Everyone was dead. Horses. Dogs. Men. The smoke from the burning wagons towered like black pillars against the blue, un-winking sky. Broad canvas from the canopy ribs snapped and tore in flaming shreds. Sometimes the wind moaned through the broken wheel spokes like a ghost trying to find its way home. There were a lot of ghosts here. We had been riding to Pat Wheedle’s farm when we happened upon the wagon train. Jake tipped his hat and leaned back in his saddle. “I don’t know why we live here, Mr. Marwood. The desert . . . it kills people.” A young woman, all of sixteen, lay at my feet. Her green dress was ripped and torn. “The desert didn’t do this, Jake,” I said. “Apache?” He shook his head in sad wonder at the mutilation. “Savage enough. And they didn’t just count coup, neither.” I studied the arrow in the back of a man.
