Chapter 6 - Shadows on the Perimeter
They left Ocotillo Flats twenty minutes after dark without the flour. Ethan had bought only the cartridges, paying with two silver dollars he had carried in his boot since the winter drive of eighty-one.
They didn't take the main road back to the ranch. Instead, Ethan led the sorrel through the bed of the dry wash, where the heavy sand muffled the hoofbeats and the ironwood branches clawed at their faces like blind hands.
"You knew your father was dead," Ethan said over his shoulder, his voice barely louder than the creak of the saddle leather.
Nahimana rode three feet behind him, her hands resting flat on the pommel. "I felt the smoke three nights ago. When lightning took my breath as a child, it left a thread between his chest and mine. When the stake went in, the thread snapped."
"Why didn't you tell me about the survey?"
"Would you have kept me on your floor if you knew the cattle company wanted my skin?" she countered. Her voice was sharp, but Ethan heard the strain in it—the thin, brittle pitch of a woman who had been running since she was nine years old and was running out of canyon to hide in. "You would have traded me to Vogel for twenty sacks of grain and a new pair of boots."
"I don't sell people," Ethan said, pulling the bay up on a low bench of limestone. He looked back toward the flats.
A mile to the west, three lanterns moved in an uneven triangle through the brush. Riders. They weren't using the wagon trail; they were quartering the ground like bird dogs looking for quail.
"They have the tracker," Nahimana whispered, leaning close to Ethan’s stirrup. "The Yaqui they call El Mudo. He doesn't need tracks. He smells the sheep fat you use to grease your saddle leathers."
Ethan drew his Winchester from the scabbard. The lever clicked twice—one to throw the round, once to seat it. The steel was cold against his palm.
"My cabin is forty minutes north," Ethan said. "If we go there, they trap us between the creek and the limestone bluff. There's no way out but through the chimney."
"There is the old copper adit," she said.
Ethan stared at her through the dark. "The Santa Rita mine? That tunnel collapsed thirty years ago. The roof is rotten pine and loose shale. A sneeze would bring fifty tons of mountain down on your head."
"The roof fell for the wagons," Nahimana said, her voice dropping into that strange, terrifying stillness she had held the first night by his hearth. "Not for people who can crawl. The paper my father took from the Mexican governor isn't on a skin, Ethan Miller. The brand on my back isn't a map of the land. It’s an assay mark. The gold isn't in the creek. It’s behind the cave-in."
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The lanterns behind them stopped. A low whistle, like the cry of a nightjar, cut through the mesquite.
"They found the sand we kicked up," Ethan muttered. "Ride. Don't look back, and if your horse goes down, don't scream. Just run for the rocks."
