Chapter 20 - Arrested
Sheriff Cole entered with twelve deputies.
He surveyed the damaged cabin, armed Apache riders, wounded Voss, bound Pike, and Rourke holding a rifle.
His expression suggested the outcome had already been decided.
“Drop your weapons.”
Nobody moved.
Cole looked at Eli.
“Mr. Crane.”
Eli lowered his rifle first.
Tala stared at him.
He nodded.
Slowly she lowered hers.
The others followed.
Pike stood.
Cole immediately crossed to him.
“Mr. Pike.”
Not prisoner.
Not suspect.
Mr. Pike.
Eli noticed.
Pike rubbed his wrists.
“These people attempted robbery and murder.”
Voss laughed from behind the table.
Cole looked startled to see him.
“Harlan?”
“Don’t sound concerned.”
Cole’s eyes went to the register pages.
Pike moved faster.
He picked them up.
Eli stepped forward.
Two deputies aimed rifles.
Pike smiled.
“Evidence.”
“Yes,” Eli said. “Against you.”
Cole glanced at the pages.
“I’ll take custody.”
“No,” Thomas said.
Cole looked at him.
Thomas was still technically an attorney in good standing.
“These documents concern federal land fraud. You have no jurisdiction to destroy them.”
“I said custody.”
Thomas laughed bitterly.
“You mean Pike’s fireplace.”
Cole’s face hardened.
“Arrest him.”
Deputies seized Thomas.
Daniel stepped forward.
Another rifle pointed at him.
Rebecca’s husband stopped.
He had finally learned something about reckless courage.
Choose the moment.
Cole ordered Eli, Daniel, Thomas, Rourke, and Voss detained.
Then he looked at Tala and Nantan.
“What about the Indians?”
Tala’s expression became stone.
Eli answered.
“They are witnesses.”
Cole looked at Pike.
Pike said, “They are wanted.”
“On what charge?”
Pike smiled.
“Horse theft.”
Tala laughed once.
Even Cole looked uncomfortable.
The lie was too obvious.
But law did not need believable lies when power controlled the jail.
Nantan spoke to the riders outside.
They began shifting positions.
Cole heard.
“If one weapon is raised, people die.”
Eli looked at Tala.
“No.”
She hated it.
But she told her people to stand down.
They were taken to Tucson.
Not in chains.
That would have created questions.
Instead Cole described everyone as “material witnesses.”
Rosa hid Mira, Rebecca, and Samuel before deputies reached the city.
That mattered.
Pike did not know where they were.
In jail, Eli shared a cell with Daniel.
Thomas and Rourke occupied another.
Voss received a private room upstairs because money still had privileges even while wounded.
Eli sat against the wall.
Daniel paced.
“You knew this would happen?”
“No.”
“You lowered the rifle.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because twelve deputies and thirty Apache riders fighting in my yard would give Pike exactly the story he wants.”
Daniel stopped.
The old Eli might have fought.
Sarah had known that.
The new Eli was learning that restraint could be a weapon.
Hours later Thomas called through the bars.
“We need outside evidence.”
Eli looked toward him.
“Bank box is compromised.”
“Sarah’s notebook?”
“Rosa has it.”
Good.
The index remained free.
Nantan and Tala were not jailed with them.
Cole had placed them under guard at a boarding house, afraid a jail cell would provoke conflict.
Also good.
Rourke lay on his cot.
“Pike will move them tonight.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s what I’d do.”
Daniel looked at Eli.
“Comforting.”
Rourke shrugged.
Eli asked, “Where?”
“Red Mesa. Force them to draw the spring route.”
Thomas said, “Then kill them.”
Silence.
Eli stood.
“We get out.”
Daniel laughed weakly.
“Excellent plan.”
Eli walked to the bars.
The deputy on duty was young.
Eli recognized him.
“Ben?”
The deputy turned.
Benjamin Lowell.
Son of a rancher whose property appeared in Sarah’s notebook.
Ben frowned.
“Mr. Crane.”
“Your father still own Lowell Ranch?”
The young man’s face hardened.
“No.”
“Voss?”
“Yes.”
Eli nodded.
“You know why your well failed?”
Ben stared.
Eli told him.
Not everything.
Just enough.
The altered survey.
The payment.
The foreclosure.
Ben said, “You’re lying.”
Eli gave him the notebook reference from memory.
“L-12. Spring diversion. Seventy dollars paid to a ditch crew. Three hundred to the clerk who certified drought loss.”
Ben’s face changed.
“My father killed himself after losing that ranch.”
Daniel looked away.
Eli gripped the bars.
“Then decide whether you work for the law or the men who bought it.”
Ben left without answering.
Two hours passed.
Night came.
Footsteps.
Keys.
Ben returned.
He unlocked the cell.
Daniel stood.
“Why?”
Ben’s eyes were wet with rage.
“My mother kept every paper.”
He opened Thomas’s cell too.
Then Rourke’s.
Rourke smiled.
“Deputy, I’m beginning to like—”
Ben pointed a revolver at him.
“You I don’t trust.”
“Healthy.”
Eli asked about Voss.
Ben shook his head.
“Gone.”
“Pike?”
“Gone.”
“Tala and Nantan?”
Ben’s face tightened.
“Taken an hour ago.”
Eli’s heart dropped.
“Where?”
Ben handed him a horse requisition sheet.
Destination:
RED MESA.
And beneath it, another name.
MIRA — FEMALE PRISONER — RECOVERED FROM ÁLVAREZ PROPERTY.
Eli stared at the line.
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Pike had found Rosa.
And now he had both sisters.
