Hale did not sit. "Say that again."
"The man who rode south from here at noon was not the man who left Ellison with a true order. We found the real courier north of this fort, in the dry wash they call Crow Bone. He had been dead since morning. Shot once. His pouch taken." Grey Feather touched the leather on the table. "This is what we took from a white rider who tried to burn a campfire without smoke. He ran when we came close. He left this behind."
Hale opened the pouch. Inside lay a courier's seal stamp, a half-burned scrap of official letterhead, a stub of sealing wax, and a folded scrap of paper with practice signatures—Colonel R. S. Harland written six times, the last nearly perfect. There was also a thin gold ring with a scratched initial: W.
"W," Hale said softly.
"The dead man at Crow Bone wore no ring," Rain Song said. Her voice was low, steady. "But his finger showed the mark of one worn for years. Whoever killed him took more than paper."
Hale's mind arranged facts the way a carpenter arranges tools. A forged order. A false courier. Wagons packed before the paper arrived. Kane pressing for speed. Kane's left hand near a holster. A gold ring with a W—Wesley.
"Why bring this to me," Hale asked, "and not ride past?"
Grey Feather's dark eyes held him. "Because your people will blame mine if this fort empties and then burns. Because the wagons you load carry powder and food that can feed a war against us as easily as they can feed your own. And because you have never pretended my dead do not count."
Hale nodded once. The debt between them was not written, but it was real. Last winter Hale had stopped a drunken patrol from cutting down Grey Feather's winter horse herd. In return, Grey Feather had guided a lost mail rider out of a blizzard that would have made a widow of a woman in St. Louis. Trust, out here, was a currency rarer than gold.
"Where is the body?" Hale asked.
"We covered him with stones and marked the place. You can send men. Or you can keep your living ones from riding into a trap."
Hale drew the forged order from his pocket and laid it beside the pouch. The handwriting matched the practice sheet too well. His stomach turned—not with fear, but with the cold clarity of a chessboard when the opponent's king stood exposed.