Jesse’s jaw set into a hard line.
Harlan Sterling was the undisputed ruler of the valley's wealth. He was a wealthy businessman from San Francisco who had bought up three-quarters of the mining claims in Sunstone Canyon. He lived in a massive, stone-walled manor house on the high plateau, guarded by a dozen tough, well-paid gunmen led by a cold-eyed mercenary named Vance Crane.
Sterling was not a man who cared about the people who dug his ore. He cared about tonnage, silver bars, and quarterly balance sheets.
The next morning, Doctor Pierce confirmed what Jesse had suspected.
"It's dysentery and mineral poisoning," Pierce declared angrily, slamming his medical ledger down on his desk back at the clinic. "Sterling's men have built an illegal dirt and timber dam up in the gorge to divert the entire creek into his private washing operations. The overflow they're dumping back into the soil is full of sulfur and heavy chemicals from the stamping mill. He's poisoning the groundwater and starving the settlement of drinking water!"
"We can go to the town marshal," Maeve said, her face pale with indignation.
"Marshal Briggs is one man with a star and a bad knee," Pierce snapped bitterly. "Sterling owns the territorial judge in Prescott. He owns the land office. If Briggs tries to ride up to that gorge, Crane and his thugs will shoot his horse out from under him and claim he was trespassing on private mining property."
Jesse leaned against the doorframe, his hat pulled low, his arms crossed over his chest. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to turn around, walk to the livery, saddle his horse, and ride north.
This isn't your fight, Kincaid, his internal voice lectured coldly. You're a horse trainer. You're a drifter. These aren't your people. Sterling has twenty armed men and all the money in the territory. If you get involved in a range war, you'll end up buried in a shallow grave in Sunstone Canyon.
He looked at Maeve.
She was standing by the table, carefully packing a leather saddlebag with bottles of clean water, tincture of digitalis, and clean bandages. Her chin was set in that familiar, stubborn line. Her hazel eyes were burning with a fierce, quiet rage that had nothing to do with self-preservation.
She looked up and caught him watching her.
"You don't have to stay, Jesse," she said softly, her voice free of accusation. "This isn't your town. You don't owe these people anything."
Jesse swallowed hard. Nine years of running, nine years of convincing himself that he didn't care about anything or anyone, seemed to evaporate under the clear, steady beam of her gaze.
"I have two more days on my corral contract," Jesse lied smoothly, turning toward the door. "I'll stick around until the fences are finished."
That afternoon, Doctor Pierce gathered three of the town's prominent shopkeepers and rode out to Sterling's manor house to deliver a formal written petition, signed by fifty miners and homesteaders, demanding the removal of the illegal dam and the restoration of the public water supply.
Jesse watched them ride out. He had a sick, heavy feeling in his gut—a feeling he hadn't experienced since the morning before his regiment was ambushed in Tennessee.
His instincts were proven right three hours later.
The sun had just dropped behind the western mountains when the smoke began to rise over Oak Haven.
It wasn't the gentle, blue smoke of cookstoves or blacksmith forges. It was thick, black, greasy smoke that rolled into the darkening sky like a pillar of ink, carrying with it the frantic, screaming alarms of the town's iron fire bell.
Jesse broke into a run, his heavy boots pounding against the wooden boardwalks.
When he turned the corner onto Main Street, his blood ran cold.
The clinic was engulfed in a roaring, white-hot furnace of flames.
The dry pine timber of the building burned like tinder. The fire had already consumed the roof and was spreading rapidly toward the adjacent dry-goods store. Townspeople were running frantically with buckets of water from the town well, but their efforts were like spitting into a bonfire.
"Where is she?!" Jesse roared, grabbing the local blacksmith by the shoulder and dragging him backward. "Where is Maeve?!"
"I don't know!" the blacksmith gasped, coughing violently from the smoke. "The fire started in the back room! Someone threw a lantern through the rear window! Doctor Pierce tried to go inside to save his medical records!"
Jesse didn't hesitate. He kicked open the low hitching gate, soaked his canvas coat in a bucket of water held by a terrified teamster, threw the wet fabric over his head, and charged straight toward the burning red door.
"Jesse, no!" a voice screamed from the crowd.
Jesse slammed his shoulder against the burning oak door. It gave way with a shower of orange sparks.
The heat inside was staggering, searing his lungs and scorching the hair on his arms. The ceiling beams were groaning, dripping burning pitch onto the floorboards.
"Pierce!" Jesse bellowed through the blinding white smoke. "Pierce!"
He found the old doctor lying near the center of the dispensary floor. His clothes were singed, his face blackened by soot, and his right sleeve was soaked in dark, fresh blood. He had been shot through the shoulder before the fire was set.
Jesse hoisted the old man over his shoulder like a sack of grain, turned, and dove back out through the roaring doorway just as the main roof truss collapsed inward with a deafening crash of thunder and embers.
Jesse tumbled onto the dirt street, rolling to put out the sparks on his trousers.
Townspeople rushed forward, pulling Doctor Pierce away from the heat. Pierce was coughing raggedly, clutching his bleeding shoulder, his eyes wild with terror.
"Jesse..." Pierce choked out, his old hand grabbing Jesse's shirt collar with desperate strength. "They... they took her..."
Jesse’s chest seized. "Who took her, Pierce? Speak!"
"Crane..." Pierce whispered, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "Vance Crane and three of Sterling's men... They shot me in the alley... They grabbed Maeve... thrown her onto a horse... heading North... into the limestone country..."
Jesse stood up slowly.
The roaring fire behind him painted his tall, angular shadow across the dirt street in long, dancing strokes of orange and red. The heat pressed against his back, but inside his chest, an icy, terrifying cold took complete control.
Nine years of running. Nine years of hiding behind nameless trails, temporary jobs, and broken horses.
It was all gone. Wiped away in a single breath.
He walked past the weeping women and the frantic bucket brigade, stepping around behind the burning hardware store.
In the mud of the alleyway, he found what he was looking for: the overturned wooden water bucket Maeve had been carrying, its metal handle bent. Beside it were the deep, torn hoofprints of four heavy horses, galloping violently north toward the high, maze-like limestone country of Sunstone Gorge.
Jesse walked straight to the livery stable.
He didn't speak to anyone. He saddled his heavy bay horse with quick, practiced precision. He checked the action of his Colt .45, ensuring the six chambers were fully loaded. He pulled a heavy lever-action Winchester .44-40 rifle from the livery rack, jacked a round into the chamber, and slid it into his leather saddle scabbard.
As he led his horse out of the barn, he found Julian Ruiz and four Mexican miners standing in the alley. They were carrying heavy pickaxes, iron crowbars, and two old hunting rifles.
"We are coming with you, Señor Kincaid," Julian said, his dark eyes burning with an ancient, unyielding resolve. "Sterling took our water. Now he takes the woman who saved my daughter’s life. We ride."
Jesse looked at the hard, determined faces of the miners. For the first time in nine years, Jesse Kincaid didn't tell them he worked alone.
"Keep your mouths shut and your eyes on the high ridges," Jesse said, his voice flat, cold, and hard as chipped flint. "We ride."
High up in the jagged, desolate maze of the limestone canyons, three miles north of Oak Haven, sat an abandoned stone line-shack that Sterling’s men used as a forward guard post for the illegal dam.
Inside the cold, damp stone room, lit only by a single flickering tallow candle, Maeve Holloway sat on a rough wooden bench. Her hands were bound tightly behind her back with coarse hemp cord, her hair disheveled, her dress torn at the shoulder from the rough handling she had received during the violent ride.