Chapter 33 - The Dust of the Black Canyon
The trail through the western pines was steep, strewn with loose shale that clattered under the horses' iron-shod hooves like scattered coins.
Jesse rode point, his slouch hat pulled low against the blinding afternoon sun that slanted through the ponderosa boughs. Behind him rode Zora, silent and alert, her dark eyes scanning every ridge, every outcropping of red sandstone, reading the landscape like an open book. Silas rode between them, hunched over his horn, clutching the reins with white-knuckled desperation, his one eye watering continuously from the stinging mountain wind.
Two hours out of Prescott, the timber began to thin, giving way to the harsh, sun-scalded flats of Skull Valley.
Jesse raised his right fist, pulling his bay mare to a halt behind a dense thicket of scrub oak. Zora immediately drew rein beside him, dropping from her saddle before her horse had even settled. She moved forward on light moccasined feet, sinking into the red dirt at the edge of the rimrock.
"Look," she murmured, pointing toward the valley floor two miles below.
Jesse brought a brass field glass to his eye and focused the lens on the distant landscape.
The Skull Valley stage relay station sat like an isolated brown scab amidst the yellow grama grass. It consisted of an adobe barn, a walled corral, and a low-slung stone station house that had once served as a fortified outpost during the early Yavapai wars. Rising behind the station was a jagged ridge of black basalt, riddled with the dark, yawning mouths of abandoned prospect holes.
"Morrison is there," Jesse said, his voice flat. "I see three horses tied to the interior hitching rail in the corral. And there’s a heavy wagon covered in canvas parked tight against the stone wall."
"Look higher," Zora said, her hand touching his sleeve. "Above the mine tailings. On the third ledge."
Jesse shifted the glass upward. The sun caught a brief, blinding glint of polished brass. A rifle barrel.
"Two men," Jesse noted. "Winchester repeaters. They’ve got the road covered for half a mile in every direction. Morrison isn't running. He’s dug in like a tick."
"He knows she is coming," Zora said, her voice tightening with a mixture of dread and fierce pride. "Kaya will not use the road. She knows these hills as well as our grandmother did. She will come down the dry wash from the east, right into the blind spot beneath the barn."
Silas slid off his horse, his knees giving out so that he tumbled into the dry grass. He sat there, trembling, his breathing ragged. "The surveyor’s chest... it’s inside the station office, buried under the floorboards behind the cookstove. That’s where I left the chain. Morrison knew I left it there when I fled Red Creek three years ago."
Jesse lowered the glass and turned to the surveyor. "Why would Morrison care about a rusty survey chain, Silas? He’s got fifty thousand dollars in stolen bank drafts and territorial bullion in that wagon. Why drag himself all the way to Skull Valley for an old tool chest?"
Silas swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny throat. "Because... because the chain isn't just iron, Jesse. When the territorial governor ratified the original treaty boundaries fifteen years ago, the survey marks were stamped directly into the brass medallions welded onto the anchor links. Those medallions contain the original coordinates that prove the reservation land was never legally ceded to the territory."
Jesse felt a cold fury settle into his chest. He looked at Zora, who had turned to stare at Silas with absolute stillness.
"So Morrison didn't just steal the land," Jesse said slowly, the full scope of the treachery laying bare before him. "If that chain exists, Morrison’s legal ownership of the entire Verde valley is void—not just his recent claims, but every single deed he’s sold to eastern speculators for the last ten years."
"Yes," Silas whispered. "If Morrison burns the chain, the original records are gone forever. The territory will never be able to restore the boundaries. The land will be thrown into public auction, and Morrison’s dummy corporation in Denver will buy it for pennies on the dollar."
A sudden sound cut through the hot mountain air—a single, sharp crack that rolled across the valley like summer thunder.
Jesse raised the glass instantly.
Down at the relay station, one of the guards on the high basalt ledge had pitched forward, tumbling off the rock face and crashing into the scree below. A split second later, a chorus of high, piercing war cries tore through the afternoon heat, rising from the dry wash just east of the corral.
"Kaya," Zora breathed, her hand going to her knife.
A dozen horsemen erupted from the arroyo, riding bareback on wiry mustang ponies. At their head rode a woman with long black braids streaming behind her like crow feathers, a Henry rifle raised high in her right hand, her face slashed with vivid red war paint that burned like fresh blood against the pale dust of the valley.
"She’s charging the open gate!" Jesse snapped, jamming the spyglass back into his saddlebag. "Morrison has a scattergun in that barn window! She’s riding right into a crossfire!"
Before Jesse could haul himself back into the saddle, Zora had already leaped onto her horse, wheeling the animal around the edge of the brush.
"Stay back, Jesse!" she shouted over her shoulder, her heels digging into her mare’s ribs. "She won't know you! If you ride in with a smoking carbine, her men will cut you down before you clear the flat!"
"Zora, wait!" Jesse roared.
May you like
He didn't hesitate. He grabbed Silas by the belt, threw the old man belly-down across the surveyor's saddle like a sack of grain, and vaulted onto his bay. With a sharp crack of the reins, Jesse surged down the rocky decline, following the billowing trail of red dust Zora had left behind, heading straight into the teeth of the gunfire.
***
