No. Then why die for it? Wade thought about that honestly because it was a fair question and he did not have a good answer. Except that three people had been dying in the dirt that afternoon and he had been the only one passing by. Because it's my well, he said and they drank from it.
Silence, a long one, then a laugh. Quiet. Nasty. Burn it. The first torch arched through the dark.
It landed on the porch. Wade was already moving out the back window over the sill, hitting the dirt hard on his shoulder. He rolled behind the wood pile, counted three shapes in the yard, one by the fence, one by the barn, one crouched at the corner of the cabin with a torch and a very bad idea. Wade went for the corner, low, silent, quick, because he had spent 20 years learning how to move through his own land without making a sound. And tonight, it finally paid.
The rider never heard him. Wade caught him by the collar, spun him, drove the rifle butt into his jaw. The man dropped like a sack of flour. The torch rolled free. Wade stamped it out.
Then a second man shouted. A shot rang past Wade's ear. He dove, rolled, came up behind the barn, fired once. A hat flew off ahead. Horses screamed, and from inside the cabin came a roar like a cannon.
The shotgun, Guan's first shell. Somebody out there cursed in a way that would have made the preacher faint. But then came the sound of hooves, pounding, fading into the dark. Silence. Wade stood in the yard, breathing hard, one man unconscious at his feet, and a cabin that was still by some miracle standing.
He crouched, rolled the man over, young, maybe 25, the bruise already blooming along his jaw. A Voss ranch brand stitched into his saddle blanket. Wade could have ended it right there. Quick, clean. Nobody would have blamed him except he could not do it.
He had never been able to. It was the worst thing about him. "Nalin," he called. "Bring me some rope. " "What are you doing?
" Guan asked from the doorway. The smoke curled from the shotgun barrel, tying him up. "You should kill him. " "Probably. " "Then why don't you?
" "Because he's got a mother somewhere, and I don't like lying awake. " She stared at him, and for the first time, there was something in her face besides suspicion. something he could not name. Confusion maybe or the beginning of respect. Wade could not tell, and he was in no state to find out. He dragged the man into the root cellar, tied his wrists, tied his ankles, tied the knots twice, then went back out to check the fence line, and that was when he saw the footprints.
Heavy, deep. Breed into the soft dirt along the north fence. Not one man's prints, a line of them, slow, staggering, like men carrying something. Then the boot marks sank so deep they looked like wells. Wade crouched, studied them.
Something cold crawled up his spine. Nobody leaves tracks like that unless they are hauling dead weight. He told himself it was a calf, a sack of grain, a thousand harmless things. He did not sleep. That night he sat by the fireplace with the old chest open on his knees, searching for cartridges, anything.
And at the bottom of the chest, under a moth eaten blanket, he found a small leather notebook. His father's. Wade had never seen it, which was strange because he thought he had gone through every inch of that cabin a hundred times. As a boy, as a man, looking for anything that was not fever. The notebook was thin, worn at the corners.
He opened it. Cattle counts, weather, fence repairs, a grocery list with the word lamp oil underlined twice. The ordinary, all of it. Then he turned toward the middle and his thumb found a ragged edge. Pages torn out, not one, seven or eight.
Torn so close to the spine you could barely see the stubs. On the last surviving page was a small drawing, a circle, a line, three short marks. Beneath it, a single sentence in his father's cramped handwriting. Wade read it twice. They will come for the well, not for the water.
He closed the notebook, very quietly, looked up. Gallian was standing in the doorway. She was looking at the book and her face had gone completely still. What is that? She asked.
My father's. May I see it? No. But why not? Because it's my father's and because you're looking at it like it owes you money.
She did not argue. She just stood there. And Wade realized something. She was not looking at the notebook the way a stranger looks at a stranger's belongings. She was looking at it the way a daughter looks at a letter from a grave.
He put it inside his coat, buttoned the coat, and decided to think about that tomorrow. Tomorrow came early. He woke on the floor with a crick in his neck and a bad feeling in his chest. The gray dawn spilled through the shutters. The cabin was quiet, too quiet.
Took his rifle, stepped out onto the porch, and that is where we began. Three people staring at the hills and an arrow in his door. Wade did not touch it. He circled it, studied it. The shaft was clean. too clean.
The feathers were stiff and fresh, a little too bright, and the blood was already drying brown at the edges, which meant it had been put there a few hours ago. Not last night, "Guan," he said. She came over, looked at the arrow, and her mouth curved down in disgust. "This is wrong. Wrong how, the feathers.
The wrong bird, and whoever wrapped this has never wrapped one before. See the binding? It is too tight, too neat, like a man who learned from a drawing. So, it's not Apache. It was never Apache.
Then who? Someone who wants you to believe it was. Wade stared at the arrow and the dread that had been crawling up his spine. All night finally reached his throat. He turned, walked to the north fence, to the line of deep bootprints, followed them to the corner post, and found him, eyes open, a tin star on his vest, face up, eyes arrow through his chest up to the feathers.