The first thing Jack Mercer noticed about Red Hollow was the silence. It was not the ordinary quiet of a town before sunrise, when the bakery ovens had not yet warmed and the saloon doors still hung shut. This silence felt deliberate, as if every person behind every shutter had agreed to hold a breath until the stranger passed. Jack rode beneath a sky the color of cold iron, his horse’s hooves clicking over the hard-packed street. He had come to the Arizona Territory to find his younger brother, Daniel, who had vanished three months earlier after taking a surveying job for the Meridian Land and Rail Company. The company’s letters had been polished and useless. Its foreman had claimed Daniel quit. A clerk in Tucson had whispered that the boy had been asking questions about boundary stones and water rights. Then even the clerk had gone quiet.
Jack was thirty-two, sun-browned, broad through the shoulders, and accustomed to being judged before he spoke. A pale scar cut through his left eyebrow, the souvenir of a cattle stampede he had survived at twenty. He wore no badge and carried no grand reputation. His ranch in New Mexico had failed during two years of drought, leaving him with a saddle, a rifle, and a stubborn belief that a missing man deserved to be searched for. Daniel was the last family he had.
At the far end of the street, a wooden sign creaked above a building marked THE RED HOLLOW HOTEL. Jack had barely swung down from his horse when a boy of perhaps fourteen hurried from the livery. The boy had a narrow face, black hair tied at the nape, and eyes that moved from Jack’s rifle to the dust on his boots.
“Mr. Mercer?” the boy asked.
Jack’s hand stilled on the reins.
“Who wants to know?”
“Someone who said you’d come.” The boy glanced toward the shuttered windows across the street.
“You should leave before noon.”
“That sounds like advice from a man who doesn’t want to pay for breakfast.”
“It’s advice from someone who doesn’t want to watch you die.”
Jack studied him.
“What’s your name?”
“Tomás.”
“Then, Tomás, you can start by telling me who sent you.”
The boy hesitated, then nodded toward the north road.
“A man in a company coat. He asked the telegraph operator if a Mercer had arrived. When he heard your name, he sent riders to the canyon.”
Jack felt the old, cold instinct that had kept him alive in bad weather and worse company.
“What kind of riders?”
“Three. One had a rifle with a silver band around the stock.”
That detail meant nothing to Jack, but the boy looked frightened enough to make it important. Jack tied his horse to the rail and entered the hotel, where the proprietor, a thin man with a white mustache, pretended not to recognize him. The room smelled of coffee, lye soap, and old tobacco. Two miners sat at a table without speaking. A woman in a gray traveling dress watched Jack over the rim of a cup.
“Room?” the proprietor asked.
“And breakfast. Then I need directions to the last place my brother worked.”
The proprietor’s mouth tightened.
“Surveyors work all over the territory.”
“Daniel Mercer worked for Meridian.”
At the company’s name, the woman in gray lowered her cup. The proprietor wiped a clean counter with a dirty cloth.
“You’d be wise to discuss that somewhere else.”
Jack leaned forward.
“I didn’t ride two hundred miles to be wise.”
Before the proprietor could answer, the hotel door opened. Three men entered wearing dusters too fine for ranch hands. Their leader was tall, narrow-faced, and dressed in a dark coat despite the heat. A polished brass pin shaped like a compass rose gleamed at his collar. Jack recognized the symbol from a company office in Tucson.
“Jack Mercer,” the man said, smiling as if they were old friends.
“I’m Silas Rourke, regional agent for Meridian. We were hoping to meet you.”
“Then you should have sent a letter.”
“We did. Perhaps it never reached you.” Rourke’s gaze moved to the rifle at Jack’s hip.
“Your brother’s employment ended some time ago. I’m sorry you traveled so far for nothing.”
“Where is he?”
“That is precisely the difficulty. Daniel left without providing an address.”
“Daniel wouldn’t leave without telling me.”
“Families are often the last to know when a young man changes his mind.” Rourke’s smile did not alter, but his eyes hardened.
“I can pay your travel expenses and offer you a position. A capable man can always be useful.”
Jack felt the room’s attention gather around them.
“I didn’t come for a job.”
“Then perhaps you came to make trouble.” Rourke spoke softly enough that the threat could be mistaken for courtesy.
“Red Hollow has had more than its share of trouble. It would be a shame if another Mercer disappeared.”
The men behind him shifted, their hands near their belts. Jack had seen this arrangement before: one man talking while two others made violence seem inevitable. He could have reached for his gun, but a gunfight in a hotel would answer nothing and likely kill someone who had no part in the matter.
Instead, Jack took his coffee from the counter and drank it slowly.
“You’ll forgive me if I keep looking.”
Rourke’s smile finally thinned.
“Of course. The desert is a large place.”
When the three men left, the woman in gray stood. She crossed the room, placed a folded scrap of paper beside Jack’s cup, and walked out without a word. On the paper was a crude map showing a dry creek bed north of town and three words written in a firm hand: ASK THE CHIEF.
Jack caught up with her outside.
“You could have told me that inside.”
“I could have been watched inside.” She pulled her hat lower.
“My name is Ruth Bell. I teach at the mission school. Your brother came to me before he vanished. He said he had found proof that Meridian was stealing water from a community north of the canyon.”
“Which community?”