Now it all makes sense. I turned toward him. Jeb tapped one finger softly against the table. Silus Crow didn't come here just to kill Nia. He pointed toward the handdrawn map.
He came to recover that evidence before it reaches the territorial investigators. I nodded slowly. If those documents become public, the Red Canyon Railroad Board will have to answer for murder, fraud, and stealing Apache land. Nia's expression did not change. That is why they will never stop hunting me.
Neither Jeb nor I tried to argue because she was right. A heavy silence settled over the room again. It ended when Jeb suddenly raised his head, his eyes locked on the door. I heard it, too. A sound so faint that it nearly vanished beneath the wind.
Not gunfire, not horses, footsteps. Many of them. Slow, disciplined. Silus Crow's riders were moving through the darkness, taking care not to make a sound. Jeb extinguished the lamp completely.
Blackness swallowed the cabin. I could could barely make out Nia's face. Her voice fell to a whisper. They're here. I reached for the Winchester.
Cold steel pressed against my palms. I took one breath long and slow. Outside the cabin, the eastern sky was beginning to brighten. Dawn was only minutes away, and all three of us knew Silus Crow had waited for this exact moment to launch the attack he had been planning through the night. The first shot shattered the silence just as the horizon turned a pale shade of gray.
There were no war cries, no final threats. Silus Crow was not the kind of man who wasted words once killing time arrived. The bullet tore through a front window and buried itself in the log wall, throwing splinters across the room. "They're coming," Jeb Mercer whispered. He did not need to say it.
We were already in position. I guarded the rear window with my Winchester braced against the frame. Nia covered the front of the cabin with the rifle I had given her the previous day. Jeb waited near the side entrance, ready to move wherever the fight became worst. Outside, the wind began to rise.
Then the first burning arrows appeared. One struck the roof. Another landed on the porch. A third streaked through the dawn like a falling red star before burying itself among the stable rafters. Flames spread almost at once.
"They're trying to smoke us out," I shouted. Nia did not answer. She calmly worked the rifle's lever, found a target through the smoke, and fired. A man running toward the fence fell backward before he reached cover. The lever snapped again.
Another shot. A second attacker dropped his weapon and vanished behind the rocks, dragging himself through the dirt with a low groan. None of us celebrated. In a fight like that, stopping to count fallen enemies was one of the fastest ways to join them. A short whistle sounded from the far side of the property.