“What was that?” John asked as they rode toward the last fences and Rock Creek.

“What was what?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Going out of business sale, brother. Going out of business.”

“I knew it was you, Tom. I knew it.”

“Listen, brother. You want to know so damned much, you just listen. Whiskey comes in from Mexico, and it gets stopped. Some of it gets dumped, the rest of it gets lost or broken. That's the whiskey you found. It's lost whiskey. It bought us the mine.”

“And got the Old Man killed.”

Tom said nothing. He turned his horse and spurred it.

The Cochise Stronghold is located in the eastern side of the Dragoon Mountains. Named for the great Chiricahua Apache leader in the nineteenth century, the Stronghold features a series of spires of eroded granite rock that provided cover for the Apaches during the wars of the middle and late nineteenth century. It's difficult terrain to traverse and thus gave the Apaches, the indigenous mountain people, significant strategic advantage over anyone, especially the army white men, trying to search them out or pursue them back into the mountains. Much of the Stronghold is passable only on foot, and the granite spires afforded the Apaches both lookout and cover and allowed them to easily repulse anyone who tried to come up into the Stronghold after them.

It was a short ride from Billy Hendricks's ranch to Rock Creek and then up into the Stronghold. The brothers and Sisson dismounted and set the horses to graze what grass remained on the banks of the creek as they began the steep ascent into the Stronghold. They took only what they needed—food, water, guns, ammunition, and rope. Tom wore his shoes, leaving his boots with his horse at the creek. John, unwilling to give up his boots, struggled up the slippery rocks and scree. Tom Sisson, older, in worse shape, simply struggled.

John was further burdened with his saddle, which he refused to leave behind, though both Tom and Sisson had abandoned theirs in the first outcropping of rocks, pointing out that it was an unnecessary burden that would prove useless in the Stronghold.

It was the hardest climbing Tom had ever done. It became vertical almost from the outset, a scramble from one rock to another, often with a branch or exposed root for a handhold that threatened to give out at any second. He led the way with John behind him, lugging the saddle, and Sisson last, forcing his aged body up through the granite by sheer will. They went nearly a hundred feet up before they came to the first level ground. Tom kicked rock and gravel on John, and John kicked it onto Sisson. Neither complained but only tucked their heads down to protect their eyes and mouths and kept climbing.