I saw this setting ten years ago in the mountains north of Tucson. I was struck by the way the early morning light came down into this little clearing. I thought that by having sunshine traveling across the painting from right to left, and then having the smoke continue off to the left out of the picture, it would create an interesting pattern of light and shadow.

The cavalry saddle in the foreground places the scene in the tumultuous period of the early 1880's, when the settlers and the Army stepped up their conflict with the native peoples. The Apache took that saddle off a trooper's horse, and altered it with a piece of hide on the seat. - HT