He leaned close.
“Back wall.”
The spring house had a narrow drainage opening barely large enough for a person.
Tessa slid through first.
Clay passed the documents after her.
Then voices entered the building.
Sturgis.
“Box is gone.”
Another voice answered.
Harlon.
“Then they found it.”
Tessa’s blood turned cold.
Clay squeezed her wrist in warning.
Inside the spring house, something crashed.
Harlon cursed.
“I told you we should have searched this place after Morgan died.”
Sturgis replied, “You told me the fall killed him before he could tell anybody.”
Tessa stopped breathing.
Clay’s hand tightened around hers.
For six years, Tessa had believed her father died because his horse slipped on shale above Willow Draw.
A ranch accident.
A terrible accident.
Inside the spring house, Sturgis spoke again.
“Cutting the cinch should have ended it.”
The world disappeared beneath Tessa.
Clay caught her before she collapsed.
Her father.
The saddle.
The fall.
Not an accident.
Murder.
Clay pressed one finger against her lips.
Tessa’s eyes filled with tears, but no sound escaped.
Harlon’s voice came through the stones.
“We finish this now.
Barrett dies if necessary.
The girl too.”
Clay slowly drew his revolver.
But Tessa touched his arm.
She pointed downhill.
Their horses were fifty yards away.
There was another way out.
The spring flowed through a narrow ravine thick with willows.
They crawled.
Every stone seemed impossibly loud.
Behind them Sturgis emerged from the building.
“There!”
Gunfire shattered the night.
Clay shoved Tessa down.
A bullet struck limestone above her head.
They ran.
Branches tore at their clothes.
Tessa reached her mare first.
Clay fired twice toward the ridge.
“Ride!”
They raced south beneath the black sky.
More shots followed.
Then hoofbeats.
Tessa had grown up riding Morgan Creek land.
She knew every wash.
Every hidden crossing.
Every ravine.
Sturgis did not.
She turned sharply toward Willow Draw.
Clay followed.
Behind them two riders thundered closer.
At the last possible instant, Tessa pulled her horse left around a sandstone shelf.
One pursuing horse continued straight.
The animal screamed.
There was a terrible crash.
The second rider stopped.
Clay and Tessa kept riding.
They did not slow until the lights of the ranch appeared.
The foreman, Amos Trent, met them with a shotgun.
Tessa nearly fell from the saddle.
“Get every man awake,” Clay said.
“Nobody approaches this house without being seen.”
Amos looked at the blood on Clay’s sleeve.
“You hit?”
“Grazed.”
Tessa walked straight into her father’s study.
She shut the door.
Then the strength left her.
She sank into her father’s old chair.
Clay entered quietly.
For several minutes she said nothing.
Finally:
“They murdered him.”
Clay stood across the room.
“I think so.”
“You suspected.”
His silence answered.
Tessa looked at him.
“You suspected for six years.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because suspicion would have destroyed you and convicted nobody.”
She stood.
“You had his receipt!”
“I had one receipt.”
“You knew his cinch had been cut?”
“I saw it after they brought his saddle back.”
Tessa’s face went white.
“You were here?”
“Your father sent for me the week before he died.”
The room went still.
Clay reached inside his coat.
“There’s something else.”
Tessa almost laughed from disbelief.
“What could possibly be left?”
“A letter.”
He placed an envelope on the desk.
Across the front, in Jacob Morgan’s handwriting, were the words:
FOR TESSA — ONLY WHEN THEY COME FOR THE RANCH.
