‘Dogs have to find the wolf first,’ said Knife-With-Two-Sides, ‘before they can bite him. We shall attack the coach and then go back into the hills. They won’t find us there.’

Eagle Chaser said, ‘Be quiet, Sabadillo. They have not caught us yet.’

And Violento said, ‘It will be a good killing. We might take enough to buy guns and ammunition. So we can kill more.’

Knife-With-Two-Sides chuckled and touched his brother’s shoulder. ‘That is the way of it: we take from the pinda-lick-oyi what we need to fight them.’

The horsemen laughed, accepting his leadership.

The first arrow hit the left-hand leader in the valley of muscle connecting leg to chest. It dug deep, propelled by Moon Dancer’s bow. It drove in to grate the stone tip against the muscle of the leg so that the horse’s movement ground it deeper and the animal screamed and went down.

At the same time Funda put an arrow into the right-hand leader, planting it neatly in the animal’s throat. His aim was tidier than Moon Dancer’s, planned more carefully, though the effect was the same. It struck the plunging neck, cutting into the windpipe so that the horse squealed and began to choke on its own blood. Its head dropped, shafting the arrow deeper still into its neck, cutting through the sinews so that the animal lifted its head again in an attempt to release the pain. Instead, the movement served only to drag the barbed head loose in a welter of blood that choked the horse and set it bucking.

The remaining four animals piled into the leaders, spilling them over and down in a roiling welter of horseflesh that threatened to tumble the coach.

Stotter hauled back on the reins, fighting to stop the team before it piled up.

His efforts ceased when Hondo’s arrow slammed into his chest.

The shaft was built of straight hickory wood, tipped with a head of chipped stone, the recurved edges knocked out into a vee-shape. Stotter felt it go in and let go the brake as he tried to haul the arrow from his body. Then he screamed and let go as a second barbed missile plucked through his left eye and imbedded in his brain.

The stage team piled madly into the dying leaders. And the coach ran down the edge of the wash, smashing the drive pole into a horse as it toppled over.

The pole ground through the horse’s ribs and tore loose from the harness. It sank into the ground and provided a pivot point for the bulk of the stage. The concord tilted, then crashed sideways, sliding down the rim of the wash with Stotter’s body pitching clear into the melee of screaming horses.

Weisskopf launched himself to the side as he felt the coach go out from under him. He landed in a rolling dive that smashed the breath from his lungs and left fear in his belly.

He came up on his knees with the Winchester spouting flame at the far side of the hollow.

And three arrows plucked his life away.

The first tore into his left arm, jerking it clear of the rifle so that his shots flew wide. The second pierced his belly, grating off the pelvic girdle to ram upwards into the sac of his stomach so that he screamed and released his grip on the Winchester as the pain burst through him. The third, aimed at his throat, struck his toppling head, entering through the soft apex of his skull to drive down through the softer brain beneath and kill him instantly.

Knife-With-Two-Sides whooped, slamming his heels against his pony’s flanks to drive the mustang forwards as Violento, Eagle Chaser, and Sabadillo followed him in the headlong charge towards the wrecked coach.

Azul had not anticipated an attack so close to Placeras. To his own way of thinking it was too close to allow a safe escape route, the proximity serving to identify the location of the broncos as surely as a definite sighting of their camp.

He was a good half mile short of the trail when it happened. And the gray horse was close on winded from the long run to catch up with the stage.

The half-breed had reined in where two low bluffs afforded him a clear view of the route, waiting for his mount to gather wind and the stage to arrive.

He saw the attack, instinctively complimenting the leader on the tactics: it was superbly planned, simple and effective.

He watched the horse go down, and the stage topple over. For a moment he thought about chancing a run down the slope; then accepted the fact his gray horse would be exhausted at the end. And waited; watching.

He saw Stotter and Weisskopf killed.

Saw the man in the black frock coat emerge from the upturned side of the coach to take an arrow in his eye, and the drummer climb clear to run a few yards before he died and decided to stay low.

Cal Backenhauser was tumbled over in a frightened ball, trying hard to fight clear of the bodies pressing him against the salt-filled interior of the concord as Cardeen pushed up through the now-vertical window and began firing.

Then he groaned as the gambler pitched back with the broken shaft of an arrow sticking out from his face.

Both eyes were wide open, but one was gone red where the arrow had struck and carried through to the brain. Cardeen was dead, blood spilling from the hollowed socket and his fingers still and stiff on the grip of his pistol.

Del Brown spewed a thin stream of fear-inspired vomit over the corpse and wriggled his body out through the window. He tossed his portmanteau out in front and picked it up as he hit the blood-stained salt. He began to run.

He was halfway up the side of the wash before the arrows hit him, arms lifted high and voice screaming a plea for mercy.

One shaft took him through the underside of his right arm, slicing through the muscle to drive clear and imbed in the material of the drummer’s suit. Brown dropped his portmanteau and fought to tug the arrow clear. Then three more hit him. The first went in where his neck joined his shoulders, twitching his head to the side as a thick plume of blood erupted from his mouth. The second landed in his back, throwing him forwards on his hands and knees so that the third landed heavily between his shoulder blades, driving in to pierce a lung and cut off the flow of blood from vital organs to the brain.

Brown gasped, his tongue protruding thick and bloody from his lips. Knife-With-Two-Sides rode in and planted a .45 caliber slug from the Colt’s Cavalry model he had taken from a dead soldier into the back of Del Brown’s skull.

The bone imploded. Brown’s face went down into the salt, the front releasing a huge spray of crimson-tinted matter that spread in a shallow crater under the man’s destroyed face.

The Apaches gathered around the stagecoach.

Backenhauser kneed Cardeen’s body away and peered out from the window.

His sketches had come loose from the luggage and the Indians were picking them up, staring at them.

He gulped as Knife-With-Two-Sides pointed the Colt at his face and said, ‘Who makes pictures?’

‘Me,’ said the artist. ‘I did.’

‘Good.’ The Mimbreño holstered his pistol so that he could jab a finger against a sketch of Azul. ‘You make picture for me. Strong power. If it works, I let you live. Come.’

Backenhauser climbed out of the coach, unpleasantly conscious of the sweat that was running down between his shoulder blades and over his face. He tried to hide it as he said:

‘Sure. I’ll come with you and paint you.’ Then softer: ‘Where the hell are you, Azul?’

Azul was watching, unwilling to risk his life against the odds.

He watched Backenhauser hauled up on a cut-loose stage horse and the dead men mutilated. Then he set to following the Apaches across the spread of flatlands that lead north from Paradise Valley.

The terrain was flat here, a long, dry spread that folded gently into the valley where the smooth landscape gave way to a long stretch of ravines and mesas. He complimented the Mimbreño leader on the sensible placement of his attack, and set to trailing him to his hide-out.

The ground from which he watched was high up, flanking the low spread of country that bled into Paradise Valley. A wall of low ridges that fell down in smooth folds to the bottom, empty of cover.

So he waited until the Indians were gone down the trail, watching them as they turned north into the broken country fronting the valley. Then he waited some more while day turned into night and a moon came up.

After that, he rode down to the stage and looked at the arrows sticking out from the bodies. Then he followed the trail to where the tracks got lost.

That was where an area of hard rock spread out in a wide fan over the sand. He skirted round until he decided the narrow canyon leading off to the north had to be the Mimbreños’ escape passage, and followed it through.

The canyon fed into a wide bowl of land that spread northwards in a gigantic fan. Just inside the entrance there were horse droppings, and beyond those, hoof-prints; faint, but still discernible to a trained eye. He followed the tracks, alternating his vision between the marks on the ground and the threat of hidden guns in the surrounding uplands.

After a while the land spread out, shading to either side into darkness as the walls got higher and further apart. He rode with his rifle cocked, all his senses tuned for the suddenness of attack. The tracks led directly north, heading towards the rim of the gigantic depression, where the far side broke up into ravines and caves and gulleys.