Chapter 7 - The Chief’s Brother
Jonas Gray did not deny working with Gideon Vale.
He seemed almost proud.
“Vale brings rails,” he said. “Trade. Guns. Doctors. Money.”
Matthew answered:
“And takes water.”
“Water can be managed.”
“By the man controlling the pumps?”
Jonas ignored him.
He looked at Elias.
“You stole our council ledger.”
“I copied it.”
“So you admit treason.”
“I exposed payments.”
“You exposed negotiations you did not understand.”
Elias’s anger rose.
“I understood your name beside Vale’s money.”
Jonas looked toward Noah.
Sarah moved closer to her son.
“You will not involve him.”
Jonas smiled.
“He is already involved.”
He pointed toward Hale’s notebook.
“Give me that.”
“No.”
“Then Vale takes the Carter property in three days and destroys every record inside it.”
Sarah said:
“Federal survey books survived.”
Jonas’s smile weakened.
He had not known.
Matthew saw it.
“You never found the chest.”
Jonas remained silent.
“Vale lied to you,” Matthew continued.
“He promised the treaty roll was enough.”
“Be careful.”
“No.”
Matthew took one step forward.
“You sold our council meetings because you believed he needed us.”
Jonas’s eyes flashed.
“He does.”
Matthew shook his head.
“He needs the spring.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
Matthew’s voice became fierce.
“You have mistaken being useful to a rich man for being powerful.”
The words hit.
Jonas’s riders shifted uneasily.
Some looked at one another.
Elias noticed.
“Did Vale tell you the Carter spring and Red Willow spring are connected?”
Jonas frowned.
“Of course.”
“Did he tell you the pumping estimate?”
Silence.
Elias pulled out Benjamin’s survey copy.
“At full operation, their mine drops our spring flow by sixty percent in five years.”
Several riders reacted.
Jonas looked at the paper.
“Lies.”
“Arthur Hale’s measurements.”
“Hale worked for settlers.”
“He worked for the territorial government.”
Matthew said:
“Read it.”
Jonas refused.
That refusal mattered more than an argument.
One of his riders asked:
“Uncle, what does it say?”
Jonas snapped something in his own language.
The rider quieted.
But doubt remained.
Sarah suddenly understood.
The five hundred riders had been overwhelming, but they had never been five hundred identical minds.
They were families.
Factions.
Young men obeying council orders.
Men loyal to Matthew.
Men influenced by Jonas.
Some believed Elias stole sacred or political records.
Others may have been trying to reach him before Jonas’s allies did.
Elias whispered to Sarah:
“That’s why I ran.”
“You thought your uncle would kill you?”
“I knew some riders were his.”
“And your father?”
“He ordered me captured alive.”
Sarah glared.
“You could have mentioned that before my son thought he’d saved you from execution.”
“I know.”
“You are going to spend years saying that.”
“If I’m lucky.”
Jonas finally dismounted.
“Enough.”
He approached Noah.
Sarah raised the shotgun.
Jonas stopped.
“The boy has memorized the remaining marker?”
Noah answered himself.
“Yes.”
Sarah looked at him.
Noah continued.
“And I already found it.”
Jonas stared.
Noah held up an empty hand.
“I don’t have the diary.”
Elias had quietly passed it to one of Matthew’s riders minutes earlier.
Jonas realized.
He looked around.
“Which one?”
No one answered.
Now the evidence was distributed.
Benjamin’s method again.
Jonas’s leverage evaporated.
Then gunfire sounded from the eastern ridge.
Not warning shots.
Everyone dropped.
A rider fell from his horse, wounded in the leg.
White gunmen appeared.
Vale’s men.
Jonas stared.
“They weren’t supposed to come.”
Matthew looked at him.
“You told him where we were.”
“To negotiate.”
“No.”
Matthew drew his rifle.
“You told him enough to kill us all.”
Vale’s hired men opened fire.
Jonas’s riders instinctively joined Matthew’s in taking cover.
Political factions vanished under shared danger.
Sarah pulled Noah behind a stone wall.
Elias crawled toward them.
“You two ride south.”
Sarah shook her head.
“No secret heroics.”
“This isn’t heroics.”
“Good. Then come too.”
Matthew shouted orders.
His riders moved in disciplined groups.
Jonas stared at the ridge.
Something inside him broke.
Vale had betrayed him.
Not ideologically.
Personally.
That was sometimes what finally made people see what warnings could not.
Jonas raised his rifle.
He fired toward Vale’s gunmen.
Then shouted to his men:
“Cover the boy!”
Sarah stared.
Minutes earlier Jonas had demanded Noah.
Now he was protecting him.
Not redemption.
Survival.
Maybe the first step.
The gunfight ended when Vale’s men withdrew rather than face a united force.
One man was captured.
He carried written instructions.
Signed by Caleb Voss.
RECOVER HALE DIARY. ELIMINATE ELIAS GRAY IF NECESSARY. NO WITNESSES.
Jonas read it.
His face hardened.
Matthew said:
“You sold him names.”
Jonas looked at the wounded rider.
“He sold us graves.”
Then Noah asked:
“Where’s the treaty?”
Everyone turned toward the prisoner.
The man shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Sarah cocked the shotgun.
He spoke faster.
“Voss took it to Vale!”
“Where?”
“Vale’s private vault.”
Jonas laughed bitterly.
“Then we know where we go next.”
Matthew looked at him.
“You are not leading anything.”
Jonas accepted the rebuke.
“For once, brother, I wasn’t suggesting I should.”
The captured orders gave them what Benjamin never had:
Direct evidence linking Vale’s agent to violence.
But to stop the foreclosure permanently, they still needed the treaty.
And Gideon Vale now knew they had Hale’s survey diary.
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The clock was running.
Two days remained before Sarah lost the homestead.
