Chapter 6 - The Shadows of the High Pass
The air in the high pass smelled of crushed pine needles, cold granite, and the faint, bitter tang of woodsmoke that didn't belong to a friendly camp.
Clay Mercer reined his bay gelding to a halt just below the crest of the ridge, his left hand dropping instinctively to the scarred leather of his holster. Behind him, Eli’s gray mule blew heavily, its breath pluming white against the gray granite walls of the Dragoon heights. Kea was already out of her saddle, crouching low behind a shelf of lichen-covered rock where the trail narrowed between two sheer faces of stone.
“They aren't behind us,” Kea murmured, her dark eyes scanning the timberline below them. “Crowe and his riders turned back toward the lower wash when they saw the smoke from your cabin. They think we’re trapped without water.”
“They’re wrong about the water,” Clay said, dismounting with a slow, careful stiffness that kept his weight off his injured flank. The poultice Kea had packed against the bullet wound earlier that morning held a sharp, herbal warmth against his skin, but every step still sent a dull throb through his ribs. “And they’re wrong about where we’re going. This trail leads straight into the old Apache camps above the creek. If Crowe tries to follow us up this slate, he’ll lose half his horses before they reach the first shelf.”
“It’s not Crowe I’m looking at,” Kea said, her voice dropping an octave. She pointed a slender finger toward a thin wisp of gray smoke rising three miles to the north, near the mouth of Whispering Canyon. “That’s not a campfire. That’s a signal fire. Three puffs, short and flat. That’s the warning signal my brothers use when white men are moving cattle through the upper grazing grounds.”
Eli limped up beside them, leading his mule by the halter, his milky eye catching the sunlight as he squinted toward the north. “That’s not just any grazing ground, miss. That’s the old mail route. If your brothers are sitting on that ridge, they’re looking right down at the stage road from Tombstone to Wilcox. And if Silas Crowe’s syndicate boys are pushing up that way, there’s going to be blood on the telegraph wires before nightfall.”
Clay walked up beside Kea, his boots crunching on the gravel. For four years, he had lived by a simple rule: keep his head down, mind his own fences, and let the territory tear itself apart without his help. But looking down at the smoke rising against the massive blue wall of the mountains, he realized the world he had tried to shut out had finally broken down his door. His cabin was a pile of charred timbers; his stock was scattered across the scrub; and the woman standing beside him—whose hand still carried the quiet warmth of the thread tied between them—was looking toward her people with a heavy, unresolved grief.
“We have to find them,” Clay said quietly.
Kea looked up at him, surprise flickering for a second in her dark eyes before her usual calm mask settled back over her features. “My brothers won't welcome a white rancher carrying a Colt and a bullet hole in his side, Clay. To them, every man coming out of the valley is either a land-grabber or a bounty hunter.”
“Then I won't go as a rancher,” Clay said, unbuckling his gun belt and sliding it into the leather scabbard tied to his saddle. He left only his hunting knife at his belt. “I’ll go as a man who owes you his life. If your brothers want to talk, they can talk to a man with empty hands.”
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Kea stared at him for a long moment, the morning wind catching the dark strands of hair loose from her braid. Without a word, she reached out, touched the leather cord tied around her wrist, and then lightly brushed her fingers against the sleeve of his canvas shirt.
“Come on, then,” she whispered. “Let’s see if the mountains still remember how to shelter us.”
