She looked at him. Where do you think I'll be? Wherever you can do the most damage to their coordination without being in the center of the corral. The east wall, she said. There's a position on the east wall that covers both the corral gate and the main camp approach simultaneously.
I've been watching Briggs's pattern from everything you told me. His forward group goes for the objective first. His rear guard watches the exits. He positions himself to observe and redirect. She paused.
He won't be with the forward group when they reach the corral. No, Seth said he'll be watching from somewhere elevated. South end of camp gives the best sight line. I know her voice had the quality it had when she had already decided something. That's why I'll be on the east wall and not the north ridge.
The east wall sees both the corral and the south approach. Seth was quiet for a moment. You planned for him specifically. I planned for what you told me about him, which is the same thing. She looked at the dark outline of the east wall above them.
He's not going to be captured easily. Men like that don't calculate for losing until they're already losing. By the time he understands what's happening, he needs to already have no options. She looked back at Seth. That's your job tonight.
Make sure the federal presence is visible at exactly the moment he realizes the corral is a trap. He needs to see the marshals before he decides to run. Seth thought this through. You want him to see the law before he makes his move. I want him to see that running isn't an option before he tries it.
A man who runs gets away and comes back. A man who calculates and loses accepts it. A pause. Elder Mary says that about horses and about people. Cole returned from his conversation with Iron Sky and the three of them stood together while Seth laid out the revised timing.
Cole listened with the attention of a man who had learned to absorb tactical information quickly and act on it without requiring it to match his prior expectations. He asked two clarifying questions. Received two answers. Not at once. My marshals will be in the east passage, Cole said.
Ready to move on signal. I'll be at the south end of camp where you need the federal presence visible. He looked at Dawn. What's the signal? Dawn looked at Seth.
Three strikes on the corral fence post, Seth said. Ash won't react. The other horses won't either at that point because I'll have been in the corral long enough for them to accept me. You're going in the corral, Cole said. Someone needs to keep eight old horses quiet when 20 men arrive expecting to find 40 excellent ones.
That's a specific job, and I'm the specific person for it. Cole looked at him for a moment with the expression of a man deciding whether to argue and determining that the argument would not be productive. Don't get killed, Mr. Callaway. I have paperwork with your name on it.
They waited. Seth settled into the corral with the eight horses and let the waiting become its own kind of work. Ash found him. Within 10 minutes, the old gray pressing his nose against Seth's shoulder with the uncomplicated warmth of an animal that had decided this person was acceptable and saw no reason to be subtle about it. Seth put his hand on the horse's neck and let his own heartbeats slow to the rate that horses read as safety, because horses read heartbeats through the hands, and what they read was what they felt.
And what Seth needed them to feel tonight was that nothing in this corral was a threat. He thought about Briggs on the flat rock with the cigar. The confidence of a man repeating a formula that had worked before. The formula was wrong this time in ways Briggs could not yet see, which was the most dangerous kind of wrong because it didn't announce itself until it was too late to adjust. He heard them before he saw anything.
Sound moved differently in the canyon at night, compressed by the rock walls, into something more directional than open air sound. Multiple horses moving carefully over stone, the particular rhythm of animals being walked slowly by riders who wanted quiet. Seth estimated the sound at 7 minutes out and used those seven minutes to move through the herd at the pace of a man doing a last check of his stock, normal and unhurried, settling the two horses nearest the gate, with a hand on each neck in turn. Briggs's forward group came in from the northwest. 14 men moving with the quiet efficiency of people who had done this before.
Seth watched them through the corral fence rails and counted and noted the absence of Briggs himself, which confirmed what Dawn had assessed. They reached the corral. Seth was visible, standing at the center, hand on Ash's neck, in the posture of a hired hand, doing a late check. He had calculated this. A man hiding in a corral was a threat to be neutralized.
A man standing openly in a corral was a problem to be solved. And solving problems took time, and time was the variable that mattered tonight. The lead rider pulled up when he saw Seth, a broad man with a rifle across his saddle and the flat eyes of someone accustomed to making fast assessments. Seth's jaw tightened as he held the man's gaze, keeping his hands visible at his sides. Evening.
The rider did not return the greeting. Step away from the fence. Seth stepped away from the fence. He stepped away from the fence deliberately and he struck the post three times with his open palm as he passed it which was the sound of a man steadying himself on an unfamiliar surface in the dark and which was also the signal. What happened in the next 40 seconds was the thing that plans either survived or didn't.
And this one survived it. From the east passage, the marshals came, threw in a line, Cole at the rear, with his rifle at port arms, and his voice already carrying before he had fully cleared the passage. Federal marshals, every man hold position. Do not raise a weapon. From the north, east, and west, Dawn's warriors appeared from positions in the rock and shadow.
Not rushing, not shouting, simply materializing at the edges of the fire light in a configuration that made the arithmetic of resistance obvious to anyone capable of arithmetic. 11 of Briggs's 14 men did the arithmetic immediately, and it showed in their hands, which went up or went still. Two made for the Northwest Passage and found Riverhawk and two warriors already there because Dawn had placed them there two hours before the attack began because she had known the Northwest Passage was the exit a panicked man would choose because she had thought about Briggs specifically and planned for him specifically and the planning had been thorough. One man raised his rifle. Dawn's voice came from the east wall above, clear and without elevation.
Put it down. The man on the east wall could not see her clearly in the dark, but he could hear exactly where the voice was coming from, and he could see nothing in that direction that gave him advantage. And the voice had the quality of a person who had already decided what would happen next, regardless of what he chose, which was a more effective deterrent than any specific threat. He put the rifle down and then from the south end of camp came what Seth had been waiting for and dreading simultaneously the sound of a scuffle and Iron Sky voice saying something sharp and Apache and Cole breaking into a run toward the south with two marshals behind him. Seth vaulted the corral fence.
Briggs had come in from the south as Dawn had predicted. He had watched the forward group reach the corral and had seen the trap close and had made his calculation in the 3 seconds before the marshals emerged from the east passage. And his calculation had been the calculation of a man who had used this move before. Take something the other side could not afford to lose and use it to negotiate an exit. He had Iron Sky by the left arm with a Colt pressed to the old man's ribs.
The south end of camp went still in the way. That situations went still when they contained a loaded gun and a man who had nothing left to lose by using it. Cole stopped 15 feet away. The two marshals stopped beside him. Seth came around the south corner of the main structure and stopped.