Chapter 2 - The Spring That Was Murdered
Before sunrise, the chief led Ethan west.
Isaac came with them, carrying a short rifle and a water vessel. Two older warriors followed at a distance.
The village disappeared behind red stone.
Ethan studied the ground automatically.
Years of scouting had trained him to read dirt the way other men read newspapers.
Horse tracks.
Moccasin marks.
Rabbit trails.
Rain cuts.
Then something bothered him.
Wagon grooves.
Fresh enough to be recent.
“You use wagons?” Ethan asked.
Isaac shook his head.
“No.”
The chief stopped near a wall of broken rock.
Nothing about the place looked like a spring.
That was the point.
Ethan crouched.
Large stones had been piled into what seemed like natural collapse. But desert rock weathered unevenly. These pieces showed pale scars where metal tools had struck them.
He picked up a fragment.
“Somebody blasted this.”
Isaac translated.
The chief answered.
“He heard thunder here.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago. There were no clouds.”
Dynamite.
Ethan moved along the rubble.
Near a crevice he found black residue mixed with sand.
Blasting powder.
Not proof of who had done it.
Proof someone had.
“Why?”
Isaac’s face tightened.
“There is more.”
They climbed above the buried spring.
From the ridge Ethan could see the entire valley.
The village.
The spring he had discovered.
A long natural pass running north and south.
And beyond it—
A faint line of survey stakes.
Ethan squinted.
“Who put those there?”
“White men.”
“How long ago?”
“Two months.”
The chief spoke sharply.
Isaac translated.
“They said the land beyond the ridge had been claimed for mining.”
“Mining what?”
“They did not say.”
Ethan walked toward the nearest stake.
Letters had been burned into the wood.
V.M.C.
His stomach tightened.
Vale Mining Company.
Gideon Vale.
Ethan knew the name.
Every cattleman in southern Arizona knew it.
Vale owned mines, freight wagons, supply contracts and enough politicians to make a poor man wonder whether elections were merely expensive theater.
But Ethan knew Gideon Vale for another reason.
His brother Caleb worked for him.
Ethan touched the branded stake.
Isaac noticed his expression.
“You know this mark.”
“Yes.”
“Then you know who buried the water?”
“No.”
It was too quick an answer.
Isaac heard the uncertainty.
The chief pointed farther north.
They descended into a dry wash where hoofprints remained protected from wind.
Cattle.
Dozens.
Ethan followed the tracks.
Their spacing, direction and occasional drag marks matched tired animals being driven hard.
Then he found something that made his throat close.
A broken piece of leather lay beneath a thorn bush.
He lifted it.
Stamped into the strap were two letters.
EC.
His saddle crew used those straps to mark lead animals in Ethan’s herd.
“These are mine.”
Isaac crouched beside him.
“The cattle were brought here?”
“Yes.”
“Why steal cattle to bury water?”
Ethan stared at the tracks.
“That’s the question.”
A metallic glint caught his eye.
Half buried beneath sand lay a cartridge casing.
Ethan picked it up.
Not unusual.
Then he saw the tiny file mark scratched around the base.
A habit he recognized.
His brother Caleb marked ammunition that way after nearly losing a box of cartridges during a cattle drive years earlier.
One shallow ring.
Ethan remembered teasing him.
You planning to marry those bullets, Cal?
Caleb had answered, At least bullets go where you tell them.
Ethan closed his fist around the casing.
“What is it?” Isaac asked.
“Nothing.”
Isaac studied him.
“That is not nothing.”
Ethan stood.
“My brother marks cartridges like this.”
The chief said something.
Isaac’s translation came slowly.
“He asks whether your brother steals cattle.”
“No.”
“Whether he works for Vale?”
Ethan looked toward the survey stakes.
“Yes.”
The chief nodded once, almost as though Ethan had confirmed something.
That angered him.
“You already suspected him?”
Isaac exchanged words with the chief.
Then answered.
“Not his name.”
“What did you suspect?”
Isaac pointed toward the buried spring.
“A man who came before the blasting.”
“What man?”
“He wore a silver watch.”
Ethan went still.
Caleb owned one silver watch.
Their father had given it to him on his twenty-first birthday.
Isaac continued.
“The chief remembers the engraving.”
Ethan’s mouth went dry.
“What engraving?”
Isaac looked directly at him.
“Two letters.”
The answer arrived before he spoke them.
“C.C.”
Caleb Cole.
Ethan stared at the rubble where a spring had once kept an entire village alive.
For thirteen days he had believed someone stole his cattle.
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Now he faced the possibility that his own brother had used them to hide a crime.
And somewhere beneath those stones, water pressed silently against the earth, waiting for someone to uncover the truth.
