Corvin raised his voice.
“She says otherwise.”
Pike stared.
“She speaks English?”
“Better than you, apparently.”
A few of Pike’s men shifted uneasily.
The sheriff leaned forward in his saddle.
“Corvin, there are nearly three hundred hostiles surrounding your property.”
“They haven’t fired.”
“Yet.”
“Neither have I.”
Pike’s jaw worked.
“Come over here.”
“No.”
Silence rolled across the valley.
Then Pike smiled.
It wasn’t friendly.
“Your old man always said you were stubborn.”
Corvin went still.
“You knew my father?”
“Knew him?”
Pike laughed.
“My father knew him better.”
Something inside Corvin turned cold.
He unfolded Silas’s confession.
Three other names appeared beneath his father’s.
One of them was Jeremiah Pike.
Amos Pike’s father.
Sena saw Corvin’s face change.
“What?”
Corvin whispered, “His father was there.”
Pike’s smile disappeared.
Perhaps he had read Corvin’s lips.
Perhaps he saw the paper.
Either way, the sheriff’s hand drifted toward his revolver.
“Corvin,” he said, suddenly calm, “whatever they’ve told you isn’t true.”
Corvin held up the letter.
“Then how do you know what they told me?”
Pike said nothing.
That was answer enough.
The valley seemed to contract.
Corvin finally understood.
Pike had not come to rescue him.
He had come for the letter.
And probably the land document with it.
Corvin looked down.
The deed was dated thirty-five years earlier.
The names at the bottom were difficult to decipher.
But one line was painfully clear.
The property surrounding the spring had not been granted permanently to Silas Torne.
He had been listed as custodian.
Temporary legal holder.
The final clause said possession passed to Elena Torne, her children, or their descendants upon their return.
Sena.
Pike’s family had been trying to buy land Corvin did not legally own.
And they must have known it.
Pike spoke quietly.
“Give me those papers.”
Corvin almost smiled.
“There you are.”
“Don’t make this difficult.”
“Seems difficult already.”
“You think these people are your friends?”
Corvin looked around at the riders.
“No idea.”
Then he looked at Sena.
“But one of them had every reason to hate me yesterday.”
He remembered her cracked lips.
The suspicion in her eyes.
The ladle trembling slightly in her hand.
“She didn’t hurt me.”
Pike’s voice hardened.
“Give me the papers.”
“No.”
The sheriff drew.
Everything happened at once.
Sena slammed into Corvin.
A gunshot split the morning.
The bullet struck the cabin wall.
Three hundred warriors surged.
Pike’s men fired.
Corvin hit the ground beneath Sena’s weight.
“Stay down!”
“I live here!”
“Then stop trying to die here!”
Another bullet kicked dirt inches from his face.
Corvin crawled behind the stone watering trough.
Gunfire exploded across the ranch.
But something strange happened.
The Apache riders did not charge wildly.
They moved with frightening discipline.
Groups descended from both ridges, using the terrain to surround Pike’s men.
Several fired over their heads.
Others cut off the southern trail.
Within seconds Pike’s riders understood the truth.
