He had worked mines.
He knew tailings.
Chemicals.
Ore waste.
“This isn’t natural.”
“No.”
“Who did this?”
Nantan pointed toward hoofprints.
They were fresh.
Shoed horses.
Cole followed them with his eyes toward wagon tracks.
And suddenly he noticed a mark stamped into an abandoned crate half buried beneath brush.
A letter M inside a diamond.
His chest tightened.
The Maddox Ranch brand.
“No.”
Nantan said nothing.
Cole walked to the crate.
Maddox & Hale Mining Company.
Tucson Territory Office.
His father’s company.
Except Silas had been dead for seven years.
Which meant—
“Who runs Maddox & Hale?”
Nantan watched him.
Cole already knew.
He simply did not want to say the name.
His older brother.
Not by blood.
But the only brother he had ever known.
Ephraim Maddox.
Cole stood slowly.
“This happened recently.”
“Yes.”
“How recently?”
“Three days.”
A cold understanding formed.
The starving group had not simply wandered too far from water.
Someone had destroyed their water source.
Someone wanted them gone.
Cole looked at the poisoned spring.
Then at the sick children.
Then at the Maddox brand.
He remembered a letter Ephraim had sent him two months earlier.
Come home.
Father’s old southern claims are finally worth something.
We can make more money in one year than he made in twenty.
Cole had ignored it.
Now he understood.
The ore was beneath land surrounding this canyon.
Ephraim was finishing Silas’s work.
Twenty-eight years later, the Maddox family had returned to steal the same ground.
“We need clean water,” Cole said.
Nantan nodded.
“There is another spring?”
“Two days west.”
“Too far.”
Cole stared at the canyon walls.
He had spent enough years prospecting to understand stone.
Springs did not appear magically.
Water traveled through fractures.
If this outlet had been contaminated recently, an upstream pocket might still be clean.
He began climbing.
For four hours, Cole crawled through ravines and cracks beneath murderous heat.
Then Dust whinnied from below.
Cole stopped.
Again.
A frantic sound.
He looked across the slope.
The horse was staring at a wall of brush.
Cole descended.
Dust pulled against his reins toward the opposite direction, refusing to approach.
Cole studied the brush.
There.
A faint dampness in the soil.
He ripped away branches.
Behind them was an old stone barrier.
Man-made.
Cole dug.
Taza joined him.
Then others.
They tore away packed clay and stones until cold air breathed through a crack.
Water trickled.
Clear.
Cole laughed.
“Keep digging!”
They pulled stones away.
Suddenly a stream burst through.
People shouted.
Children screamed with delight.
Women filled containers.
Taza stood ankle-deep in the rushing water, staring at Cole.
Nantan touched the stone wall.
“This was blocked.”
Cole nodded.
“Recently.”
Behind the barrier they found a shovel.
On its handle—
the Maddox brand.
Cole’s joy vanished.
Ephraim had not merely poisoned one spring.
He had deliberately sealed the clean one first.
This was attempted extermination without bullets.
Let the desert kill them.
Then call it nature.
Cole stared toward the north.
“I’m going to Tucson.”
Nantan frowned.
“For what?”
“The territorial marshal.”
“He will believe you?”
Cole looked at the branded shovel.
“He’ll believe company records.”
She watched him.
“You think your brother keeps papers admitting this?”
“Ephraim keeps records of everything.”
“Why?”
“Because he trusts numbers more than people.”
