“He did not abandon you.”
“He left me when I was seven.”
“He left because men were coming for this ranch.”
“What men?”
The older warrior spoke quietly.
The woman listened, then translated.
“Men who are coming again.”
Corvin looked toward the ridges.
The horses.
The rifles.
The bows.
Suddenly the morning felt colder.
“Who?”
The woman’s answer was almost a whisper.
“Gideon Rusk.”
Corvin’s stomach dropped.
Everyone knew Gideon Rusk.
He owned nearly forty thousand acres south of the San Pedro.
He owned cattle.
Freight wagons.
Two saloons.
Half the merchants in Dry Creek owed him money, and the other half owed favors.
Rusk had spent twenty years trying to buy Corvin’s ranch.
Corvin had refused every offer.
Not because the land was particularly rich.
It wasn’t.
The grazing was poor in dry years. The house needed a new roof. The barn leaned slightly east.
But the Torne ranch possessed one thing no neighboring property had.
The stone well.
It had never gone dry.
Not during the drought of ’71.
Not during the terrible summer of ’77.
Not even when cattle died standing beside empty creek beds.
Rusk had once offered ten times the ranch’s value.
Corvin had laughed at him.
Now Corvin looked at the well.
“You’d better explain.”
The woman turned toward one of the warriors.
He carried forward a worn leather satchel.
Corvin recognized it.
His father’s initials had been carved into the flap.
E.T.
The woman handed it to him.
Inside were journals.
Maps.
Letters.
A broken pair of spectacles.
And a folded sheet stained dark brown at one edge.
Blood.
Corvin opened the paper.
The handwriting was unmistakable.
His father’s.
Corvin,
If this reaches you, then I failed to come home again. What you were told about me was a lie, but not the greatest lie. The greatest lie concerns the ground beneath your feet. Trust the woman who brings this. Trust her even when the truth makes you hate me. Especially then.
Corvin stopped.
His hands shook.
Beneath those lines were three more.
Rusk knows what the well truly is.
He will come before sunset.
Do not let him take the water.
Corvin read the words twice.
Then a third time.
He looked up.
“Why before sunset?”
The woman’s eyes moved toward the southern road.
“Because yesterday we found three dead families at Willow Wash.”
Corvin went still.
“What?”
“Their water barrels were poisoned.”
A chill climbed his back despite the morning heat.
“Poisoned with what?”
“Arsenic.”
“How do you know?”
“We caught one of the men who carried it.”
She nodded.
A rider on the western hill lifted something from his saddle.
A tin container.
Even from the yard, Corvin could see a white painted mark on the side.
Rusk Freight Company.
Corvin swallowed.
The woman continued.
“Your father had followed Rusk’s men for months. They poisoned springs used by our families. Then they told soldiers we were stealing water from settlements.”
“Why?”
“To make war.”
Corvin looked around at the warriors.
“And my ranch?”
“The largest underground water source for many miles begins beneath this valley.”
Corvin frowned.
“It’s a well.”
“No.”
She pointed toward the northern bluff.
“Your well touches a river underground.”
Corvin almost dismissed it.
Then he remembered something.
Even in the driest summers, the water had remained cold.
Constant.
Deep.
His father used to say they had been blessed.
The woman continued.
“Rusk knows. Your father discovered Rusk hired a surveyor fifteen years ago. If Rusk owns this valley, he controls nearly every reliable water source between here and the southern cattle road.”
Corvin’s jaw tightened.
“He has plenty of land.”
“He wants something better than land.”
“What?”
“Men who need his permission to live.”
The older warrior spoke again.
This time his words were longer.
