And said Wade, his heart was beating strangely. Your father brought it to me the morning before he died in a leather case. He made me swear never to open it. Not until the day the well was found. I swear it on my mother.
Voss does not know I have it. Nobody knows. Guan's fork stopped halfway to her mouth. Where? said Wade. The vault behind the records room.
I'll come sit. Eat. It is a tiresome lock. It takes a minute. He patted Wade's shoulder kindly and shuffled out.
The door closed. Wade chewed, stared at the plate, and something small and wrong began scratching at the back of his mind. You stopped chewing, said Guan. I'm digesting. Your face is not digesting.
Your face is thinking. He stood, went to the window. The street was empty. The last red light slid off the rooftops and above the stone office in the attic, a lamp lit, dimmed, lit, dimmed, lit. Three flashes, a pause, three more.
Wade stopped breathing because he knew that pattern. He had learned it at 8 years old in this very building from a gentle old man who taught him a signal game called lighthouse. Three and three. It meant all clear. Come in or it meant come now before he leaves.
No, Wade whispered. He did not remember the stairs. He only remembered the splintered third step, the narrow attic door, and a stooped old man at the window with a lantern in his hands and tears running down his face. Puit turned. Their eyes met.
Neither said a word, Elias. I am sorry. Don't. My daughter's husband borrowed from the bank. The bank is Voss.
Last spring, a man came with a sack of silver and said, "Only tell us if Harland visits. " Only that. I took it. Wait, they would have put her in the street with the baby in winter. So you put me in a noose.
I only said you were coming. I never said the vault. I swear it. That's all it takes. The revolver was in Wade's hand.
He had not drawn it. It was simply there. Cocked steady pointed at the center of a moth eaten cardigan. I taught you your letters. Puit whispered.
I know. I loved your father. Stop. I loved you. That's why this hurts.
The old man closed his eyes and waited like a man who had been waiting for this for years. Wade stood there. The gun did not move. His finger did not tighten. And somewhere inside him, a boy of 10 sat at a kitchen table, learning to write his own name.
While someone patient guided his hand, he lowered the revolver. Open the vault. You will not. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't have to ask twice. Open it, Elias.
A narrow iron door, a cold stone cell, a single shelf. And on the shelf, one flat leather case sealed with bronze. Wade took it, opened it, and inside lay a deed. real parchment, a bronze seal pressed into red wax, the transfer of cedar wash and every acre around it. From the Apache family to Voss and Sons, and at the bottom, in a hand like a picket fence, careful in a hand like a picket fence. Jay Harland unmistakable.
Wade's knees nearly gave because he knew that writing every grocery list, every fence receipt, every cheap Christmas card of his childhood, his father's hand, his father's name signed on a lie. He had always known the fever was a lie. He had told himself his father died fighting something honest. That was the story he had lived in all his life. And now the story had a signature on the wrong side.
Along the red silk ribbon beside the seal ran a faint trail of tiny holes, pin pricks barely visible. The moths, he thought. Of course, 24 years in a cellar. No, he said he wouldn't, Wade, said Puit. He was an honest man.
But he was also afraid. His father, a forger, a liar. The reason 61 people were dying of thirst. A cold, ugly thing opened in Wade's chest, wide as a canyon. And in that moment, he understood exactly why Dakaya had gone quiet in the ashes, folded the deed, shoved it inside his coat.
Then Guan's voice rang up the stairs. Sharp riders, boots, hooves, the crash of the front door. He bolted down, Guan at the window. The dia at the back door with a chair raised over his head like a very old, very angry grandmother. How many ate?
Callaway at the front. Wood splintered the back door. The horses are tied in the alley. Go. What about you?
Right behind you, you are lying mostly. Guan hesitated. Looked at Puit on the attic stairs with his lantern. He sold us. I know.
And you let him live. Go. She went. Wade lingered one second. But don't make me regret it.
The old man nodded and as the front door burst inward and Callaway's black coat filled the frame. Puit did something strange. He stepped between them, raised his lantern, raised his chin, and said in a firm, clear voice Wade had never heard from him in his life. You will not pass, Mr. Callaway. Not in my office.
A single gunshot cracked. Wade did not stay to see who fell. He hit the saddle running. The mare lunged and the three of them tore out of Fenwick with a storm of hooves behind them and blackness spreading across the sky. They rode all night.
Nobody spoke. Near dawn on Saturday, they pulled up in a dry aoyo, slid down, stood with a hand on the mare's neck, shake. Dakaya rode up beside him. You saw the signature? Yes, I am sorry.
You knew? I knew a man signed it. I did not know it would be the vault where you found out. That's the same thing. No, said Tea softly.
It is not, Wade turned. Tell me the truth. When the boy is safe, I want it now and I would give it now. But the truth will not save Nalin. Only one thing will a trade.