We would be slaughtered. So, we run, another said. Move deeper. Let them search. They will find nothing and leave.
And if they do not leave, Nashoba asked, if they decide to make camp, to wait us out? Silence. Ethan spoke up. They're looking for Vance, for answers. If we give them answers, they'll leave.
"What answers?" We make it look like Vance's unit was ambushed by a different Apache band, one that doesn't exist anymore. Plant evidence. Bodies in militia uniforms, lead the patrol to a fake massacre site, let them draw their own conclusions. Nashoba considered it.
That could work, if they believe it. They'll believe it because it's what they want to believe, that Vance died fighting savages, not that he was killed by his own incompetence. Ethan leaned forward. We give them a story, a neat, simple story that lets them close the case and go home. And where do we find bodies in militia uniforms?
We kept the uniforms from Vance's men. We dressed some of our own dead in them, staged the scene. The idea hung in the air, ugly and practical. The woman elder spoke. It is disrespectful to our dead.
It is survival, Nashoba countered, and our dead would understand. After a long debate, they agreed. It was risky, but it was better than fighting a battle they couldn't win. They spent the next day preparing. Ethan led the effort, choosing a box canyon 10 miles south of their current location.
He and a dozen warriors dragged bodies, militia dead they'd kept for exactly this purpose, into the canyon, arranging them to look like they'd made a desperate last stand. They scattered spent shell casings, broke rifles, burned a supply wagon. It looked real because most of it was real. They were just rearranging the truth. When they finished, Ethan stood back and surveyed the scene.
It looked like a massacre. A brutal one-sided fight where the Apache had overwhelmed the militia patrol and left nothing but corpses. "It is good," Nashoba said beside him, "convincing." "Yeah. Too convincing."
"War is ugly. This is just a different kind of ugly." They left the canyon and returned to camp. The next day, they moved again, putting another 20 miles between themselves and the false massacre site. And then they waited.
The patrol found the canyon 2 days later. Ethan and two warriors watched from a distant ridge through a spyglass as the soldiers picked through the bodies, took notes, said words over the dead. The officer in charge looked grim but satisfied. He'd found what he came for. By sunset, the patrol was riding south back toward civilization, carrying news of Colonel Vance's heroic last stand against savage hostiles.
It worked. Ethan felt sick about it. But it worked. That night, alone in his bedroll, he stared up at the stars and wondered how many more lies he'd have to tell, how many more lines he'd have to cross before this was over. He didn't have an answer.
But he knew one thing for certain. He was done running. Whatever came next, he'd face it here, with these people, in this hard and dying land. And maybe, just maybe, that was enough. The first snow came early that year, dusting the canyon rims with white and turning the morning air sharp enough to bite.