Corvin stared despite himself.
Sela looked at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Together they dragged the man into the yard.
“Tell them!” Corvin shouted.
The hired rider spat blood.
Crowe’s face darkened.
The man looked at him.
And fear took over.
“Captain paid us!”
The yard fell silent.
Crowe’s soldiers stared at their commander.
The captive began talking faster.
“Pike hired us first. Crowe gave the orders. We hit settlements dressed like Apache. Then we stole cattle and left tracks north. He said once enough people died, Washington would approve a campaign.”
Crowe raised his pistol.
Sela moved.
Faster than Corvin expected possible.
She shoved Corvin aside as Crowe fired.
The bullet tore through her upper arm.
Sela staggered.
Corvin fired back.
His bullet struck Crowe’s pistol and sent it spinning away.
Soldiers surrounded their captain.
For several seconds, nobody seemed to know whose orders still mattered.
Then an older cavalry sergeant stepped forward.
“Captain Crowe.”
Crowe looked at him.
“Stand down.”
“I am your commanding officer.”
“Not anymore.”
The sergeant removed Crowe’s revolver from the dirt.
Behind him, another soldier lowered his rifle.
Then another.
Then twenty more.
Crowe looked toward the hills.
Three hundred Apache warriors remained exactly where they had been.
They had been given every reason to fire.
They had not fired once.
Crowe’s plan had failed because the people he expected to behave like savages had shown more discipline than the men he had paid to provoke them.
A strange expression entered his face.
He began laughing.
“Do you think this changes anything?”
Nobody answered.
Crowe pointed toward Sela.
“You think Washington cares what she says?”
Then at Corvin.
“Or you?”
He nodded toward the papers.
“Those records are thirty years old. Men who signed them are dead. Judges can be bought. Clerks lose documents. Witnesses disappear.”
Corvin’s stomach tightened.
Because Crowe wasn’t entirely wrong.
Then Sela smiled.
It was the first time Corvin had seen her do it.
Crowe noticed.
“What?”
Sela pressed one hand against her bleeding arm.
“My brother carried copies.”
Crowe’s laughter stopped.
“To where?”
“Fort Mason.”
“He never arrived.”
“No.”
Sela glanced toward the western ridge.
“But the other courier did.”
Movement appeared between the riders.
A horse descended.
The rider was white.
Behind him came another.
And another.
At their center rode a thin man wearing a dark coat and a silver territorial marshal’s star.
Crowe’s face collapsed.
Sela looked at Corvin.
“Nantan knew he might be followed. So he carried the papers everyone was supposed to see.”
Corvin understood.
“Decoys.”
She nodded.
“The originals left by another road.”
The marshal stopped near the ranch house.
He looked at Crowe.
“Captain Elias Crowe?”
Nobody answered.
The marshal removed folded papers from his coat.
“I have warrants for you, Ransom Pike, and six others on charges including murder, conspiracy, theft of federal property, falsification of territorial records, and obstruction of military communications.”
His eyes moved toward Pike’s body.
“Looks like I’ll only need one horse for Mr. Pike.”
By sunset, Captain Crowe rode away with his wrists bound.
Three of Pike’s men went with him.
The cavalry returned toward Fort Mason under the sergeant’s command.
