Create the conditions. Engineer the conflict that would justify the action. Three years ago in Coyote Valley, they tried once and it hadn't worked cleanly enough. The wrong soldier had set down his rifle and the wrong soldier's brother had found a document he wasn't supposed to find. Fitch had dealt with the brother.
Jack had disappeared. And then 3 years later, when they were ready to try again, when Voss had rebuilt the political connections and Fitch had put enough men in place, they'd looked at the map and found Jack Marorrow still sitting at the edge of the valley and decided two birds. What was in the document? Jack said the one Danny found. Yasa looked at one of his riders.
Something passed between them. The writer reached into his vest, pulled out a folded oil cloth packet, old, the edges worn. The oil cloth stained with what might have been water or might have been time. He held it out to Jack. Jack looked at it, then at Yoska.
Your brother gave this to to my contact 3 years ago, Yoska said the day before he died. He didn't know who to trust. He knew the contact would a pause. We have been waiting for the right moment to use it. Jack took the packet, unfolded it carefully.
Inside a single page, handwritten a land conveyance agreement dated autumn 1875, signed by a federal land office representative who had Jack read the name twice who had signed an under a forged authorization from Washington and countersigned by Elias Voss and witnessed by one H. Fitch, then a lieutenant, not a captain yet. A lieutenant, the date four years before the Coyote Valley attack. Four years before Dany died. This had been built for that long.
Jack read it twice, then carefully refolded it, held it in both hands. This goes to the Tucson Courier, he said to the editor there. Name of breed. He's old and he's stubborn and he's been looking for something to put on Voss's operation for 2 years. Yasa looked at him.
You know this man? I know of him. Danny mentioned him once. Jack paused. Dany mentioned a lot of things.
I've been remembering them lately. He paused. Can you get it there? Yasca's expression shifted slightly. I sent a writer to the telegraph station at Benson yesterday.
He said, "When I knew I was coming here, the operator there has worked with us before. He will wire breed directly. " A pause. The document itself follows with my writer, but the message will already be in Tucson by morning. Seiya was watching Jack. That steady look, he held the document for a moment longer.
But first, he said, Fitch comes back probably tonight, and this time he's going to be done being official about it. Yes, Yasa said. Then we need to be ready. Jack looked at the two riders. Then at Yasa.
All of us. The old man looked at him for a long moment. Then he said something in Apache that made Seiya look at Jack with an expression he hadn't seen on her face before. Something complicated. Warm and troubled at once.
What did he say? Jack asked. She looked at the ground for a moment. Then back up, he said, she said slowly. That you walk like a man who has stopped running away and started running toward.
Jack was quiet. Looked at the valley stretching out around them. The red earth, the scrub, the hard blue sky, the mea in the distance catching the afternoon light. He thought about Dany wanting a bookshop in Richmond, about a set of tracks in the ochre dust that were the wrong size, about the dry well at the cabin, and a woman who' pressed her hand to the earth 30 ft away and said, "There's water there running toward. " He didn't say anything, but maybe the not saying was answer enough because Yasa nodded once like he'd heard it anyway. And Seiya looked at the horizon and her chin was up and there was something in the set of her shoulders that wasn't bracing anymore.
That was ready. That night they came back as the last light went out. Fitch 12 men this time. And behind him at a careful distance, Voss on a horse too good for a merchant to ride. Watching Jack Sai Yska and the two riders stood outside the canyon entrance and from the ridgeel line above shadows Jack had been watching for the past hour shapes that had moved into position so slowly and so patiently that the cavalry hadn't seen them three more three Apache warriors with bows high ground Fitch saw them and pulled up looked at Jack then at the rgeline then at Jack again and for the first time The first time in all the years Jack had known him, in all the briefings and campaigns, and the terrible autumn of 76, Harlon Fitch looked uncertain just for a moment.
But Jack had been reading men his whole life. He saw it, and the seeing of it felt like something breaking open, something that had been sealed for 3 years, releasing just enough pressure to breathe. Not over, but not hopeless anymore, either. Fitch gathered himself. Jack could see it.
That contained quality, that pulling inward. The captain in him reasserting over whatever he'd felt when he saw the ridge line. He straightened in the saddle. Last chance, Jack. His voice came out.
Even professional, the voice of a man who believed he still controlled the terms. Hand her over. Walk away from this. You've got no stake in Coyote Valley, Jack said. Fitch stopped.
The valley went quiet around the word. Autumn of 76, Jack said. You're routing your map, your orders. He paused. And your signature on a land conveyance dated 14 months before it.
Something happened in Fitch's face. The contained quality cracked just slightly, like a hairline fracture in something that had looked solid. Behind him, Voss moved. Just shifted his weight on the horse. A small adjustment, but Jack caught it because Jack had been watching Voss from the moment he appeared.
The way you watched the thing at the back of a room that wasn't moving when everything else was. You don't have anything, Fitch said. His voice had changed, still even. But the note in it was different now. The professional register had dropped slightly, become something else, something more personal.
Your brother is dead, Fitch said. Flat, deliberate. Whatever he thought he had, he gave it to someone before he died, Jack said. Someone who kept it for 3 years, waiting, silence, a long one this time, the kind that had texture that you could feel pressing from the ridge above. No one moved.
The three shapes were perfectly still against the darkening sky. Boughs ready, not drawn, not yet, just present. The statement of them being there doing all the work that mattered. One of Fitch's men said something low that Jack couldn't hear. Fitch didn't respond to it.
He was looking at Jack and Jack was looking at him. And for one strange suspended moment, it was like being back in the briefing tent in 75. Back when Jack had respected this man, back before he'd understood what that man was actually building. You have a document, Fitch said slowly. That you claim that a federal editor in Tucson has had in his hands since this morning, Jack said, not entirely true about the timing.