Holloway raised his hand.
Ethan knew what was coming.
"Get down!"
Gunfire exploded.
The valley became chaos.
Ethan fired twice.
A man dropped behind a rock.
Tomas and two other men returned fire.
Women dragged children toward the canyon.
The horses panicked.
Ethan grabbed the reins of his three missing horses and released them toward the western cliffs.
Then he ran back to the spring.
A bullet tore through his sleeve.
He ignored it.
"Mara!"
He found the girl hiding behind a wagon.
"Where's your brother?"
She pointed.
Ethan saw a small body lying beside the rocks.
He ran.
The boy was conscious but bleeding from the leg.
Ethan lifted him.
"Hold on."
The boy cried.
"I can't."
"You can."
Ethan carried him to the spring.
Mara followed.
Behind them, the fighting continued.
Tomas shouted.
"Ethan!"
Ethan turned.
Tomas was standing over a wounded man.
Not one of the Apache.
One of Holloway's.
The man was barely conscious.
Tomas looked at Ethan.
"He knows something."
Ethan crouched.
"Who?"
The wounded man stared at him.
"Holloway..."
"What about him?"
"He..."
The man coughed.
"He killed Cole."
Ethan's blood ran cold.
"My father?"
The man nodded.
"Not a fall."
Ethan grabbed his coat.
"Tell me."
"He ordered it."
Then the man closed his eyes.
Ethan stood.
Everything inside him went silent.
For four years, he had carried grief.
Now grief became something else.
Not rage.
Not revenge.
Purpose.
He looked at Tomas.
"How many men can fight?"
"Nine."
"How many can shoot?"
"Six."
Ethan nodded.
"Then we don't fight them head-on."
Tomas understood.
"You have a plan."
"I have half a plan."
"What is the other half?"
Ethan pointed toward the western cliffs.
"The river."
Tomas looked at him.
"The river is dry."
"Not underground."
Tomas's eyes widened.
Ethan held up his father's compass.
"This points somewhere."
"Your father found the old channel."
Ethan nodded.
"And if we can open it..."
Tomas finished the thought.
"We flood the valley."
Beneath the Red Stone
They moved after sunset.
Ethan, Tomas, and three others entered the narrow canyon behind the spring.
The passage was almost impossible to see.
Only the compass gave them direction.
Ethan's father had scratched a tiny mark beneath the compass lid.
Three lines.
A mountain.
A river.
A circle.
Tomas recognized it.
"Your father marked the old reservoir."
"How do we reach it?"
"Through the cave."
They found the entrance after an hour.
It was hidden behind a curtain of dead vines.
Inside, the air was cool.
Ethan lit a lantern.
The cave descended.
Water dripped somewhere in the darkness.
The sound was almost impossible to believe.
After miles of drought, the earth beneath them was full of water.
They continued.
Eventually the tunnel opened into a cavern.
A massive underground pool lay beneath them.
Ethan stared.
"How much?"
Tomas smiled sadly.
"Enough."
At the far end stood an old wooden gate.
Rotten.
Half collapsed.
But still holding.
Ethan understood.
The spring wasn't natural.
His father had discovered an ancient irrigation channel built long before the ranches existed.
Someone had deliberately blocked it.
Tomas touched the wood.
"Holloway."
Ethan nodded.
"Probably."
They worked for hours.
Ropes.
Axes.
Crowbars.
Their hands bled.
The gate refused to move.
Then Ethan noticed something.
A metal pin.
He pulled it.
Nothing.
He pulled harder.
The gate groaned.
Water rushed through a crack.
"Back!"
They jumped away.
The sound grew louder.
The gate shattered.
A wall of water exploded through the channel.
It raced beneath the valley.
Ethan and Tomas ran.
They reached the spring just before midnight.
Water suddenly erupted from the ground.
The dry riverbed began filling.
First inches.
Then feet.
The Apache families stared in disbelief.
Children laughed.
Women cried.
Tomas knelt beside the water.
Ethan stood silently.
For the first time in years, Dry River was alive.
But the flood carried something else.
A wooden crate surfaced.
Then another.
Ethan pulled one from the current.
Inside were documents.
Hundreds of them.
Old land deeds.
Survey maps.
Government letters.
Records proving the valley had been occupied by Apache families before the surrounding ranches were established.
And underneath those documents were newer papers.
Holloway's forged claims.