"Keep your hands right where I can see 'em," the corporal ordered, his voice losing its arrogance. "Jenkins, go get Lieutenant Reynolds. Move!"
Five minutes later, Ethan was being escorted across the sun-drenched parade ground between four armed cavalrymen, bayonets fixed. Soldiers cleaning their carbines on the barracks porches stopped to gawk; teamsters hitching six-mule teams to supply wagons paused in their work, murmuring among themselves as the ragged drover was marched toward the post headquarters—a substantial adobe building with a broad veranda shaded by cottonwood boughs.
Inside, the headquarters smelled of lemon oil, dry paper, and pipe tobacco. Behind a broad mahogany field desk sat Captain Marcus Baylor.
Baylor was forty years old, a career officer who had won two brevet promotions for gallantry during the Wilderness campaign in Virginia. His dark hair was cropped short, his mustache trimmed with military precision, and his blue service blouse was immaculate, adorned with the ribbon of the Union cavalry. He sat with his hands clasped over a stack of deployment maps, his eyes cold, gray, and piercing as chilled steel.
Standing to Baylor’s left, leaning against the field desk with an air of insolent familiarity, was a civilian Ethan recognized with a cold knot in his gut: Jason Vance.
The syndicate chief was a tall, heavily built man in his late forties, wearing an expensive broadcloth suit of charcoal gray, a silk brocade vest, and a diamond stickpin in his cravat. His face was broad, florid from good whiskey, and dominated by small, calculating eyes that were currently fixed on Ethan with the malevolence of a cornered viper.
"Well, well," Vance purred, his voice smooth as oiled silk, though a muscle in his cheek twitched with suppressed rage. "If it isn't Ethan Walker. The runaway drover who's been playing Indian scout in the hills."
Captain Baylor raised a hand, silencing the mining boss, and leveled his icy gaze directly at Ethan.
"Corporal Miller tells me you came through my gate shouting accusations of treason and bribery, Mr. Walker," Baylor said, his voice clipped and precise. "You are addressing an officer of the United States Army on a federal military reservation. You have exactly two minutes to explain yourself before I have you clapped in irons and delivered to the territorial authorities for assaulting a government courier."
Ethan stepped up to the edge of the mahogany desk, ignoring Vance’s murderous glare, and placed the black leather dispatch case firmly upon the polished wood.
"Captain Baylor, you’re about to march eighty men of the Fifth Cavalry into an Apache sanctuary at the Devil's Ribs," Ethan said, his voice dead-level. "You think you’re enforcing a legal eviction order signed by the territorial governor under the Mineral Act of '72. But that paper is a forgery, Captain. The judge who signed it was paid ten thousand dollars in syndicate stock, and the governor received five thousand in gold."
Vance laughed loudly—a harsh, theatrical sound designed to dismiss the claim. "Captain, the man is an outlaw. He ambushed my courier at Rattlesnake Wells, stole territorial property, and he’s been consorting with hostile renegades. This is a pathetic attempt to delay our lawful military escort!"
"Shut up, Mr. Vance," Baylor snapped with sudden, whip-like authority, not taking his eyes off Ethan. The officer leaned forward, tapping the leather case. "Where is the key?"
Ethan reached into his pocket and placed the small brass key beside the pouch.
Baylor took the key, inserted it into the lock, and turned it. The mechanism clicked open. The captain drew out the thick sheaf of documents, his eyes skimming over the red wax seals, the parchment maps, and the requisition orders. Then he pulled out the small, leather-bound private ledger.
For three agonizing minutes, the only sound in the office was the ticking of the brass mantel clock and the slow, deliberate turning of paper pages.
Baylor’s face remained a rigid mask of military discipline, but Ethan watched the veins in the captain’s neck slowly swell against his high wool collar. Baylor turned to page forty-two of the ledger, where the financial transfers to Territorial Judge Miller and Governor Safford were recorded in crisp, unmistakable ledger ink, cross-referenced with the exact serial numbers of syndicate stock certificates.
Baylor slowly closed the ledger. He looked up, his gray eyes burning with a cold, terrifying fury.
He did not look at Ethan. He looked at Jason Vance.
"Mr. Vance," Baylor said, his voice dropping into a register so quiet that it was far more lethal than a shout. "Perhaps you would care to explain why my requisition orders for two companies of United States cavalry are listed in your private ledger under the column titled 'Operating Expenses — Bribery & Securing Military Force'"