After them, the law of the law. He sat back on his heels. Looked at Tavana. At her sisters, at the dead men around the fire, at the knife still standing in the log. I've been hating the wrong people for 3 weeks.
Most of us have been hating the wrong people longer than that, Wesley. You just found out quicker. Dashka was on the ground again, cheek to the dirt. Horses at the mouth of the canyon for she lifted her head. Something new in her face.
They stop. They wait. And then a voice came rolling up the canyon walls, magnified by the rock. Easy, unhurried, genial even. The voice of a man who had never in his life had to raise it.
Halleran, that you in there? I stood up slow, kept the boulder between me and the mouth. Sheriff Ro in the flesh. Hell of a mess you've made, Marshal. Hell of a mess.
Dupre dead, I heard shooting. Terrible thing. Your rifleman's a good shot. Don't know what you mean. I got three deputies down here and nobody up on that rim.
Maybe it was them women. Who can say a pause? Send them out, son. All five. And we'll talk about getting your name off that wire.
I can do that easy as I put it on. Tavana had come up beside me in the dark, her shoulder against my arm. I felt her shaking. Not fear something else. You know him?
Yes. How well? She didn't answer. Did from behind us? Very quiet.
He lived in our village 10 winters, Marshal. He traded with us. He ate at our fires. He learned our words. He cut his hand and pressed it to my father's hand, and they were brothers.
After that, he brought coffee and ribbon to our mother and long stories to our fires. He asked us to call him by the word for uncle, and we did. A breath. We still have no other word for him. Send them out, Halaran.
He was family. He was family. Tavana's voice was a dry branch breaking. And when my father would not tell him where the old things were hidden, he went to men who would help him take it. That is all.
That is the whole story. You hear me, Marshal? These women killed the Pickering Boys. You read the paper. I got witnesses swear to it.
And who's going to take an Apache's word over a sworn sheriff's in a territorial court? Be sensible. You're a sensible man. Puit always said so. Puit always said so.
I looked at the letter in my hand, at the dead man in the sand, at five women in the dark who had trusted me with nothing at all. And then slowly with everything, I stepped out from behind the boulder where he could hear me clearly. These women are under federal protection. Ror, anybody comes up this canyon after them comes through me first. You want them?
You'll have to arrest a United States marshal to get there. A long silence. The fire popping. A nightb bird somewhere. Then the voice came back and the genial was gone out of it like water out of a cracked jug.
Ah, son, you were never going to make old bones, and the canyon mouth lit up with muzzle flashes. Bullets came up the canyon like hornets out of a kicked nest. off the walls, off the boulders, off the iron of the fire great with a sound like a church bell struck with a hammer. The last of Dupre's men broke and ran toward the mouth, toward Ror. Hands up, screaming that he surrendered. I heard the shot that answered him.
I didn't hear him again. They are not here to arrest anybody, Marshal. Kane firing back from behind the boulder, steady as a clock. They are here to make it quiet. I figured that out about 4 seconds ago.
You are slow for a lawman. I'm thorough. Three of them working up the canyon in the dark now, leapfrogging. Ror's voice behind them, calm, giving orders. The fourth one up on the rim again.
I could tell by the angle. Every time one of us moved, a round came down from above. We couldn't go out. We couldn't stay. Tavana's hand closed on my sleeve.
Hard. Come where? Where my father went twice a year. She pulled me along the base of the wall, deeper into the canyon, away from the fire. Her sisters falling back behind us, one covering the next, smooth as if they'd practiced it a hundred times.
Maybe they had. Wesley stumbled along with Isha, dragging him by the collar. 50 yards back where the canyon pinched in tight, the rock wall had a crack in it. Narrow, black, the kind of crack you'd ride past a thousand times and never look at twice. Tavana turned sideways and slid into it. I followed rock scraped my chest and my back at the same time.
Then it opened out and the air changed. Cool. Still old. Somebody struck a match. Dashka with a stub of candle from somewhere inside her buckskin.
The flame caught and steadied, and I forgot to breathe for the second time in 3 days. The cave went back further than the light could follow. And everywhere the light did fall, it came back gold. Not nuggets, not ore, made things, bowls hammered thin as leaves, bracelets, breastplates worked with suns and spirals, old Spanish silver, candlesticks and plates, and a chalice black with tarnish. Knives with hilts of turquoise, strings of beads heaped like coiled rope, things that had taken life at times to make and longer to gather, laid in niches along the walls and rows with a care that had nothing to do with greed.
Somebody had arranged this place. Somebody had loved it. Lord God, not God. Tavana was looking at it, too. Not with wonder, with grief.
Grandfathers, behind us, through the crack, the gunfire had slackened. Ror's men were searching. Coming closer. This is what he wants. This is what he thinks he wants.