"Then we do not let them scatter," Hale said. "Grey Feather's people hold the cleft. We hold the mouth. No one plays hero for a crate of flour."
Ruiz nodded. "And Kane? If this goes wrong, he will say you led men to die on Indian rumors."
"Then I will have died on the side of the ledger that still adds up," Hale said, and was surprised to find he meant it without bitterness.
At his signal, the rifles rose along the rim. Hale stood into the firelight's edge and called, "United States Army. Lay down your arms. You are surrounded."
Chaos answered. One of Hollis's men fired wild. The canyon walls threw the shot back like an echo of judgment. Hale's squad answered with disciplined fire—aimed low, meant to stop, not to paint the stones with more ghosts than necessary. Grey Feather's people moved like water through scrub, cutting off the escape cleft. Rain Song dropped a man who tried to reach the horse line. Little Branch, too young for this and exactly old enough, held a rope gate shut with both hands while a pony screamed past him.
Hollis himself tried to talk even as he reached for a shotgun. "We have papers! We have a bill of sale from your own lieutenant—"
"Then you bought a lie," Hale said, and when Hollis swung the barrel up, Ruiz shot him through the shoulder. The shotgun fell. Hollis fell after it, cursing the century.
It was over in less than four minutes. Two of Hollis's riders dead, three wounded, the rest on their knees with empty hands. Hale walked among the crates and found powder, flour, spare rifles, and a locked strongbox that, when forced, held not Army payroll but a mix of coins and a ledger of buyers' names. He wrapped the ledger in oilcloth. Evidence was a kind of prayer that courts sometimes answered.
Grey Feather stood over one of the dead and spoke a few words in his own tongue—neither curse nor blessing Hale could parse, but something that made the air feel accounted for.
"This will not be the last Hollis," Grey Feather said in English.
"No," Hale agreed. "But it will be the last one who used my fort as a pantry."