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could hit the broad side of a barn, I’d swear you were the one who shot him.”
    “If I had, it would have been no more than he deserved for being one of the cowards who murdered my father.”
    “Nate thought your father was a fool for rebuilding that dam—I heard him say that to your father’s face—but he would never be part of what happened last night. I don’t know how he came to be here. He’s been off hunting Laveau diViere.”
    “If your boss is so anxious to kill diViere that he goes looking for him, why should he hesitate to shoot a farmer using water he thinks of as his own?”
    “DiViere is a traitor who killed Nate’s brother. Your father was just a fool.” Russ didn’t appear to care that it was considered uncivil to criticize a dead man, especially to his daughter.
    “The doctor will tell you when you can take your boss home. I’ll do everything I can to make sure he survives his stay here. After that, I intend to see that every man involved in the attack hangs.”
    “They were masked. How can you know who they were?”
    “I’ll find out.” She didn’t know how, but she didn’t intend to give up until she did.
    “I’m not leaving until I see the boss.”
    “He’s sleeping.”
    “How can I know that without seeing for myself?”
    Roberta wasn’t sure she could summon the energy to get to her feet, but somehow she managed. “Okay, one look. Then I want you out of my house and off my land.”
    An agitated voice was heard from inside the house. “Russ, get your butt in here before that woman kills me.”

Chapter Three
    Every vestige of civility left Russ’s face. “What have you done to him?”
    “Nothing.” Roberta couldn’t understand why Nate would make such an accusation. “Every time I’ve looked in on him, he’s been sleeping.”
    Russ pushed by Roberta to go inside. “Where is he?”
    “In my father’s bedroom.”
    The house was built in an “L” pattern with a bedroom, parlor, and bedroom across the front. Behind the bedroom on the left were the dining room and kitchen, both of which opened onto a porch that could also be reached from the parlor. Russ covered the distance to her father’s bedroom in half the steps it took Roberta. When she reached the bedroom, Nate lifted his arm and pointed at her.
    “Why did you shoot me?”
    Roberta wasn’t ready to admit she’d shot Nate, but his blunt accusation threw her off stride. “I… you… who says I shot you?”
    “I do.” Nate was emphatic. “I saw you pick up a gun and aim it at me.”
    “If you know that, then you know why I shot you.”
    “I can’t remember everything that happened, but I remember seeing what I thought was a fire. When I got here, it looked like there were men all over the place trying to put it out. It was so dark I couldn’t see their faces, but the clouds parted just enough for me to see you bending over somebody. That’s when you picked up the gun and shot me.”
    “You got some of it right, but you missed the important parts. You did see a fire, but they were building it up, not trying to put it out. Men were all over the place because they were riding through my father’s fields. You saw me bending over my father. He’d just been killed by one of the men whose faces you didn’t recognize because they were wearing hoods. I shot at the first man I saw because I was hysterical with grief and shaking with rage. I wanted to kill every man who rode here that night. Oh, I almost forgot. They blew a hole in the dam.”
    “I didn’t come here to blow up the dam, destroy crops, burn the barn, or kill your father,” Nate insisted. “I don’t know anything about what happened. I’ve been gone.”
    “I know. You’ve been looking for a man you intend to kill on sight. So of course you wouldn’t do anything to hurt a man who was stealing your water.”
    Nate struggled to sit up but failed. “I thought your father was making a mistake, and I told him so, but I wouldn’t shoot him