Chapter 13 - When the Canyon Burns Red
The bell tower burned until dawn.
The adobe walls held, but the wooden roof of the mission nave crashed inward at four in the morning, sending a pillar of sparks five hundred feet into the desert sky.
Ethan and Nahimana sat on the well curb, thirty feet from where Luke Vogel lay handcuffed to the axle of his own freight wagon. The storekeeper’s face was gray, his shattered leg wrapped in a dirty grain sack that had turned brown with dried blood.
A troop of the Sixth Cavalry rode in from Fort Lowell just as the sky behind the Rincon peaks was turning from plum to brass.
Captain Henry Vance, a forty-year-old veteran with three campaign ribbons pinned to his blue coat, swung down from his horse and looked at the smoking ruins of the oldest mission in the territory.
"Miller," Vance said, his glove resting on the pommel of his saber. "You want to tell me why the best Catholic church between Santa Fe and the coast looks like a charcoal kiln?"
Ethan didn't get up. He pointed with his thumb toward the wagon where Vogel was tied.
"Ask the storekeeper," Ethan said. "He’s got thirty years of Mexican grant papers in his boot, and Silas Kane’s body is up in that choir loft with a pocket full of Federal assay stamps."
Captain Vance looked at Nahimana. She had washed her face in the well water, but she hadn't covered her shoulder. The brand was there for anyone to see—not a mark of shame, but an indictment stamped in human flesh.
"Is that Chaska’s girl?" the Captain asked softly.
"Her name is Nahimana," Ethan said, rising to his full height. His legs were shaking with exhaustion, but his eyes were clear, harder than the granite blocks of the mission floor. "And she owns every foot of land from this well to the top of the Santa Catalinas. If you want to move her off, Captain, you'd better bring more than one troop of horse."
May you like
Vance looked from the rancher to the woman, then at the dead men being laid out under the cottonwood trees by his troopers. He slowly pulled off his leather gauntlets and shoved them into his belt.
"The Army doesn't enforce cattle company evictions without an order from the Department of the Interior, Miller," Vance said. "And after what we found at Vogel’s warehouse in town three hours ago, I don't think there’s a company left to file the petition."
