The point of Eli Mercer\u2019s pen had already touched the paper when the sound of approaching horses reached him.<\/p>\n
He could not have known it then, but if he had written his name only a few seconds sooner, the valley around him might have passed into the hands of a man who had spent two decades trying to erase the truth buried beneath it.<\/p>\n
Eli lifted the iron-tipped pen away from the signature line.<\/p>\n
Outside, his steel-gray mare raised her head.<\/p>\n
Calico was sixteen years old and long past wasting energy on noises that did not matter. She had learned to divide the world into things worth eating, things worth avoiding, and things too foolish to deserve attention. Rattlesnakes barely earned a twitch anymore. Coyotes sometimes received one turned ear. Passing freight wagons did not interest her at all.<\/p>\n
Now both of her ears pointed toward the southern road.<\/p>\n
Eli stayed seated at the rough pine table inside the ranch house he had built himself. Before him lay a formal document carrying the neat letterhead of a Santa Fe land broker. The offer printed there was larger than his little ranch had any sensible reason to be worth.<\/p>\n
It was the fourth proposal in a year and a half.<\/p>\n
And this time Eli had almost accepted it.<\/p>\n
The house was so still that he could hear timber quietly shifting inside the walls. Beside his elbow sat coffee that had gone completely cold. Afternoon sunlight entered through the western window and caught the slow-turning dust above the floor.<\/p>\n
At thirty-three, Eli had the sort of face that seemed older when viewed from across a room and unexpectedly young whenever he smiled.<\/p>\n
He simply did not smile often.<\/p>\n
He was lean and weather-darkened, shaped by labor instead of appearance. His palms and fingers carried old scars from reins, wire, splintered boards, horseshoes, nails, tools, and all the other stubborn objects a rancher spent his life negotiating with. His hair was brown, his eyes gray, and beneath his jaw ran a pale scar left by the hoof of a frightened colt eight years earlier.<\/p>\n
He lived by himself.<\/p>\n
Once, solitude had felt like liberty.<\/p>\n
Recently, it had started to feel more like the answer to something nobody had asked him.<\/p>\n
The hoofbeats grew louder.<\/p>\n
Eli shoved back his chair and went to the window.<\/p>\n
Three riders were moving up the valley from the south.<\/p>\n
Women.<\/p>\n
That was the first thing he noticed.<\/p>\n
The second struck someplace much deeper.<\/p>\n
They rode with the effortless balance of people who had been familiar with horses before they had ever learned to fear the ground.<\/p>\n
The woman in the center sat a dark bay. She was tall, straight in the saddle, with long black hair divided into two braids decorated with small beads. The woman riding on her left carried herself with the alert stillness of a hunter. The third wore carefully decorated buckskin and had a leather satchel hanging near her saddle.<\/p>\n
Something inside that bag gave a faint metallic sound each time the horse stepped.<\/p>\n
Clink.<\/p>\n
Eli frowned.<\/p>\n
The sound unsettled him, not because he immediately knew it, but because some buried part of him nearly did.<\/p>\n
The riders reached the wooden gate.<\/p>\n
They stopped.<\/p>\n
Dust rolled gently around the horses\u2019 legs.<\/p>\n
Eli stepped onto the porch.<\/p>\n
The woman in the center looked at him.<\/p>\n
Ten years had changed the shape of her face.<\/p>\n
They had not changed her eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cEli Mercer.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the name as a statement, not a question.<\/p>\n
Something old and dry opened behind his ribs.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman watched him another moment.<\/p>\n
Then she spoke again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have spent a long time looking for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli\u2019s hand tightened on the porch railing.<\/p>\n
The ranch disappeared.<\/p>\n
The table vanished.<\/p>\n
For one terrible instant he was twenty-three again.<\/p>\n
He smelled hot red dust.<\/p>\n
He heard horses running.<\/p>\n
He heard a young woman screaming between stone walls.<\/p>\n
And he remembered.<\/p>\n
He remembered the summer afternoon when he had pulled three young Apache women away from men who had never intended to let them leave that canyon.<\/p>\n
Ten years earlier, during the summer of 1869, Eli Mercer owned almost nothing another man would have bothered stealing.<\/p>\n
He had Calico, his saddle, two shirts, a revolver that saw little use, thirty-seven dollars wrapped inside cloth beneath his bedroll, and one stubborn belief: if a man expected nothing from life, life could not disappoint him.<\/p>\n
He was returning west after finishing cattle work near the Texas border.<\/p>\n
Nobody waited for him.<\/p>\n
No wife.<\/p>\n
No ranch.<\/p>\n
No family.<\/p>\n
His parents had died when he was twelve, or so he had always believed, during a summer when fever moved through frontier settlements faster than messages. A widowed neighbor took him in for a time, until poverty forced her to decide between feeding her own children and continuing to feed somebody else\u2019s boy.<\/p>\n
Eli had understood.<\/p>\n
At least that was what he spent years telling himself.<\/p>\n
After that, he learned to be useful.<\/p>\n
Useful boys usually found food.<\/p>\n
He fixed fence lines, mucked stalls, pushed cattle, dug wells, split wood, broke horses, carried supplies, and discovered early that people were often more comfortable around a man who asked for very little.<\/p>\n
By twenty-three he had perfected the habit of leaving before attachment became responsibility.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, while passing through a narrow red-stone region local settlers called Comanche Canyon, Eli heard the first scream.<\/p>\n
Calico stopped beneath him.<\/p>\n
Eli listened.<\/p>\n
Another scream came.<\/p>\n
Nearer.<\/p>\n
He could have kept riding.<\/p>\n
A more sensible man probably would have.<\/p>\n
The frontier concealed a thousand dangers, and survival often depended on knowing which troubles belonged to other people.<\/p>\n
Eli had never become especially good at that lesson.<\/p>\n
He turned Calico toward the noise.<\/p>\n
Past the ridge, the canyon opened into a broad pale flat bordered by broken cliffs.<\/p>\n
Three young women were running across the open ground.<\/p>\n
Their clothing marked them as Apache.<\/p>\n
Behind them rode six men.<\/p>\n
Eli\u2019s first thought was that they were Comanche. Their clothing looked right. Some of their horses carried paint. Several riders had portions of their faces covered.<\/p>\n
Still, something did not fit.<\/p>\n
One man rode too rigidly.<\/p>\n
Another wore unmistakably American-cut boots beneath his leggings.<\/p>\n
Eli registered those details without having time to understand them.<\/p>\n
The riders were gaining.<\/p>\n
One of the women stumbled.<\/p>\n
The nearest pursuer bent low over his horse.<\/p>\n
Eli drove his heels into Calico.<\/p>\n
The mare launched forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cEast!\u201d Eli yelled as he reached the women. \u201cToward the rocks! East!\u201d<\/p>\n
The tallest young woman turned toward him.<\/p>\n
Their eyes met.<\/p>\n
Eli extended one arm.<\/p>\n
She seized it without hesitation.<\/p>\n
He pulled her up behind him while Calico was still running.<\/p>\n
The other two women veered toward the narrowing canyon corridors.<\/p>\n
A shot cracked.<\/p>\n
A chip of stone flew from the ground beside Calico\u2019s hoof.<\/p>\n
Eli twisted in the saddle and fired his revolver once above the pursuing riders.<\/p>\n
He was not trying to hit anyone.<\/p>\n
He wanted them angry.<\/p>\n
That part of the plan worked perfectly.<\/p>\n
Three men followed him.<\/p>\n
Then four.<\/p>\n
Then all six.<\/p>\n
\u201cHold on,\u201d Eli shouted.<\/p>\n
The woman behind him said nothing.<\/p>\n
Her arms locked harder around his middle.<\/p>\n
Calico raced into the canyon.<\/p>\n
For the rest of his life, Eli would remember what followed in pieces rather than as one continuous sequence.<\/p>\n
His boot scraping stone.<\/p>\n
Calico\u2019s sweat-darkened neck.<\/p>\n
The young woman breathing against his shoulder.<\/p>\n
Bullets striking rock.<\/p>\n
The canyon walls turning everything the color of old blood beneath the sun.<\/p>\n
He knew this country because he had hunted there.<\/p>\n
The men behind him did not.<\/p>\n
At one fork he went left.<\/p>\n
At another, right.<\/p>\n
Then through a narrow cut where his knee slammed against the canyon wall.<\/p>\n
The riders began to separate.<\/p>\n
Eli doubled through a dry wash, climbed loose shale, and sent Calico sliding down the opposite slope.<\/p>\n
One rider nearly reached them.<\/p>\n
A hand stretched toward the woman sitting behind Eli.<\/p>\n
She turned, caught the man\u2019s wrist, and bit down hard.<\/p>\n
The rider shouted.<\/p>\n
Eli laughed in spite of everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood!\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman snapped something furious in Apache.<\/p>\n
Eli had no idea what it meant.<\/p>\n
They reached a deep arroyo.<\/p>\n
He drove Calico through it, then climbed onto a concealed shelf hidden beneath brush and an overhang.<\/p>\n
The pursuing riders thundered past below.<\/p>\n
Eli pressed a palm against Calico\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n
She shook beneath him.<\/p>\n
The woman slid from the mare.<\/p>\n
Neither of them spoke for several minutes.<\/p>\n
Then she managed one word in broken Spanish.<\/p>\n
\u201cOthers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli nodded.<\/p>\n
They returned through the canyon by another route.<\/p>\n
The other two women were waiting where he had directed them.<\/p>\n
All three were frightened.<\/p>\n
None appeared badly injured.<\/p>\n
The youngest had a thin cut across one cheek.<\/p>\n
She also held a wrapped object beneath her clothing so tightly that Eli got the impression she would have protected it before she protected herself.<\/p>\n
He remembered that later.<\/p>\n
He remembered something else too.<\/p>\n
When she shifted, the bundle made a quiet metallic noise.<\/p>\n
Clink.<\/p>\n
The same sound coming from the leather satchel ten years later.<\/p>\n
In 1869, Eli had not asked about it.<\/p>\n
One of the women spoke limited Spanish.<\/p>\n
Enough for them to establish that they needed to travel north.<\/p>\n
Enough for Eli to understand they had been separated from their people.<\/p>\n
He offered water.<\/p>\n
They drank.<\/p>\n
The tall young woman\u2014the one who had ridden behind him\u2014continued studying him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou come?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
Eli shook his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou move quicker without me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her expression tightened.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou saved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli shrugged.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone had to.\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked at him as though he had just said something foolish.<\/p>\n
Then she touched two fingers against her chest.<\/p>\n
\u201cChaska.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pointed toward the young woman whose eyes never stopped studying the surrounding rocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWaya.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she indicated the youngest.<\/p>\n
\u201cSerina.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli touched his own chest.<\/p>\n
\u201cEli.\u201d<\/p>\n
Serina carefully repeated it.<\/p>\n
\u201cEli.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chaska stepped nearer.<\/p>\n
Dust had dried across her face.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ride away?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI reckon so.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ask nothing?\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli looked back toward the red maze of canyon walls.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat would I ask you for?\u201d<\/p>\n
Chaska seemed unable to answer that.<\/p>\n
Eli touched the brim of his hat.<\/p>\n
Then he rode away.<\/p>\n
Whenever the memory came back during the years that followed, Eli reduced it to one uncomplicated truth:<\/p>\n
Three women had been in danger. He had been there. So he had helped them.<\/p>\n
He never wondered whether the men chasing them had actually been the men they appeared to be.<\/p>\n
He never asked what Serina had been guarding beneath her clothing.<\/p>\n
And he certainly never imagined that one reckless decision in a red canyon would one day determine the fate of the valley where he finally chose to stay.<\/p>\n
Now, ten years later, those three women were sitting outside his gate.<\/p>\n
And one of them had just said they had been searching for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Echoes of Red Rock Canyon: A Western Tale of Retribution, Gratitude, and Redemption. 009 The point of Eli Mercer\u2019s pen had already touched the paper when the sound of approaching horses reached him. He could not have known it then, but if he had written his name only a few seconds sooner, the valley […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","class_list":["post-807","sr_chapter","type-sr_chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/sr_chapter\/807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/sr_chapter"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/sr_chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/sr_chapter\/807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}