Chapter 2 - Clay Danner Rides Through Smoke
Elias pressed himself against the burned wall.
His cheek stung where splinters had cut it.
Beside him, the Apache woman tested her bruised shoulder and quietly drew the knife from her belt.
“Three men,” she whispered.
“I counted.”
“The one in black?”
“Clay Danner.”
“You know him.”
“Unfortunately.”
Clay’s voice carried through the ruins.
“Come on, Elias. I know you’re there.”
Elias checked his revolver.
Five rounds.
His second revolver had been traded for food three days earlier.
Clay had two riders with rifles and enough cover to make a direct fight stupid.
That had never stopped Elias when he was younger.
It would now.
Clay laughed.
“You still pretending you’re better than me?”
Elias closed his eyes.
Six years earlier.
A bank in Santa Rosa.
Broken glass.
Gun smoke.
Money bags.
Elias on the floor with blood pouring from his neck.
Clay taking both horses.
Clay saying, “Nothing personal.”
Then leaving Elias to hang if the bleeding did not kill him first.
Elias had survived because a widow living behind the bank pressed a kitchen towel against his throat until the doctor came.
He had spent the next six years telling himself survival had made him different.
Sometimes he believed it.
“Elias?”
Clay sounded amused.
“You robbed beside me.”
Elias stood.
The woman caught his sleeve.
“What are you doing?”
“Ending a conversation.”
“That is how you describe being shot?”
“Usually.”
He stepped from cover.
Clay smiled.
“There he is.”
Elias raised his revolver.
Clay did the same.
The other riders aimed rifles.
For several seconds no one moved.
Clay looked at the scar across Elias’s neck.
“That healed ugly.”
“You always did poor work.”
Clay laughed.
“I missed you.”
“I didn’t.”
Clay glanced toward the woman behind the wall.
“Find yourself company?”
Elias’s expression hardened.
“Careful.”
“There’s the old Elias.”
Clay stepped forward.
“You know what I like about you?”
“No.”
“You spend six years pretending you changed, and all I have to do is say the wrong thing.”
Elias’s finger tightened against the trigger.
Clay saw it.
“Do it.”
The woman behind Elias whispered something.
One word.
“Choice.”
Clay suddenly fired.
Elias dove.
The bullet struck burned timber.
He fired once.
Clay rolled behind a water trough.
One rifleman shot.
Dirt jumped beside Elias’s hand.
Elias moved through smoke, circled behind a collapsed shelter and slammed into Clay before the outlaw could stand.
They hit the ground hard.
Clay punched him across the mouth.
Pain exploded through Elias’s split lip.
Elias drove an elbow into Clay’s ribs.
Clay laughed even while fighting.
“That’s him!”
They rolled through dust.
Elias got on top.
His revolver landed against Clay’s chest.
Everything stopped.
Clay looked up.
“Do it.”
Elias saw Santa Rosa.
The money.
His blood.
The widow’s hands.
All the years of imagining this exact moment.
Clay smiled.
“We’re the same.”
Elias remembered the woman’s voice.
Choice.
He lowered the gun.
“No.”
Clay’s smile faltered.
A rifle cocked behind Elias.
He turned.
The Apache woman stood with one of Clay’s riders’ rifles.
The rider lay unconscious nearby, apparently struck with a broken beam.
The second man had fled behind the ruins.
“Move,” she said.
Elias dragged Clay upright.
Clay suddenly drove his head into Elias’s face.
Elias stumbled.
Clay ran.
The remaining rider brought Clay a horse.
They fled through the canyon.
Elias considered shooting.
He did not.
The woman lowered her rifle.
“You let him go.”
“Yes.”
“That may have been foolish.”
“Usually is.”
Blood ran from his lip.
She handed him a strip of clean cloth from an undamaged bundle.
He wiped his mouth.
“What’s your name?”
“Aayoka.”
“Elias Boon.”
“I heard him.”
“Unfortunately.”
Aayoka looked around the burned settlement.
Her control weakened for the first time.
“These homes were attacked yesterday.”
“Clay?”
“He was here.”
“You saw him?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
She walked toward the center of the settlement.
A wagon track cut through the dirt.
“They came looking for something.”
“What?”
Aayoka crouched near a stone foundation.
“The warning marker.”
Elias remembered the spring.
“The one that told me not to drink?”
Aayoka looked sharply at him.
“What did you read?”
“Not much. ‘Do not take’ something.”
She stood.
“That marker was moved.”
“From here?”
“No.”
She looked toward Red Mesa.
“From another place near the spring.”
Elias took out the metal canteen.
Aayoka stared at it.
“You filled that there.”
“Yes.”
“Do not give it to anyone.”
Elias laughed.
“It’s a canteen.”
“No.”
Her seriousness stopped him.
“What do you think it is?”
“Metal.”
“That’s comforting.”
“The water is water.”
“Also comforting.”
Aayoka looked at his scar.
“What did you hear?”
Elias did not answer.
She stepped closer.
“What did it say?”
The air seemed colder.
Elias finally replied.
“You belong to me.”
Aayoka’s face lost color beneath the soot.
That frightened Elias more than the whisper had.
“You’ve heard it?”
“No.”
“But you know it.”
“My mother did.”
Elias waited.
Aayoka looked at the burned shelters instead.
“We need to find the others.”
“Others?”
“Most escaped when the shooting began.”
Relief loosened something inside him.
“Where?”
“If the attackers followed them, nowhere safe.”
She collected ammunition from the unconscious rider.
The man was breathing.
Elias tied his hands.
“What does Clay want?”
Aayoka paused.
“I thought he wanted us gone.”
“You don’t anymore?”
“No.”
She pointed toward the ruins.
“They searched every storage place. Broke floors. Dug beneath one house.”
“For the marker?”
“Or something connected to it.”
Elias looked west.
The spring had saved his life.
Clay had burned a settlement looking for something near it.
Aayoka’s mother had heard the same whisper.
None of that felt accidental.
Then Elias noticed something in the dirt where Clay had fallen.
A brass token.
He picked it up.
DANNER FREIGHT & LAND COMPANY.
Elias stared at the lettering.
“Clay owns a company?”
Aayoka nodded.
“He owns much more than horses now.”
Elias laughed without humor.
“Of course he does.”
Clay had used stolen money better than Elias apparently had.
Aayoka started toward the horses.
“You said he abandoned you.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Money.”
“No.”
Elias looked at her.
Aayoka pointed toward his canteen.
“Why did he come back today?”
Elias stopped.
Clay had not seemed surprised to find him.
He had seemed pleased.
As though Elias’s arrival confirmed something.
Aayoka continued.
“He could have killed you from the ridge.”
“He likes talking.”
“So do you.”
“Fair.”
“He wanted you to step out.”
“Why?”
She looked at the neck scar again.
“I do not know.”
Then the bound rider behind them began laughing.
Elias turned.
The man’s face was swollen.
“What?”
The rider spat blood into the dust.
“Clay said you’d drink.”
Elias went still.
The man smiled.
“Said if the desert got thirsty enough, Elias Boon would always choose water.”
Aayoka slowly looked toward the metal canteen.
Elias felt the spring’s whisper against his ear again.
You belong to me.
Clay had known Elias was coming.
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Worse—
Clay had known exactly where thirst would lead him.
