Chapter 32 - The Blood on the Flag
Jesse reached the rear doorway first, his Spencer carbine cradled in the crook of his arm, thumb resting on the hammer.
The narrow alley between the hall of records and the livery stable smelled of damp straw, manure, and old wood ash. A single roan horse stood shuddering in the middle of the alley, its flanks caked in dried sweat and white lather, head hanging low between its knees. Slumped over the horn of the saddle was a man Jesse recognized instantly: Frank Vance, Morrison’s chief wrangler and the ruthless enforcer who had run homesteaders off the Verde for a decade.
Vance was barely clinging to consciousness. A rough square of white canvas—torn from a flour sack—was clutched in his stiff right hand, dyed crimson from a gaping wound across his collarbone.
Jesse stepped down into the dust, keeping his boots light and silent. He reached up, caught Vance by the collar of his denim coat, and hauled him carefully out of the saddle before the horse could collapse.
Captain Miller and Zora followed closely behind, the captain drawing his sidearm while Zora knelt immediately by Vance’s side, her eyes raking over the wound.
"Arrow strike," Zora said quietly, her fingers brushing the ragged tear in the cloth. "Pushed through clean from behind, then snapped off. Kaya let him ride."
Vance let out a wet, rattling gasp, his bloodshot eyes fluttering open. When he saw Zora’s face hovering over him, his body jerked in pure terror, his boot heels digging into the alley dirt. "Keep her away from me!" he croaked, coughing up a spatter of red froth. "Keep them damn savages away!"
"Shut your mouth, Vance," Jesse said, his knee pressing down against Vance’s good shoulder to keep him still. "You’re in Prescott. The cavalry is right here. Who gave you the flag?"
Vance swallowed hard, his throat working violently. "The sister... the red-faced hellcat. She hit our camp at the lower crossing before dawn. Morrison... Morrison wasn't there. He had already cleared out toward Skull Valley with two mules packed with bullion."
"Then why are you here?" Miller demanded, leaning down over Vance. "Why didn't she finish you?"
"She gave me a message for Finch," Vance whispered, his voice fading like wind through dry sage. "She said... she said the ledger in the courthouse is only half the debt. She said Finch has the survey chain. The one with thirty-two links."
At the mention of the survey chain, Silas Finch, who was watching from the doorway, let out a choked cry and gripped the doorframe until his knuckles turned gray.
"What is she talking about, Silas?" Jesse asked without turning around.
"The chain..." Silas whimpered, his voice cracking. "The steel chain I used to measure the sections. Every link represented an acre taken from their winter camp. When Morrison’s men rounded up the children... they used that very survey chain to bind their wrists together before loading them into the reservation wagons."
Zora froze. Her hand, which had been pressing a clean handkerchief against Vance’s shoulder wound to staunch the bleeding, pulled back as if she had touched hot iron. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps, her stare locking onto Silas with an intensity so sharp it seemed capable of piercing bone.
"You let them use your chain," Zora said, the words falling like lead stones into the quiet alley. "My sister carried iron burns on her wrists for ten years because of your chain."
"I was drunk! Morrison threatened to hang me from the cottonwood if I interfered!" Silas wept openly now, dropping to his knees on the wooden threshold. "I tried to hide the links later! I kept the chain locked in my surveyor’s chest at the stage relay in Skull Valley... I never meant for them to keep the scars!"
Jesse looked from Silas to the dying wrangler. Things were shifting fast, turning dirtier and more entangled with every passing breath. "Miller," Jesse said, "Vance just said Morrison cleared out for Skull Valley with bullion. And Silas’s surveyor chest is sitting at that very same relay station."
Miller cursed under his breath, piecing together the grim geography. "Skull Valley is halfway between here and the reservation border. If Morrison is heading there, he isn't running south to escape—he’s heading for the old mountain redoubt to hire the border border-jumpers and deserters who hole up in the abandoned copper mines."
"No," Zora said, standing tall, her dark hair catching the mountain breeze that blew down from the pine ridges above town. "Morrison isn't running to hire men. He knows Kaya is tracking him. He’s going to Skull Valley to bait her into an ambush. He wants the cavalry and Kaya’s warriors to wipe each other out so he can slip across the border with his gold."
Before Miller could formulate an order, the sound of a bugle echoed from the parade ground three blocks away, sharp and urgent.
A young private came sprinting down the alley, his eyes wide. "Captain Miller! Message from the telegraph office! The wires to the south just went completely dead. The line was cut two miles south of Granite Gorge!"
Miller’s jaw set like iron. "That’s Kaya. She’s closing the canyon behind her."
Jesse turned to Zora. There was no hesitation in his pale blue eyes, only the steady, unyielding resolve that had kept him alive through four years of war and ten years of hard frontier trails. "We need fresh mounts," Jesse said quietly. "We ride out the west trail toward Skull Valley before Miller moves his troop. If Kaya hits that relay station while Morrison is waiting with high-powered rifles, she’ll be riding straight into a slaughter."
Zora looked at him, her eyes searching his weathered face. "And Silas?"
Jesse reached down, grabbed Silas Finch by the scruff of his neck, and hoisted the trembling old surveyor to his feet. "He’s coming with us. He forged the lines. He carries the chain. He’s going to look your sister in the face and answer for every inch of dirt he stole."
Silas didn't fight. He merely nodded, a broken husk of a man resigned to whatever judgment waited in the dry hills.
May you like
As they slipped through the livery stable toward three saddled quarter horses, Jesse checked his ammunition pouches. Forty rounds of .44-40 for the carbine, twenty for the Colt. But in the pit of his stomach, Jesse knew that lead wouldn't be enough to settle what was coming. Ten years of theft, fire, and blood had finally gathered into a single storm, and the lightning was set to strike at Skull Valley.
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