Chapter 4 - The Mark of the Mountain Clan
Marshal Vance looked like a man standing on a trapdoor with the rope tight around his neck. The arrogance that had carried him across the territory collapsed under the iron gaze of Chief Nana’s frontline riflemen.
"Chief Nana," Vance stammered, his fingers twitching away from his holster. "This is sovereign U.S. territory. You’re off the reservation. The 6th Cavalry has orders to shoot on sight."
"The 6th Cavalry is thirty miles north, choking on dust," Nana answered smoothly. "And you, Marshal, are surrounded by thirty arrows for every drop of blood in your fat body. Turn your horses around. If your shadow falls upon this valley again, we will leave your skin hanging from the telephone poles along the rail line."
Vance glared at Corvin, his eyes burning with venom. "You’re a dead man, Torne. You hear me? You’ve sided with savages against your own blood. When the army hears of this, you’ll hang from the courthouse gallows in Dry Creek."
"Rides out, Vance," Corvin answered, leveling his Winchester carbine directly at the center of the marshal's chest. "Before I decide to save the territory the cost of the rope."
With a ragged curse, Vance wrenched his horse around. The fourteen deputies dug their spurs into their exhausted mounts, bolting south in a frantic scramble of loose shale and panicked shouts.
Corvin let out a long breath, lowering the rifle. His knuckles were bone-white. He turned to Nana, but the chief was already looking toward the woman.
Tazhi stepped out from the shadow of the woodpile. She unrolled a strip of oiled buckskin she had carried concealed against her ribs. Inside lay a set of surveyor's deeds bearing the gold seal of the United States Department of the Interior.
"This is what Vance was willing to slaughter an entire camp for," Tazhi said, spreading the maps on the rough-hewn table of Corvin’s porch.
Corvin leaned in, his eyes widening. Marked across the yellowed parchment were boundary lines—not just for the reservation, but encompassing his own valley, the northern aquifers, and an immense tract of land rich with untouched silver deposits. Attached to the deed was a forged transfer document naming Thomas Vance and an eastern mining syndicate as the sole beneficiaries, dated three days in the future.
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"They intend to drive our people into the desert wastes and dynamite the springs," Tazhi explained, her eyes flashing like obsidian. "And your homestead sits directly above the central water artery. You were never going to keep this land, rancher. They were going to kill you next month and claim the Apache did it."
Corvin touched the deed, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. The solitude he had guarded with his life had been a bullseye on his back all along.
