"Wait," she whispered to the darkness. The lead riders passed the choke point. The main body of the troop entered the narrow corridor. They were bunching up, anxious to get through the shadows. "Now! " Nalin screamed.
The canyon exploded. It did not begin with gunfire. It began with the earth falling. The women on the rim shoved the cedar poles, tongues of red sandstone, carefully balanced for this moment, tipped into the void. The sound was deafening, a roar that drowned out the screams of men and horses.
The rocks crashed down into the rear of the column, crushing wagons and blocking the retreat. Dust billowed up, instantly blinding the soldiers. Then, the arrows came. They rained down from 50 different crevices, silent and deadly. The soldiers, trapped in the confusion and the dust, fired wildly at the cliffs, their bullets chipping uselessly against the stone.
Luke was positioned on a high outcropping near the south ridge, overlooking the carnage. He had his rifle shouldered, his cheek pressed against the stock. He saw a sergeant rallying a group of men, trying to form a firing line to suppress the archers on the north wall. Luke took a breath. He let it out.
He squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked against his shoulder. Below, the sergeant's horse dropped, hit in the head. The sergeant went down in a tangle of limbs. Luke worked the lever.
Clack. Clack. He shifted his aim. A corporal was raising a pistol toward Nalin's position. Luke fired again.
The dirt exploded at the corporal's feet. The man flinched, his shot going wide. Luke did not shoot to kill, not yet. His hands shook with the effort of it. These were men wearing the uniform he had once served.
They were men who wrote letters home to their mothers in Ohio and New York. But, then he saw a trooper break from the chaos, charging toward a lower ledge where two older women were throwing stones. The trooper raised his saber, slashing down. One of the women fell. Blood sprang from her neck.
Something cold snapped in Luke's chest. The hesitation vanished. He tracked the trooper. He led the target by 6 in. He fired.
The trooper jerked backward, falling from his saddle, dead before he hit the ground. Luke felt a wave of nausea, followed by a grim, hollow resolve. He was no longer a scout. He was no longer a rancher. He was a defender of this canyon, and the price of admission was blood.