Inside the ring, Tanner's men grew restless. One of them kept shifting his rifle from shoulder to shoulder. Another kept looking at the trail back to town, as if measuring how far he would have to run. Riker stood at the spring-house door, his face unreadable, his rifle lowered, and Elias watched him closely, because Riker was the man whose decision would matter most. Riker was not a fool. He had ridden for Tanner long enough to know when a job had turned from risky to hopeless, and Elias could see him doing that arithmetic in his head, weighing the pay Tanner still owed him against the posse on the ridge and the camp riders on the far side. Tanner, standing on the dam, shouted again, louder this time, demanding the paper, demanding a signature, demanding that Elias come forward alone, and his voice cracked on the last demand, because even he could hear how thin it sounded against the silence of the ring.
Elias rode forward alone, slowly, his hands open at his sides, and he spoke to Tanner in a voice pitched to carry without threatening. He told him the claim was in doubt, the hearing had heard his father's notebook, the town knew about the forged filing, and there was no paper left in the territory that would make this dam lawful. He told him Wilkes was behind him with the law, and Nash was beside him with the camp, and Ayasha was behind Nash with the riders, and that the only choice left was to walk down from the dam and answer for what he had done, or to stand there until his own men left him. He spoke, too, of the water itself — of the families downstream who had carried water from the far pools since morning, of the horses standing thirsty in the corral, of the creek that had run through this canyon long before any company had drawn a map of it — and he asked Tanner, plainly, whether a signature bought by thirst was a thing any man would want his name on. Tanner stared at him, and for a moment Elias thought the words had reached him, because something in his face faltered, like a man hearing his own name spoken in a way he had not expected.
Then Tanner laughed, a short, ugly sound, and raised his rifle, and then, in a sudden, desperate rush, he lunged at Elias, grabbing for his rifle and his reins, and the two men went down together in a short, clumsy, desperate struggle on the bank of the creek. It was not a hero's fight. It was two tired, frightened men grappling in the mud, Elias's stiff arm failing once and then holding, Tanner's strength failing as his breath gave out, and Elias, with an effort that tore at his ribs, wrenched the rifle free and threw it into the creek, where it splashed and sank, and held Tanner down with his weight and his good arm until Wilkes's men reached them. The struggle lasted less than a minute, though it felt longer, and when it was over, both men lay panting on the bank, mud on their clothes, and Elias's ribs ached with the old wound's familiar thump, and Tanner's face, when he looked up, was not angry anymore, only empty, as if the fight had taken the last of something he had been holding onto for a long time.
Riker watched it happen, and he looked at the ring of riders, and at Wilkes riding in with the posse, and at his own men lowering their rifles one by one, and he set his own rifle on the ground with a care that was almost gentle, and raised his hands. "I am done," he said, and his voice was flat and tired. "I have ridden for this man long enough." Wilkes's men took Tanner in irons, not roughly but firmly, and they took Riker too, and the other men were disarmed and sent walking back toward town under guard.
And then the camp riders and the townsmen together set to work on the dam, pulling brush and stone apart with their hands, and the creek, freed, came rushing through the gap, cold and bright, carrying leaves and small stones downstream, running free again past the spring-house and down toward the camp. It was hard work, and it was joyful work, the kind of work men do shoulder to shoulder when a danger has passed, and Elias found himself working beside a townsman he had never spoken to, and beside Nash's riders, and beside Ayasha, who pulled branches with the same steady strength she brought to everything, and no one spoke of town or camp while they worked, only of the water and where it needed to go. When the last stones were cleared, the creek ran full and unhindered, and a cheer went up, not a wild shout, but a deep, relieved sound from many throats at once, and the horses, brought down to drink, lowered their heads to the water and drank long and gratefully.
Ayasha stood beside Elias on the bank, her hand in his for a moment, and Nash, his wounded arm bound, stood on the other side, and the three of them watched the water run, and Elias thought of his father, and of a watch stopped at twenty minutes past four, and of a dream of land that had turned, somewhere along the way, into something larger and harder and better: a promise kept, in the open, beside running water. He thought of the notebook in Wilkes's office, and of the council fire, and of a marriage that had begun as a bargain and had become, by work and honesty, a real thing, and he knew that whatever the town did next, whatever paper Crowe filed or disowned, the water would still run, and the camp would still stand, and he would still be here, beside the people who had judged him by his work and found him sufficient. The dam was down. The water ran free.