Control the spring, control cattle.
Control cattle, control Mercy Bend.
Tilda whispered:
“Your father owned the water beneath half this county.”
Mae backed away.
“Owen told me Father lost everything gambling.”
“Your father didn’t gamble.”
Mae’s knees nearly gave way.
Caleb caught her elbow.
She flinched.
He released her immediately.
Tilda continued.
“Joseph Larkin planned to sell water rights directly to small ranchers.
Silas Drayton would have lost a fortune.”
“And then the barn burned.”
Tilda nodded.
Mae stared at the wall.
“Mother always said it was an accident.”
“Maybe she had to.”
Before sunrise, Caleb and Mae broke into the county records office.
Technically, Tilda opened the rear window with a hairpin.
“I’m seventy-one,” she said.
“Nobody hangs seventy-one-year-old women.”
Inside, Caleb found the Larkin documents.
Or what remained of them.
One deed claimed Joseph Larkin transferred Mercy Spring to Silas Drayton for eight hundred dollars.
Mae stared at her father’s signature.
“That’s not his handwriting.”
Caleb looked at the witness.
Doctor Bell.
Second witness:
Reverend Thomas Vale.
Both men still lived in Mercy Bend.
Then Caleb found another document.
Nora Rusk.
His breath stopped.
It was an employment record.
Household servant.
Drayton Ranch.
Twenty-two years earlier.
Caleb gripped the desk.
Mae saw his face.
“Caleb?”
“My sister.”
“What?”
“Nora.”
His voice cracked.
“I had a sister named Nora.”
He pointed at the page.
“She disappeared twenty-two years ago.”
Mae went pale.
Caleb read the final notation.
Employment terminated.
Destination unknown.
Signed:
Silas Drayton.
Caleb closed his eyes.
For two decades he had imagined a hundred endings for Nora.
None had contained Silas Drayton.
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Caleb turned.
Sheriff Crowder stood in the doorway.
Gun drawn.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t make me do this.”
Tilda lifted her hands.
“You always were weak, Hal.”
Crowder looked miserable.
“Quiet.”
Mae stepped forward.
“You knew.”
Crowder wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“You knew Owen was hurting me.”
“I knew things weren’t right.”
“You brought me back twice.”
Crowder swallowed.
“I had a family.”
“So did I.”
His gun lowered an inch.
That was when a second man stepped from the hallway.
Owen.
Crowder’s expression changed.
“You weren’t supposed to come.”
Owen smiled.
“Yet here I am.”
Everything happened quickly.
Owen struck Crowder across the head with a revolver.
The sheriff collapsed.
Caleb lunged.
Two ranch hands rushed through the doorway.
The room exploded into overturned chairs, breaking glass, fists, and splintering wood.
Caleb put one man through a cabinet.
The second slammed him into the wall.
Owen grabbed Mae.
She screamed.
Caleb turned.
Owen wrapped one arm around Mae’s throat and pressed his revolver beneath her jaw.
“Enough.”
Caleb stopped.
Mae’s face was white.
Owen smiled.
“See what you make me do?”
