Chapter 4 - Red Knife Canyon
Eli slept badly.
Near midnight he stepped outside and found Chaska sitting on the porch.
The desert had cooled.
Stars covered the sky.
“You should sleep,” she said.
“So should you.”
“I did.”
“For ten minutes?”
“Enough.”
He sat several feet away.
For a while they listened to Calico shift inside the corral.
Finally Eli said, “Tell me everything about that day.”
Chaska looked toward the dark outline of Red Knife Canyon.
“You remember most of it.”
“I remember what I saw.”
“That isn't the same thing.”
Ten years earlier, the heat had been nearly identical.
Chaska had been twenty-two.
Waya was twenty-one.
Serina was only nineteen.
They had left their families two mornings earlier with an older relative and two pack animals, traveling toward a trading settlement where hides and beadwork could be exchanged for flour, iron tools, coffee, cloth, and medicine.
They never reached it.
Near Red Knife Canyon, they encountered five men camped beside a newly placed survey stake.
The men assumed the women did not understand English.
They were wrong.
Chaska understood enough.
The riders were discussing a spring.
Not just any water source.
A permanent one hidden deep inside the canyon.
One man complained that Thomas Mercer had refused to cooperate.
Another said Thomas would cooperate once his younger brother “fixed the papers.”
Eli's stomach tightened.
“You heard Gideon's name?”
“Not then.”
Chaska continued.
The women tried to leave quietly.
One rider spotted them watching.
The men followed.
At first the women believed the pursuit was meant only to frighten them away.
Then Waya saw one man drawing his bow.
They abandoned their pack animals and ran toward the open desert because loose rock made mounted pursuit difficult.
That was when Eli appeared on the ridge.
Eli remembered it vividly.
Three figures running.
Five riders behind them.
Dust.
Shouting.
He had not thought.
He had simply acted.
“GET TO THE CANYON!”
He rode Calico straight between the women and the pursuers.
One young woman—Serina—caught his arm.
Eli hauled her onto the mare behind him.
Waya and Chaska ran toward the canyon entrance while Eli deliberately circled wide.
The pursuing riders changed direction.
They followed him.
“That was stupid,” Waya said from the doorway.
Eli turned.
She had awakened.
“You're welcome.”
“It was brave. Brave and stupid often share a saddle.”
Despite himself, Eli laughed once.
Chaska continued.
Eli knew Red Knife Canyon better than the riders.
Calico was young and fast.
He led them into a narrow passage where the walls closed tightly enough that only one horse could pass at a time.
At the first fork he sent Serina scrambling up a rocky shelf.
Then he rode deeper.
The pursuers followed him for nearly an hour.
He escaped by climbing a steep wash where two of their heavier horses could not follow.
By the time Eli returned, exhausted, the three women were together again.
He had tipped his hat.
Then ridden away.
“What you don't remember,” Chaska said, “is what Serina found while she waited.”
Serina had hidden beside a pile of stones near the survey camp.
One of the pursuers had dropped something while turning his horse.
The brass marker.
She kept it.
“Why?”
Serina answered from inside.
“Because I heard them arguing about it.”
She came onto the porch.
“One said it proved where the spring was. Another said nobody could see it until Thomas Mercer signed.”
Eli stared at her.
“My father.”
“Yes.”
“Did they say who they worked for?”
“No.”
“Why didn't you take this to him?”
Chaska looked away.
“We tried.”
That surprised him.
“After we returned home, our families were afraid the riders would come looking. We stayed away from the canyon for months.”
The following spring, an older relative traveled to find Thomas Mercer.
He returned with news that Thomas was dead.
“So you stopped?”
“No.”
Chaska smiled faintly.
“You are beginning to understand why we took ten years.”
Finding Eli was far harder than expected.
Thomas Mercer had two male relatives in the region.
Gideon.
And Eli.
But traders knew Gideon.
Almost nobody knew Eli.
Eli avoided towns.
He changed cattle buyers repeatedly.
He did not use his full first name.
When asked, he called himself Mercer or simply Eli.
The women searched intermittently while building lives of their own.
Then three years ago, Serina saw the same Mercer mark on a crate at a trading post.
The crate belonged to Gideon's mercantile operation.
They began watching his business.
A pattern emerged.
Gideon was buying land around the canyon through other names.
Waya discovered San Aurelio Land and Livestock Company.
Then, that summer, they learned San Aurelio was attempting to purchase the final independent parcel at the canyon entrance.
Eli's ranch.
“That was when we knew where to find you,” Chaska said.
Eli rubbed his hands together slowly.
“Why does the spring matter so much?”
Waya stepped onto the porch.
“Because whoever controls that canyon controls water for every route between here and the western mesas during dry months.”
“That's business.”
“It is more than business.”
Chaska's gaze hardened.
“Families have used those routes longer than any deed in the county courthouse has existed.”
Eli heard no accusation in her voice.
Only fact.
“And San Aurelio?”
“They intend to close the passage.”
“How do you know?”
Serina reached into the satchel and removed a small folded paper.
“A freight agent in Socorro was paid to move fencing material west.”
She handed it to Eli.
“Destination?”
He read.
MERCER NORTH PASS.
His own land.
Three miles of wire.
Two wagonloads of posts.
Scheduled delivery:
September 5.
Less than three weeks away.
Eli looked back toward the house.
The sale agreement transferred possession September 1.
Gideon had insisted Eli sign immediately.
The timing was no coincidence.
Chaska stood.
“We didn't come because of what happened ten years ago.”
Eli looked at her.
“Not entirely.”
“No.”
She faced Red Knife Canyon.
“We came because the thing you stopped that day never really ended.”
A faint orange glow appeared beyond the eastern ridge.
Morning.
Eli realized he had spent the whole night hearing the first truthful account of a story he thought belonged to his past.
Chaska descended the porch steps.
“There is one more thing you should know before your uncle returns.”
Eli followed.
She stopped beside Calico.
“The man leading those riders ten years ago wore a silver watch chain.”
“So?”
“Yesterday, when Gideon reached for the brass marker…”
She looked directly at him.
“I saw the same chain.”
Eli's pulse changed.
“Lots of men own silver chains.”
“Yes.”
Chaska's voice remained calm.
“But this one has a broken black stone set into the clasp.”
Eli knew that clasp.
He had seen it at every Christmas dinner of his childhood.
It had belonged to Gideon's father.
Then Gideon.
Eli turned toward the road.
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His uncle had not merely known about the canyon.
He might have been there.
