Cal took Naelli's hand. He held the letter in his other hand. High in the air. They began to walk down the center of the dusty road. Two small figures against the massive indifferent landscape.
Behind them, the posi shouted and spurred their horses. Ahead of them, the cavalry bugle sounded. Cal looked at Naelli. Don't look back, he said. Just keep walking.
Naelli squeezed his hand. Her grip was strong enough to crush bone. I am here, she said. And together they walked into the guns. The San Salano town square was not a place of civic beauty.
It was a patch of beaten earth where the ambitions of men came to die in the heat. On this Sunday, it had been transformed into a theater of judgment. The traveling revival tent, a canvas cathedral stained with road dust, flapped in the wind. Reverend Solaris, a man with a voice like a grinding millstone, stood on a crate, preaching about the fires of hell. But the real fire was in the crowd.
300 people were packed into the square. ranchers, miners, shopkeepers, and the drifters who smelled blood in the water. They were there for the spectacle, for the promise of scandal that had been whispered from the saloons to the church pews. Agent Silas Reed stood near the livery stable entrance. Flanked by four men who wore badges that shone too brightly to be real, he looked confident, smoothing his silk vest, checking his pocket watch. He was a man who believed that money could buy gravity itself.
Then the road to the north cleared. The silence started at the edge of the crowd and rolled inward like a wave. The hymn singing died in throats. Heads turned. Kalhart and Nielli walked down the center of the main street.
They did not run. They did not hide. They walked side by side. a white man battered and bruised, limping slightly, and an Apache woman with a spine of steel, wearing a sarap that was dusty from the bad lands. They looked like ghosts who had clawed their way out of a shallow grave. Behind them, the posi from the sheriff's office had stopped, confused by the sheer audacity of the approach.
Ahead, the cavalry patrol that had been signaled by the gunfire reigned in their mounts. The lieutenant unsure of his orders in the face of such a public procession. Cal walked straight to the center of the square right in front of the revival crate. He stopped. He looked at the crowd.
His left eye was swollen shut. His lip split, his coat hanging off his frame like a shroud, but his good eye burned with a cold, terrifying light. He held up the papers. Silus Reed pushed through the crowd, his face twisting into a mask of righteous indignation. "Arest him!"
Reed shouted, pointing a manicured finger. "Arest that man for treason. He's consorting with the enemy. He's bringing a savage into our midst." The sheriff Miller stepped forward, his hand on his gun, but he looked uncertain.
He looked at Cal's face, then it reads, "Cal did not speak to the sheriff. He spoke to the crowd. "I'm not here to hide," Cal said. His voice was raspy, dry as old parchment, but it carried. "I'm here to show you what you bought with your tax dollars.
He loves the [ __ ]," Reed yelled, trying to drown him out. "Look at them. It is an abomination. He bought her for horses. He sold his own race for a night in a blanket."
The crowd murmured. The words were ugly, designed to hook into the darkest parts of their prejudice. Men spat on the ground. A woman covered her child's eyes. Ni stepped forward.
She did not look down. She did not look at Cal. She looked straight at Silus Reed. "You speak of buying," Na said. Her voice was clear, melodic, and utterly fearless.
"It cut through the murmuring like a knife through canvas. You speak of trade," she continued. "But you are the merchant, Agent Reed." She turned to the crowd. She saw the hate in their eyes, the disgust.
She did not flinch from it. She walked toward the women in the front row. You call me a savage. Nailey said. You call me a [ __ ].
You say this man bought me. She paused, letting the silence stretch until it was painful. He offered horses. Yes, she said. He made a spectacle.
He made you all look. He made you whisper. He made you hate him. Why? She held up the ledger page she had taken from the strong box because it was the only way to make you listen.
She said, "If I came to you as a mother begging for food for my starving child, you would have slammed the door. If he came to you as a neighbor speaking of theft, you would have called him a liar." She walked back to Cal and took the manifest from his hand. So, we gave you a scandal. Ny said, "We gave you a story about a man and a woman because that is all you understand.
But the real story is this. She slapped the papers against the wood of the preachers's crate. 3,000 head of cattle paid for by the government. Stolen by this man in Cyrus Vance. 500 rifles meant for the reservation police.
Sold to smugglers. Starvation used as a weapon to make my husband go to war so that you, she pointed to the crowd, so that you would be frightened enough to call the soldiers. So that the soldiers would buy beef from Vance. It is a lie, Reed screamed. His composure was cracking.
The veins in his neck bulged. She is a lying savage. She is trying to save her skin. Is she? The voice came from the back of the crowd.
A man stepped down from a freight wagon. It was the driver Cal and Nielli had stopped in the pass. He was a rough man, a drinker, a man who didn't care much for Indians. But he took off his hat and twisted it in his hands. I drive for Vance, the Teamster said.
I drove the wagon last night. It was marked for flower, but it was empty, just like Hart said. And I seen the agent there when we loaded up. I seen him take the cash box. The crowd shifted.
The mood changed from hostility to confusion. And then to a low, dangerous growl. Reed looked around. He saw the doubt. He saw the sheriff's hand move away from his gun.
"You're all fools," Reed hissed. He backed away. his hand going inside his coat. "Evidence!" Cal shouted, throwing the letter from the strong box onto the ground. "Signed by Vance, ordering the raids."
The sheriff stooped and picked up the paper. He read it. His face went pale. He looked up at Reed. Silus, you're under arrest.
Reed didn't surrender. He panicked. "Kill them!" Reed shrieked to his bodyguards. "They are armed.
Kill them." One of the hired guns, a man with dead eyes and a hair trigger, didn't hesitate. He saw Cal's hand move and he drew. The crack of the gunshot was deafening in the enclosed square. Cal threw himself to the side, tackling Naelli.
The bullet missed Cal. It struck a woman standing behind him, the wife of the town baker. She collapsed with a look of total surprise, clutching her chest. The square exploded. Screams tore the air.
Horses reared, trampling the revival benches. The sheriff fired back, hitting the gunman. The crowd became a panicked stampede. People running, falling, crawling over each other to escape the crossfire. Cal rolled, coming up with his revolver in his hand.
"Stay down!" he yelled to Naelli. Smoke filled the air, acurid and gray. Through the haze, Cal saw Reed running toward the alley where his horse was tied. Cal raised his gun, but a shadow blocked his view.
A horse had jumped the fence of the corral and was charging through the crowd. The rider was screaming a war cry that chilled the blood. It was Gooo. He had ridden down from the hills, using the chaos as his cover. He was not looking at the agent.
He was not looking at the soldiers. His eyes were locked on Cal Hart. He was painted for death. white ash on his face, black streaks under his eyes. He held a lance in one hand and a heavy colt revolver in the other. He rode straight for Cal, ignoring the bullets whizzing past him from the deputies.
Cal scrambled backward, tripping over a broken bench. Heart. Gojo roared. Thief of wives. He fired.
The bullet kicked dirt into Cal's face. Cal scrambled to his feet. He didn't want this. He had the proof. He had the law turning.
He didn't want to kill the husband. Gojo! No! Cal shouted. It's over.