Follow me. Judge Warren Cole was not in session. He was in his chambers behind the courtroom, which were smaller than the building suggested, stacked with paper on every flat surface and lit by a single window that looked onto an alley where a cat was conducting some private investigation of a fence post. Cole was a compact man in his late 50s with closecropped gray hair and the controlled stillness of someone who had spent decades making consequential decisions and had concluded that agitation was not a productive part of the process. He looked at Seth the way Seth looked at horses he was evaluating quickly thoroughly without announcing the conclusion.
Holt Briggs Cole said 20 men at Eaglespine Ridge east of the Catalina range camp two days ago possibly moved since target is a Red Canyon Apache camp 40 horses worth close to $8,000 and a documented pattern of not leaving witnesses. Seth had prepared this on the ride stripping it to its loadbearing elements. I need federal authority and bodies. Not many of either if we move in the next 48 hours because the camp has 15 warriors and a woman running the defense who is better at it than most men I've encountered. And I told her four days and I intend to keep that.
Cole looked at him steadily. Who are you? Seth Callaway, rancher from New Mexico. Currently in a complicated situation. Cole almost did something with his mouth that was not quite a smile.
Sit down, Mr. Callaway. He asked 12 questions. They were the questions of a man who had been building a case on Holt Briggs for 2 years and knew exactly which pieces remained missing. Seth answered all 12 without qualification or decoration because he had learned in 13 years of running a ranch that the plain truth was always faster than the dressed up version, and they did not have time for dressed up anything.
When the 12th answer was given, Cole stood. I have eight federal marshals in Tucson. We ride at first light tomorrow. I was hoping for tonight. My men and horses need rest.
So do you and your animal, whether you'll admit it or not. And I need to review the applicable federal statutes before I walk into a situation that has to hold in a federal court, not just in a canyon. Cole looked at him with the directness of a man who had learned to say difficult things without softening them unnecessarily. First light tomorrow we make your camp by nightfall if we push. Seth calculated tomorrow first light plus a hard day's ride was four days minus 6 hours from when he left.
Dawn had said she could hold for four days and she had said it the way she said things that were decided rather than hoped. First light, Seth said before he left the chambers. He placed a second document on Cole's desk. He had written it by hand at the boarding house in Tucson the previous evening using the language he had absorbed over 13 years of land transactions and federal registry filings in New Mexico. It was not a sophisticated legal document, but it was accurate and it named the right statutes.
And Cole read it in two minutes with the expression of a man finding a thing he had been looking for in an unexpected drawer. "You want me to file a formal federal trespass prohibition on the camp's territory? " Cole said, "Under the 1868 treaty provisions, I want you to tell me if there's a legal basis for it," Seth said. Because if there is, I'd like it filed before we ride out tomorrow so that when Briggs is arrested, there's already a document in existence that says the next person who tries what he tried faces a federal charge rather than a territorial one. Cole set the paper down, picked it up again. Where did you learn federal land law?
I didn't, Seth said. I learned New Mexico territorial land law over 13 years of buying, selling, and protecting property. Some of it transfers. Cole looked at him for a long moment. I'll have this reviewed by morning.
If the basis holds, I'll file it before we ride. He paused. This is a real protection if it goes through. Not symbolic. Violation means federal court.
That's what I'm asking for, Seth said. He spent what remained of the day doing three things in the order they needed doing. He slept four hours at the nearest boarding house in the deep immediate way that his body had been requesting for 31 hours and that he had been refusing on the grounds that there was not yet time. He ate a hot meal with vegetables in it. And he sent Creek to the livery with instructions for grain supplement and full rest because she had earned both more thoroughly than he had earned his sleep.
The marshals were assembling in the street before dawn. Eight men competent in the specific way of people who did dangerous work regularly enough that it had stopped requiring performance. Cole was already mounted with the official document case across his saddle and the expression of a man who had waited 2 years for exactly this convergence of circumstances and was not going to allow impatience to make him careless now. They rode north and east through the full heat of the day and arrived at the outer canyon country as the light was starting its descent. Seth navigated from memory which was the only navigation available and the accuracy of his memory was a relief he did not take for granted given that his memory of a map had failed him catastrophically once already on this journey and he did not want to repeat.
He found the east passage in the dark. This was possible only because of something he had learned over 1four years of working with horses on unfamiliar terrain, which was that the body remembered routes, that the mind had not consciously cataloged, that feet and hands held information that I sometimes missed, and that trusting the body's record of a place was often more reliable than trusting the mind's reconstruction of it. He went through first with Creek following close behind him and the passage delivered them into the camp. What he found was not chaos, not relief either, not in the way he might have expected after four days of not knowing. What he found was a camp that had been maintaining combat readiness for four days without breaking under it, which was a different and more demanding thing than simply waiting.
The watch positions were all occupied. The cook fires were low and functional. The eight horses in the main corral stood quiet, which told him that whatever tension was in the camp had not transmitted to the animals, which told him the handlers had been doing their jobs throughout. Riverhawk found them within 30 seconds and led them to the central circle. Iron Sky was awake.
The senior warriors were awake. Elder Mary sat at the edge of the circle with her hands folded in her lap and her attention fully present, and she looked at Seth with an expression. Identical to the one she had worn when he left, which meant she had decided he was returning and had organized her waiting accordingly and had not found cause to revise that decision. Dawn was standing at the north side of the circle. She looked at him the way she looked at things that mattered directly and without performance.
Then she looked at Creek, at the nine riders behind him, at the document case on Cole's saddle, and back at Seth. And something shifted in her face that was small and internal and not for the general audience of the camp. Briggs Seth said moving her voice was level. Riverhawk tracked them this afternoon. They left Eaglespine Ridge around midday.
They're in the lower canyon now, maybe two hours out, which meant tonight, not tomorrow. The margin he had been carrying in his chest since Tucson collapsed to nothing. Seth looked at Cole. Cole was already looking at Seth. We move the plan up.
Seth said everything has been ready since yesterday. Dawn said not as correction as information. Of course it had. Cole dismounted and went with Iron Sky to conduct the formal introductions that federal authority required before it could operate. And Seth used those 10 minutes to walk the camp perimeter with Dawn.
Not to assess the defensive positions which he trusted, but to sync the picture he had been carrying in his head for four days with what was actually standing in front of him. The way you verified a fence line against your map of it before you relied on either. The positions were better than he had planned, not better than Dawn had planned, which was a different distinction, and one he noted without surprise. The eight horses in the corral, Seth said, the oldest eight ashes on the west side. She said this without him asking because she knew what he was going to ask.
He won't move regardless of what happens around him. I put the three most reactive animals in the south pasture before you arrived. When this morning when I decided tonight was more likely than tomorrow. He looked at her. You moved them before you knew Briggs was in the lower canyon.
I moved them when I calculated that a man planning a large operation would want to use the last of the dark moon. She looked back at him without particular emphasis. Tonight is the last of the dark moon. Seth had not thought of this. He should have.
It was the kind of detail that experienced ranchers knew about livestock operations and experienced military people knew about night movements and Dawn had applied it to both simultaneously without mentioning it to anyone because it was simply part of how she thought. The position on the north ridge, Seth said, covered. Three warriors, my best trackers. They've been up there since dusk with instructions to signal when Briggs's forward riders enter the lower canyon approach. And you?