Posted January 5, 2018

Cantrell reached out and lightly tugged Shade' sleeve so the two men could back out to the edge of the activity going on while still keep an eye on the area. "It looks like there's more than meets the eye with our new lawyer..." Cantrell cradled the coach gun in his left arm with the barrel pointing up and to the side in a safe direction. He had already decided to keep the weapon...it wasn't like the former owner would object.

Shade nodded, but motion at the entrance to the yards heralded the arrival of the sheriff and two deputies. Harriet moved to stand next to Quentin and Shade, "Say nothing, gentlemen." She turned to the tall man with salt and pepper hair and a badge pinned to the front of his tan leather vest. "Sheriff, I am H.G. Mercer, an attorney. These two men are my clients. Can you take our statements here?"

The sheriff blinked at the woman who had preempted his plan to ask exactly what had happened at the usually quiet stable yard. He gestured at his two deputies, "See what you can find out from any onlookers, check those two men over there." He spared a brief glance at the man and a younger woman who seemed to be attending to an injured man. "He one of the shooters?"

"Mr. Royce would have participated, but I interfered with his plans," Harriet answered. "Mr. Stahl, my driver, has medical training as does my sister, but he will need ongoing care after his arrest. Sheriff...?" She looked expectantly at the man.

"Benjamin Gaines, ma'am," the man replied. "Sorry about that, forgot my manners. As for your request to take the statements here, I..."

Harriet held up a hand, "Sheriff Gaines, I know my request is irregular, but we have a hearing scheduled with Judge Oliver Mandrell in Kalispell, and it is vital we not miss the court date which could result in contempt charges. I will see that my clients return for any subsequent proceedings here, sir." Her tone was reasonable with the barest hint of urgency in it to reinforce the importance of being allowed to continue their journey.

"As you say, ma'am, it is highly irregular," Sheriff Gaines replied, reaching up to run a hand through his thick hair. "Under the circumstances, if you can provide proof of the court appointment, I will allow it as long as I know how to reach you."

"I have the letter requesting my presence and naming these two men as well," Harriet answered, turning to lead the way to the porch area. "I just need to get my attaché case from the carriage."

Gaines watched the woman walk off and gave another shake of his head. Turning to the two men she had indicated were her clients, he pointed toward the porch, "Maybe we can have a seat?" He grinned at the hovering form of the stable's owner, "Could we get some coffee, Charlie?" Chaffee hurried off while Ben walked to the porch with H.G. Mercer's two clients. By the time they were settled at one of the tables, Mrs. Chaffee was delivering a coffee and tea service, and the female attorney was back with a slim, expensive looking briefcase.

Harriet took out a sheet of paper and handed it to the Sheriff, watching him as he read the short missive requesting that she along with Mr. Quentin Cantrell and Mr. Shade Thornton present themselves for a hearing regarding the custody of two children and their property. The sheriff read through the letter twice, requested paper and a pencil which she provided and wrote down a few notes.

"I'll follow up with a telegram to Judge Mandrell," Ben Gaines said and then took a sip of coffee. He fixed his warm, intelligent brown eyes on the younger of the two men. "I recognize you, Mr. Thornton, so that means you must be Mr. Cantrell. I was sorry to hear about Chance, Regina, and the children. Knew them a long time, they were good people." Gaines leaned back in his seat, "I was the deputy that took your and Mrs. Thornton's statements when you killed Calvin Steelgrave. Is that what all this was about?"

Shade started to answer but subsided when Harriet shook her head at him. "Sheriff Gaines," she said, "there have been attempts to keep my clients from making the mandated court date. Those two incidents and this one could, of course, be bizarre coincidences, and I have no concrete evidence to indicate otherwise. It seems unlikely, however, since the man who has challenged my clients' wills was fired by them several years ago." Harriet went on to repeat Royce's statement to her and what she had overheard of the challenge from "Blackie" to Shade.

Cantrell saw the byplay between Shade and Harriet and played along. "She's not trying to be evasive, Sheriff. I have the hole in my arm to prove we've been attacked recently. We are both sorry to have had trouble follow us into your town, but we did not really have a choice. Neither one of us will be hard to find if you need us to return. Too many responsibilities to be drifters."

Gaines continued writing for a few moments, occasionally nodding as Harriet Mercer and then Cantrell spoke. "George "Blackie" Calder and Calvin Steelgrave were thick as thieves back in the day," he remarked as he finished writing and laid the pencil down. "In fact, had Calder been in town when Steelgrave attacked Miss Regina, things might have ended very differently. He was always fond of ambush attacks or stacking the odds in his favor, so none of this surprises me in the least." He handed the sheet of paper to Harriet, "Please read for accuracy and if you agree with it, sign it and have your clients sign it. If our prosecutor or the judge thinks we need you back for the trial, I'll send word to you. Good enough?"

Harriet read the pages that Gaines handed to her, "I would like to change the verbiage in a couple of places." She took a clean pad of paper and quickly rewrote the pages to suit herself and then handed them back to the sheriff. "If you agree to the changes, Sheriff," she said sweetly, "and once my clients have read it and agreed, we will sign it."

Shade watched Harriet Mercer work and had to stop himself from grinning. These types of situations usually found him trying to convince the local law that he had not started the fight and that it had all been straight up and fair. To have someone running interference with the sheriff and actually defending his actions left him feeling a bit bemused. It was evident that Mercer took her duty as their attorney very seriously which, despite the fact that he had not taken a liking to her personally, made him feel better about the situation.

Cantrell was also showing his mettle by reinforcing what Harriet was saying to the sheriff. The man was as cool, calm and logical as the attorney in his statements to the sheriff. Shade knew he would not be handling things as calmly. Even now, as his gaze turned back to the small knot of people by the wall where Stahl and Miss Josephine were dealing with Royce, his blood boiled. There was nothing that made his blood boil like a back-shooter, whether it was his back being targeted or someone else's.

Shade's thoughts were interrupted as Ben Gaines finished reading the changes Harriet had made and handed the pages back to her, "Looks fine to me, ma'am." He tore up the draft he had written to make sure the pages didn't get confused with the new draft.

"Thank you, Sheriff Gaines," Harriet said and quickly set her signature to each page before handing them off to Shade and Quentin to read and sign. While they did that, Harriet rewrote the statements from memory. She then pulled a small leather box out of her case that had an ink-darkened sponge in it. She also took a small tightly stoppered jar of ink out, removed the stopper and poured a little on the sponge. Another tiny case held a rubber notary stamp. She quickly affixed the stamp to each page, wrote the date and her signature again and handed the sheaf of papers back to the sheriff who also initialed each page. "There you are, Sheriff. One copy for you and one for me."

Sheriff Gaines folded the signed statements and tucked them into the inside pocket of his vest just as one of the deputies walked up. "Carl's gone for the wagon so we can move the bodies to the doc's place." His expression was full of suspicion as he looked at the two men seated at the table with the sheriff.

"Good job. Anything else, Jeff?" Gaines raised his eyebrows at the young deputy.

"We didn't find anything other than six-guns on Blackie and the other man and no identification either," Jeff stated, now openly glaring at Cantrell.

Cantrell gave a slow smile and reached, scooping the coach gun from where it had been resting on the edge of the table. He brought it up and broke the breech open, and tipped it, catching the two brass shells as they slid out into his waiting hand. "There...all safe, Sheriff. However, I will be keeping this because I plan to give it back to whoever paid these men to try and kill us..." Cantrell's smile was slow to widen and maddening in its obvious malice at the deputy as he set the shotgun on the tabletop while he handed the shells to the Sheriff. "Run along, Jeff. Adults are talking."

Gaines rose to his feet, shouldering the glaring boy aside, "Go round up the prisoner before you get into more trouble than you can handle, boy," he said affably to the deputy. The sheriff had not missed the fact that Shade's hand had dropped toward his sidearm. "I think that about does it, ma'am, gentlemen. I'll be in touch." He tugged the brim of his hat and ushered the deputy over to take charge of Royce.

Shade lounged back in his chair, watching the two men cross the yard, stopping to take the injured man into custody, before heading out through the side gate. Once they were gone, he turned his eyes toward Quentin and gave the man a long, considering look although he refrained from saying anything. The snapping of the catches on the attaché case brought his attention back to Harriet Mercer. She looked at each man as she smoothed her trousers with one hand, the other closing about the handle of the case, "We should get going. We've lost too much time as it is. Would one of you be so kind as to retrieve my knife? It was a gift." Shade's gaze followed the woman's trim figure as she stepped off the porch and headed for the carriage.

"I'll let you retrieve her knife while I saddle the horses. You shouldn't be trying to sling a saddle around yet," Shade told Quentin, rising easily to his feet. "Wonder what we've gotten ourselves into?" He mused quietly.

Cantrell stood up and handed the shotgun to Shade. "Stick this in my saddle somewhere while I see about our lawyer's knife..." Cantrell watches Harriet walk away. "That woman..." He snorted to himself and headed to the front fence area toward where Josephine and the newcomer were cleaning up their work.

Posted January 5, 2018

Shade reined Lakota to a stop at the top of the rise to wait for Quentin and the carriage to catch up with him. He had been primarily riding scout while Quentin rode alongside the carriage as the guard. His eyes continually scanned the landscape, drinking in its beauty from the gently undulating land around him to the rugged magnificence of the Rocky Mountains. Across the clearing from the surprisingly well-maintained road, a small herd of elk grazed within a safe distance of the treeline. They were in no danger. It would be wasteful to kill one of the animals as the meat could not possibly be consumed nor preserved for the remainder of their journey. Besides, another surprise was Harriet Mercer's culinary abilities with a campfire. She had managed to turn simple beans and bacon with a pan cornbread into a passable chili.

They had left Missoula before noon of the previous day and made good progress on the road. It helped that the big Vanners that pulled Harriet's coach could maintain a brisk trot without strain. Even with breaks for those traveling in the vehicle to stretch their legs and for Harriet and Stahl to change out driving duties, they were going to be in Kalispell well ahead of the court date. They had camped at one of the way stations the night before and nooned at Happy's Midway Inn, the only true relay station between Missoula Mills and Kalispell. If there was no trouble, Shade estimated they would reach the south end of Flathead Lake the next day. He and Quentin agreed that it would be prudent to avoid the very rough and rather dangerous trading town of Poison that sat on the lake's southernmost shore. If they really pushed, they might even make it into Kalispell late the next day.

It was hot, but there was a strong wind coming off the mountains that made things bearable. Shade stood in his stirrups so he could pull a bandana from the back pocket of his jeans. Unhooking his canteen, he poured a little water on the cloth, removed his hat and used it to wipe his face. He wrung the cloth out, allowing the water to fall into his hair before he replaced his black Stetson. The carriage was now in sight so he gigged Lakota and moved him off to the side of the road where the horse could pick at the grass while they waited. Moving just those few feet gave him a different line of sight allowing him to spot a dark shape next to an outcropping of rock he couldn't identify at that distance. Shade grumbled mentally. He'd left his field glasses rolled up in his bedroll that was stored in the boot of the carriage. He'd meant to return them to his saddlebags but had forgotten.

Harriet could see against the glare of Montana's blazing afternoon sun that Shade had reined in his horse at the top of the next rise. She had divided her time between driving, riding in the driver's box while Stahl drove, and riding inside the carriage to keep Josephine company although that was more courtesy on her part as her sister mostly ignored her. It had been late when they stopped to make camp the night before, and everyone was exhausted. The conversation had been stilted and limited to what was needed to get camp setup and get them fed. They had not even felt inclined to talk about that morning's events, the shooting in the stable yard. In fact, Harriet found that she really did not want to think overmuch about the incident and the part she had played in it.

Shade had stopped again at the ridge, waiting for them to catch up. Stahl squinted against the bright light of the sun to see if their scout gave any indications of trouble ahead. There was no such sign, at least none that he could read, which was not saying much. He had known the entire traveling company for less than two days. There had not been many words after they had left Missoula, leaving the incident behind there. Stahl sometimes admired the ability of people here to simply let things go. No questions, no explanations asked, no debates - simply going on with the life as it was. Maybe that was what made them free. He liked that thought.

Posted January 5, 2018

Quentin sat his horse, reins held loosely in one hand as Paladin ambled along, easily keeping up with the wagon at a walking pace. He reached and tugged his loose bandana from a pocket and wiped his neck and face. The heat was amazing as always this time of year. After their little skirmish in town, the group had been trying to be extra alert, but the heat and the monotony of the trail could dull the sharpest senses. The thought of not being alert hit Cantrell, and he raised his head, seeing Shade at the top of a rise near the road. He was sitting still and looking off the other side. Cantrell sat up and spurred, sending Paladin loping along the flat ground, then up the small hill toward where Shade sat. He slowed and reined in beside the younger man. Cantrell reached back and undid one saddle bag, tugging out his field glasses. "You see something?"

"Not sure," Shade replied, feeling Lakota sidle a bit toward Paladin. He'd heard Quentin cantering up behind him, but had become accustomed to the older man's coming and going as he took Shade's empty canteens to refill and brought him fresh ones or a bit of jerky to nibble on. Overall, they had settled into a comfortable working relationship on the trail. Lakota and Paladin seemed to take their cues from their riders, usually merely touching their noses and inhaling one another's scent to reaffirm a friendly arrival and not something that would eat them.

Shade pointed diagonally off to his right toward the farthest of the two substantial rock outcroppings. The heat made the image shimmer, and he narrowed his eyes, "Something...over there maybe?"

Cantrell pulled out the sunshades on the ends of his field glasses and raised them to his eyes. His finger turned the focus wheel a few times. "Yeah...there's something...hard to make out...wait..." Cantrell lowered the glasses and looked at Shade. "...I think I saw a broken wagon wheel..."

Feeling a cold lump forming in the pit of his stomach, Shade held his hand out for the field glasses. Even after Quentin handed them to him, he hesitated to raise them to his eyes. In his heart, Shade knew what he was going to see. Finally, feeling Quentin's scrutiny, he raised the glasses to his eyes, triangulating in on the rock outcropping in the near distance. Shade took a sharp, deep breath. "It's the wagon," he told Cantrell as he swung his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground. He handed the field glasses back to his friend as well as Lakota's lead line.

Shade prowled the edge of the road, soon finding what he needed in the form of a thin branch from a tree. He quickly stripped it of its dead leaves and tested it against the long grass. Satisfied that it would do what he needed it to do, he signaled Quentin to follow him. Shade walked along the verge of the road for several feet before spotting the signs that someone else had ridden off the road into the meadow. By itself, that meant very little. Many travelers used the rocks as landmarks and campsites. But what he had spotted was the faint impressions of wider than normal wheels. A fairly heavily laden wagon had left the road and made a diagonal route toward the larger of the two rock formations. Shade used the stick to push aside the grass, letting him see the ground. Periodically, he'd stoop to pick up objects, wrap them in his spare bandana and tuck them into the pocket of his vest.

Cantrell let his right hand drop and pull his Schofield from its holster. He let the pistol rest across his lap while he nudged Paladin into a slow amble to follow Shade and lead Lakota. His eyes lifted up past Shade to watch the nearby area warily as they moved slowly. "You sure you want to do this right now, Shade?"

Shade kneeled to pick up several items hidden by the grass. He handed them up to Quentin; several shell casings, an arrowhead, and two broken arrows. "I have to, Quentin. I have to know." His eyes begged for understanding before he turned to continue along the unseen trail. Although he continued to occasionally stop and pick up items strewn on the ground, he picked up the pace.

Posted January 5, 2018

The carriage crested the rise and came to a stop. Harriet had noted that Shade and Quentin were looking at something in the distance with the aid of field glasses. She now noted that they had angled off the road a few yards below the summit of the ridge and were making slow progress toward a large rock formation. Curious, she pulled her field glasses from the leather pouch that hung just under the driver's seat. The blackened hulk of a wagon leaped into focus, making Harriet gasp in consternation. "Oh, good Lord no!" She leaned forward, taking in deep cleansing gulps of air to keep the morning's meal from leaving her stomach. "Mr. Stahl, we need to follow them, carefully."

Stahl squinted, but he could not see clearly what had startled Ms. Mercer. He followed her order to get moving again, but only slowly. Whatever it was, something was not right ahead, and they lacked a clear signal from their scouts. As the carriage began to move again, Stahl cast a short look at the Lady beside him. Her exclamation made it clear that whatever was ahead was terrible. In light of how calm she had been during the attack on them, it had to be all the more nasty to get such a reaction from her. "How bad is it?" he asked softly, eyes never leaving the terrain the carriage slowly moved toward.

Harriet glanced at Adalwin while she considered how much she could say without betraying client-attorney privilege. Finally, she gestured toward the dark image that lay close to the rock formation they were slowly approaching, "If that is what I think it is, it is the reason my clients and I are journeying to Kalispell. I apologize for being so vague, but there are things they will have to reveal. As their attorney, I cannot."

Her words cast an entirely new light on the reasons for her journey, he had not asked for her reasons to travel when they met, it had not been necessary. Strange though it might be to see a woman in a legal role like this, she was bound by the law to keep her confidences. He respected that. Frowning, he studied the scene before them, the traces that were hard to miss. This looked like danger, trouble, and maybe a very dark reason for his employer to travel. "I understand," Stahl confirmed out loud that he respected Miss Mercer's position. "Nevertheless, we should be careful."

The group continued to progress toward the rocks in the same manner with Shade leading on foot, stopping to search the ground periodically. Quentin rode behind him, often pointing out objects from his vantage point that Shade missed. The carriage followed at a slight distance to make certain the team of big Vanners did not crowd the two saddle horses.

The objective gradually resolved itself into the burned out hulk of a wagon built in the style of a Conestoga prairie schooner. It was the type of vehicle bringing people to settle in the west although there were a few notable differences. The wagon was not an actual Conestoga. Those were built in the Conestoga River region of Pennsylvania's Lancaster County. This one had been designed and built by a custom craftsman in St. Louis, Missouri for a couple making the journey by wagon train to Oregon. It had been shorter in length than standard covered wagons, a bit wider, and the wheels had been wider as well. Shade knew all this because his father had purchased the wagon at auction in Sacramento. It was the one that he'd learned driving a heavy team on.

Now, the beautifully polished wooden sides and bed lay charred and blackened. The bows, large wooden or metal hoops that supported the bonnet, could be seen sticking up like the ribs of some dead animal. In this wagon, the bows were of metal and had darkened but survived the fire intact. Only a trace of the bonnet, the canvas cover that gave covered wagon its name, remained. A fragment of the canvas, darkened but not badly burnt, could be seen still attached to one of the bows where it attached to the side of the wagon. The wheels on the side nearest the rock formation, some twenty feet away, had been burned away while the ones nearest the travelers were mostly intact. This caused the wagon to lay with its bed tilted toward the rocks, away from the group that now stood a few feet away.

Posted January 5, 2018

As if in a trance, Shade moved closer, reaching out to rest his hand on the wagon's charred side. Wind and rain had scoured away the smells of death, and he was grateful. Shade had once helped search a burned-out farmhouse after an Indian raid near Laramie. The unique scents associated with the dead in that house had remained with him to this day. It was something he never wanted to experience again. The only scent remaining was the faint acrid smell of burned wood. Shade glanced down at the ground. Here, the long meadow grass had been charred to the earth leaving dirt and rock exposed where it met the stonier ground leading to the rock formation. A few yards east of the wagon and rock formation, Shade could see the rib bones of a large animal peeking through new shoots of grass.

Cantrell dismounted and let the reins go. As they dropped the horses just stood in place, grazing on the grass in front of them. He slid his pistol back into its holster and walked up beside Shade. He stood looking at the wagon silently, feeling the weight of what it represented. Absently he reached up and tugged his hat off and held it at his side and ran the fingers of his free hand through his hair as he inhaled and then let out a long shaky breath. His arm came up, and one hand rested on Shade's shoulder, giving a squeeze once.

Shade met Quentin's eyes, his own expressing gratitude for the older man's understanding. He hoped that Cantrell knew that he felt the same. They shared more than the trail north. The two men shared the pain of having lost those they loved. Shade frowned and pointed to the bones in the grass, "One of the horses." No doubt he would find scraps of hide amongst the skeletal remains, but he was in no hurry to inspect the carcass. Predators and carrion eaters would have picked it clean. Finding evidence of whether the animal had been an incidental casualty of the attack on the wagon would be next to impossible. Instead, he pointed past the wagon to the outcropping of massive boulders and spires of rock.

"People call this formation the Devil's Watchtower. The region's Indians have many names for it. The one over there," Shade pointed to the south formation, "is called Wadi's Well because of the spring. It's long been considered a place of peace, a sanctuary." He rested one black-gloved hand on the wagon, "Chance was trying to reach the Watchtower. It's defensible. There's a narrow entrance where the rocks have tumbled together, no way in from the back, top or sides. One or two people can defend against a large party. Most Indians in the region avoid it, believing the nooks and caves to harbor evil spirits. Tribal names vary, but all have one thing in common, they refer to monsters or evil creatures that live in the dark places. It's bad medicine, bad luck." Something caught his attention, and he dug at an item embedded in the wagon's frame managing to pry loose yet another arrowhead for their growing collection.

Harriet dropped to the ground from the driver's box, pausing to dust off the seat of her britches before approaching the wagon, stopping not far from where Shade stood. He'd stopped speaking and stood with one hand resting on the wagon and his head slightly bowed. He was so still that it seemed as if he were not breathing. Her misty gray eyes darkened slightly. She might be a hard and cold businesswoman, but she was not cruel by nature. Harriet instinctively knew that the younger man would not welcome her touch. Against all expectations, she understood that. He might have made a connection to Quentin Cantrell, but he was a long way from being comfortable with the rest of them. After giving Shade a few more moments, she asked, "What are you searching for, Mr. Thornton?"

Shade glanced back at Quentin and then at Harriet, noting that her crisp, cold voice had softened marginally. He gestured at the wagon and the ground around it, "Evidence. Something isn't right, doesn't make sense..." his voice trailed off making it clear that he knew something wasn't right about the deaths of his family, but he wasn't sure what didn't fit.

Nodding, Harriet pulled the bandana from around her throat. She was an attorney. The concept of evidence was something she understood. Leaving Shade to look for the more obscure things that only a man raised to this life would see, she began looking for more obvious bits and pieces.

Quentin began to walk around the wagon and the area nearby. Occasionally his foot would scuff on the ground. Every so often he would kneel, and his fingers would scrape at the ground. After several minutes he stood and looked in his hand at a pile of various objects. He placed the hat back on his head so his free hand could push and sort through the things in his palm. Finally, he looked up. "Shade...are the Indians who live around here well off?...I mean money wise?"

Shade shook his head, "Financially, no. They have it a little better regarding feeding themselves because they never relied as heavily on the buffalo. Some of the nations were also willing to learn agriculture as white men settled the area. In general, they're more willing to barter and trade with us for what they need."

Cantrell nodded. "That's about what I figured...I'm beginning to think something's wrong with this picture."

Posted January 5, 2018

Stahl had remained on the driver's box, at first because it was unclear if they intended to stop for longer and then because the elevated position gave him something of a good look at the surroundings. When he saw Miss Mercer take the bandana to make ready to take a closer look at the carnage, he was very much tempted to give the two ruffians a sharp bark to not leave a Lady to wander the site on her own. He could not just go with her, it would leave the carriage and the passenger unattended. The only thing stopping him from barking something very much akin to an order toward Thornton was the man's countenance, the way he stood, walked...the way he looked at this place. This was not shock. If a man living like this could still be shocked by the random violence, this was closer to home, personal in some manner. Be it because he knew the place and region, or maybe he knew the people. His wish to look for evidence and was traveling with an attorney only added to the picture. Something had happened here. He whistled softly for Wilhelm. The horse came trotting along, stopping beside the carriage.

Leaving the drivers box only for the short moment he needed to get the pistol from where he had stored it, Stahl was swiftly back in his place. The weapon had come to him in his first year in the new world and he hardly ever used it, but it was more familiar than the rifles he had encountered here. He loaded the weapon, keeping it ready, as he kept an eye on Miss Mercer and her search. If someone had remained behind or had come to plunder what was left, this place was still dangerous.

Harriet's search yielded several large scuffed stones and more shell casings. She had kept an eye on Shade and Quentin, watching while they both circled the wagon. Like her, neither seemed inclined to search its bed although the remains of those killed had long since been removed. Her eyes were drawn past the wagon to the rock formation towering behind it. She had not studied geology in college, but she could tell it had taken terrific earth-born forces to leave the rock formations that dotted the meadow. Harriet imagined she felt a cold wind spiral out from the rocks behind the fallen wagon as if something had expelled its icy breath. The rock formation that Shade called the Devil's Watchtower consisted of a wide swath of giant jumbled boulders. Rising behind them were taller, solid rocks, some worn into spiral shapes and narrow spires. A path led into the rocks, but it was shadowed, darkened by the massive stone monoliths that loomed over it. It was nowhere that Harriet wanted to walk, but even her unpracticed eyes could see that if someone made it into the interior, it would be a defensible position. In all her journeys back and forth, Harriet had never stopped to camp at the Well or near this formation.

Shaking herself back to reality, Harriet walked over to stand near Shade and Quentin. She opened the bandana to reveal her collection of rocks and shell casings. Shade reached out and picked up one of the larger, flattish stones. He traced one gloved finger over the couple of streaks of white that crossed its surface. The rains had obliterated most of the tracks, but he'd still found a few.

"Shod hooves," Shade stated. "Most of the tracks were lost due to weather, but I've seen a lot of rocks scuffed like this and the harder ground retained a track or two. Indians don't shoe their ponies."

Quentin looked at some of the items in her hand and then held his own up. "There are a lot of empty casings around here. Far more than some Indians with rifles would leave. They shoot to hit a target, not to keep someone's head down..." He then fished out two casings from the group in his palm. "...and I have never seen an Indian who could afford or would even want to use a revolver."

Stahl had observed their search form his vantage point, though his main focus had been on Ms. Mercer most of the time. Now that Quentin spoke, he frowned. "Who said that it was an Indian attack?" he asked. Ms. Mercer's words If this is what I fear had indicated someone had known of this attack or told of it. Not all things that were said to have happened to men who have died were what actually happened, Stahl had seen a few of these things in war.

Harriet glanced at Stahl, taking a moment to calculate how much she could say without betraying confidentiality. Sadly, she concluded that what she could divulge would likely leave everyone more confused. Keep it simple, she told herself. "The report from the military that investigated the incident concluded it was an Indian attack. Since the army concluded it was Indians, it fell to their jurisdiction. Kalispell's town marshal was not allowed much leeway to investigate."

Her words made Stahl's eyes stray over the field again. Soldiers here should have noticed what Quentin was pointing out, should they? Or had there been a reason not say all there was about what had happened here? In a short blink of an eye, Stahl did not see the rock formation or the burned out wagon remains anymore, but again saw that sun-burned railway station in France and the haggard, drained face of a young soldier. Whispered, feverish words that he was later told, he better never had heard. "Barring gross incompetence on the side of their officers, that leaves either Indians too well armed or asks for a reason why the army would not say what really happened here," he said slowly. "Could the people of the wagons have had someone with them? A criminal or other that the soldiers were after?"