"Here is what I've decided," he said. "If he's lying, we lose two days and some patience. If he's telling the truth and I don't listen, we lose those children. The wagons stay inside the wall until I say otherwise. Mr. Ames, you'll command the station. I'll take ten men at moonrise to the seep for the marshal, and from there to the rim of Quemado to see what is in it with my own eyes. Nalté will guide."
"Birch says he shouldn't sit a horse for a week," Ames said.
"Nalté says he will. I've stopped telling him what his arm can do."
Klemm cleared his throat. "Sir. I'll go."
The room went still. Asa turned to look at him.
"You're the man I struck this evening, Corporal. There'll be an inquiry. You'd have every right to keep as far from me as this territory allows."
"I know it, sir." Klemm's voice came thick through the swelling. "But if that buck's a liar, I want to be there to see it fall apart. And if he ain't—" He did not finish. His jaw worked. "If he ain't, I want to see that too. With my own eyes. Not hear it after."
Asa considered him, then nodded once. "Then you ride."
"I'm riding as well," Iona said.
"No."
"He's my brother, Asa. He's been a night and a day under a rock with a ball in him. Birch has to stay with the station. I've dressed more wounds on this road since Independence than any man in your troop, and I can ride as well as any man in it, which you know, because you taught me on your father's livery horses." She took the star from her pocket and held it up in the candlelight. "And you gave me this. You told me to hold on to it. Then let me carry it to the man it belongs to."
Ames said, "Sir, a civilian woman on a—"
"Mr. Ames," Asa said, without looking away from her. "I find I am in no position this evening to tell anyone in this room that they've forgotten their place." He was quiet a moment longer. "Draw a horse from the remuda. The gray mare; she's sure on rock. You'll do what Nalté says in the canyon. Not what I say. What he says."
When the others had gone, he sat at the table and wrote by the guttering candle. Iona waited. When he was done he sanded the page and handed it to her to read before he sealed it.