Chapter 6 - The Room Beneath the Chapel
Kalisa recognized the key before Caleb did.
“Mission San Aurelio.”
“What?”
“The old chapel near Red Mesa.”
Caleb turned the brass key in his fingers.
“How do you know?”
“The priest used keys like this. My brother worked there sometimes.”
The mission had been abandoned after a fever outbreak four years earlier.
They rode south before noon.
Caleb disliked traveling beside Kalisa.
Not because she frightened him.
Because she made silence difficult.
Mary had also done that.
Two hours into the ride, Kalisa asked, “Did you love her?”
Caleb gave her a hard look.
“What kind of question is that?”
“A simple one.”
“Yes.”
“Then why did she fear telling you?”
Caleb looked ahead.
“Because I hated Apache before she died.”
Kalisa waited.
Caleb exhaled.
“My father was killed when I was fourteen. Wagon attack.”
“Apache?”
“That's what everyone said.”
“You saw?”
“No.”
The answer unsettled him.
Kalisa said nothing.
At San Aurelio, half the roof had collapsed.
Dust covered the altar.
Behind the sacristy they found a locked storage door.
The key fit.
Inside stood shelves of ruined books and broken furniture.
Nothing else.
Caleb cursed.
Kalisa examined the floor.
“There.”
A plank showed less dust around its edge.
They lifted it.
Stone steps descended into darkness.
Caleb lit a lantern.
The chamber below was small and cool.
A table stood against one wall.
On it were three boxes.
The first held letters.
The second held maps.
The third held a leather-bound journal.
Kalisa picked it up.
“My father's writing.”
Caleb opened the letters.
Some were Mary's.
Others came from a Captain Elias Ward at Fort Lyman.
The dates began six months before Mary's death.
Ward wrote that military ammunition was disappearing from inventory.
He suspected Quartermaster Lieutenant Daniel Voss.
Voss later resigned.
Caleb remembered the name.
Voss had become Reeves Hargrove's cattle manager.
“Damn.”
Kalisa looked up.
Caleb handed her the letter.
She read.
Another document listed incidents near water sources.
Burned wagons.
Shot livestock.
Fenced springs.
Each incident was blamed alternately on settlers or Apache groups.
Mary had drawn lines between locations.
All sat along the same north-south corridor.
Caleb understood.
“Rail survey.”
Kalisa nodded.
A final map showed planned sidings and a proposed station.
The Whitlock ranch sat at its center.
Caleb's well was marked in blue.
His stomach tightened.
“They wanted the ranch.”
“Mary knew.”
“Then why didn't Reeves just buy it?”
“Would you have sold?”
“No.”
“Would Mary?”
“No.”
Kalisa looked around.
“Then fear makes land cheaper.”
Caleb stared at the papers.
Violence had not been the goal.
Displacement had.
Fear had been a business strategy.
Kalisa opened Tokala's journal.
She translated slowly.
“My father says Mary came here the morning before she died.”
“What for?”
“She believed she had enough evidence to take to a territorial judge.”
Caleb leaned closer.
Kalisa continued.
“Nantan was to ride with her.”
“Your brother.”
“Yes.”
Her voice changed.
“He never came home.”
Caleb had assumed Nantan died in the same war.
Now he realized how vague that story had been.
“What happened?”
“My father found his horse.”
“And Nantan?”
“Nothing.”
Kalisa turned a page.
She stopped.
“What?”
She held the journal closer to the lantern.
“My father wrote that someone else knew about this room.”
“Who?”
Before she could answer, noise came from above.
A boot scraped stone.
Caleb extinguished the lantern.
Darkness swallowed them.
A man's voice drifted down the stairway.
“Mr. Hargrove said burn everything.”
Kalisa's hand found Caleb's arm.
Another voice answered.
“What if they're inside?”
A match struck.
Caleb smelled kerosene.
He whispered, “Take the journal.”
“What about the letters?”
“As many as you can carry.”
Above them, something shattered.
Flame spread across the wooden floor.
Smoke began pouring down the stairs.
Caleb searched the chamber walls.
No second door.
Then Kalisa found a narrow opening behind the shelves.
“Here.”
They pushed through.
A dirt tunnel descended toward the old burial yard.
Behind them fire roared.
Caleb crawled after Kalisa with Mary's letters pressed beneath his shirt.
At the far end, moonlight appeared through a broken stone vent.
They emerged among crumbling graves.
The chapel roof caught fire behind them.
Kalisa looked at the journal.
“I saw the name.”
“Whose?”
She stared at Caleb.
“The man my father said knew about the room.”
Caleb waited.
Kalisa's next words chilled him.
“Silas Boone.”
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And suddenly the man who had tried to shoot Caleb was no longer merely Reeves Hargrove's loyal foreman.
He had been part of Mary's secret five years earlier.
