His blood.

He nearly laughed from the impossibility of it.

Instead he became angry.

Anger was easier.

“Why didn’t she come herself?”

Sena glanced at the elder.

The elder spoke.

Sena translated.

“Because until six months ago, my mother believed you were dead.”

Corvin’s anger vanished.

“Dead?”

“Your father told people his son died in the fire.”

“Why?”

“To prevent anyone from searching.”

Corvin looked again at Silas’s confession.

Near the bottom was one final paragraph.

I told Elena the boy burned. I told the boy Elena was murdered. God forgive me, it seemed easier than losing him.

Corvin closed his eyes.

Thirty-four years.

Thirty-four years stolen by a single sentence.

His mother had lived believing her son was dead.

His sister had grown up believing her brother was ashes beneath a burned homestead.

And Corvin had spent his entire life believing the people surrounding him had murdered them both.

Yet yesterday, when one of them lay dying beside his fence—

he had given her water anyway.

His mother would have liked that thought.

The grief struck him so suddenly he almost doubled over.

Then Sena stiffened.

Her head turned south.

Several warriors on the ridge moved simultaneously.

Corvin heard it seconds later.

Horses.

Many.

Fast.

Sena’s hand went to the rifle strapped behind her saddle.

The elder barked several orders.

The quiet surrounding the ranch disappeared.

Warriors moved into position.

Corvin turned toward the southern trail.

Dust climbed above the mesquite.

Twenty riders emerged.

Then thirty.

Then nearly forty.

Leading them was Sheriff Amos Pike.

And the moment Corvin saw him, he understood why Sena had been bleeding yesterday.

Pike was a big man with a red beard and a silver star he loved more than justice.

He had visited Corvin three times during the previous year.

Always about water.

“You’ve got the only reliable well between Mercer Wash and the north pass,” Pike once said.

“So?”

“So men with money would pay handsomely.”

“Then men with money can dig.”

Pike had laughed.

“They’d rather buy yours.”

“Not selling.”

That conversation had ended there.

Or so Corvin had believed.

Now Pike rode toward a ranch surrounded by three hundred warriors while thirty-eight armed men followed him.

That was not courage either.

Unless Pike knew something Corvin didn’t.

“TORNE!”

The sheriff shouted from two hundred yards away.

“YOU ALIVE?”

Corvin looked at Sena.

She whispered, “He followed me yesterday.”

“Did he shoot you?”

“His men did.”

Corvin’s jaw tightened.

Pike approached until several rifles from the ridge aimed toward him.

He stopped.

“Corvin!” he shouted. “Walk over here! We’ll get you out!”

“I’m not trapped.”

Pike frowned.

“What?”

“I said I’m not trapped.”

The sheriff’s expression changed.

He looked toward Sena.

Recognition crossed his face.

Then fear.

Only for a moment.

But Corvin saw it.

Sena saw it too.

“That woman killed two men yesterday,” Pike shouted.

Sena said quietly, “They tried to kill me first.”