"'Elias — you asked about Malcolm Reed. He and Silas Whitmore worked the Silver Queen together twenty years ago, partners down to the last share. When the claim played out, Whitmore went into banking and Reed went into politics, and Whitmore's money bought Reed his appointment. Whatever you send to that office, Reed reads first, and Whitmore reads second. — E.'"
The lantern hissed. Nobody spoke for a long moment.
"The commissioner," Caleb said slowly, "is Whitmore's partner."
"Was, is — what's the difference?" Hiram folded his big hands. "The territory won't help us. Crowe knows it. That's why he's been doing arithmetic instead of law. Any complaint we file goes to Reed's desk, and Reed puts it in a drawer, and Whitmore learns our names before the ink's dry."
Elise set the letter down carefully, but her fingers stayed on it, as if letting go would let go of something else. "My father knew," she said quietly. "Two months before he died, he knew the territory was bought. And he kept going up that canyon anyway."
"He wasn't a man who could leave a thing half-done," Hiram said. "Same as you, girl."
"Why didn't you show this to Crowe?" Caleb asked. "He's honest. You said so yourself."
Hiram's laugh was short and humorless. "Crowe is an honest man in a bought county, son. The day he files that letter, Reed has his badge by sundown and Whitmore has his house by Christmas. And then who's left to do anything? No — Elias gave this to me, not to the law, because Elias understood what I understood." He looked at each of them in turn. "The legal road is closed."
Elise's voice was very small. "So the legal road is a cliff."
"The legal road," Hiram said, "is a cliff."
Caleb glanced at the crate. "The mine know its powder's gone?"
Hiram's grin was all teeth. "Signed out for a stope that doesn't exist, on a shift that never worked it. I still do contract powder work up there when the foreman's desperate, and the magazine keeper owes me from the war." The grin faded. "They'll miss it eventually. Best we use it before they do."
---
"What about going over Reed's head?" Caleb said. "The governor. A federal marshal."
Hiram shook his head before Caleb finished. "The water commission is territorial business — the governor appointed Reed himself, on Whitmore's recommendation, with Whitmore's money behind the campaign that put the governor in the chair. You think you're the first man to think of riding to Prescott?" He leaned forward. "Toller tried. Sam Toller rode out two years ago with a petition signed by forty families. He got as far as the stage depot at Wickenburg before three of Rafe's men 'escorted' him home. He never filed a thing after that, and he died last winter with his well dry and his pride broke."
"And it would take months," Elise added, thinking it through the way her father would have. "Even if someone listened. Months of hearings, months of Whitmore's lawyers. The town doesn't have months. The Abernathy children don't have months."
Caleb looked at the dynamite crate. At Hiram's scarred hands. At Elise's set jaw.
"Then we break the dam ourselves," he said.
It wasn't a question, and nobody treated it like one. Elise didn't flinch. Hiram nodded once, slow, like a man hearing a thing he'd already decided.
"You've thought about how," Caleb said. It wasn't a question either.
Hiram leaned forward, and the lantern light carved his face into planes of shadow. "Twenty years a powder man, Caleb. I know that dam. Timber crib — logs pinned and packed with rock, the way they built them in the mining camps. Strong against the water pushing on it. Weak where the cribbing meets the bedrock at the base." He tapped the table with one blunt finger. "Twelve sticks. We set them at the toe of the crib, both ends and the middle, tamped with mud. The charges crack the cribbing. The water does the rest. A reservoir that size doesn't leak, son. It tears."
"When?"
"New moon." Hiram glanced at Elise. "Three nights. No moon, and no stars worth naming if the clouds hold. We go in dark."
"Guards," Elise said. "Rafe keeps men up there."
"Two, most nights. Sometimes three." Hiram's mouth tightened. "We go quiet or we don't go. That's where the mare comes in."
"Clover," Caleb said.
"Elias's mare knows that trail better than any living soul," Hiram said. "She won't whinny at strangers — never did, even as a filly. She'll carry you up in the dark without putting a foot wrong, and she'll stand quiet while the world ends around her." He looked at Caleb. "You ride her. Elise knows the canyon. I know the powder."
Elise's hand found Caleb's wrist across the table, and her grip was hard enough to hurt. "And if we're caught?"
"Then we're caught," Hiram said simply. "But we won't be."
---
Caleb scouted the dam at dusk the next day, alone, belly-down on a granite shelf a quarter mile off with Hiram's old field glasses.
The dam sat in the throat of Hollow Canyon like a secret kept too long — timber cribwork dark with creosote, packed with rock, holding back a sheet of water so still it threw the cliffs back at the sky. Whitmore's private lake. While Copper Creek choked, this water lay fat and idle behind logs.
Two guards, just like Hiram said. They kept a fire going near the spillway gate and took turns walking the crest — bored men, careless men, the kind who'd been posted so long they'd forgotten why. A dog slept by the fire, ears twitching at dreams. Caleb made a note of the dog the way a man notes a loaded gun on a table: a problem Hiram would have to solve, because a barking dog ended quiet plans.
The reservoir itself was obscene. It stretched back into the canyon's throat, a sheet of water so still it threw the cliffs back at the sky — millions of gallons, lying fat and idle behind creosoted logs while Copper Creek's children drank mud. Caleb felt his jaw tighten until it ached.