We are dying slowly. This is just choosing how we die. Then what do you suggest? Nashoba's voice was sharp. Should we surrender?
Walk into the reservation and let them destroy what is left of us? I suggest we stop pretending we have a choice. We are the last free band, the last one still fighting, and we are losing. The argument went on for hours, voices rising and falling, tempers flaring. Ethan sat quietly, listening, watching the old fault lines of fear and pride and desperation crack open.
Finally, Nashoba turned to him. "You have been silent. What do you think?" Ethan chose his words carefully. I think you're both right.
Staying gets you killed. Running gets you killed slower. But there's a third option. "Which is?" You make the fort's life so miserable they abandon it.
Hit their supply lines, steal their horses, make every patrol that leaves the walls a gamble. Not enough to provoke a full retaliation, just enough to make the cost too high. Eventually, they'll decide it's not worth it and pull back. And if they do not pull back? Then you've bought time, and time is all anyone should ever gets.
Nashoba considered it. It is risky. If we provoke them too much You're already at risk. At least this way you're choosing the terms. The council debated deep into the night.
In the end, they voted to try Ethan's plan. They would move north to a more defensible position, but they would also start hitting the fort's supply lines, making the military's presence as costly as possible. It was a long shot, but it was something. Over the next month, they put the plan into action. Small raiding parties hit supply wagons, stealing food and ammunition, scattering horses, disappearing before the soldiers could respond.
They ambushed patrols not to kill, but to harass, firing a few shots and and vanishing into the canyons. They cut telegraph lines and destroyed bridges, forcing the military to rebuild and repair constantly. It was working. The fort's morale was suffering. Soldiers were requesting transfers.
Supply shipments were being delayed because drivers refused to make the run. But it came at a cost. Three warriors were killed in a botched ambush. Two more were badly wounded, and the military was adapting, sending out larger patrols, fortifying their supply routes, offering bounties for Apache scalps. The pressure was building.
Ethan felt it every day in the tight faces around the camp, in the way people jumped at sudden sounds, in the exhaustion that never quite went away. They were surviving, but just barely. And then the worst happened. Kael disappeared. He'd been part of a scouting party checking the southern approaches.
The other scouts returned at dusk, but Kael didn't. They'd gotten separated during a brief skirmish with a patrol, and when they circled back to find him, he was gone. Ethan organized a search party immediately. They rode out that night following the route the scouts had taken, looking for sign. They found blood on the rocks near where the skirmish had happened, but it was impossible to tell whose.
They searched for 2 days, found nothing. On the third day, a soldier rode into view carrying a white flag. He stopped 100 yards from the camp and shouted that he had a message from the fort commander. Nashoba and Ethan rode out to meet him. The soldier was young, nervous.