Come. I will show you something. They descended into the valley following game trails invisible to Ethan's eyes. Neshoba moved like water, flowing over obstacles, never breaking stride. Ethan stumbled and sweated and tried to keep up.
After an hour, they reached a narrow slot canyon. Neshoba let him inside, the walls closing in until they were walking single file through a passage barely wide enough for a man's shoulders. Then the canyon opened into a hidden chamber maybe 20 ft across, the walls soaring up to a patch of blue sky far above. In the center of the chamber was a spring, clear water bubbling up from the rocks and forming a small pool before disappearing into a crack in the stone. This is a sacred place, Neshoba said quietly.
My grandfather showed it to me when I was Caleb's age. His grandfather showed him. It has kept my people alive for generations. The white men have maps, they have compasses, they have scouts. But they will never find this place because they do not know how to see.
Ethan knelt by the spring and cupped water in his hands, drinking deeply. It was ice cold and tasted like stone and sky. This is what you must teach, Neshoba said. Not how to shoot straight, how to see what others cannot. How to survive when survival seems impossible.
They spent the rest of the day in the high country. Neshoba showed Ethan how to read tracks in hard ground, how to move without leaving sign, how to find water in places that looked bone dry. He showed him which plants could be eaten and which would kill you. How to start a fire without smoke. How to build a shelter that was invisible from 10 ft away.
It was exhausting, humbling, and absolutely necessary. By the time they returned to camp, Ethan's head was spinning with information, his body aching from the long hike. But he felt something else, too. A kind of clarity he hadn't experienced in years. He'd been trying to teach the Apache to fight like white men.
But what they needed was for him to learn to think like them. To see the world the way they did. And then maybe, just maybe, he could help them survive it. The training changed after that. Ethan still taught marksmanship and tactics, but he also started teaching the things Neshoba had shown him.
He took the young men into the canyons and made them find water, build shelters, move without leaving tracks. He taught them to use the terrain not as a battlefield, but as an ally. Kael took to it immediately, his young eyes sharp and his instincts good. Some of the others struggled, especially the ones who wanted to fight, who wanted revenge for what had been taken from them. Ethan understood that hunger.
He'd felt it himself, still felt it if he was honest. But he also understood that hunger would get them killed. One afternoon, 3 weeks after his walk with Neshoba, Ethan was working with Dakota on tracking when Ayla appeared. Her face was pale, her movements stiff. What's wrong?
Ethan asked immediately. Nothing. I am fine. You're not fine. What happened?