HE FIXED THEIR FENCE, BUT HIS ONE CONDITION CHANGED EVERYTHING

His voice was not loud, but it cut through the cold air with the flat, heavy finality of an iron door slamming shut in a stone cell.

Vance stared at him, his scar twitching violently.

"Look at the corner post by the bluff," Elias continued, raising his left hand and pointing toward the red rock. "Look at the four strands running into the cedar crib. Look at the gauge of the wire. Look at the height."

He took a slow step forward, his boots sinking three inches into the crusted drift, his Springfield carbine never shifting from its horizontal balance.

"It’s five feet from the sod to the top barb," Elias said. "It’s four strands of number-nine galvanized steel. The cribs are pinned with three-quarter-inch drift bolts and loaded with four tons of native limestone. That fence was lawful three hours ago, Vance. Before your mules even crossed the south creek."

The surveyor stepped cautiously toward the wire, his spectacles fogging in the cold. He pulled a wooden folding rule from his overcoat, knelt in the snow, and measured from the crust to the lowest strand, then up to the top wire. He checked the cedar stays, testing the tension with a trembling forefinger. The wire gave off a high, clear ping that sang across the silence.

The little man stood up, turned around, and looked at Vance with an expression of sickly terror.

"It... it complies, Mr. Vance," the surveyor stammered. "It meets the statute in every particular. Four strands, stone-anchored corner posts, lawful height. Under Section Six, an enclosure of this class constitutes a legal boundary. If your cattle cross this wire, it’s criminal trespass and fence-cutting under territorial law."

Vance’s face went the color of lard. He turned in his saddle, his eyes blazing with an insane, cornered fury.

"Shut up, Thaddeus," he hissed.

He looked past Elias, past the wire, his eyes settling on Aiona where she stood behind the rock crib, the heavy shotgun leveled across her arm.

"You think you won something, girl?" Vance snarled, his hand creeping down toward his cross-draw holster beneath his sheepskin coat. "You think a few strands of wire and an old cavalry bum are going to keep five hundred head of cattle off this grass? I’ll have twenty men up here tomorrow with wire-cutters and kerosene. I’ll burn that cabin until the stone splits, and I’ll leave both of you out on this ice for the coyotes."

"No," Elias said.

The word was quiet, almost gentle.

Elias raised the Springfield carbine. He did not pull it to his shoulder; he brought the stock up against his hip, his thumb drawing the heavy hammer back to full cock with a clean, sharp clack.

"You won't be here tomorrow, Vance," Elias said.

"Is that a threat, soldier?"

"It’s a sworn warrant," Marshal Cole said, rising to his feet from the buckboard.

The old lawman threw his wolfskin coat back with both hands. The silver star pinned to his coat caught the pale midday sun, flashing like a mirror. In his right hand, the heavy ten-gauge shotgun lifted until its twin black bores were pointing directly into the middle of the eight riders behind the wagon.

"Arthur Vance," Cole bellowed, his voice echoing off the red cliffs with the authority of an avalanche. "I have a bench warrant for your arrest from the Federal District Court in Cheyenne. Charge is grand larceny of the United States mail at the Sweetwater Crossing, assault with a deadly weapon, and the murder of Deputy Sheriff James Thorne on the Bozeman Trail."

The eight men behind the freight wagon went dead still.

None of them moved their hands toward their carbines. They were border drifters, rustlers, and hired guns, willing to bully two women off a quarter-section of dirt for twenty dollars and winter grazing rights; they were not soldiers willing to hang for a federal capital charge on a frozen Tuesday in the middle of nowhere.

Vance saw the shift in his men's posture. He saw the cold, murderous readiness in Elias Kane’s gray eyes; he saw the Winchester in the hands of the twelve-year-old girl behind the rock crib; he saw the twin black tunnels of the marshal’s shotgun.

He knew the game was done.

A low, guttural snarl tore from his throat. His right hand blurred, ripping his Colt from its sheepskin lining—

CRACK.

The shot did not come from the marshal. It did not come from Elias.

From behind the cedar crib, Nielli’s Winchester bucked against her shoulder. A cloud of blue smoke burst from the firing port, followed immediately by the sharp, ringing report of forty grains of black powder.

The heavy lead bullet took Vance’s horse squarely in the shoulder.

The animal screamed, reared straight up onto its hind legs with its forehooves pawing the frozen air, and threw the outlaw leader sideways out of the saddle. Vance hit the glazed crust of the snow with a brutal, bone-shattering impact, his revolver flying from his fingers and sliding across the glare-ice until it struck the bottom strand of Elias’s wire with a metallic clink.

Before Vance could roll onto his belly, Elias crossed the thirty feet of snow in four running strides.