Chapter 31 - The Sister’s Fire
The silence in the records office snapped like dry pine beneath a boot.
Silas Finch stumbled backward until his thin shoulders struck the wall. His single good eye was locked onto the dust-caked scout as though staring down the barrel of a cocked Colt. The parchment map he had been clutching slipped from his fingers, fluttering down to the pine floorboards without a sound.
"Her name is Kaya," Zora said. Her voice didn't shake, but it dropped into a register so low and hollow that Jesse felt the chill of it in his own marrow. She let go of Jesse’s hand and took two slow, measured steps toward the scout. "Tell me. Did she ride with red ochre across her cheekbones?"
The scout blinked away sweat and alkali dust, his chest still heaving beneath his sweat-stained wool tunic. "Yes, ma'am. Red clay across the bridge of her nose and cheekbones. She had twenty armed men behind her—all young bucks from the San Carlos agency who slipped the perimeter four nights back. They burned Morrison’s main ranch house to the studs and shot three of his foremen out of their saddles. But they didn't touch the small homesteaders along the lower creek. When one of the settlers asked what she wanted, she threw a burnt cedar stake into the dirt and said she was coming north to Prescott for the surveyor's eye."
The room seemed to shrink. Captain Miller’s hand drifted instinctively to the hilt of his cavalry saber.
"Finch," Miller barked, turning hard on his heel. "What is the scout talking about? Morrison was the one who bought the forged claims. You were just the penman."
"No," Silas wheezed, his knuckles turning white as he clawed at his frayed waistcoat. "No, Captain... that ain't the half of it. God forgive me, that ain't the half of it."
Jesse stepped between Silas and the door, his hand resting easy on his gun belt. His instincts, forged in the bloody brush of Missouri and hardened across ten years of frontier silence, were already measuring distances and calculating exits. "Talk, Silas. If twenty Apache warriors are riding up the Black Canyon trail with blood in their eyes, you’ve got about six hours of daylight before they hit Granite Creek."
Silas slid down the wall until he sat crumpled on the floor, his head in his hands. "Morrison didn't know where the spring boundaries were ten years back. The Verde was open country, free grazing, and the band living in the red rock draws had an ancestral treaty signed by the Indian agent at Camp Verde. Morrison couldn't drive them out legally. So he paid me double wages in Mexican gold to deliberately alter the landmark survey."
The old man looked up at Zora, tears cutting dark, muddy tracks through the grime on his hollow cheeks. "I didn't just draw false lines, Zora. I marked your mother’s winter encampment as an illegal squatter settlement on territorial grazing land. Morrison took my survey map to the irregular militia in Prescott. They rode down while the men were hunting in the high rimrock... they burned the wickiups with the women and elders inside."
Zora’s breath hitched. Her right hand moved to the heavy bone-handled skinning knife sheathed at her waist. Jesse saw the muscle in her jaw bunch into hard knots, saw ten years of buried grief and exile flare into sudden, murderous fire.
"Kaya was twelve," Zora whispered, her knuckles stark against the leather hilt. "I was fourteen. I dragged our younger brother into the creek reeds while the soldiers fired into the smoke. Kaya ran the other way toward the horses. They roped her like an unbroken yearling and dragged her into the wagon bed for the reservation pens. I thought she died of cholera at San Carlos nine winters ago."
"She didn't die," Miller said Grimly. The captain walked over to the tall front window, squinting out across the bustling sunlit square of Prescott. Down below, teamsters were unloading freight wagons and shopkeepers were sweeping boardwalks, utterly oblivious to the storm bearing down from the south. "If she’s crossed the Black Hills this fast, she’s riding stolen cavalry remounts. She knows the country better than any patrol I can put together."
Miller turned back to the room, his eyes hardening with military precision. "Corporal! Sound assembly at the garrison stables. I want fifty carbines in the saddle inside twenty minutes. We meet them at Granite Dells and cut them off before they reach the town limits."
"No!" Zora’s voice cut through the room like a whip crack. She stepped directly into Captain Miller’s path, her black eyes flashing with an authority that made the veteran officer freeze mid-stride. "If your blue-coats ride out with carbines, my sister will smell the brass from two miles off. You will turn the Dells into a slaughterhouse, and every drop of blood spilled will feed another thirty years of war along the Verde."
"Ma'am, with all due respect, she burned an American ranch and is marching on an American territorial capital," Miller replied sharply. "I have orders to maintain the peace of this territory."
"The peace was broken ten years ago by the man cowering on your floor," Jesse said calmly, his deep voice slicing through the tension. He looked at Miller, unblinking. "Give me and Zora three hours. We take Silas and we ride south into the canyon."
Miller frowned, his mustache twitching with disbelief. "Are you insane, Jesse? You'd take the one man she wants to skin alive and walk him right into her guns?"
"It’s not her guns she wants," Zora said, turning to look at Silas with eyes as cold as river slate. "It’s the truth she never got. And if she’s going to kill him, she’ll have to look through me to do it."
Before Miller could answer, the rear door of the records hall swung open on oiled hinges, and the deputy marshal who had been guarding the corridor stepped in, his face pale and drained of blood.
May you like
"Captain," the deputy whispered, pointing a trembling hand out toward the alleyway behind the building. "You’d better look out the back. Morrison’s lead teamster just rode through the livery gate... and he’s carrying a white flag soaked in fresh blood."
***
