Chapter 27 - The Terms of Survival
We dragged Silas’s dead mule into the scrub, salvaged the water canteens, and transferred the saddlebags to Vance’s abandoned sorrel. My shoulder throbbed with a dull, sickening ache, the makeshift bandage Zora had tied around it already soaked through with dark crimson.
As she pulled the knot tight against my flesh, her fingers lingered for a second against the curve of my neck. Her touch was firm, almost fierce.
"You did not run to him," she said, her voice so low that even Silas, ten paces away, could not catch it.
"I told you," I answered, gritting my teeth against the pain of the wound. "I don't belong to Caleb. Not anymore."
"He will kill you, Jesse," she whispered, her eyes meeting mine with absolute certainty. "He did not kill Vance to protect us. He killed Vance so no one could say he was here. He is clearing the road so there are no witnesses left when he takes Fort Whipple's rifles."
"I know," I said. "Silas told me about the armory."
"Then why do we ride with him?"
"Because Morrison still has twenty men between this pass and the Verde valley," I said. "And because the territorial marshal won't listen to an Apache woman or a wounded blacksmith. We need Caleb to get inside the courthouse gates in Prescott. Once we are inside the walls... we finish this."
Zora looked toward Caleb, who was standing fifty yards ahead, checking the cinch on his black mount.
"If his hand goes to that saber again," she said softly, "I will not shoot to wound."
By three in the afternoon, the timber began to thin, revealing the broad, sunlit basin of Prescott. In the center of the valley, surrounded by split-rail fences and neat adobe outbuildings, stood Fort Whipple, the United States flag fluttering sluggishly from the main parade ground pole. Further south, the red-brick facades and wooden false fronts of Prescott’s commercial district shimmered in the dry heat.
Caleb turned his horse and waited for us at the junction where the military road met the town turnpike.
"Listen to me carefully," Caleb said, his voice dropping into the familiar tone of command. "Silas stays at the livery with the spare horses. Jesse, you and the squaw walk behind me into the territorial land office. We present Morrison’s ledger to Territorial Secretary Sumners. I sign the affidavit certifying the fraud. The moment Sumners signs the warrant for Morrison’s arrest, I take the survey seals to the vault."
"And Zora?" I asked, keeping my hand on my pommel. "What does she get?"
Caleb smiled—a thin, cruel line that didn't reach his eyes.
May you like
"She gets twelve hours to vanish into the Sierra Ancha before the cavalry patrols are notified that Morrison’s claims are void. That’s more mercy than she would have found in Red Creek, Jesse. Take it, or leave her out here on the road right now."
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