Outside, the hoofbeats slowed to a trot, then stopped right in the front yard.

“Got tracks leading straight from Ash Creek to your property, Jonah!” a harsh, gravelly voice echoed through the thick wooden walls. “Bare feet and shod hooves! We know you’re in there!”

Jonah’s jaw set hard. He knew that voice.

It belonged to Caleb Stroud. Stroud was a former army scout turned independent contractor—a polite term for a mercenary who hunted human beings for bounty. He was a man with yellowed teeth, eyes like an owl, and a reputation for leaving behind burned cabins and missing women whenever he cleared out a trail.

Jonah half-carried, half-dragged the woman across the room toward the center of the floor. He kicked aside a faded braided rug, revealing a heavy iron ring set into the oak floorboards—the door to his storm and root cellar.

He pulled the trapdoor open. A cool, damp smell of wet earth drifted up from the dark hole.

“That man…” the woman whispered desperately, clinging to Jonah’s shirt sleeves as he lowered her down onto the top step of the earthen ladder. “He burned my home, mister. He shot the horses.”

Jonah looked down into her terrified eyes. “Is your brother alive?”

“I saw him alive,” she sobbed softly. “In chains. Behind their pack horses.”

Outside, a heavy leather boot slammed against the porch boards.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

“Open up, Mercer!” Stroud yelled. “By order of the Territorial Marshal’s Office! Don’t make us burn you out like we did the rest of ’em!”

Jonah’s chest tightened with a dark, ancient rage. He leaned down close to the woman’s ear. “Stay dead quiet. Don’t make a sound, no matter what you hear up here.”

He gently released her hands, pulled the heavy oak trapdoor shut, and dragged the braided rug back over it.

Jonah walked over to the corner beside the door, grabbed his Winchester Model 1873 rifle from the rack, levered a round into the chamber with a sharp clack-clack, and leaned the gun against the wall right behind the doorframe. Then, adjusting his hat, he unbolted the heavy iron latch and swung the cabin door open.

Chapter 5: Blood on the Saddle
Caleb Stroud stood on the porch, bathed in the pale light of the Arizona moon. He was a tall, gaunt man wrapped in a dust-covered leather duster. A pair of heavy Colt revolvers hung low on his hips, and a double-barreled shotgun rested casually in the crook of his left arm.

Behind him, sitting on their horses in the dusty yard, were two other men. One was a thick-necked brute known as Silas, holding a greasy rope in his hand; the other was a younger, twitchy kid with a rifle rested across his saddle horn.

Stroud’s eyes flicked over Jonah’s shoulder, probing the dark interior of the cabin. A thin, predatory smile stretched across his weathered face, but his eyes remained flat and cold.

“Evening, Jonah,” Stroud drawled, tilting his hat back with two fingers. “Late for visiting.”

“We’re not visiting,” Jonah replied coldly, stepping out onto the porch and pulling the door half-shut behind him. He kept his posture relaxed, but his body was coiled like a steel spring. “You’re on private land, Stroud. Get off it.”

Stroud spat a stream of dark tobacco juice onto the porch boards, inches from Jonah’s boot. “Now, that ain’t very neighborly. We’re trailing state property. An Apache girl. Young, injured. Ran from a prisoner transport column near Fort Bellamy two nights back. Her brother’s sitting in our camp right now in irons, waiting for her.”

Jonah didn’t blink. “Haven’t seen her.”

“Funny,” Stroud chuckled, taking a slow step forward. The two riders in the yard shifted, their hands hovering near their scabbards. “Because we tracked her bleeding feet right to the bank of Ash Creek. And from Ash Creek, we found fresh iron-shod tracks—looks an awful lot like that copper gelding of yours—heading straight up your draw.”

Stroud reached out with his free hand and lightly patted the leather saddle of Jonah’s horse, Jasper, who was tied to the hitching post nearby. When Stroud pulled his hand back, his fingers were dark. He held them up into the moonlight.

Fresh, dark blood coated his fingertips.

“You got a leaky saddle, Jonah?” Stroud sneered, his voice dropping an octave. “Or are you harboring a fugitive from the United States Government?”

The air on the porch turned deadly cold. Jonah could hear his own heartbeat thumping slowly, steadily in his ears.

“That’s horse blood,” Jonah lied smoothly, his voice unwavering. “Jasper cut his flank on a barbed-wire fence up near the ridge this afternoon. Now state your business and get off my land before I make you.”

Stroud’s eyes narrowed into slits. He didn’t believe a word of it. He stepped closer, bringing the barrel of his double-barreled shotgun up just an inch. “Mind if we take a look inside? Just to satisfy my curiosity?”

“You step across that threshold without a federal warrant,” Jonah said softly, “and you won’t walk back out.”

Silas, the brute on the horse, let out a harsh laugh. “Listen to the old hermit! He thinks he’s still got a life worth fighting for!”

Stroud raised a hand to quiet his man. His eyes locked onto Jonah’s. For a long, tense ten seconds, neither man breathed. The wind howled softly through the eaves of the cabin.

Then, from inside the cabin—directly beneath the floorboards of the porch—came a sound.

It was tiny. A wet, muffled, involuntary cough.

Stroud’s smile instantly vanished. His eyes dropped down to the floorboards beneath Jonah’s boots.

“Jonah…” Stroud whispered, his hand slowly sliding down toward the butt of his right-hand revolver. “What exactly are you hiding under there?”

Chapter 6: The Iron Threshold
Time dilated.

Jonah didn’t answer with words. He answered with steel.

Before Stroud’s revolver could clear its holster, Jonah stepped hard into the scout’s chest, driving his shoulder into Stroud’s sternum. The force knocked Stroud off the porch, sending him tumbling backward into the dust.

Jonah spun, grabbed the Winchester rifle resting behind the doorframe, and brought the stock to his shoulder all in one fluid motion.

BANG!

The rifle spat a plume of orange fire. The twitchy kid on the horse gasped as the bullet struck him squarely in the chest, knocking him clean out of his saddle. He hit the dirt with a heavy thud, his horse rearing up with a terrified squeal.

“Get him!” Silas roared, hauling his own revolver from its holster.

Jonah racked the lever—clack-clack—and fired again just as Silas raised his weapon. The heavy .44 bullet caught Silas in the shoulder, spinning him around in his saddle. Silas screamed, dropped his gun, grabbed his reins with his left hand, and spurred his horse into a desperate, chaotic retreat, galloping out of the yard into the dark desert.

Jonah swept his rifle back toward the ground where Stroud had fallen.

Stroud was already up. He scrambled onto his feet, dropped his shotgun, and dove behind the thick wooden wall of the hog pen twenty yards away.