They were outnumbered nearly eight to one.
Most stopped shooting.
Pike didn’t.
He wheeled his horse toward the cabin.
“THE PAPERS!”
He charged.
Corvin rose behind the trough.
“Sheriff!”
Pike aimed.
Corvin fired first.
His bullet struck Pike’s revolver from his hand.
Pike’s horse reared.
The sheriff fell hard.
Before he could rise, Sena reached him.
She dismounted with astonishing speed and kicked his second gun away.
Pike stared up at the enormous woman.
His face turned white.
“You.”
Sena stood over him.
“Me.”
He reached for a knife.
Corvin shouted.
Sena caught Pike’s wrist.
There was a brief struggle.
Then she twisted.
The knife fell.
She could have killed him.
Everyone knew it.
Pike knew it most of all.
Instead she stepped away.
The elder rode forward.
He looked at Pike with profound contempt.
Then at Corvin.
Sena translated.
“He says killing a man is easy.”
The elder continued.
“Making him live long enough to hear the truth is harder.”
By noon, Pike and seventeen of his men were tied beneath the cottonwoods.
The rest had thrown down their weapons and demanded nothing except permission to leave.
Corvin allowed them to go only after taking their names.
He wrote every one into the ledger.
Habit.
Evidence.
Perhaps both.
Sena watched him.
“You write everything.”
“Important things.”
“Why?”
Corvin looked toward the brass clock.
“I suppose I grew up believing memories weren’t trustworthy.”
“Perhaps they aren’t.”
“Paper isn’t either.”
“No.”
She looked toward Silas’s confession.
“But sometimes lies become careless.”
Corvin almost smiled.
One of the Apache women had cleaned Sena’s wound properly.
A bullet had grazed her ribs, not penetrated.
She had been traveling south after months of searching settlements for anyone using the surname Torne.
At a trading post she’d heard about an isolated rancher named Corvin.
Before she could reach him, Pike’s men intercepted her.
They knew who she was.
More importantly, they knew why she had come.
She escaped.
Barely.
And collapsed beside Corvin’s fence.
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” Corvin asked.
Sena considered the question.
“I did not know who you were.”
“You knew my name.”
“A name is not a man.”
“What were you afraid of?”
She looked toward Pike.
“That you were like your father.”
The words hurt.
Corvin nodded anyway.
“And the water changed your mind?”
“Partly.”
“Partly?”
A small smile finally appeared.
“You complained while helping me.”
Corvin raised an eyebrow.
“I did not complain.”
“You said I was heavy.”
“You fell on me.”
“I had been shot.”
“Which made you no lighter.”
Her smile widened.
For a few seconds, they were not two strangers separated by thirty-four years of lies.
They were family.
Corvin felt that realization somewhere deeper than thought.
He wanted to ask a hundred questions.
About Mara.
His sister.
What she had looked like grown.
Whether she remembered him.
Whether she had children besides Sena.
Whether she hated him for never searching.
