THE WATER BEARER OF COLD SPRINGS
How One Act of Mercy to a Giant Apache Warrior Saved a Lonely Rancher from an Empire of Blood and Forged the Shadow Treaty of the Arizona Badlands
THE DUST ON THE FENCE RAIL
The heat of mid-August in the Arizona borderlands did not merely sit upon the earth.
It pressed down upon it.
It pressed down like a blacksmith's iron plate fresh from the furnace, flattening every living thing beneath its weight.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, the alkali flats surrounding Cold Springs shimmered beneath the sun. From a distance, the ground appeared to be covered in silver water, but any traveler foolish enough to chase that illusion would find nothing but cracked clay and bitter dust.
The mesquite trees had dropped yellow leaves despite the summer season. Creosote bushes stood twisted and gray. Far beyond them, the Dragoon Mountains rose like broken teeth against a cloudless sky.
Corvin Torne stood beside his stone well with both hands wrapped around a cedar bucket rope.
He was thirty-eight years old, though the desert had carved enough lines into his face to make him look closer to fifty.
His shirt was soaked with sweat.
His sweat evaporated almost immediately.
Corvin had learned long ago not to complain about the heat.
The desert did not care.
Three hundred acres of rocky ground stretched around his cabin. It was land most cattlemen considered worthless. There was little grass. The soil was hard. Limestone ridges cut across the property, making wagon travel difficult.
But beneath the stone was water.
Cold, clear, permanent water.
That single spring had allowed Corvin to build a life where most men would have seen only death.
He had four horses, forty head of longhorn cattle, a small vegetable patch, and a two-room stone-and-clay cabin.
He had no wife.
No children.
No close neighbors.
No family waiting for him in the East.
Corvin preferred it that way.
At least, that was what he told himself.
He had once served as a cavalry scout. During those years he had learned that men could be more dangerous than wolves and more unpredictable than storms.
After his enlistment ended, he had traveled south and purchased Cold Springs.
He wanted silence.
The kind of silence that came when nobody knew your name.
Nobody asked questions.
Nobody expected anything from you.
That afternoon, however, the silence changed.
His dun gelding lifted its head.
The horse gave a low, uncertain nicker.
Corvin stopped pulling the rope.
He looked toward the western fence.
At first, he saw nothing.
Then he noticed something lying beside the bottom rail.
It looked like a bundle of dark animal hide.
Corvin's right hand moved instinctively toward the Colt at his hip.
He stopped himself.
His eyes traveled across the surrounding ridges.
Nothing.
No movement.
No dust.
No birds.
No riders.
The figure moved.
Only slightly.
Corvin narrowed his eyes.
He walked forward.
Thirty yards.
Twenty.
Ten.
Then he saw her.
She was an Apache woman.
And she was enormous.
Corvin had encountered Apache warriors during his years with the cavalry, but he had never seen anyone built like this woman.
She stood well over six feet tall.
Her shoulders were broad.
Her arms were thick with muscle.
Her hands were large and calloused, the hands of someone accustomed to climbing stone, drawing heavy bows, and surviving where weaker people died.
She wore a buckskin tunic darkened by sweat and dust. A silver-concho belt wrapped around her waist.
Turquoise beads rested against her chest.
Blood covered the side of her head.
Her lips were cracked.
Her breathing sounded like stones rattling inside a dry gourd.
Corvin stopped ten feet away.