The pen was less than an inch from the paper when the dead began riding back into Eli Mercer’s life.
At least, that was what it felt like.
Ten years earlier, he had watched three frightened young Apache women disappear north through a red-rock canyon after he had risked his life helping them escape mounted pursuers. He had never learned whether they reached home. Never learned whether they survived the winter that followed. Never learned enough of their language even to ask their names.
He had simply touched two fingers to his hat, turned his gray mare south, and ridden away.
Now all three of them were sitting inside his house.
Alive.
Older.
And staring at the unsigned deed on his table.
Chaska looked at it first.
“Were you going to sell?”
Eli glanced toward the document.
“Thinking about it.”
Waya leaned against the wall with her arms folded.
“You think too slowly.”
Serina smiled into her coffee.
“She means you were about to make a terrible mistake.”
“I understood her.”
“You usually do,” Waya said.
That surprised a laugh out of Serina.
It was a small sound, but something about hearing laughter inside his house unsettled Eli almost as much as the women’s arrival had.
The place had grown accustomed to silence.
So had he.
Chaska reached toward the deed but stopped before touching it.
“Who wants your land?”
“A man named Harlan Voss.”
For the first time since arriving, all three women changed.
Not dramatically.
Waya’s shoulders tightened.
Serina stopped smiling.
And Chaska’s eyes became very still.
Eli noticed.
“You know him.”
“Yes,” Chaska said.
The answer came too quickly.
Eli straightened away from the counter.
“How?”
Chaska looked at her sisters.
They were not sisters by blood, Eli would eventually learn, but they had survived enough together that they had stopped making the distinction years ago.
Waya gave one slight nod.
Serina reached beneath the table for the leather satchel she had carried across her body when she arrived.
Metal clinked softly inside.
Chaska turned back toward Eli.
“We did not come only because of what happened ten years ago.”
Eli already knew that.
He could feel it.
“What did you come for?”
Chaska looked toward the paper.
“To stop you from signing that.”
The room went silent.
Outside, Calico stamped once inside the corral.
Eli folded his arms.
“You rode all this way to stop me from selling a ranch you couldn’t have known I owned?”
“We knew.”
“How?”
“Because Voss knows.”
That answer made Eli’s stomach tighten.
Chaska continued.
“For three years he has purchased land from families between here and the southern mesas. Some sold willingly. Some sold because water disappeared. Some because fences burned. Some because cattle were stolen.”
Eli’s jaw hardened.
Rumors.
He had heard rumors.
People blamed Harlan Voss for everything from poisoned wells to missing horses, but nobody ever proved anything.
Voss himself never threatened anyone.
That was part of what made him dangerous.
He smiled.
He hired lawyers.
He purchased debts.
And whenever something unfortunate happened to a rancher who refused him, Voss was always somewhere else.
Eli looked toward the deed.
“What does he want?”
Waya answered.
“Water.”
Eli almost laughed.
“My creek barely reaches my knees.”
“Not that water.”
Serina opened her satchel.
