“My father hated fences.”
Elias could imagine.
“He left often.”
Mara continued.
“Sometimes the Army brought families back. Sometimes no one cared. We lived between rules made by people who rarely knew where water was.”
Her eyes followed the creek.
“My mother adapted better.”
“Your father?”
“He became angry.”
“Reasonably.”
“Reasonable anger can still destroy a house.”
Elias looked at her.
That sentence carried history.
Mara continued.
“He blamed everyone.”
“Harrow?”
“Yes.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Fair.”
“Soldiers. Mexicans. Other Apache families who made different choices. Himself.”
She looked toward Samuel.
“My brother learned anger from him.”
“And you?”
Mara almost smiled.
“I learned questions from my mother.”
Elias nodded.
“I prefer your mother.”
“So does everyone.”
They reached Elias’s ranch the following evening.
Or what remained orderly of it.
His barn door hung open.
The house had been searched.
Drawers overturned.
Mattress cut.
Cabinets emptied.
Elias stood in the doorway.
Pain disappeared beneath rage.
“They came here.”
Mara inspected the floor.
“Yesterday.”
Elias walked toward Daniel’s room.
The trunk was overturned.
False compartment exposed.
Empty.
Cal Rusk knew.
Harrow knew Elias had found something.
Samuel found a note nailed to the kitchen table.
RETURN WHAT YOU STOLE.
Tomás read it.
“Friendly.”
Elias pulled it down.
“I want to kill him.”
Mara looked at him.
“Which?”
“Dealer’s choice.”
“No.”
He laughed bitterly.
“You don’t get to tell me not to be angry.”
“I did not.”
“You said no.”
“To killing.”
“Feels related.”
“Not same.”
Samuel unexpectedly agreed.
“Harrow wants you angry.”
Elias looked at him.
Samuel continued.
“Angry man rides straight.”
Mara translated the meaning more clearly.
“Predictable.”
Elias stared at the destroyed room.
Daniel’s clothes had been thrown across the floor.
One old photograph lay broken beneath glass.
Brothers standing beside their mother.
Elias at seventeen.
Daniel sixteen.
No Harrow.
No surveys.
No graves yet.
He crouched and lifted it.
Mara watched.
“Your brother?”
“Yes.”
“You look alike.”
“He was better looking.”
“No.”
Elias looked up.
Mara’s face remained serious.
Then he realized she was teasing.
“You make terrible jokes.”
“I learn from you.”
That evening they made a plan.
Judge Nathaniel Ward was not in Tucson.
He had traveled to Prescott for territorial court.
Three days north.
Too far for Elias in his condition.
But the United States Land Office maintained a district clerk in Tucson named Edwin Marsh.
Tomás knew him.
More importantly, Marsh disliked Harrow after losing a bid for a freight contract.
Elias distrusted motives.
Tomás shrugged.
“Good men are rare. Useful resentment is common.”
Mara agreed.