The Dragoon Mountains are a series of pilings of weathered granite that look like they've been dropped down from above rather than pushed up from below. They are spectacularly rugged mountains with large spires and steep, narrow canyons from which rock had weathered and shattered. The great Apache leader Cochise had made his stronghold in the rugged, nearly impenetrable rocks and crags of the Dragoons. It was a good place to hide. It was a good place for anyone to hide. And if Braz Wootan and his gang of vigilantes had beaten them to it, they would be hidden away, just waiting in ambush.

Sisson had spent many of his younger years as an Indian scout. He boasted that he had scouted out the Indians that had killed Custer. He was too young to have actually done that, but he had helped chase the last of the Sioux back to the reservation, and that made his claim almost but not exactly true. There weren't many men in the state who had the knowledge that Sisson had about pursuit and escape. And his was all knowledge that came from the experience of having done it, not from reading about it. He couldn't read. He could only do things.

In Sisson's experience, the best way to avoid an ambush was to find your way around it. The next best way was to split up your forces in order to flank and ambush the ambush. Since they were only three, and two half blind, the second was no option at all. He would take the first option. He would go around to the north, as the vigilantes would be expecting them from the south. He would come around the north end of the mountains, come back up either from the north or from all the way around to the west. They would try to come up behind the ones who were waiting for them.

He guessed that Tom was thinking somewhat along those lines, too. That's what he guessed, but he wasn't good at guessing what Tom would do. And that put him back into the puzzle again. You couldn't tell the smart ones what to do, even if it was the right thing to do, because the smart ones were smarter than you, right or wrong.

That hadn't bothered him with the Old Man. In a lot of ways, the Old Man was like Tom. He was smart, and he was sharp in the tongue and quick to temper up.

You didn't want to cross the Old Man in any serious kind of way. He would take after you with a big mouth and a bigger stick. He was mean, but he didn't brood. Tom Power was a brooder. Sisson supposed that was because Tom had to grow up under the Old Man's shadow. It was not fun to be a grown-up dealing with the Old Man's temper. He could only imagine what it had been like for a young boy.