Ethan recognized it instantly.
An identical one had been in his father’s trunk.
His hands went cold.
He opened it.
Inside was a folded strip of paper.
Three words.
Bring the journal.
Below them:
Miller’s Canyon. Midnight.
Ethan looked at the blood again.
A trap.
Almost certainly.
He went anyway.
Moonlight filled Miller’s Canyon.
Ethan arrived at eleven forty-five.
He carried the journal pages inside his coat and a rifle across his saddle.
No one appeared.
At midnight, a lantern lit near the old mine entrance.
Gideon stepped from the darkness.
Two men held Briggs between them.
The old man’s face was bruised.
Ethan dismounted.
“Let him go.”
Gideon laughed softly.
“Bring the pages.”
“What pages?”
A rider struck Briggs in the ribs.
He collapsed.
Ethan took one step.
“Stop.”
“Pages.”
Ethan removed the journal sheets.
Gideon held out his hand.
“First Briggs.”
“No.”
“Then no pages.”
Gideon considered.
“Throw them between us.”
Ethan did.
The papers landed in the dirt.
Gideon walked forward.
Briggs suddenly shouted, “Ethan, no!”
A rifle cracked.
Ethan dove.
A bullet struck his horse.
The animal screamed and fell.
Chaos erupted.
Briggs drove his shoulder into one captor.
Ethan rolled behind a boulder and fired.
One lantern shattered.
Darkness swallowed the canyon.
Gunfire echoed.
Ethan crawled toward Briggs’s voice.
“Here!”
He found the old man behind rocks.
“You hit?”
“Not yet.”
They moved deeper into the canyon.
Behind them Gideon shouted.
“You can’t run forever!”
Briggs laughed.
The sound shocked Ethan.
It was not an old man’s frightened laugh.
It was angry.
Almost delighted.
“You think that’s funny?”
“I waited twenty years to hear a Rourke sound afraid.”
Ethan stared at him in the moonlight.
“What did you say?”
Briggs kept moving.
“Later.”
“No.”
“Ethan.”
“Who are you?”
The old man stopped.
Gunshots cracked farther away.
Briggs looked at him.
“You really don’t recognize me.”
The world tilted.
Ethan studied the scar.
The eyes.
The shape of the forehead beneath white hair.
Something impossible stirred in memory.
A younger face bending over a boy’s bed.
A hand showing him how to knot rope.
A voice laughing beside a barn.
Ethan stepped backward.
“No.”
Briggs’s eyes filled with tears.
“Your mother always said you had my stubbornness.”
Ethan could not breathe.
“No.”
“My name isn’t Elias Briggs.”
The canyon disappeared.
The gunshots disappeared.
Twenty years disappeared.
The old man whispered:
“It’s Thomas.”
Ethan’s knees nearly gave way.
“My father is dead.”
Thomas Callaway looked at him.
“No, son.”
Ethan struck him.
The punch sent Thomas sideways.
The old man hit the rocks.
Ethan stood over him, shaking.
“You let me bury you!”
“There was no body.”
“I buried you anyway!”
“I know.”