“I could arrest people who were driving off my cattle?”

“Yes,” Kirby lied. “Yes, you could. You could arrest them and bring them to me, but you've got to have evidence. Evidence is the key. You got to have evidence before we can charge anyone with anything. I wouldn't want to see you dragging some poor soul through here without evidence. Here.” Kirby pulled a badge from his desk drawer. “You got to get me evidence.”

“Oh, I'll have evidence,” Power said. “You can bet I'll have evidence.”

Swift was just coming back into the room, letting out some of the laughter that he'd held in while Kirby toyed with Power. The front door of the office swung open, and Power walked back in, not acknowledging Swift, who turned to go back out again.

“Obliged,” Power said with a wink. “Obliged. I forgot to say that. Now I'm going out and get some evidence.” He turned and went back out the front door, closing it behind him. Swift poked his head back into the room.

A week later, when he went to check on the cattle, Power found them missing again and only Cleghorne cattle grazing the creekbed. Cleghorne owned a big ranch just south of Klondyke and seemed to think he had a special right to the prime grazing land.

Tom Power spent the better part of the day riding up Aravaipa Canyon into the tree line, trying to round up all his cattle. Most of them he found together a mile up the canyon; the rest he had to pick up, one or two at a time, from the hillsides. Some he never found but thought they might find their way back when they found the rest of the herd missing.

He had missed a full day of digging for flake gold back up Rattlesnake Creek. He, Charlie, John, and their father were working their way up the creek, still looking for the source of the flake. When they ran out of flake, they determined that the source was now below them, but then a few more flakes showed from up above them. It was erratic that way. Some days there was a lot of flake, other days none or hardly any.

It was never enough to be worth the energy they were putting into it. But that was mining. There was a lot of labor and money invested in the early days of an operation, with little reward. So you rode hope, figuring that somewhere, up above you, ahead of you, there was a payday that would return more than you had invested. It was an operation that ran on hope and a belief in a future that was little evident in the present or past. Your own past was forgotten, and the present became only days that pushed you further into the future when you would be rich enough not to care about the days you had lost.