Chapter 14 - The Unmarked Chest
The dust in the wash took several long minutes to settle.
Elias moved cautiously from boulder to boulder, his rifle ready, until he confirmed that the remaining attackers had indeed fled through the lower gap. The two men who had been shot lay groaning in the gravel, both disarmed and clutching their wounds.
"Elias!" a small, sharp voice called down from the rock ledge.
Elias turned as Nia scrambled out from the mouth of the alcove. Her braided hair was full of dust, her cotton dress torn at the hem, but her eyes were clear and her grip on an old iron-bladed skinning knife was steady.
She ran down the short gravel incline, throwing her arms around Mara with an impact that nearly knocked her sister off her feet.
Mara caught her, burying her face in the girl's hair, her hands shaking for the first time since they had left the town. "You're whole," Mara whispered, running her palms over Nia’s back and shoulders. "You're whole."
"They burned the shack," Nia said against Mara’s shoulder, her voice muffled but steady. "Old Elena heard their horses two miles off. We packed what we could onto the mule, but they were tracking us by the mule's bad shoe."
Old Mateo appeared at the lip of the rock shelf, carrying a battered Remington smoothbore, followed by Elena, who was murmuring prayers in rapid Spanish, clutching a wooden rosary in her weathered fingers.
Elias walked over to the two wounded outlaws sitting against the canyon wall. One was a young cowhand Elias vaguely remembered seeing around the saloons in town—a drifter named Hank. The other was the man Mara had hit, a hardened border rider known only as Miller’s boy.
"Where was Vance heading?" Elias asked, resting the muzzle of his Winchester against the ground near Hank’s boot.
The young cowhand spat blood into the gravel, his face pale from shock. "Go to hell, Burke. You're too late anyway."
"Too late for what?" Elias asked, taking half a step closer. The nickel deputy's star on his vest caught the pale moonlight. "Vance has warrants out from the federal marshal for cattle rustling, land fraud, and attempted murder. If you talk, Cole might let you off with five years in Yuma instead of hanging from a mesquite branch."
Hank looked at the star, his eyes flickering with sudden dread. "He... he wasn't after the unbranded cattle," he whispered hoarsely.
Mara walked over, leaving Nia with Elena. Her expression was like carved flint. "Then why did he come to our canyon?"
"The south mine," Hank stammered, wincing as he shifted his wounded arm. "The old Spanish drift behind your boundary fence. Vance didn't just store stolen steers there. He had an iron chest hidden in the timbering. He said if the law caught up with the ledger, he needed what was inside that chest before he crossed into Sonora."
Elias and Mara exchanged a swift look.
The south mine was an abandoned silver adit on the disputed boundary line between Elias's spread and Mara's family claim—the very line Vance had tried to erase two months ago when the harassment first began. Elias had always assumed Vance wanted the mine because it controlled the only perennial spring during drought years.
"What was in the chest?" Elias demanded.
"I don't know!" Hank cried. "Swear to God, I don't! Vance kept the key on his neck chain. He said the ledger you took was just the tally book for the boys. He said the real paper was in the iron box."
"The real paper," Mara repeated slowly.
She turned and looked toward the upper reaches of the canyon, where the trail climbed toward the dark silhouette of the mountain. The old mine was barely a mile away.
"He went there alone," Mara said to Elias. "The horses we heard riding south... that was a decoy. He sent the other two boys down the canyon to draw us off, while he doubled back up the old timber trail on foot."
Elias knelt beside the tracks near the cottonwood tree. Sure enough, in the pale moonlight, only two horses had galloped toward the southern exit. A third set of heavy boot tracks turned sharp left, climbing directly up the steep, overgrown mule trail leading to the abandoned adit.
"He's up there right now," Elias said, levering a fresh shell into the Winchester’s chamber.
"Stay with them," Mara told Nia, pointing to Mateo and Elena. "Barricade yourselves in the alcove until dawn. If we aren't back when the sun hits that ridge, take the mule and ride straight north to the stage road."
"Mara, don't," Nia pleaded, catching her sister's sleeve. "You won the ledger. The law is coming. Let the marshal deal with him."
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Mara looked down at Nia's hand, then reached over and gently pried her fingers loose.
"The law has three men fifty miles away, little sister," Mara said quietly. "We are the only law this canyon has tonight."
