Chapter 3: THE MAN CALEB HAD BLAMED
Tokala’s camp was hidden within a canyon Caleb had ridden past many times without ever realizing people could live there.
He and Kalisa reached it close to midnight.
Caleb expected hostility.
Instead, he found caution.
Old men watched him.
Women pulled children closer.
Young riders recognized his face and whispered among themselves.
Kalisa led him toward a small fire under a cottonwood tree.
A man sat there.
Tokala was much older than Caleb had expected.
Perhaps sixty-five.
Gray ran through his hair, and deep lines covered his face. A scar crossed his left cheek from near the ear toward the jaw.
He did not resemble the monster Caleb had constructed in his imagination during the previous five years.
He looked like what he actually was.
An exhausted older man.
Tokala studied Caleb for a long time before speaking.
“Caleb Whitlock.”
His English was clear.
Caleb still held the torn leather fragment.
“You knew my wife.”
Tokala nodded.
“Yes.”
“Were you at my ranch?”
“Yes.”
“The night it burned?”
“Yes.”
Caleb moved toward him.
Kalisa shifted slightly between them.
Tokala raised one hand.
“No.”
Kalisa stopped.
Tokala looked directly at Caleb.
“He has earned his anger.”
Caleb’s voice trembled.
“Did you kill Mary?”
“No.”
“Did anyone with you kill her?”
“No.”
“How can you know that?”
Tokala reached beneath the blanket around his shoulders.
Caleb tensed.
The old man brought out a small object.
A silver button.
He placed it in his open palm.
Caleb recognized it immediately.
It had come from Mary’s winter coat.
She had lost one button months before the fire, and Caleb had teased her after she replaced it with a mismatched wooden one.
His knees almost weakened.
“Where did you get that?”
“She gave it to me.”
Caleb stared.
Tokala spoke slowly.
“Your wife came to see me three weeks before the fire.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“It is.”
“She would have told me.”
“Perhaps she intended to.”
“Mary didn’t keep secrets from me.”
Tokala held his gaze.
“Everyone keeps secrets when telling the truth might endanger someone they love.”
Caleb’s anger faltered.
Tokala continued.
“She discovered soldiers were moving stolen cattle.”
“What soldiers?”
“Men who sometimes wore uniforms. Sometimes ranch clothes.”
Caleb thought immediately of Hargrove.
Tokala seemed to read the thought.
“The officer.”
“Hargrove?”
“Yes.”
“He was stealing cattle?”
“Taking them from smaller ranches. Moving them elsewhere. Selling them. Blaming us whenever it was useful.”
Caleb felt something sick settle in his stomach.
“Why would he do that?”
“Fear makes land inexpensive.”
Tokala drew several lines in the dirt.
“First, livestock disappears. Then perhaps a barn catches fire. Then somebody says Apache. Families leave. Their land is sold.”
Caleb remembered how much property Hargrove owned.
Tokala drew a circle around the lines.
“And it happened most often around water.”
Caleb stared down.
“My well.”
Tokala looked at him.
“Your wife found records.”
“What kind of records?”
“Payments. Names. Army supply numbers. Land purchases.”
“Where are they?”
“She did not tell me.”
Caleb’s temper returned.
“Then why was she meeting you?”
“Because one of those names was my son’s.”
Kalisa turned her face away.
Tokala’s voice became heavier.
“Hargrove’s men killed him. Then they wrote that he died while attacking soldiers.”
Caleb remembered what Kalisa had told him at the well.
She had lost a brother.
Same wars.
Same grief.
Tokala continued.
“Your wife wanted evidence from both sides.”
Caleb whispered, “Mary was investigating Hargrove.”
“Yes.”
“Was she doing it alone?”
“No.”
“Who was helping her?”
Tokala looked briefly at Kalisa.
Then back at Caleb.
“She never told me.”
Caleb moved away from the fire.
Every part of him resisted what he was hearing.
Mary making biscuits.
Mary repairing his shirts.
Mary laughing because he checked the door twice at night.
Mary secretly meeting Tokala.
Mary searching into the actions of a colonel.
Mary gathering records.
It felt as though the woman he remembered had been replaced by a stranger with the same face.
Tokala spoke behind him.
“She loved you.”
Caleb turned sharply.
“You don’t get to tell me that.”
“No.”
Tokala remained calm.
“But she told me herself.”
Caleb’s throat tightened.
“What else did she tell you?”
Tokala stared into the fire.
“On the night your ranch burned, she sent a boy to me.”
“What boy?”
“He never came back.”
“Why was she sending him?”
“He carried one sentence.”
Tokala paused.
Caleb waited.
“Seventeen stones. Where the earth drinks first.”
The canyon seemed to tilt around Caleb.
The well.
Kalisa counting.
The seventeenth stone.
He whispered, “Why didn’t you come to me afterward?”
Shame seemed to settle across Tokala’s face.
“I tried.”
“When?”
“The next morning.”
Caleb shook his head.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I was there that morning.”
“No. You were unconscious.”
Caleb stopped.
Tokala went on.
“You remember smoke. You remember running.”
“I remember everything.”
“Do you?”
Tokala asked the question gently.
That made it hurt more.
“You collapsed beside your barn.”
Caleb’s mind flashed.
Heat.
A beam crashing.
Hands pulling him.
He had always assumed one of the ranch hands from town had dragged him away.
Tokala touched the scar across his cheek.
“I carried you out.”
Caleb stared at him.
“No.”
“The soldiers arrived later.”
“Hargrove’s soldiers.”
“Yes.”
Caleb’s hands began trembling.
“What happened to Mary?”
Tokala fell silent.
Caleb stepped toward him.
“Tell me.”
“She was alive when I found her.”
Everything stopped.
Caleb opened his mouth.
No sound came.
Tokala’s voice dropped.
“Not for much longer.”
Caleb had to sit because his legs could no longer support him.
“She was alive?”
“Yes.”
“And you—”
“I stayed with her.”
“You stayed?”
“Yes.”
Caleb put one hand over his mouth.
For five years, the thought that Mary had been alone had tortured him more than almost anything else.
Tokala continued quietly.
“She was afraid for you. Not for herself.”
Caleb was crying before he realized it.
“What did she say?”
Tokala looked directly at him.
“She said, ‘Don’t let him spend the rest of his life hating the wrong people.’”
Caleb bowed his head.
The fire blurred before him.
Tokala allowed the silence to remain.
After a long time, Caleb spoke.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
“You already said that.”
“Hargrove’s soldiers stopped us before we could reach town. Two of my people were killed. I was wounded.”
Tokala touched his side.
“Afterward, patrols increased. Anyone who approached your ranch risked being shot.”
“For five years?”
“No.”
Tokala’s eyes hardened.
“For two years, I believed Hargrove had already found whatever Mary had hidden. Then he stopped buying property.”
Caleb immediately understood.
“Until recently.”
“Yes.”
“Why begin again now?”
Tokala looked toward Kalisa.
She answered instead.
“Because the railroad survey is coming through.”
Caleb frowned.
“What does a railroad have to do with this?”
Tokala drew another line in the dirt.
“Railroads require water.”
Caleb thought about his well.
Thirty miles.
Deep.
Dependable.
It had never failed.
Kalisa said, “If the railroad chooses the southern route, whoever controls your well controls every water contract between this valley and the river.”
Caleb stared at her.
Hargrove’s offer.
His growing land holdings.
The pressure.
The stolen cattle.
The rumors.
It had never truly been about hatred.
Hatred was only a useful instrument.
The real issue was water.
Caleb opened his hand.
Hargrove’s stamped piece of leather lay in his palm.
Tokala looked at it.
“So he has started moving again.”
Caleb stood.
“We’re going back.”
Kalisa frowned.
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Caleb looked east.
Toward his isolated ranch.
Toward the well.
Toward the seventeenth stone.
“Because whatever Mary hid, Hargrove believes it is still there.”
Tokala slowly stood as well.
“And if Hargrove is watching?”
Caleb faced him.
“He is.”
“How can you know?”
Caleb’s expression hardened.
“Because if our places were reversed, I would be watching too.”
Comments (0)