Jack found Isabel at the spring, washing blood from her cheek. He held out a clean cloth.
“You should have told me you were going around the ridge.”
“You would have tried to stop me.”
“I would have asked how you planned to do it.”
“And then you would have worried aloud until the opportunity passed.” She took the cloth, and the corner of her mouth lifted.
“I had help. I knew the carts were there because I helped repair their wheels last month.”
“I’m beginning to understand why your father listens to you.”
“My father listens because he has learned that I am often right. It took him longer than I would have liked.”
Jack smiled, then grew serious.
“You could have been hurt.”
“So could you. I did not ask you to stay out of danger. I asked you to listen before deciding what I could endure.”
He accepted the correction.
“You’re right.”
She looked surprised that he said it without defending himself. The veil hung loose at her neck, and the morning light fell across her face. Jack wanted to touch the cut on her cheek, but he waited for her to invite the gesture. Instead, he asked, “Are you all right?”
“I will be.” She folded the cloth and held it against the cut.
“What matters is that the company failed tonight. But they will not stop. Rourke will call this a riot and say the defenders attacked lawful officers.”
“Then we make sure the captured men testify.”
“And we find the original agreement.”
“Daniel said the company planned to use your past against you. We need to know what Rourke has.”
Isabel’s expression closed.
“I have spent years being told that my past belongs to other people. I will not let him use it to decide my future.”
“Then we find the truth before he can twist it.”
She studied him, weighing whether he meant it.
“When you first arrived, you were looking for your brother. Now you are risking your life for people you met yesterday. Why?”
Jack looked toward the valley, where smoke drifted away from the gardens and families were returning to their homes.
“Because yesterday I met people who had been treated as if their lives mattered less than a line on a map. I know what it is to lose a home, even if I’ve never lost one this way. And because you asked me to see you as a person, not a bargain. I’m trying.”
For once, Isabel had no quick answer. She tied the veil loosely over her hair, leaving her face uncovered.
“Then keep trying,” she said.
“That is more than most men offer.”
As the sun climbed above the cliffs, a rider arrived from Red Hollow carrying a sealed notice from Judge Voss. The hearing had been moved forward to the following afternoon. Meridian intended to claim the night’s violence proved the valley was dangerous and needed immediate control. The chief gathered the elders. Jack read the notice twice, then looked at the charred grain store and the people beginning to rebuild. They had less than a day to turn evidence into protection. The next fight would not be won with a rifle. It would be won in a room where a man in a clean coat could decide whether truth was worth more than money.
The courthouse in Red Hollow had once been a stagecoach station, and it still looked as if the law had arrived there by accident. Its walls were rough pine, its windows too narrow for the afternoon heat, and its benches polished by years of anxious people shifting beneath decisions they could not control. By the time Chief Samuel’s delegation arrived, the room was crowded with ranchers, merchants, company employees, and curious townspeople. Some had come to witness justice. Others had come to watch the chief be humiliated.
Judge Harlan Voss sat behind a desk raised on a platform. He was a heavy man with a neatly trimmed beard and a gold watch chain across his vest. He looked at the chief as if the valley were a nuisance he had been asked to remove from his boot. Silas Rourke sat at the judge’s right hand, wearing the compass-rose pin and an expression of patient concern. Deputy Hask, released on bail through a friend of the judge, stood near the door with his arm in a sling.