The Fire of Greed (25 page)

Bladen Cole's finger squeezed the trigger of his Winchester.

Epilogue

AUTUMN HAD COME TO THE MOGOLLONS IN THE FULLNESS OF ITS GLORY
. The leaves on the aspens, painted deep gold by the season, fluttered across the foothills like an infinite treasury of golden eagles.

In the meadows, the sun was still warm on the back of the neck, but in among the ponderosa, the air was cool with the promise of winter. When the two riders paused to let their horses graze, the only sound above the level of the satisfied crunching was the light breeze whispering though the highest branches and the occasional racket of a woodpecker.

The higher they rode into the mountains, the deeper the blue of the sky became, until it was the most luminous cobalt imaginable, a color which invited the eye to drift aloft to linger, or to follow the progress of an eagle of the feathered species.

There were dangers deep in the Mogollons, the stronghold of the Chiricahua, but knowledge of saving the life of the son of a certain Chiricahua leader had spread though the mountains like shafts of light, and that light shone on these two riders.

The nights were cold, the sort of cold that invited a closeness to the campfire, popping and spitting as the flames licked the pine sap. As the fire turned to embers, the stars were bright, so vivid indeed that the Milky Way seemed to conceal the infinitely deep and distant blackness of the sky the way a warm buffalo robe enclosed those who paused to marvel at the infinite.

The sunrises of the clear mountain mornings were vivid and deep with color. The first thing the rays touched was the tops of the not-so-distant snowcapped peaks, and the palette was the deep rich color of butterscotch, or of the best Kentucky whiskey, depending on who was crafting the metaphor.

The mornings dawned so bright and so magnificently clear that one was tempted to marvel that the ends of the earth could be seen, if only one could climb to the top of yonder ponderosa.

They rode, not toward the points of any compass, but toward tomorrow, with yesterdays resolved and situated in permanent and settled places on the distant shelves of worldly endeavors. They rode onward, charting the course of a journey they dreamed would never end.

“Look,” she said, reaching across to gently touch his wrist. “Look over there, through the trees. I can see red sandstone cliffs.”