Chapter 10 - The Night They Surrounded the Cabin
Calder Boone escaped custody six weeks later.
The news reached Elias at noon.
By sunset, he was riding toward Aayoka’s property.
She met him outside.
“I heard.”
“You need to come to the ranch.”
“No.”
“Aayoka.”
“No more running.”
“He wants revenge.”
“Then we prepare here.”
Elias looked around.
Workers.
Families.
People depending on the spring.
Calder could hurt them.
Aayoka understood his expression.
“They stay somewhere else tonight.”
By dark, the property was empty except for Elias, Aayoka, Hayes, Chayton, and several trusted ranchers.
Nothing happened.
Midnight.
Nothing.
Then horses surrounded the valley.
Calder had gathered the last men still loyal to him.
Aayoka stood beside Elias.
Just like the first morning at Ward Ranch.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” he said.
She smiled.
“I know.”
Calder called from the darkness.
“Ward!”
Elias did not answer.
“I only want her.”
Aayoka shouted back.
“No.”
Silence.
Then Calder laughed.
“You still think you have a choice?”
Aayoka looked at Elias.
He remembered the exhausted woman kneeling in the dirt.
No one wants to marry me.
I need a husband.
That woman had believed safety had to be given by someone else.
The woman beside him now owned her land, commanded her own future, and faced Calder without lowering her eyes.
“Yes,” she called.
“I do.”
Gunfire began.
Windows shattered.
Hayes returned fire toward the ground near the attackers, forcing them into cover.
The confrontation stretched through the night.
Then Chayton discovered Calder’s men attempting to enter through the rear canyon.
He warned the others.
Hayes repositioned.
By dawn, Calder’s group was trapped between deputies arriving from Tucson and the defenders at the spring.
Calder tried to flee.
His horse stumbled.
He fell.
Elias reached him first.
Calder’s gun lay several feet away.
For one terrible second, Elias wanted revenge.
The burned ranch.
The threats.
The fear.
Everything.
Then Aayoka’s voice came behind him.
“Elias.”
He looked at her.
That was enough.
He stepped away.
Hayes arrested Calder.
This time, chains went around both wrists and ankles.
Calder stared at Aayoka.
“You needed him to save you.”
Aayoka looked at Elias.
Then back at Calder.
“No.”
Her voice was calm.
“He reminded me I could save myself.”
Calder was taken away.
And when the sun rose over the spring, the war that had begun with one desperate marriage proposal was finally over.
But another battle remained.
One inside Elias Ward.
May you like
And this time, no rifle could help him.
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