Ita struck his hand.
The weapon fell.
Pike stared at her.
“You have no idea what your family started.”
“My family survived you.”
“No.”
He looked toward Elias.
“His father started it.”
Elias grabbed Pike by the collar.
“Tell me everything.”
Pike smiled.
“Ask your father's widow.”
“My mother is dead.”
“Not the one you think.”
Elias froze.
“What?”
Pike laughed.
Then Abel struck him with the shotgun stock.
Pike collapsed.
The other gunmen fled into the night.
Silence returned.
But the silence was different now.
It carried seventeen years of questions.
At dawn, Elias and Ita rode north.
They found the old camp beneath the cliffs.
Most of it had disappeared.
Trees had grown where tents once stood.
The river still ran through the valley.
And at the center of the old camp stood the spring.
Cold Water.
Beside it was a stone marker.
Ita dismounted.
“My mother died here.”
Elias removed his hat.
“I am sorry.”
“She was trying to protect me.”
“How old were you?”
“Three.”
“You remember?”
“Not everything.”
She touched the stone.
“I remember smoke.”
Elias looked away.
“What happened to your father?”
“He died before the attack.”
“And your grandmother?”
“Alive.”
“Where?”
“Twenty miles east.”
Elias looked at her.
“You came here because of Pike.”
“I came here because of the truth.”
“And now?”
“I don't know.”
They returned to the ranch.
Pike had been captured two days later.
But before he was taken to the territorial jail, he asked to speak with Elias alone.
Elias agreed.
Pike sat behind the bars.
“You want answers.”
“Yes.”
“Your father wasn't the mastermind.”
“Then who was?”
Pike hesitated.
“Your mother.”
Elias stared at him.
“You're lying.”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Because lies kept me alive for seventeen years.”
Pike leaned forward.
“Your mother knew about the spring.”
“My mother would never hurt those people.”
“No.”
Pike smiled bitterly.
“She tried to stop your father.”
Elias said nothing.
“Your father had arranged the attack. Your mother discovered it. She rode north to warn the camp.”
Elias's heart pounded.
“But she arrived too late.”
“What happened?”
“She saw what your father had done.”
“Then why did she stay with him?”
“She didn't.”
Elias's face changed.
“What?”
“Your mother left.”
“When?”
“Three days after the massacre.”
“That is impossible.”
Pike shook his head.
“She took you with her.”
“No.”
“You were five.”
“I was twenty-two.”
“That was later.”
Pike looked at him.
“Your father told you your mother died when you were five, didn't he?”
Elias stopped breathing.
The memories came slowly.
A funeral.
A small wooden box.
His father's hand.
A grave.
But he had never seen the body.
Never.
Pike continued.
“She didn't die.”
“Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
“Who does?”
Pike looked toward the window.
“Your mother.”
Elias left the jail trembling.
Ita was waiting outside.
“You heard?”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“No.”
He stared at her.
She looked devastated.
Then she reached into her satchel.
“I found this in your father's office.”
She handed him a letter.
The handwriting was familiar.
He knew it without reading.
His mother's.
Elias opened it.
The letter was seventeen years old.
My son,
If you ever read this, it means I failed to protect you from the truth.
Your father is not the man you believe him to be.
But neither am I.
I knew about the northern spring.
I knew what he planned.
I was too late to stop the first shot.
I could not stop the others.
I saved one child.
You.
I took you away because I believed your father would eventually come after us.