It happened fast. One moment Nathanial Barrington was riding beside his old West Point friend Johnny Davidson, listening to Johnny’s tale of romantic woe. The next, he saw an arrow sticking out of Johnny’s chest. A second later, Johnny was forgotten. Bedlam had descended upon the detachment of dragoons. Gunshots volleyed around them, arrows zipped through the air, there were screams of pain and the whinnies of horses. Nathanial saw men hit all around him, and then it felt as if a sledgehammer smacked him on the shoulder. Nearly knocked off his horse, he managed to hold on to the pommel. Blood poured down his left arm, the ground was littered with soldiers, and he nearly panicked, but then his long frontier experience took over. He was an officer. His job was to get what was left of his command out of this devilish death trap. But never had he faced a job as hard as this ... as he sensed that all the Apache wars of the past were nothing compared to the one to come ...