The horse came back carrying a map to Caleb Reed’s ranch, a trail to Chief Stone Eagle’s village, and one word written beneath a black circle.
Tomorrow.
Caleb stared at it until the letters seemed to move beneath the dying light.
Around him, the celebration had vanished.
Only an hour earlier, cooking fires had filled the canyon with the smell of roasted meat and corn. Children had darted between cottonwoods. More than a hundred warriors had stood beneath the red Arizona cliffs waiting to learn whether Chief Stone Eagle’s daughter would choose one of them.
Then Takara had pointed at Caleb.
A man she had never met.
A dusty cowboy who had entered the village by accident.
And said the words that had nearly caused him to drop his hat.
“I choose him.”
Now nobody was thinking about marriage.
Caleb turned the map toward the last orange light.
The drawing was crude but precise enough to be unmistakable.
His ranch sat at the southern edge.
Stone Eagle’s village lay to the north.
Between them, someone had marked a narrow canyon Caleb knew well—a twisting passage of black rock and dry brush called Widow’s Throat.
A line connected all three places.
Beside the canyon was the same strange symbol that appeared beneath the word Tomorrow: a circle crossed by three vertical cuts.
Caleb looked up.
“What does this mark mean?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Takara stood beside her father.
The confidence she had shown when choosing Caleb was gone.
