Chapter 5 - Dawn on the Skeleton Ridge
The gray light of dawn was just beginning to touch the high peaks of the Skeleton Hills when Silas and Nalin reached the crest of the ridge. Below them, the vast expanse of the San Simon Valley stretched out toward the horizon like an ocean of sagebrush and gray mist.
Silas stopped to catch his breath, leaning heavily on his rifle barrel while he scanned the valley floor with a pair of brass field glasses he'd salvaged from his scouting days.
"See anything?" Nalin asked, keeping low behind a cluster of prickly pear cactus.
"Vain's camp is three miles south, near the old stage station," Silas said, lowering the glasses. "They've got fresh horses from the livery at Contention. They figured out we crossed the wash and headed toward the hills."
"Are they coming this way?"
"Not yet," Silas replied, his expression grim. "They're waiting for reinforcements. I saw two troopers from the fort riding into their camp about an hour before sunrise. Halloway knows we've got the book, and he's sent regular army cavalry to do his dirty work."
Nalin's hand dropped to the hilt of her knife. "Regular soldiers? Then we can't outrun them. They have fresh mounts and better maps."
"We don't need to outrun them," Silas said, turning to look back down the narrow pass they had just climbed. "We just need to make them follow us into terrain where horses are more trouble than they're worth."
He pointed toward a steep, boulder-strewn canyon that wound its way down the western flank of the range—a place known to the old prospectors as Devil's Punchbowl, where the walls rose sheer for two hundred feet and the path was narrow enough that men had to walk single file.
"If we get into the gorge before they cut us off, we can hold the pass with a single box of cartridges," Silas said. "Halloway can't send a troop of cavalry through there without exposing every man to fire from the rocks above."
Nalin looked from the dangerous gorge below to Silas's weathered, determined face. For the first time since they had met in the wash, the lingering suspicion in her eyes gave way to a steady, hard-earned trust.
"And if they bring up a mountain gun from the fort?" she asked.
May you like
Silas checked the priming on his rifle and pulled the brim of his hat down against the rising sun. "Then we'll just have to remind Colonel Halloway that some ghosts don't stay in their graves."
He turned and began descending the rocky slope toward the gorge, his limp barely slowing his pace as he led the way into the shadows of the canyon, leaving the valley and Blackjack Vain far behind them in the morning light.
