Corvin’s chest rose and fell.
Across the yard, Caleb drew again.
This time Corvin saw it.
He shoved Mara aside.
The shot exploded.
Pain burned across Corvin’s shoulder.
Three hundred rifles and bows lifted.
“NO!” Mara roared.
Her voice rolled across the valley.
The warriors held.
Caleb fired again.
Corvin dove behind the stone well.
Rusk’s men scattered.
Someone on the ridge fired.
A Rusk rider fell.
Then everything broke loose.
Gunfire cracked from the south fence.
Horses screamed.
Dust erupted across the yard.
Corvin crawled behind the well as bullets struck stone.
Mara landed beside him.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Wonderful observation.”
She tore cloth from her sleeve.
“You joke like Elias.”
“You’ve known me ten minutes.”
“I knew you seven years.”
“Apparently.”
Despite everything, Mara laughed.
One short, shocked sound.
Corvin looked at her.
And for one impossible instant, amid bullets and dust and twenty-three lost years, both of them smiled.
Then a wagon crashed through the south fence.
Corvin saw what it carried.
Barrels.
White-marked tins.
Arsenic.
“They’re going for the well!”
Rusk’s men were not trying to rescue Corvin.
They were trying to poison the water.
Corvin understood immediately.
If Rusk could not own it, he would destroy it.
Corvin stood.
Mara yanked him down.
“You want to die?”
“That’s my well.”
“Stay.”
She rose instead.
Corvin grabbed her belt.
“Absolutely not.”
She looked down.
For the first time, irritation crossed her face.
“I have survived gunshots, soldiers, drought, and your father.”
“Congratulations.”
“I can survive a wagon.”
“Not alone.”
Corvin loaded his rifle.
Mother and son looked at each other.
Something passed between them.
Not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But recognition.
They moved.
The older leader shouted from the ridge.
Apache riders descended in a sweeping line.
Not charging blindly.
They struck the wagon teams from both sides, driving horses away rather than shooting them.
Rusk’s men panicked.
Corvin sprinted toward the well.
Caleb appeared behind the wagon.
Their eyes met.
Caleb raised his pistol.
Corvin fired.
The bullet struck Caleb’s gun from his hand.
Caleb screamed and dropped behind a barrel.
Corvin reached him.
He dragged Caleb upright.
Caleb swung.
Corvin took the punch.
Returned one.
Caleb hit the ground.
Corvin pressed the rifle barrel beneath his chin.
“You shot my father.”
Caleb spat blood.
“He should’ve stayed dead the first time.”
Corvin’s finger tightened.
He saw Elias’s coffin.
Mara.
The carved horse.
Twenty-three stolen years.
One squeeze.
That was all.
Caleb smiled.
“Do it.”
Corvin realized suddenly why.
If Corvin killed him now, Rusk could later claim the Apache warriors had influenced him.
He would become part of their story.
Savage attack.
Mad rancher.
Dead witnesses.
Corvin lowered the rifle.
Caleb’s smile vanished.
“No.”
Corvin struck him across the temple with the stock.
Caleb collapsed.
“You’re going to talk instead.”
By midday, the fighting was over.
Rusk’s surviving men had surrendered or fled.
Gideon himself was caught less than two miles south when his horse broke a leg crossing a wash.
Three riders brought him back.
He looked smaller on foot.
Older.
Without the gray stallion and expensive coat, he was simply a frightened man with dust on his face.
Corvin stood beside his father’s coffin.
Gideon looked at Mara.
Then at Corvin.
“Kill me, then.”
“No.”
Rusk laughed bitterly.
“You think some territorial court will take their word against mine?”
“No.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
Corvin lifted the satchel.
“But they might take yours.”
Rusk frowned.
Corvin removed a ledger taken from the freight wagon.
Gideon’s face drained.
Caleb had been carrying it.
Payments.
Dates.
Names.
Arsenic purchases.
Land acquisitions after attacks.
Everything.
Corvin opened one page.
“Interesting reading.”
Rusk said nothing.
“Especially this.”
Corvin pointed.
“‘Payment to E. Mercer, Dry Creek postal agent.'”
Mara looked at him.
Corvin’s voice tightened.
