By Peter B. and Art Intelli
Chapter Five: Trial by Sun
The Texas sun showed no mercy.
By midmorning, Peter’s shirt was soaked through and caked with the red grit of the land. Iron chains clinked and dragged with every labored step — the ankle shackles heavy, the transport belt tight around his waist, locking his collar and wrists in a web of rusted links.
The twins had not spoken much since dawn. They simply watched. One from horseback, the other from the shade of a fencepost, arms crossed, aviators hiding any flicker of expression.
Peter dug.
The hole was pointless — not for a post, not for irrigation — just a pit in the earth, three feet wide, three feet deep, then deeper still. Blisters tore open across his palms. His shoulders screamed. The collar bit deeper into his neck every time he bent forward.
At noon, they gave him water.
By three, they took it away.
And when he slowed—just once, just long enough to drop to one knee—they saw.
Sheriff Colt swung down from his saddle. Wade moved with him, boots kicking up dust as they approached.
“You’re playing weak, city boy,” Wade said flatly, voice dry as bone. “Ain’t no union breaks on our land.”
Peter tried to stand straight, but the chains pulled him off balance. He staggered, then froze as Colt stepped closer and unsnapped the baton from his belt.
“No excuses,” Colt said, voice low.
Peter’s chest heaved. “I wasn’t—”
The baton cracked down on the dirt beside his boot. Silence.
“You want to act like a sweak little lacker?!,” Wade said, stepping behind him, “you’ll get treated like one.”
The brothers each grabbed one of his arms and dragged him toward the perimeter. Near the old feed lot, two rough posts stood about eight feet apart, sun-bleached and bound with loops of steel at chest and ankle height.
They didn’t speak as they chained him spread-eagle between them—wrists pulled high, ankles locked down to the ground. His back bowed with the tension. The collar dug in. The sun was behind him now, but the sky still glared white-hot.
Then he saw it—Wade pulling the long black strap from the side of his saddle. Wide. Thick. Polished with age.
A relic from prison camps and chain gangs. And Peter knew exactly what it was.
“I can’t—”
“You can,” Colt growled.
“You will,” Wade finished.
The strap landed on his bck with the sound of thunder—low, deep, and final. Once. Twice. Ten times. Peter cried out, his voice swallowed by the flat expanse of earth and wind. The leather snapped against his sweat-soaked back and shoulders, punishing more than skin—breaking down whatever pride he still clung to.
When it ended, they said nothing.
They unhooked him, letting him fall to his knees.
And then they opened the Box.
It was small—four feet long, four feet tall, made of thick, cracked planks. Barely enough room to squat, no room to stand. Inside, it was dark. Stifling. Stale with heat and the scent of iron and dust.
Wade threw down a tin canteen of water. “You’ll earn it tomorrow.”
Colt shut the lid. Peter heard a padlock slide through the hasp above him, and the heavy click when it closed.
The world vanished.
Inside the Box
Time ceased to mean anything. The air was dense and unmoving, each breath a struggle. His knees pressed into the slatted floor, his spine hunched forward against the cramped walls. Every shift sent sparks through the welts on his back. Sweat soaked him again, but there was nowhere for it to go.
The collar felt heavier than ever. Not just iron — but a sentence. A verdict.
And in the silence, broken only by his breathing and the creak of the box settling, Peter thought about New York. Asphalt. Noise. Useless rebellion. All of it melted away here. Burned off by sun and labor and the hard silence of men who didn’t tolerate weakness.
There was no one here but him.
And in that brutal stillness, something in him began to harden. Not with hatred. Not with vengeance.
But with acceptance.
To be continued …
