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have presumed on Thunderhawk’s indulgence.
    Crowfoot turned to his friend. “You cannot ride from here until the blizzards have blown themselves away and the snow melts. Then all the tracks will be washed from the land as though they had never been. Without the boy as scout it may take many sleeps to find these Double Mountains . Your brother once told me an old man taught him the land in the west has mountains pointing to the sky both far to the north and the southlands. He said the ridges go on for ever until they meet the stars. It will be an impossible task without the boy.”
    Thunderhawk’s anger cooled and he glanced appreciatively at the wise Indian. “As ever, Crowfoot, you speak straight my friend. Your eyes see for me when my heart is blind.” He turned and looked across the fire at the waiting boy. “You, Short-Lance, will smoke your first pipe of war with me. You will be my scout.” He paused and turned to the Buffalo Medicine Man. “To ride with the braves and fight as a man, he should have his man name. He has already ridden on a raid into Mexico and stolen ponies, and fought as a soldier against the white man who stole the life of my brother. Now he wishes to ride with me when I take my revenge. I think he has earned his name.”
    The Buffalo Man nodded at the sage remarks then thought for a while before he stood and began to shake his buffalo tail wand at Short-Lance, chanting an incantation in the language of the great beasts of the prairie. When his song was over he stared long and hard at the boy. “I shall give you your name for the deeds you have already done. From this day forward you shall be known as Eks-a-Pana , The Soldier.”
    Heads nodded around the fire as the braves showed their agreement on the choice of name. In front of them, the boy who had now become a man stood straight, chest swelled with pride. Swift-Foot looked up at his friend, soon to be admitted to the warrior society of the Kiowas, and his envy and resentment ran deep. His own name had not been mentioned once. Hadn’t he ridden the same hard trail and suffered the same hardships?
    As Eks-a-Pana , the Soldier walked away from the council fire, Swift-Foot turned away his face in shame.

    ***

    That year, winter came early to the mountains.
    The first flurries of snow scattered among the highest branches of the dark pines, then as the fall increased they began to break through to the ground beneath, leaving wet splotches on the bare faces of the haggard rocks. The temperature dropped and ice began to form on the slow creeks, weaving spiky patterns across the surface of the water, ridging and blossoming into intricate, crystalline ferns.
    On the mountains the carpet of snow began to join together until all was white, then as the fall grew deeper, the wind that sighed and groaned in the timber nudged and picked at the snow as if dissatisfied with its handiwork, driving it into deadfalls and hollows until there were drifts ten feet deep. It was a continuous process, like the shifting sands of the desert.
    Every living thing that stalked live prey or merely grazed off nature’s produce ran for cover and the mountains became a lonely place, spurned by animals and men alike, left to the subtle devices of winter’s shaping hands and the howling winds.
    At Sun Creek the snow drifted slowly, sheltered as it was from the direct force of the wind, but it ranged over the gold diggings to leave the face of the peak an undulating snowfield, garnished by the winter black trunks of the pines, and broken only by the gash of the creek, too swift as it teemed down the slope for the ice to probe tentative fingers into the current.
    Until spring, Morgan Clay’s secret was safe.

CHAPTER 5

    The saloon was noisy with coarse laughter, clinking of bottles against glasses, jingling spurs, scraping chairs and the continual rattle of a badly tuned piano being mauled by a tone-deaf whore. But nobody