box at the old mission ruin. And every one of them traced, through two or
three layers of company names β Cobre Consolidated, San Ysidro Land &
Water, the Piedra Creek Company β back to the same signature at the
bottom.
Ambrose Hale.
"Busy fellow," Silas said.
"Oh, Mr. Hale's been very active," Quill said. "Very active indeed.
Consolidation, he calls it. Says the county's water ought to be in responsible
hands." Quill chuckled, a nervous little sound. "Responsible hands. That's a
good one. I mean β that's what he says."
Silas turned another page. Beside three of the filings, in Quill's neat hand,
were marginal notes: prior claimant relocated, homestead abandoned,
claimant deceased β no heirs found. He tapped one with a finger.
"These the ones gave up?"
49
Quill's chuckle died. "The Garza place. The widow Lindqvist. Old Man
Fenn." He lowered his voice, though the office was empty. "Fenn didn't give
up anything. Fenn's buried up on the ridge. His boy left in the night and
never came back for the tools. And the Garzas β" He stopped.
"What about the Garzas?"
"They just went. One morning the place was empty. Chickens still in the
coop." Quill took off his spectacles and polished them on his sleeve, a man
buying time. "People go, mister. It's hard country."
"People go," Silas agreed. "Chickens usually go with them."
Quill put his spectacles back on and said nothing at all, which told Silas
everything the filings hadn't. After a moment the little clerk seemed to make
a decision β the decision of a man who has been afraid for a long time and
is suddenly more tired of the fear than of its consequences.
"The widow Lindqvist," Quill said, very quietly. "Filed her own claim on the
lower fork, two years back. Good water. She came in here herself, proud as
anything, paid the fee in coin she counted out of a handkerchief." He turned a
page with excessive care. "Six weeks later Hale's company filed over it. Said
her markers were deficient. She fought it β hired a lawyer from Santa Fe,
cost her nearly everything. Then one morning her place was empty. The
lawyer left town the same week." Quill looked up. "Her markers weren't
deficient, mister. I saw them myself. They were painted fresh."
"And you wrote 'abandoned' in the margin."
"I write what's filed." Quill's voice was thin. "I have a wife in Albuquerque
and a boy at the mission school, and I write what's filed. But I remember
what's true. Most days that's all I have."
50
Silas looked at the small man for a long moment. "Most days that's more
than most," he said, and meant it.
The forge was at the end of the street, a low adobe building with a wide door
and the smell of hot iron rolling out of it like weather. Silas stood in the
doorway a moment, watching the blacksmith work β a broad man with
forearms like fence posts, hammering a horseshoe with the steady rhythm of
a man who had done it ten thousand times and would do it ten thousand
more.
"Felipe?" Silas said.
The hammer stopped mid-swing. The blacksmith turned, and his face was
open and tired and wary all at once.
"You need shoeing?"
"I need to talk about Esteban."
The name landed like a dropped anvil. Felipe set the hammer down slowly
on the anvil and wiped his hands on his apron, and the forge's roar filled the
silence where his answer should have been.
"Who are you?" Felipe said at last.
"Silas Wren. I run freight, mostly. I live up CaΓ±on Seco."
"I know who you are. Everybody knows the hermit." Felipe's voice was flat.
"What do you know about my brother?"
"Three weeks ago he was shepherding near Three Springs. Then he wasn't
anywhere." Silas stepped into the heat of the forge. "I found a woman caught
in a trap on the springs trail. A leg-hold, baited, staked deep. Not an accident
trap. A taking trap. She says your brother's gone the same way men have
been going β the Garzas, the widow Lindqvist, old Fenn."
51
Felipe stared at him. "You found a woman."
"She's a healer. She's alive because I got to her before the infection did."
Silas held the man's eyes. "I'm not telling you where she is. I'm telling you
what she told me, because I think your brother's alive, and I think Hale's got
him at a line camp, and I think I'm going to need help that isn't just mine."
"A family," Felipe said quietly. "I have a wife. Two girls. I owe the company
store more than I'll clear this year, and the company store is Hale's, same as
everything else." His hands opened and closed. "You understand what you're
asking?"
"I understand exactly what I'm asking." Silas didn't look away. "That's why
I'm asking it here, where nobody can hear, and not at the saloon."
Felipe picked up the hammer. He turned it over in his hands. He set it down
again, and when he spoke his voice had changed β still quiet, but with iron
in it now, the way iron sounds before it goes into the fire.
"Esteban taught me to swim," he said. "In the Piedra, when we were boys. He
held my chin up the whole first summer." He nodded once, short. "If you
move against Hale, my hammer is yours. But you move careful, Wren. He's
got daughters, too, that man does β everybody's got somebody."
"I know," Silas said, and he was thinking of two graves under a cottonwood,
and of a woman on a crutch who had carved three rings into it, and he didn't
say any of that. "Careful's the plan."
Felipe reached under the workbench and came up with a folded scrap of
paper, soft with handling. "Esteban's last letter. Came the week before he
vanished." He handed it over. The writing was cramped and hurried: The