The first thing I noticed was the rope moving against the sky.
It was a clear afternoon in the Arizona Territory, the kind of afternoon when the desert looked almost beautiful enough to make a man forget how merciless it could be. The sky was blue from horizon to horizon, and the red sandstone formations beyond Cuervo Creek stood like enormous monuments left behind by some civilization older than the mountains themselves. I'd been riding west for weeks, following a trail that promised work at a cattle ranch outside the settlement, and I was thinking mostly about supper, a place to sleep, and whether my horse would forgive me for another day on the road.
Then I saw the tree.
It stood beyond the last buildings at the edge of town, a twisted old cottonwood with branches thick enough to support a wagon. Seven men had gathered beneath it, along with a mule team, a wooden cart, and several horses tied to a crooked fence. Something hung from one of the largest branches, moving slowly in the breeze. At first, I thought somebody had suspended two heavy bundles of clothing to dry. But clothing doesn't struggle. It doesn't have arms reaching toward the earth, or hair swinging beneath terrified human faces.
Two women were hanging upside down by their ankles.
I pulled my horse to a stop.
For a moment, my mind refused to accept what my eyes were telling me. The women wore fringed buckskin clothing, their long black hair hanging toward the dusty ground. Their ankles had been bound with thick rope, and their feet were secured to the enormous branch overhead. Their hands hung below their heads, occasionally reaching toward the earth as though the ground might somehow rise to meet them.
One was younger, perhaps twenty-three, with a slender face and a frightened expression. The other looked several years older. Her shoulders were broader, her features more angular, and there was a dried mark above one eyebrow where somebody had struck her. Both were Apache women. Both were conscious. And both were being displayed before a group of men who seemed to believe the entire arrangement was entertainment.
My horse shifted beneath me.
His name was Chester, a chestnut gelding I'd owned for nearly nine years, and he possessed a talent for recognizing trouble before I did. He flicked his ears toward the tree, snorted, and took an unwilling step sideways.
"I see it, old boy," I whispered.
The men beneath the cottonwood had noticed me.