Jack put his plate down and looked up into red eyes.
For a moment he froze, then reached for his gun as he realized he was staring into the eyes of a coyote, one that stood not fifteen feet from him, and an even shorter distance from Luz. The starlight turned the animal’s coat a silvery white—or was it a white coyote? “Don’t move,” Jack said, slowly drawing his Colt.
“Shozkay,” Luz breathed, and the coyote, hearing her voice, turned to look at her, his ears up.
Chills swept Jack’s body, and he hesitated. A lone coyote did not wander into a human camp, ever. Was she right? He held the gun, prepared to kill the small beast if it so much as moved toward any of them. His heart was thumping. The coyote’s eyes were so damned unnatural, like red coals, burning with an almost human intelligence. He had never seen anything like it.
The animal stood there for a minute at the most, but it was a long minute. Then it turned and raced off silently. Jack looked at Luz. She was trembling, tears spilling down her face, clutching herself with her arms. He wanted to hold her, but it was totally improper. He was relieved when Datiye did, comforting her as one would a child.
Disturbed, Jack sheathed his gun. Had it been Shozkay? For a moment, he closed his eyes. Of course it had. Between him and Luz, they were thinking about Shozkay continuously, and spirits always delayed their journey to linger under such circumstances. More so in this case, for there would be no journey to the afterworld for his brother. Shozkay would wander the face of this earth forever, crying with a need to be avenged.
How could his brother be avenged? Kill Bascom? Kill Warden? Kill the lieutenant in charge, Morris? Or all three?
Morris, he thought savagely, and knew his own war would never be over until Morris had died in retribution for ordering the hangings. Then his brother could leave this world and find peace for eternity in the next.
Three days later they rode into Cochise’s stronghold. It was a sea ofgohwahs, for the Chiricahuas numbered some twelve hundred men, women, and children. On the outer edge of one side of the village, Jack stopped and dismounted, helping Datiye down carefully, then Luz. “I’ll start cutting juniper immediately,” he told Datiye. “You supervise the unloading and the animals.”
She nodded.
It was some time later, when he had brought the last of the tall juniper logs to the site where he would erect thegohwah, that he saw Nahilzay watching. Jack ignored him and began to dig holes, then to erect the frame. Datiye came over and protested.
That is my duty,” she said, placing her hand on his.
“No,” Jack returned. “You can weave in the bear grass.” She met his implacable gaze, then nodded. Jack began to secure the juniper poles with pliable branches of desert willow. He didn’t look up as Nahilzay came over, but stepped back to view his work. It was certainly better than the last time, and a pang struck him as he thought of that day he had shared with Candice.
“The woman should do it,” Nahilzay said, referring to Datiye. He knew Luz, of course, though he probably didn’t recognize her, for it had been years since she had left the Chiricahua to marry Shozkay and join the Coyoteros. But anyone who saw her knew she was deep in mourning and would both shun her and respect her grief.
“I prefer to protect the babe,” he said, looking at him for the first time.
“Is she your wife?” Nahilzay asked. It was a natural conclusion.
“Yes,” Jack said. She was now. He was providing for her and she was pregnant with his child, and under Apache custom that was enough to make her his wife. “My second wife,” he added. “My first wife is white and I left her with her people.”
“You divorced her?”
“No,” Jack said shortly. “I do not want to endanger her child.”
“Two pregnant wives,” Nahilzay said, his lips turning into a smile of amusement. “May they both be sons.”
Jack nodded curtly, but did not thank him for the compliment, for that would have been considered ungrateful. He thought that Nahilzay was softening toward him with the addition of Datiye and Luz to his household.
“Tomorrow we ride the path of war,” Nahilzay told him.
Jack watched him walk away, then turned to the task at hand.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Some five hundred warriors in full war dress thundered across the Sulphur Springs Valley, turning north to bypass the Dragoon Mountains, where Cochise’s west stronghold was hidden. Jack was fully armed with a quiver of arrows and bow, a lance, his rifle, Colt and a knife. The bow, arrows, and lance he carried were Shozkay’s, which Datiye had wisely packed in the Coyotero camp. Brown and black white-tipped eagle feathers hung from the end of the lance and the black’s bridle. Jack’s face was barely distinguishable beneath streaks of red, yellow, and black paint. Before he had left, Datiye had pressed a war amulet upon him, and he did not know whose it was, or if she had made it for him overnight and gone to the shaman for blessings. The mass of warriors veered south down the Sonoita Valley.
Their target was the Warden ranch, just twelve miles north of Fort Buchanan.
They bypassed the other ranches in the valley, and when they surrounded Warden’s, it was still dark, the sky turning from black to slate and then mauve gray in the east. An owl hooted. The signal to attack. With wild war cries from every direction, the Apaches attacked.
Jack was riding at a gallop amid dozens of warriors toward the back of the ranch house, a wooden one-story cabin with one chimney, smoke wisping upward. He urged the black on until he reached the front ranks of the riders, then surged ahead, alone. The cabin was only twenty yards away … fifteen … ten. He wanted Warden.
He let loose a bloodcurdling scream.
He rode the black straight at the house, and when a rifle protruded from the window that was the focus of his attention, he drew his Colt and fired. The rifle blasted with a puff of smoke, but a second too late. The barrel waved loosely, aimlessly, in the air before slipping out of sight behind the windowsill.
