Chapter One — The Sound Beneath the Wind
November of 1867 had turned the mountains into a world without mercy.
Snow covered the high country from ridge to ridge, filling the spaces between dark pines and swallowing the narrow trail beneath a smooth white sheet. Wind moved through the trees with a low, restless sound, shaking loose powder from branches and sending it across the mountainside in pale curtains.
A lone frontiersman rode through it with his collar pulled high and his hat brim low.
The bay gelding beneath him moved carefully, placing each hoof as though the mountain might break open under the snow.
The man had been riding north for four days.
He had no destination that mattered.
That had been true for nearly three years.
He had worked cattle in New Mexico, hauled freight outside Prescott, repaired fences for a rancher along the Verde, and spent one summer guiding prospectors through country he secretly hoped would kill him.
None of it had.
Sometimes he thought that was the problem.
A dead man did not have to remember.
The living did.
And the frontiersman remembered Tonto Basin.
He remembered smoke rolling over cottonwoods.
He remembered horses screaming.
He remembered a militia captain shouting for the men to advance.
Most of all, he remembered one small dwelling already burning when he reached it and a woman dragging a child through the back while armed men fired from the opposite ridge.
He had not fired.
For three years he had repeated that sentence to himself.
I did not fire.
It had once sounded like a defense.
Now it sounded like cowardice.
He had guided the column into the basin.
He had known the trail.
He had accepted the money.
And when the shooting began, he had stood there long enough to understand exactly what was happening before he finally walked away.
The frontiersman tightened his grip on the reins.
The gelding stopped.
The man frowned.
“Come on.”
The horse did not move.
Its ears pointed toward the trees on the right side of the trail.
The frontiersman listened.
Nothing.
Only wind.
Then—
Clang.
Metal striking stone.
The frontiersman went still.
A moment later came another sound.
Not an animal cry.
Not quite a word.
A strained groan carried faintly through the trees.
The gelding shifted uneasily.
The man stared toward the timber.
Every sensible part of him said to keep riding.
A trapper might be waiting.
A wounded outlaw could be pretending to need help.
In that country, compassion could get a man buried faster than stupidity.
Then the sound came again.
A desperate grunt.
Metal scraped rock.