Chapter 3 - The Woman From the NewspaperNora Hale was thirty-one, sharp-eyed and practical, wearing trousers beneath a long brown coat in a town where half the men already distrusted her for running a newspaper.
She unlocked Cole’s cell.
He did not move.
“How do you know my father’s watch?”
“Because Jacob Harper came to my father with it sixteen years ago.”
Cole stared.
“What?”
“Move.”
She handed him a revolver.
He refused it.
“I want answers.”
“You can ask them after you aren’t hanging from Bell’s gallows.”
“Bell said morning.”
“He lied.”
That was enough.
Cole followed.
Nora led him through a records room into an alley.
They remained in shadow.
Three hundred riders ringed the town beyond the buildings.
Lanterns flickered like stars across the desert.
“What do they want?” Cole asked.
“The truth.”
“Rourke murdered twelve people.”
Nora looked at him.
“Did he?”
Cole showed irritation.
“I saw the poster.”
“Printed where?”
“What?”
“Look at the typeface.”
“The sheriff took it.”
“I already saw one.”
She pointed toward the Gazette office.
“My press printed those posters.”
Cole stared.
“You printed them?”
“My father did.”
“When?”
“Sixteen years ago.”
“After the massacre?”
Nora paused.
“Three days before it.”
Cole stopped walking.
“That’s impossible.”
“Exactly.”
A wanted poster accusing Silas Rourke of a massacre existed before the massacre happened.
Cole’s mouth went dry.
“Who ordered it?”
“My father never told me.”
“Convenient.”
“He died regretting it.”
“Everybody’s dead when answers get difficult.”
Nora slapped him.
Cole stared.
She did not apologize.
“My father spent twelve years drinking himself to death because of what happened at Red Mesa. Don’t make grief into evidence.”
Cole rubbed his jaw.
“Fair enough.”
They moved.
At the Gazette office, Nora lit one shaded lamp.
Old newspaper bundles covered shelves.
She pulled a box labeled 1881.
Red Mesa had happened in October of that year.
Nora found the issue printed the day after.
Headline:
ROURKE GANG SLAUGHTERS RED MESA SETTLERS
Cole read.
Twelve dead.
Homes burned.
Silas Rourke accused.
Territorial warrants issued.
“How did they know it was Rourke?”
“That’s the problem.”
The article cited an eyewitness.
Cole scanned.
“Name?”
“Anonymous.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does when every original witness statement disappeared.”
Cole looked toward the saddlebag, which was not there.
“Bell has everything.”
“Not everything.”
Nora opened a drawer.
She removed another copy of Silas’s wanted poster.
Then placed a printing ledger beside it.
The poster order was dated October 11.
The massacre occurred October 14.
Cole felt the mystery deepen.
“Why keep this?”
“My father did.”
“Why?”
“Insurance.”
“Against who?”
Nora looked out the window toward the distant riders.
“Gideon Vale.”
Cole knew the name.
Everybody in Arizona did.
Railroad investor.
Mining owner.
Land baron.
Gideon Vale controlled freight routes from Tucson north toward Prescott and owned interests in three silver mines.
“What does Vale have to do with Red Mesa?”
“Almost everything around here eventually has something to do with Vale.”
Nora turned a map toward Cole.
Red Mesa lay on a corridor between Vale’s silver holdings and the future railroad line.
“The settlers refused to sell.”
“So he murdered them?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
“I print facts.”
“You broke me out of jail.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Cole almost smiled.
Then the floorboards creaked downstairs.
Nora extinguished the lamp.
Voices.
Deputies.
“Search everything.”
Sheriff Bell.
Cole and Nora moved toward the rear stairs.
Then Bell said:
“The watch isn’t opening.”
Another man replied.
“Force it.”
Cole froze.
Bell:
“Vale said not to damage it.”
Cole looked at Nora.
There it was.
Gideon Vale.
Nora leaned toward the floor.
The second man asked:
“What’s inside?”
Bell answered:
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t still be sheriff.”
Footsteps approached the stairs.
Nora grabbed Cole.
They climbed through the rear window onto the awning.
From there they dropped into an alley.
Cole whispered:
“We need the saddlebag.”
Nora shook her head.
“We need you alive first.”
A gunshot cracked from the edge of town.
Then another.
Not aimed at them.
Signal shots.
Silas Rourke’s voice rolled through the darkness.
“ONE HOUR, BELL!”
Cole looked toward the ridge.
Nora said:
“You’re going to meet him.”
“The murderer?”
“The man your father spent sixteen years trying to clear.”
Cole froze.
“My father?”
Nora pulled something from her pocket.
A yellowed letter.
Jacob Harper’s handwriting.
Cole recognized it instantly.
The first line:
Silas Rourke did not murder those families at Red Mesa.
Cole stopped breathing.
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The second line was worse.
I helped the men who did.
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