been the one most likely to continue his work as a healer. Clay looked toward the southern ridge.