Corvin paused. The steel pen hovered a fraction of an inch above the crisp paper, a small drop of black ink clinging to the tip.

He lowered the pen and added three more words:

Looked familiar. Why?

Corvin stared at those last words for several seconds. A strange feeling of unease settled in his stomach. He shook his head, raised the pen, and aggressively scratched the three words out with thick black lines until the paper beneath was nearly torn through.

"Ridiculous," he muttered aloud to the empty room. "You're spending too much time talking to horses, Corvin."

He had never seen her before in his life. How could he have? He avoided the reservation, he rarely visited the border towns, and he hadn't seen a band of Apache closer than ten miles in over six years.

He closed the heavy ledger with a firm thud, blew out the oil lamp, and let the cool darkness of the desert night wash over the room.

Outside, the oppressive heat of the afternoon had vanished, replaced by the sharp, clear chill of the high desert night. Corvin ate a quiet meal of cold pinto beans and stale sourdough bread by the window, watching the stars pinprick the black sky above the northern ridge. He walked out to the corral, checked the latch on the gate, tossed an armful of sweet alfalfa to his three horses, and returned inside to lie down on his narrow rope bed.

His revolver rested on the floor beside his boot; his Winchester rifle leaned against the headboard within easy reach of his right arm.

At midnight, one of his mares screamed.

Corvin was awake before the sound had fully died away. His eyes snapped open, his hand plunging down to grip the cold wooden stock of the Winchester.

Outside, the heavy thud of frantic horse hooves echoed through the dirt as the stock in the corral surged against the wooden rails in a blind panic.

Corvin slipped silently out of bed, his bare feet making no sound against the cool flagstone floor. He moved to the eastern window, keeping his body behind the heavy pine frame, and peered out into the night.

Full moonlight washed the yard in a stark, silver light.

The corral was empty of intruders. The three horses were bunched together in the far corner, their ears pinned back, their eyes wide and white with terror as they stared up toward the high stone ridge that rose directly behind the house.

Corvin slowly shifted his gaze toward the sky line.

There, silhouetted sharply against the glowing silver face of the moon, sat a single mounted rider.

Corvin narrowed his eyes, his finger tightening imperceptibly against the trigger of his rifle. The horse was motionless, its rider tall, straight-backed, and holding a long lance or rifle across the saddle pommel.

A second mounted shape pulled up alongside the first. Then a third.

Corvin blinked once to clear his eyes in the gloom.

When he opened them, the ridge was empty. There was only the jagged line of black sandstone against the night sky, and the soft rustle of dry wind through the mesquite trees.

"Coyotes spooked 'em," Corvin told himself softly, though the lie felt hollow even as he spoke it. Coyotes didn't sit tall in a saddle against the moon.

He stood by the window for another twenty minutes, his eyes scanning every shadow in the basin, but nothing else moved. Eventually, he returned to his bed, laying the rifle across his chest beneath the light blanket.

Sleep came slowly, creeping in around the edges of his mind like smoke.

And when it finally took him, Corvin dreamed of fire.

He dreamed of a narrow, steep-sided canyon trapped in shadow. He heard the deafening roar of repeating rifle fire echoing off red rock walls. He heard the terrible, shrill sound of a young child screaming in pure terror.

And rising above the chaos, he heard a dark, harsh voice—a voice he had spent nineteen long years trying to bury beneath hard work and silence:

"Leave no witnesses. Burn it all to the ground."

Corvin woke at first light, his nightshirt soaked with cold sweat.

The nightmare had left a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth, the ghost of gunsmoke lingering in his throat. He sat up on the edge of his bed, rubbed his face with his calloused hands, and forced himself to breathe slowly until the phantom smell of burning timber faded from the room.

"Nineteen years," he whispered into the gray dawn. "Let it lie."

He pulled on his heavy leather boots, strapped his revolver to his hip, and opened the heavy oak front door to begin his morning routine.

He took three steps onto the gravel yard and stopped dead.

The morning air was completely still. The sun had not yet cleared the eastern peaks, leaving the valley wrapped in a cold, blue twilight.

And surrounding his ranch on three sides were nearly three hundred Apache warriors.

They occupied the northern ridge. They lined the dry creek bed to the south. They sat mounted on small, wiry ponies along the western fence line where the woman had fallen yesterday afternoon.

There was no yelling. No war cries. No brandishing of weapons.

The silence was absolute, heavier and more terrifying than the roar of thunder.

Corvin did not reach for his revolver. He was a veteran of the frontier; he knew that making a sudden move with three hundred rifles and bows pointed at his chest was simply a very noisy way to commit suicide.

He stood perfectly still beside his porch post, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, his thumbs hooked casually over his gun belt.

From the center of the northern ridge, a single rider detached himself from the main body of men and began walking his horse down the steep gravel slope.

The pony picked its way carefully through the loose rock, its hooves making dry, crunching sounds that echoed across the quiet basin. The rider was an older man, his face deeply lined like cracked river mud, his gray-streaked hair tied back with a strip of red cloth. He wore a faded blue cavalry coat over his buckskins—a prize taken from some forgotten skirmish years ago.