The children had gone silent. Iona stood without deciding to, and the slate slid from her knee and cracked on the rim of the bucket.
Twenty feet from the scout, by the gate in the adobe wall, eight or nine troopers of H Troop were standing about in their blue blouses, the ones who had been currying horses and the ones who had been watching them do it. They turned their heads. That was all they did. They turned their heads the way men turn to look at a dog barking in somebody else's yard. One of them spat. Corporal Klemm, a broad, heavy man whose face went red in any weather, folded his arms.
"It's the Sergeant's Apache," somebody said, as if that settled it.
The scout looked from face to face. Iona saw him do it. She saw him understand, one face at a time, and she saw him go on shouting anyway.
"White men. Painted. In the canyon. Do you hear me—"
And then Asa came out of the gate.
Captain Asa Whitcombe was tall enough that he had to duck under the adobe lintel, and when he straightened, the low sun found the brass buttons down the front of his dark blue jacket and the gold of his epaulets and the thin chain of the watch that looped across his vest. His beard was thick and dark brown and hid most of his mouth, which was a mercy, because Asa's mouth had always given him away. The rest of his face gave away nothing. He walked to the scout and stopped and looked down at him.
"Stand," he said.
One word. Flat as a plank.
Iona was already moving. She did not remember crossing the ground; she only knew that she was at Asa's side and her hand was up, palm out, as if she could stop the whole moment like a runaway team, and then her fingers were closed hard on his sleeve.
"Asa. Asa, that's the Sergeant's Apache scout—that's Holloway's man, the one who rode out with Callum—he's bleeding in the dirt and your cavalry men are standing there like fence posts. I'm a school teacher, not a surgeon, and even I can see he'll bleed out while you decide whether he's worth the bother. Tell them to move. Tell them—"
"Miss." Corporal Klemm had stepped out from the others. His finger came up and jabbed at her, at the air an inch from her face. "Miss, you take your hand off the Captain and get back to your wagons. This is army business, not a spelling bee. That buck's likely put a knife in his own arm to make a show of it—they'll do anything for a—you don't know the first thing about what you're—"
Asa turned. There was no change in his face at all. He turned the way a door swings, and his right fist went out straight from the shoulder and took Corporal Klemm in the middle of the face.
The sound was short and wet. Klemm went back two steps and sat down hard in the dust with his kepi rolling away from him, both hands over his nose.