"My horse," the man in the gravel said hoarsely. "You'll not take me down there afoot before—"
"You'll go down as I decide," Caleb said, and got him up with the rifle's muzzle doing the talking, and bound his wrists with his own belt. "You shot a judge of the territory and a chief of the Apache, and you did it from hiding, and there's twenty witnesses to the smoke if not the face. Whatever name you're carrying, friend, you left it up here on this hill. Walk."
Chapter 11
: His Own Right Hand
Caleb brought the shooter down off the hillside with a rope around his wrists, Flint picking his way behind them. The man stumbled twice, then went quiet when he saw the crowd at the barrier. Guns had lowered, but no one had put theirs away. The spring shone beyond the timbers, as if a bullet had not just grazed Judge Whitcomb and another had not passed through Tasin's shoulder.
Caleb shoved the prisoner forward. Dust coated the knees of his trousers where he had knelt to fire. His rifle Caleb carried unloaded, the cartridges in his pocket.
"Say your name," Caleb said.
The man looked past him toward Harlan Voss. Voss stood beside his horse with one hand resting on the saddle, his face composed, his eyes not composed at all. Deputy Odell had stepped a little apart from him, as men do from a fire they suddenly fear might catch.
"Ike Sorrell," the prisoner said at last.
A murmur went through the company riders. He was no drifter paid out of a saloon. He ate at Voss's table, signed the company's orders when Voss was away. He was, as everyone understood in the same instant, Voss's own right hand.
"Who told you to fire?" Caleb asked.
Sorrell worked his jaw. Blood had dried in a thin line at his hairline where a branch or a stone had caught him in the chase. "Nobody tells me when to pull a trigger."
"You did not climb that hill for the view," Tasin said. The chief sat on a flat stone with a cloth pressed to his shoulder, an Apache woman kneeling beside him to hold it steady. His voice was even, but his face had gone the color of ash under its bronze. "You waited until the judge held the map in his hands. You fired when words were about to do what your master feared."
Voss spoke then, smooth as ever. "The man acted alone. If he fired on Judge Whitcomb, he will answer for it in court, as any criminal should. My company deplores—"
"He fired to miss," Caleb said.
That stopped him.
Caleb held up the rifle. "I found his rest — a forked limb, padded with his neckerchief so the barrel would not shift. A man set that careful does not miss a judge standing still in full sun unless missing close was the work. He meant to graze him, or meant us to think the Apache had shot to kill. Either way, the next breath would have been rifles from both sides. After that, who would ask whether a lease was forged? You would clear this ground as law and order, and no one would call it theft."
Sorrell's mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Boy sees clear for a rancher."
"Be quiet," Voss said, too quickly.
Odell found his voice. "Now, Caleb, that's a theory—"
"It is the only theory that puts your friend on that hill before the shot," Caleb said. "He did not ride up with the rest of us this morning. Ask your own men when they last saw him. He was placed."
No company rider spoke, which was answer enough.
Whitcomb had been held upright by two riders near the wagons, a cloth bound round his head, blood in his gray beard. Now he raised a hand, and the men steadied him to his feet. He swayed and stayed standing.
"Mr. Voss," the judge said, each word measured. "You will withdraw your party from this spring. Today. My review of this title will proceed in Paloma, under guard if need be, and if I learn that shot was fired at your direction, sir, no lease in this territory will save you."
Voss held his gaze a long moment. Caleb saw the calculation move behind his eyes — twenty guns still, but a wounded judge for a witness now, and his own lieutenant exposed. Cold patience was Voss's strength, and it served him even here. He inclined his head.
"We withdraw, Your Honor. For the sake of calm." He mounted without hurry. "Sorrell stays in your custody, Deputy. See he reaches a cell."
It was neatly done — Sorrell offered up like a bad coin — but Odell looked ill taking hold of the rope. The company party lifted Whitcomb into a wagon bed lined with blankets, turned their horses, and filed north through the gap in the rocks, dust rising behind them in a slow, pale column.