The sharp sting brought Arthur back to full consciousness.
"We did not carry you five miles through the dirt for you to die on a rock like a dog," she hissed, her dark eyes flashing. "Get up, Rancher."
Before Arthur could reply, Harrow’s enforcer, Miller, crested the ridge above them, his revolver raised. "End of the line, Hale!"
Miller fired. The bullet ripped through the meat of Arthur’s thigh. Arthur yelled out, falling hard onto the slate rock.
Miller grinned, taking deliberate aim at Arthur’s chest. "The boss wants you dead, and he wants those squaws quiet."
A soft thwackechoed through the canyon.
Miller’s eyes widened in sudden, disbelief. He dropped his gun, reaching foolishly for the wooden shaft of an arrow that had suddenly appeared, driven deep through the center of his throat. He let out a wet, gurgling sound and tumbled backward off the cliff face.
High above on the canyon rim, the eldest sister stood framed against the morning sky, her bow unstrung, her face cold as flint.
Moments later, the youngest sister emerged from the brush below, holding the reins of two captured horses belonging to the men who had pursued her. Her clothes were torn, and there was blood on her knife, but she was smiling.
"They chase poorly," she said simply.
Harrow, left entirely alone at the bottom of the gorge, realized his men were gone. Panic finally overcame his refined air. He wheeled his horse around to flee back toward his town mansion, but Arthur—fueled by a sudden, surging rush of adrenaline—pulled himself up onto the boulder, raised his Winchester, and squeezed the trigger.
The shot struck the ground inches in front of Harrow’s horse. The horse reared, throwing the banker violently onto the river stones. Harrow scrambled backward in the mud, his expensive coat ruined, his face pale with terror as the four of them—the broken rancher and the three Apache sisters—surrounded him.
"Arthur! Arthur, please!" Harrow begged, clutching his fractured wrist. "It was business! Only business! I can make you rich! I can give you half the syndicate!"
Arthur stood over him, the barrel of his rifle pointing directly between the banker's eyes. His finger tightened on the trigger. He thought of his burned barn. He thought of his dead cattle. He thought of the three dead homesteaders, and he thought of the sisters' father, murdered in the dark for protecting his family.
Pull it,a voice inside Arthur screamed. End it here.
A hand rested gently on his shoulder. It was the eldest sister.
"If you kill him here, his friends in town will call it murder," she said softly. "They will hang you, and they will hunt us until we are dead. Let the law tear him down."
Arthur looked at her, then at Harrow, who was shaking violently in the dirt. Slowly, Arthur lowered the hammer of his rifle.
"Bind his hands," Arthur said, his voice cold as winter ice. "We’re going to town."
The sun was high when the strange procession entered the main street of Prescott.
The townspeople stopped on the wooden boardwalks, gaping in absolute silence. Down the center of the dusty street walked Arthur Hale, bloodied, limping, and held upright by two Apache women. Behind them came the third sister, holding a lever-action rifle, driving a snorting, dirt-covered Edwin Harrow ahead of her with his hands bound securely with rawhide rope.
Walking beside them was Arthur's gray mare, which had entered town hours earlier and was currently being held by a young boy near the deputy's office.
Marshal Amos Reed stepped out onto the porch of the territorial courthouse, his tall frame clad in a dark coat, a silver star gleaming on his chest. He looked at the bloodied rancher, the bound banker, and the three silent Native women.
"Arthur Hale?" Reed asked, chewing on an unlit cigar. "What in God's name happened to you?"
"Ask him," Arthur rasped, nodding toward Harrow. "And check the saddlebag on my gray mare."
Marshal Reed walked down the steps, unbuckled the mare's leather saddlebag, and pulled out the oilcloth bundle. He unwrapped it, unfolding the military ledgers and the charcoal copies made by the middle sister.
As Reed read the names—the payments, the fraud, the recorded land seizures, and the names of the corrupt deputies on Harrow’s payroll—his face grew increasingly dark.