Chapter 3 - Blood on the Floorboards
The gunshot left Elias deaf for half a second.
Then instinct took over.
He kicked the lamp from the table.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Naelli dropped behind the stove.
Sheriff Burke lay on the floor.
“Samuel!”
“I’m alive,” Burke grunted.
Elias crawled toward him.
Blood covered the sheriff’s shoulder.
Not his chest.
“Through and through,” Elias whispered.
“Wonderful.”
Another shot punched through the wall.
Naelli pointed toward the rear window.
“Two riders.”
“You see them?”
“Movement.”
Elias grabbed his Winchester.
“Stay with Burke.”
Naelli looked offended.
“You cannot order me—”
“Tonight I can.”
He slipped through the back.
Moonlight washed the corral.
A rider moved near the cottonwoods.
Elias fired into the dirt ahead of him.
The horse reared.
The rider fled.
A second horse followed.
Elias did not pursue.
That was what they wanted.
He returned inside.
Naelli had torn cloth into bandages.
Burke sat against the wall.
“You're getting blood on my floor,” Elias said.
“Send me a bill.”
They treated him.
When Burke could speak normally, he looked at the shattered window.
“They're escalating.”
Naelli’s face hardened.
“Because of the paper.”
“Then we make copies,” Elias said.
Burke nodded.
“And find proof.”
The following morning changed everything.
Word of the shooting spread through Dry Creek.
Mercer publicly condemned the attack.
He even offered a reward.
Elias nearly laughed when he heard.
Instead, he began asking questions.
Families had disappeared.
Ranches had burned.
Water rights had changed hands.
Debts had appeared from nowhere.
And always, eventually, Mercer acquired the land.
Naelli’s paper wasn't proof of murder.
But it was a map.
A map leading somewhere ugly.
Three nights later, Elias and Naelli rode to an abandoned ranch listed in the records.
They searched the burned farmhouse.
Naelli found something beneath a floorboard.
A ledger.
Inside were payments.
Names.
One belonged to the bounty rider with the scar.
Another belonged to a military supply contractor.
Then Elias found an entry that made him sit down.
Carver, Thomas.
His father.
Naelli saw his face.
“What?”
Elias pointed.
A payment from decades earlier.
The same year Naelli’s people had been forced away from Cottonwood Creek.
“No,” Elias whispered.
Naelli read it.
Her expression became unreadable.
“My father took money.”
“For what?”
“I don't know.”
But Elias already feared the answer.
Perhaps their childhood had not simply ended because soldiers arrived.
Perhaps someone had been paid to make sure Naelli's people disappeared.
And Elias’s own family might have helped.
He looked at her.
“I didn't know.”
Naelli’s voice was quiet.
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because the boy I knew would have told me.”
The words nearly broke him.
Then hoofbeats sounded outside.
Too many.
Elias extinguished the lantern.
Through a crack in the wall he saw four riders surrounding the ruined ranch.
Scar-face dismounted.
“We know you're inside, Carver.”
Naelli whispered, “There were four.”
Elias understood.
These were the men who had followed her across the desert.
Scar-face called again.
“Give us the ledger and the woman walks away.”
Naelli almost laughed.
“They will kill us both.”
“Yeah.”
“What is your plan?”
Elias checked his rifle.
“I'm working on it.”
“That is not a plan.”
“It's the beginning of one.”
Then another voice came from outside.
“You always were slow at planning, Carver.”
Sheriff Burke.
A shotgun blast shattered the silence.
One bounty rider fled.
Then another.
Elias and Naelli emerged.
Burke sat on his horse with his wounded arm in a sling.
“You're supposed to be recovering,” Elias said.
“So is she.”
Naelli smiled.
“I like him.”
Burke looked at the ledger.
“We've got enough to bring in a territorial judge.”
“Not yet,” Elias said.
He pointed to his father's name.
“I need to know what this means.”
Naelli looked toward Cottonwood Creek.
“So do I.”
They rode before sunrise.
Toward the place where everything had begun.
Toward the creek where two children had once promised never to forget each other.
May you like
And neither knew that someone was already waiting there.
---
