Keeping the law wasn't a bit like carpentry. Carpentry was exact. If you cut a board too short, it was simply too short and, therefore, useless. Precision and patience were the keys to good carpentry. And that didn't work in law enforcement. If you tried to be precise, to follow the law to the letter, you were bound to fail, same as if you had used a rule that was mismarked. People were not boards, and they weren't suited to precision, and you couldn't recut them to make them that way.

But other people didn't see it that way. If you missed a cut on a board, you slapped some molding on it. If someone violated the law, either the state's or Heaven's, you punished him, no matter why he had done it or what the outcome. People were odd that way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1916

They were riding fences some two miles below the Garden when they saw the rider approaching them. None of them spoke, but they all dismounted at the same time, and they all pulled rifles from their scabbards.

The rider saw this, stopped, turned, put up his right hand to show he wasn't armed, and started toward them, picking his way. “Would you be the Power family?”

“That's right,” Jeff called.

“R. J. Samuels, deputy clerk of the Cochise County District Court.” Again, nearly in unison, the Powers pulled their rifles up across their chests. “With good news,” Samuels added. “Good news.”

“And what good news ever comes out of Cochise County?”

“It's the matter of the Tucker estate.”

“Is that settled?”

“It's about to be.” Samuels rode up to where they stood, started to dismount, but looked at Jeff, and only after Jeff had nodded his assent did Samuels dismount fully. “Documents in the bag,” Samuels said, motioning with his head to the big canvas bag behind his saddle. He retrieved a small bundle of papers. Unfolding them and pressing out the creases, he said, “You were in the midst of a business transaction with Mr. C. P. Tucker at the time of his unfortunate demise, I believe.”

“We were buying a share of a gold mine,” Jeff said. “One-quarter of it.”

“Right, right,” Samuels said. “There's a complication.”

“We bought it outright. Paid money to Tucker. In full. I got papers,” Jeff said.

“Yes. Yes. That's right. Not all complications are bad. Sometimes they're just complications.”

“What's that mean?”

“Well, you signed and Mr. Tucker signed a contract stating that you were buying, and these are the exact words of the contract, ‘that share of the mine owned by Mr. C. P. Tucker.’”

“That's right.”