Cole mounted Dust.
Nantan grabbed the reins.
“You cannot go alone.”
“I can travel faster alone.”
“They may know you found us.”
“Who?”
“Your brother’s men.”
Cole looked at the poisoned spring.
Then at her.
“You think they’re watching?”
“I think men who poison children do not stop because one stranger gives them water.”
A rifle cracked.
Stone exploded beside Cole’s head.
Everyone dropped.
“DOWN!”
A second shot rang out.
Then a third.
Men appeared along the northern ridge.
Five riders.
One shouted.
“Cole!”
Cole knew the voice.
His stomach turned.
A rider emerged between two boulders.
Broad shoulders.
Gray hat.
Red beard.
Ephraim Maddox.
“Well,” Ephraim called down. “Ain’t this a reunion.”
Cole stepped behind a rock.
“What are you doing here?”
Ephraim laughed.
“You’re standing on eighty thousand dollars of copper and asking stupid questions.”
Cole clenched his jaw.
“You poisoned their spring.”
“They kept coming back.”
“They live here.”
“So do coyotes.”
Cole’s face hardened.
Nantan crouched beside him.
Ephraim continued.
“Ride out, Cole. This ain’t your fight.”
Cole looked toward Isadora.
Toward the little girl he had given water.
Then toward the broken wooden horse tied to his saddle.
“You’re wrong.”
Ephraim’s smile disappeared.
Cole called upward.
“I know about Red Mercy.”
Silence.
Even at that distance, Cole saw his brother’s posture change.
“Who filled your head with that?”
“The people who survived it.”
Ephraim spat into the dirt.
“Father should’ve finished the job.”
Cole’s breath stopped.
Not because of the cruelty.
Because of the certainty.
“You knew?”
Ephraim shrugged.
“All my life.”
Cole felt something inside him fracture.
“You knew I wasn’t his son.”
“Course I knew.”
“You knew where I came from.”
“Father told me.”
“And you never said anything.”
Ephraim laughed.
“What difference would it make?”
Twenty-eight years.
Christmases.
Funerals.
Bar fights.
Ephraim teaching him cards.
Cole dragging Ephraim three miles after a horse broke his leg.
Brothers.
All while Ephraim knew.
“You let me believe they murdered my family.”
“They did murder families.”
“Not mine.”
Ephraim leaned forward in the saddle.
“You ought to be grateful. Father pulled you out of the dirt and made you civilized.”
Cole’s face became completely still.
Nantan whispered, “Cole.”
He barely heard her.
“Why did Silas take me?”
Ephraim’s grin returned.
“There’s a question worth asking.”
Cole felt fear for the first time.
Real fear.
“Why?”
Ephraim looked toward Isadora.
Then at Cole.
“Ask your aunt.”
Cole turned.
Isadora had gone pale.
Nantan stared at her.
“What does he mean?”
Isadora began speaking rapidly.
Nantan’s expression changed.
Confusion.
Then shock.
“TELL ME,” Cole shouted.
Nantan turned slowly toward him.
“She says Silas did not take you because he felt mercy.”
Cole knew somehow that the next words would be worse than everything before them.
“Then why?”
Nantan swallowed.
“Because your father was not Apache.”
Cole stared.
“What?”
“Your mother was.”
“And my father?”
Isadora whispered a name.
Nantan closed her eyes.
Then translated.
“Silas Maddox.”
The desert seemed to tilt beneath Cole’s boots.
Ephraim laughed from the ridge.
And suddenly the impossible truth became horrifyingly clear.
Silas Maddox had not rescued Cole from the massacre.
Silas had taken his own son.
“No.”
Cole’s voice barely existed.
Ephraim shouted down.
