Chapter 12 - The Red Breaks Trail
The red rock canyon walls radiated heat like the bricks of a baker's oven.
For four brutal hours, Elias and Mara pushed their mounts along the narrow, shale-strewn ledge of the Apache cut. Below them, the dry wash of the arroyo twisted like a bleached bone through the chaparral. Every rattle of loose rock beneath the horses' hooves sounded like a gunshot in the oppressive silence of the afternoon.
Neither of them spoke. Words were wasted breath, and breath was precious in the thin, searing air of the plateau edge.
Elias rode ahead, his eyes constantly scanning the ridgeline for dust plumes. His mind was a relentless clock, calculating distances and hours. Vance had left town with fresh horses and a head start, but Vance had cattle to gather if he truly intended to make a drive toward Sonora. That greed was the only advantage Elias and Mara possessed. If Vance stopped to round up the unbranded stock, they might beat him to the homestead.
If he was riding purely for slaughter and revenge, Nia was already in terrible danger.
Around three in the afternoon, the trail widened into a small plateau dotted with scrub juniper. Elias raised his left hand, pulling his gelding to a halt behind a dense cluster of mesquite.
Mara drew up beside him, leaning forward over her mare's neck, her chest heaving in rhythm with the animal's flared nostrils. "What do you see?" she whispered.
Elias pointed toward the southern horizon, where the distant rim of their home valley appeared as a pale blue line against the sky. Between them and the valley lay the white expanse of the dry alkali flats.
Rising from the flats was a thin, dark pillar of smoke.
It wasn't the broad, gray cloud of a brushfire, nor was it the lazy drift of a cooking fire. It was dense, oily, and black.
"The line shack," Mara breathed, her knuckles whitening on her reins. "The line shack at the western spring. Old Mateo lives there."
Mateo and his wife, Elena, were the ones sheltering Nia. The stone line shack sat near the mouth of the box canyon, tucked beneath an overhanging sandstone bluff that should have made it invisible from the main basin trail unless someone knew precisely where to look.
"Vance didn't know about that shack," Elias muttered, his brow furrowing as he pulled his field glasses from his saddle scabbard. He adjusted the brass focus ring, steadying his elbows against the pommel.
The circle of lens brought the burning structure into sharp, terrifying focus.
The cedar-pole roof had collapsed, sending showers of sparks upward into the still air. Scattered around the clearing were three overturned water barrels and the unmistakable dark shapes of slaughtered dairy goats. But there were no horses in the corral, and no bodies visible on the trampled earth.
"He found it," Elias said, his voice dropping into a harsh rasp. "Someone guided him there."
Mara snatched the glasses from his hand, putting them to her eyes. She stared for nearly a minute without blinking, her breath hitching in her throat.
"Look at the tracks leading away from the spring," she commanded, passing the glasses back.
Elias looked. Heading south into the narrow throat of the canyon wasn't a disorganized band of riders. There were two distinct sets of shod horse prints moving fast, followed closely by five or six heavier mounts. And trailing behind them, like a fallen branch, was a single drag mark.
"A travois," Elias whispered. "Or an injured mount."
"Not an injured mount," Mara said, her voice trembling slightly before settling into granite. "Elena had an old mule she used for hauling cedar logs. Nia knows how to rig that harness. If the roof was fired, Nia got Mateo and Elena out before the walls went up."
"Which means Vance is hunting them into the box canyon," Elias added, sliding the glasses back into their leather case. "And the box canyon has only one way out."
"The rim trail at Dead Man’s Drop," Mara said. "The sheep path that leads to the upper springs. We can get above them before they reach the head of the draw."
Elias looked at their mounts. The horses were exhausted, their flanks hollowed, their coats crusted with white salt from their sweat. Pushing them up the eastern scree of Dead Man's Drop would break them.
"We walk the last two miles," Elias decided, dismounting and loosening the cinch by two notches to let his horse breathe. "Rifles only. Leave the bedrolls, the canteens, everything we don't need to shoot."
Mara jumped down instantly. She stripped her saddle of the scabbard, pulled three extra boxes of ammunition from her saddlebags, and shoved them into the deep pockets of her canvas trail coat. She checked the loading gate of her lever-action rifle, her thumb clicking five cartridges smoothly into the magazine.
"If he touches my sister, Elias," she said, looking directly into his face, "I don't care what star the marshal pinned to your vest. Vance doesn't ride out of that wash."
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"He won't," Elias replied simply.
Together, they led their staggering horses into the dry cut of the wash, vanishing into the jagged red shadow of the canyon.
