He was tying the sorrel mare to his saddle when he saw the small brush of white on its front leg. He brushed at it and knew that it was the horse's hair, not a dab of paint or lime. “Oh, fuck me,” he said. “Fuck me, fuck me for a fool.” He untied the sorrel mare, which he now knew was not his, remounted, and started up the trail to the camp when he thought better of it, turned around, and headed for Alamogordo.

“Pack up what you can,” he told Granny Jane. “Leave the rest. I'll be back in an hour. As soon as the sun goes down, we're taking the children and getting out of here.”

“What the hell have you done?” Granny Jane demanded.

“It don't need talking. It needs moving. We're out of here soon as it's dark.”

Jeff went to the bank and took out half the money he and his partners had saved. When he didn't show up at work, Sam or Melvin or Zeke would come to the bank and find he had withdrawn his share and know he was out of it, fair and square. There should have been more, but they had spent considerable on improving the camp and the stock. He went back into the bank and withdrew half of the remainder. It was fair. They would have the business that he had come up with and had built himself.

After dark, the six of the Powers started west, back toward Cliff. It seemed as though they were wearing ruts into this route, following after good fortune, only to be pushed in the other direction by bad fortune. As good as Jeff was at business, he was worse at luck.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1918

Sisson took the lead then, heading them back toward the Dragoon Mountains and the Stronghold. It was a good place if they could get up there. For years the Apaches had used it as a place of refuge and attack. The Dragoons were the most rugged mountains in Arizona, and no one, except the Apaches, had been able to maneuver his way through them easily.

Sisson didn't like the odds. Tom Power was smart, but it seemed to Sisson that smart people had a way of getting too smart and doing things that were dumber than any dumb person would do. He thought of smart as a circle. Go too far toward smart, and you found yourself back at dumb. But there was nothing to do about it. It was just the way. You had to follow the smart ones just because they were smarter than you were. And even when you knew what they was doing wasn't smart, they was still smarter than you, and if you did something else, it would be wrong because you were dumb. You just had to trust them. Only thing was, mostly you didn't trust them.