Chapter 1
: Three Horses Gone
Caleb Wren knew the corral gate was wrong before his eyes had fully taken it in. It stood open a hand's breadth, swinging in the dawn wind off Coyote Creek, and the chain his father had taught him to loop twice hung loose against the post. No horse had ever learned that chain. No wind had ever lifted it free.
He stood on the cold step, coffee cooling in his hand, and counted what the corral still held. Old Bess stood hip-shot by the trough. The mule watched him. Flint, his bay gelding, lifted his head and nickered. Three stalls in the lean-to stood empty, and the yard beyond the gate was printed thick with fresh sign.
Dulcie. Pet. Rooster. The two mares his father had foaled on this ground and the gelding Tess had gentled the summer she turned fifteen. Gone in the night, all three, without a sound loud enough to wake either of them. That sat colder in Caleb's gut than the empty stalls.
He set the coffee down and went to the gate on foot, reading as he walked. Boot prints showed where a man had stood to work the chain, toes dug deep. Another set, smaller, paced the fence line, keeping watch toward the house. The horses had not bolted. Their tracks left in a close bunch, heads low, the way horses go when a rope they do not trust is leading them.
Tess came out behind him with the Winchester cradled easy in her arm, the way Samuel had taught her and then, laughing, admitted she had surpassed him. She was seventeen and barefoot, her braid still loose from sleep, but her eyes were clear and already counting.
"Three," she said. It was not a question.
"Three," Caleb said. "Led out. Not run off by coyotes, not scattered by any cat. Men did this, and took their time doing it."
She crouched by the gate, studying the prints with the frown she wore over the ranch books when a column refused to balance. "That one stood here a while," she said. "Smoked, too." She pointed with the rifle barrel to ash ground into the dust and the chewed end of a cigar. "Pa would have charged a man rent for standing that easy in our yard."
"Pa would have charged him more than rent." Caleb laid his father's brass surveyor's compass in his palm a moment, not for direction β he knew east the way he knew his own name β but for the steadiness of its weight. Samuel had carried it through the survey of 1868 and every season after.
The trail led east, plain as a furrow, across the creek bottom toward San Rey Valley. Whoever had taken the horses had not troubled to hide their going. That troubled Caleb more than cunning would have. Men who do not hide a trail either mean to be followed or do not care who follows, and neither kind was good company at the end of it.
"Could be rustlers bound for Paloma," Tess said, though she did not sound persuaded. Paloma lay twelve miles north of the spring, and the trail did not bend north. It bent east, toward Ojo Azul, the deep spring in its rock basin, where Tasin's people camped as they had camped since before the Wrens came. "Could be boys out for devilment."
"Boys out for devilment don't bring a second man to watch the house," Caleb said. He stood and looked east, where the valley lay pale with spring grass. Six miles of open ground between the ranch and the spring. He could ride it before the sun was well up, if Flint was willing.
Tess read his intention the way she read most things about him, a half-step ahead. "You're going after them alone."
"I'm going to look," he said. "Looking is all I'm promised to do before breakfast."
"That's a lie you tell better than most men tell the truth," she said, but she was already turning for his hat and coat. She brought them without argument, and a heel of yesterday's bread wrapped in cloth, and stood close while he saddled Flint, her hand once on the gelding's neck, firm and quiet.
"Bar the door after me," Caleb said. "Both bars. If I'm not back by dark, ride for Paloma at first light and find the marshal himself if he's in the county. Don't open to any man who calls himself company."
"Company," Tess repeated. "You think it's Voss's men already."
"I think I don't know yet," Caleb said, "and not knowing is why I'm riding east instead of eating my breakfast." He swung up. Flint shifted under him, eager. "Keep Bess close to the house. And Tess β if you hear riding before you see me, go inside first and ask questions through the wood."
"Then come back and be laughed at properly," she said, and stepped clear.
He rode out through the gate the thieves had opened, and did not look back. The trail ran east into the brightening valley, plain to follow, and Caleb followed it with his father's compass in his pocket and a feeling, low and certain, that the morning had taken something larger than horses.