Suddenly, the faint crunch of gravel outside the lodge flap cut through the quiet.
Before Elias could reach for his revolver, three heavy, armed men tore through the leather entrance flap of the lodge.
“Get him!” a harsh voice barked.
Elias lunged upward, but a heavy iron rifle butt swung through the darkness, striking him squarely in his injured left ribs. Pain exploded through Elias’s chest like a white-hot knife, driving the breath from his lungs and dropping him onto his knees.
Ren screamed—a sharp, terrified cry that cut through the night air.
A heavy canvas sack was violently shoved over her head. She fought frantically, kicking and scratching, but two large, burly men in rough leather coats pinned her arms, lifted her off the ground, and dragged her screaming out into the dark.
Elias choked for air, blood pouring from a gash on his forehead as he dragged himself toward his gun belt. His fingers wrapped around the butt of his Colt revolver, and he stumbled out of the lodge into the moonlight.
“Ren!” he roared.
In the distance, three horses were already galloping at a desperate pace out of the eastern canyon draw, heading straight into the black, trackless desert.
Shouts and cries erupted across the camp. Warriors rushed out of their lodges with rifles and bows in hand.
Iron Elk sprinted toward the lodge, his face carved into an expression of absolute, towering fury as he saw his daughter’s empty veil lying discarded in the dirt beside Elias’s blood-stained forehead.
“They took her!” Elias gasped, clutching his shattered ribs with his left hand as he leaned heavily against a lodge pole. “Crane’s men took her!”
Iron Elk’s eyes burned with a terrifying, apocalyptic rage. “We ride! We kill every man who touched her!”
Elias wiped the blood from his eyes, his gaze sweeping across the chaotic, torch-lit camp.
And that was when he saw him.
Standing near the edge of the medicine lodge, half-hidden in the shadow of a cottonwood tree, was Two Feathers—Iron Elk’s younger nephew and one of the three warriors who had guarded Elias upon his arrival.
Two Feathers was watching the fleeing riders disappear into the desert night with an expression that carried no shock, no anger, and no fear whatsoever.
It was the calm, satisfied look of a man who had just seen a heavy sack of gold delivered exactly where he had promised it would go.
Elias didn't wait for the war party to paint their faces.
He slammed his saddle onto his buckskin horse, pulled the girth strap tight despite the excruciating fire in his ribs, and shoved his Winchester repeating rifle into the leather scabbard.
Iron Elk swung up onto a midnight-black stallion beside him, ten of his best tracking warriors falling into line behind them, their faces grim and illuminated by the red glare of the torches.
Elias reined his horse up right in front of Two Feathers.
Before the young warrior could react, Elias leaned down, grabbed Two Feathers by his buckskin collar, and yanked him off his feet, pressing the cold barrel of his Colt revolver directly under the man’s chin.
“You sold her,” Elias growled, his voice a lethal, terrifying whisper that froze the surrounding camp. “You gave Crane the layout of our lodge.”
Two Feathers went pale, his eyes darting frantically to Iron Elk.
Iron Elk looked at his nephew, seeing the sudden, damning guilt written across the young man’s face. The old chief’s hand moved like a striking rattlesnake, snatching a heavy leather pouch from Two Feathers’ belt.
He flipped it open—twenty crisp American gold eagles spilled out into the dirt.
“Leave him to the women,” Iron Elk commanded darkly, turning his stallion toward the canyon mouth. “We hunt Crane!”
They rode out of the canyon like a thunderclap.
The trail led straight toward an abandoned timber mill six miles south, perched high on a rocky bluff overlooking the roaring waters of the Salt River draw. It was Crane’s primary staging ground—a fortified wooden compound surrounded by stacked logs and heavy timber walls.
The sun was just beginning to streak the eastern sky with bloody bands of red when Elias and the war party crested the ridge above the mill.
Down in the yard, four armed guards were standing near a buckboard wagon.
Bound to a heavy timber post near the edge of the bluff was Ren. Her veil was gone, her dark hair blowing in the cold morning canyon wind, her pale blue eye and dark brown eye defiant as she glared at a tall, broad-shouldered man in a tailored wool suit—Silas Crane.
Crane held a thick leather whip in his hand, a heavy brass key ring hanging from his belt.
“Sign the land transfer document, girl!” Crane was shouting, his voice carrying up the canyon wall. “Your father’s title is dead! Once you sign as Whitlock’s proxy, the fort takes the valley and I take the timber rights!”
“My husband will kill you!” Ren spat, her voice ringing out like a iron bell.
Crane laughed—a loud, ugly sound. “Your husband is a broken soldier lying in the dirt with a caved-in chest—”