Chapter 5 - The False Trail
The wind howled down the canyon like a freight train, carrying the first stinging needles of dry snow. By midnight, the temperature had dropped below zero, freezing the mud into iron and turning the sagebrush into brittle glass.
Emmett stood at the mouth of the box canyon, checking the girth on his bay gelding. Behind him, Chata and Red Hawk watched in silence.
“You are riding alone into their camp,” Chata said, his voice carrying a strange, hard respect. “If they catch you, they will hang you as a renegade scout or shoot you as a horse thief. The army does not ask questions of white men riding with Apache war parties in the winter.”
“They won't catch me,” Emmett said, pulling his leather gloves tight. “I’m going to leave a clean, wide trail heading south toward the alkali flats—straight back toward my ranch. They’ll take the bait because it’s the easiest path out of the wind. Once they’re chasing me across the flats, you and your people move the column north through the high timber. By the time they realize they’ve been led in a circle, you’ll be over the Sweetwater ridge.”
From the shadows behind the horse racks, Ronnie stepped forward. She wore a heavy buffalo-hide robe wrapped tightly around her shoulders, her face pale against the dark wool.
“You are paying a debt that was never yours to pay,” Ronnie said, her voice trembling slightly in the freezing air.
Emmett looked down at her from the saddle. For the first time in four years, the cold knot of guilt in his chest—the one tied to the blue embroidered M and the blood on another floor—felt slightly looser.
“Everybody pays for what they’ve done, Ronnie,” Emmett said quietly. “Or for what they didn't do. Stay off that horse until you reach the timber.”
Before she could answer, Emmett turned the bay’s head and rode out into the blinding white dark of the Wyoming snowstorm.
He rode hard for two miles south, deliberately cutting deep, sloppy boot prints and horse tracks into the melting slush near the creek bed where the army patrol was bivouacked. When he reached the ridge above the old stage station, he could see the faint glow of their campfires flickering through the swirling snow.
Emmett reined in his horse behind a cluster of wind-stunted pines. He pulled his rifle from its scabbard, chambered a heavy round, and fired a single shot directly into the air above the camp.
The sharp crack of the Sharps echoed off the canyon walls like thunder. Instantly, the camp below erupted into shouting, running figures, and the frantic squeal of startled horses. Flashlights and lanterns bobbed through the snow as the cavalrymen scrambled for their carbines, looking up toward the ridge where the lone horseman sat etched against the winter sky.
Emmett didn't wait to see them mount up. He spurred the bay gelding hard down the southern slope, cutting across the open flats toward the white salt crust where the wind blew hardest and the snow wiped away every trace of a trail within minutes.
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Behind him, distant shouts and the rhythmic thunder of hooves broke the silence of the night.
Emmett smiled faintly into the biting wind, leaning low over his horse's neck as the chase began.
