His horse stumbled, injured by burning debris.

“No!” Abby shouted.

She saw Caleb’s bay mare.

Before anyone could stop her, she ran.

Caleb grabbed her wrist.

“You’re bleeding.”

“He has everything.”

“I’ll go.”

“You can barely stand.”

“Neither can you!”

Their eyes locked.

For the first time, Caleb looked frightened.

Not for himself.

For her.

“Abby.”

She squeezed his hand once.

Then she mounted.

The chase carried them across three miles of burning grassland.

Elias had the faster horse.

Abby had rage.

She gained on him near a narrow wash.

Twenty yards.

Ten.

Five.

Then they were side by side.

She grabbed the satchel strap.

“LET GO!”

Elias struck at her.

Abby ducked.

He reached for his revolver.

The world narrowed.

Hooves.

Smoke.

Leather.

Steel.

Elias pulled the gun.

Abby did the only thing she could.

She yanked the strap sideways with both hands.

Elias’s revolver fired.

The shot went into the ground.

His horse veered.

The leather strap caught beneath his arm.

Elias lost balance.

For one sickening instant he hung between saddle and earth.

Then the strap snapped.

He fell.

Abby’s mare stumbled but stayed upright.

She circled back.

Elias lay on the ground, dazed.

His gun rested several yards away.

Abby dismounted.

He began crawling for it.

She reached the weapon first.

Elias looked up.

The woman he had mocked stood above him, blackened by smoke, blood running from one sleeve.

She held his revolver.

He laughed breathlessly.

“You won’t shoot.”

Abby pointed the barrel toward the sky.

She emptied every round into the dirt.

Then threw the gun away.

“No,” she said. “I won’t become you.”

Hooper arrived minutes later.

Elias was arrested.

The satchel was recovered.

Everyone believed the nightmare had ended.

They were wrong.

The satchel contained cattle ledgers.

Forged bills of sale.

Branding records.

Letters naming two accomplices.

And the receipt showing Elias’s eight-hundred-dollar payment to Nathaniel Whittaker.

But beneath those papers was another document.

One Abby had never seen.

Marshall Hooper unfolded it twice.

His expression changed.

“Miss Whittaker.”

Abby sat beside Caleb in the surviving half of the ranch house.

Caleb’s shoulder was bandaged.

“What?”

Hooper placed the paper before her.

It was a land deed.

Three thousand two hundred acres.

Red Willow Valley.

Permanent spring rights.

Signed twenty-six years earlier by Margaret Anne Whittaker.

Abby’s mother.

Abby stared.

“My mother owned land?”

Hooper nodded.

“Apparently substantial land.”

“I never knew.”

“There’s more.”

Attached to the deed was a will.

Upon Margaret Whittaker’s death, the property passed entirely to her daughter.

Abigail.

Abby could not speak.

Caleb read the document.

“This land borders Redford’s ranch.”

Hooper nodded grimly.

“It controls the only permanent spring along twelve miles of summer grazing range.”

Understanding moved through the room like cold air.

Elias had not wanted Abby because he believed she was attractive.

He had not even wanted a wife.

He wanted her land.