Iona thought it was a cruel question until she saw Asa's face, and understood he was asking it of himself.
"There are children with your wagons," Nalté said. "I saw them two weeks ago when we passed you on the road. A woman was teaching them letters on a board." His eyes went to Iona. "And my own children are at Cibecue, and the canyon is the road to them too. I didn't come back only for yours, Captain. Don't make it into that story. And I came back because I signed the paper at Fort Apache that says I will scout for the army. I keep what I sign. It is your side that forgets."
IV.
The council was held in the long room of the old station, where the Mexican mail company had once sold mescal and beans. The adobe kept the day's heat; the candles made it worse. There was a table with a map weighted at the corners by a canteen, a Bible, a horseshoe, and Asa's revolver. Around it stood Lieutenant Ames, Ephraim Stroud and two of his men, and, because Holloway was gone and he was now the senior noncommissioned officer in camp, Corporal Klemm, with a twist of lint in each nostril and his upper lip swelling purple.
Iona stood by the door. No one had invited her, and no one told her to go.
Asa laid it out plain. He did not soften the parts that made the army look bad, and he did not raise his voice over the parts that frightened the settlers. When he was finished, it was Ames who spoke first, because Ames was twenty-three and believed the world ran on regulations.
"Sir, with respect. It is an Apache's account against Sergeant Holloway's twenty years of service. Holloway is absent. He could be dead. He could have been killed by this man's people, and the horse taken. The star could have come off the marshal's body as easily as from his hand."
"It could," Asa said. "Go on, Mr. Ames."
"And there's the law. Since Congress passed the posse comitatus law, the army may not act as a posse to arrest civilians. If these are white men in that canyon, even painted, we have no authority to put them in irons. We'd need a civil officer."
"We have one," Iona said from the door. "He's lying under a rock at a seep with a ball in his leg."
Klemm turned his head toward her. His eyes were bloodshot. "Begging your pardon, Miss. The Lieutenant's right. The buck could be lying, and your brother could be—" He stopped himself. It was clearly an effort. "Could be anywhere."
"He could," Asa said again. "Mr. Stroud. What's the other road?"
"South around the Pinitos, then up the Gila," Stroud said. "Four days longer. The springs on that road were half dry when the freighters came through in August. I've got a woman due in three weeks and stock that's already ribs and hide." He rubbed his face. "Captain, I'll not lie to you. I don't know this man. I don't much know any of them. But I saw him come off that horse. A man doesn't do that for show."
Asa looked down at the map for a long time.