The stranger appeared at dusk.

Elias Boone was repairing a broken section of fence when he saw the horse first.

It was stumbling down the ridge without a rider.

The animal reached the bottom of the hill, collapsed beside a mesquite tree, and lay still.

Elias dropped his hammer.

For twenty years, he had lived alone on the edge of the Arizona Territory.

He knew the sounds of the desert.

He knew the difference between a wild horse and a frightened one.

And he knew that a riderless horse almost always meant trouble.

He reached for his rifle.

Then he saw the man.

The stranger was crawling through the dust.

One hand pressed against his side.

Blood darkened his shirt.

He made it perhaps thirty feet before collapsing.

Elias stood still.

He should have gone back to the cabin.

That was what common sense told him.

Men who arrived wounded at sundown rarely brought good news.

But the stranger lifted his head.

His lips moved.

“Water.”

Elias looked toward the cabin.

Then at the man.

The desert wind blew across the valley.

“Stay there.”

He took his canteen and walked closer.

The stranger's eyes followed him.

“Slowly,” Elias said.

The man tried to sit.

Elias knelt.

“Don't.”

He held the canteen to the stranger's mouth.

The man drank too quickly.

Elias pulled it away.

“You'll choke.”

The stranger coughed.

Then he whispered:

“They're coming.”

“Who?”

The stranger looked toward the eastern ridge.

“Apache.”

Elias stared at him.

For a moment, the only sound was the wind.

Then the stranger grabbed his sleeve.

“Don't let them take the box.”

“What box?”

But the stranger had already passed out.

Elias looked down.

Around the man's neck hung a leather cord.

Attached to it was a small wooden disk.

On the disk was a symbol Elias had seen only once before.

A black sun.

His stomach tightened.

Because twenty years earlier, his father had died trying to understand that same symbol.

Elias stood.

He looked toward the ridge.

Nothing moved.

Then he heard a distant sound.

A drum.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Elias had never heard a drum sound like that.

He carried the stranger toward the cabin.

By midnight, there were fires on every ridge.

By dawn, there were three hundred riders surrounding his ranch.

And every single one of them was looking at Elias Boone.

Elias woke before sunrise.

The stranger was still alive.

Barely.

He lay on Elias's bed with a cloth pressed against the wound.

The bullet had entered below his ribs.

Elias had removed it with a pair of pliers and a knife.

The stranger had not complained.

That worried Elias more than screaming would have.

Men who could endure pain like that usually had experience with worse.

Elias stepped toward the window.

The valley was dark.

But the ridges were no longer empty.

Small fires burned in a wide circle.

One on the north ridge.

Two on the west.

Three to the east.

Dozens in the south.

The stranger opened his eyes.

“You see them?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“I don't know.”

“Enough.”

Elias turned.

“Who are you?”

The man remained silent.

“What's in the box?”