The desert had a way of making a man believe he had been forgotten by God.
Elias Turner had believed that for most of his life.
He had spent years riding through country where the horizon seemed endless and the sky seemed close enough to touch. He had slept beneath stars so bright they looked like sparks thrown from a blacksmith's forge. He had crossed rivers swollen by spring storms, followed cattle trails through dry country, and buried men whose names he barely knew.
Yet nothing in all his years had prepared him for White Mesa.
He had entered Apache territory because a storm had driven him away from the trail.
He had expected danger.
He had not expected to be found half-dead beside a dry wash by five Apache women.
The youngest among them had been Ayanna.
She had been the one who insisted that he was still alive.
That decision had changed everything.
Now, weeks later, Elias stood inside a hidden cave beneath the red cliffs of White Mesa, staring at the body of a man who had spent years hunting him.
Mercer was dead.
The rifle smoke still hung in the cold air.
Ayanna stood several feet away, her hands trembling around the rifle she had used to save Elias's life.
Outside, gunfire faded into the distance.
The remaining gunmen had fled.
Elias looked at Mercer.
The man had tried to kill him only moments before.
He should have felt relief.
Instead, he felt something much heavier.
Mercer had known too much.
And before he died, he had said something that Elias could not forget.
You still don't know who you're protecting.
Elias turned toward the wooden chest lying against the cave wall.
The chest had been hidden beneath loose stones for years.
Inside were ledgers, letters, maps, payment records, railroad schedules, land deeds and names.
Too many names.
Some belonged to men Elias had heard praised all his life.
Judges.
Sheriffs.
Cattle barons.
Businessmen.
Men who attended church on Sunday and ordered murders on Monday.
Men whose portraits hung in respectable offices.
The papers told another story.
Elias picked up a ledger.
He turned several pages.
Gold shipments.
Military movements.
Land purchases.
Payments made to men who had never officially worked for anyone.
Then he saw something worse.
Orders.
Orders to attack settlements.
Orders to burn cabins.
Orders to leave behind weapons and clothing that would make the attacks appear to have been committed by Apache raiders.
Another document described attacks against Apache camps carried out by men wearing uniforms.
The purpose was simple.
Create fear.
Create hatred.
Then use that hatred to justify taking land.
Elias's stomach tightened.
For years, he had heard the same stories as every other man in the territory.
Apache attacks.
Settler deaths.
Retaliation.
War.
But here, in this cave, the truth sat quietly in ink.
Much of the bloodshed had been manufactured.
Someone had wanted war.
Someone had made money from it.
And someone had killed people to keep the secret buried.
Ayanna suddenly stopped turning the pages.
"Elias."
He looked up.
She was holding a narrow piece of paper.
It looked different from the other documents.
Older.
More personal.
The handwriting was uneven, as though the person writing it had known he was running out of time.
At the top were the words:
If I do not return, the man responsible is—
Elias took the paper.
He read the name.
Once.
Then again.
His hands went cold.
Samuel Turner.
His uncle.
The man who had raised him.
For several seconds Elias could not breathe.
Samuel Turner had been the closest thing he had ever had to a father.
Samuel had taught him how to ride.
How to shoot.
How to track an animal.
How to tell rain from dust by the smell carried in the wind.
When Elias was sixteen and his mother Clara died, Samuel had taken him into his home.
He had never been warm.
Never hugged Elias.
Never told him that he loved him.
But he had always been there.
For a lonely boy, that had seemed like enough.
Whenever Elias asked about his real father, Samuel had given him the same answer.
"That man abandoned you before you were born."
Elias had believed him.
Now the silver hawk hanging from his neck seemed suddenly heavier.
Takakota.
The name he had only recently learned.
His father.
A man he had spent his entire life believing had abandoned him.
A man Samuel had apparently murdered.
Ayanna watched his face.
"You know this man."
Elias folded the paper.
"He raised me."
The cave became silent.
Neheni, the oldest of the women who had first found Elias, stepped closer.
"Then we return to White Mesa."
"No."
Elias's voice was quiet.
"I go alone."
Ayanna shook her head.
"No."
"This is family."
"So was Takakota."
Elias looked at her.
She did not move.