Chapter 3 - Blood on the White Oak Trail
The dust column grew, dark and ragged against the blue rim of the sky.
Chief Nana did not panic. With a single gesture of his hand, the three hundred riders melted back into the pinion pines and broken stone ridges. They did not retreat; they vanished. Within moments, the valley appeared empty once more—save for Tazhi, who slipped behind the rear woodpile of Corvin’s corral, rifle in hand, and Corvin, who walked slowly back toward the porch.
Fourteen riders crested the southern creek bank. At their front rode Marshal Thomas Vance, a man built like a meat barrel, dressed in a black frock coat speckled with trail grime, wearing an ivory-handled Colt .45 low on his right hip. Behind him were the dregs of the territory: scalp hunters, renegades, and hired guns whose faces were scarred by knife fights and cheap whiskey.
They hauled their lathered mounts to a sliding halt before Corvin’s cabin.
"Torne!" Vance bellowed, resting his thick forearms across the pommel of his saddle. "You’re up early for a dirt farmer."
Corvin leaned casually against the porch pillar, his thumb tucked into his belt, close to his holstered Army revolver. "Sun’s up. Chores don't do themselves, Vance. What brings your circus out to the middle of nowhere?"
Vance spat a dark stream of tobacco juice into the dust, directly between Corvin's boots. "An Apache bitch slipped away from my men near the reservation border. She killed two of my deputies and stole government papers. Her tracks led across your southern pasture straight toward your well."
"Didn't see any deputies," Corvin lied coldly. "I saw heat shimmer and prairie dogs."
Vance’s eyes narrowed into slits of porcine malice. He motioned with his head to two of his riders. "Search the barn. Check the root cellar. Burn the haystacks if you have to."
"Touch that barn, Vance, and you’ll leave here strapped over your saddle," Corvin warned, his voice dropping into that quiet, deadly register that stopped men who knew better.
The two riders paused, glancing at the marshal. Vance chuckled, an ugly, wet sound. "Big talk for a homesteader whose nearest neighbor is thirty miles out. You think the law gives a damn about you, Corvin? Out here, my badge is God’s handwriting."
He drew his Colt halfway from the holster. "Where is she?"
From the eastern ridge, a solitary, high-pitched war whoop split the desert stillness like lightning tearing velvet.
Vance’s horse reared, white-eyed with terror. The hired men reached for their carbines, but their hands froze in midair.
Around the entire perimeter of the homestead, along every lip of stone, behind every brush of sage and cedar, rifle barrels caught the morning sun. Three hundred Apache warriors stood silently, arrows notched to cheekbones, Winchester levers pulled down and ready.
Vance’s ruddy face drained of color until he looked like tallow. "Mother of God..." one of the bounty hunters muttered, his hand trembling on his reins.
May you like
Chief Nana walked his horse from the shadow of the barn, stopping ten paces behind Vance.
"You spoke of God's handwriting, Marshal," Corvin said quietly, stepping down off the porch. "Seems like He just rewrote the page."
