Chapter 9 - The Reckoning at the Spring
The first gray light of dawn was just beginning to peel the purple shadows off the rocks when the sound of heavy boots and jingling spurs rose from the lower trail.
Caleb, Winona, and Sikya were waiting by the stone sheep-corral at the head of the spring. They weren't hiding. Caleb stood with his Winchester resting across his left arm, his hat pulled low against the morning frost. Winona stood slightly behind him to the right, her hands empty but her stance balanced and ready. Sikya occupied the high rocks above the trail, out of sight but commanding a clear field of fire down the entire approach.
Six horsemen broke through the brush at the turn of the trail, led by Wade Kearny himself, sitting tall in a high-forked saddle with a silver-mounted pistol strapped to his thigh. Behind him came his foreman, Miller, and four hard-faced men carrying carbines across their saddle bows.
Kearny hauled his horse to a halt ten paces from Caleb, his face flushed with the morning chill and righteous anger.
“Well, Calloway,” Kearny shouted, loud enough to echo off the canyon walls. “I see you like my bull well enough to bring him up into the rocks. That’s grand larceny in this territory, and you know it as well as I do.”
Caleb didn't move. He let the silence stretch for three long heartbeats before he spoke.
“The bull wandered off, Kearny,” Caleb said evenly. “We just kept him safe from the coyotes until you came looking.”
Kearny’s face darkened. He pulled the foreclosure writ from his pocket, waving it in the air like a bloody flag. “You can keep your jokes for the judge in Tucson. This land, this spring, and every steer you’ve got grazing on this bench belong to me by legal right of transfer dating back twenty years. Get your women and your gear off my property before I have the marshal clear you out with buckshot.”
“Your father lost that paper in a poker game behind the saloon in Tombstone twenty years ago, Kearny,” Caleb said, his voice cutting through the crisp morning air like a knife. “Amos didn't steal it; he won it fair, even if he was too proud—or too ashamed—to record it before he died.”
Kearny went very still. His eyes narrowed, darting from Caleb to the empty space behind him. “You’re lying.”
“Amos is dead, so you can’t ask him,” Caleb replied, stepping forward until he was six feet from Kearny’s horse. “But you’re standing on dirt that isn't yours, trying to steal water that keeps forty families downstream alive, all because your daddy couldn't hold his cards.”
Kearny’s hand dropped toward his pistol holster. “Miller. Take the writ and clear them out.”
Before Miller could spur his horse forward, a sharp clack echoed from the rocks above.
Sikya’s voice dropped down from the ledge like a falling stone.
“If your hand touches that iron, Miller,” she said, her tone conversational and entirely lethal, “the next sound you hear will be the wind blowing through your hat.”
Miller froze, his hand hovering two inches above his revolver. He looked up, spotting the dark barrel of Sikya’s rifle pointing squarely at his chest from twenty feet above.
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Kearny’s horse sidestepped nervously, snorting in the cold air. Kearny cursed, his face mottled with rage. “You think a woman with an old rifle is going to stop the law, Calloway?”
“There is no law here today, Kearny,” Winona said, stepping out from behind Caleb so she stood fully in the open, her dark eyes locked on the land-grabber with a terrifying calm. “There is only what you brought with you, and what you’re willing to carry back down the mountain.”
