200 arrowheads suddenly aimed at one unarmed man standing in his own doorway. "No shoot," Wade called out. In the handful of Apache words he half remembered from years of half listening at trading posts. His pronunciation was terrible. He knew it, could feel it, the syllables coming out wrong and clumsy.
But the meaning came through clear enough because the arrows stayed knocked but didn't fly. And that right now was the only mercy Wade had any right to ask for. Chief Grey Talon raised one hand. The circle held its breath along with him. Then he dismounted one fluid motion, no wasted movement anywhere in it, and walked toward Wade with the measured steps of a man who had made this exact walk, or one very much like it, more times in his life than he cared to ever count out loud.
He stopped three feet away, close enough that Wade could see the dust caked into the lines around his eyes. He studied Wade's face like he was reading something written there in a language only he understood. Some old language of grief and suspicion that white men rarely bothered to learn. "My daughter," he said, his English clean, only lightly accented, each word set down like a stone. "Where?"
Not a question. A demand wrapped so tight around a father's fear that it barely had room left inside it to be anything else. Wade pointed toward the open cabin door, his hand steadier than he expected it to be. "Inside. Hurt bad.
Leg's broken, I believe, but she's alive." Found her under a rock out past the east canyon yesterday, near midday. I splinted leg best I know how. Gave her what water I had left. Sat up with her fever half the night and most of tonight besides.
Grey Talon's eyes narrowed to slits. "White man lies." "I don't." Wade held the man's gaze steady because looking away right now would have been the same as confessing to a crime he hadn't committed. "Go look for yourself, Chief."
She's lying on my own bed, the only one I own. I've got nothing to hide out here and no earthly reason to. Four warriors moved past him into the cabin, weapons ready, eyes sweeping every corner like Wade might have a whole army hiding in a two-room shack with one window. Wade stood there in the open, hands still raised, sweat running cold down his back despite the growing heat, and waited through what felt like the longest 30 seconds of his entire life, which considering everything Wade Callaway had already lived through in 27 years, was saying a great deal. Finally, one of the warriors stepped back out and spoke fast, low, urgent, and Apache.