Chapter 4 - THE LEDGER UNDER THE FLOOR
Deputy Pike survived the night.
Barely.
The bullet had entered beneath his ribs and passed through without striking anything Silas could not sew around.
Emiline held the lantern.
Josie boiled water.
Sam stood at the door.
Nobody had to tell the children something terrible had happened.
They had become experts at reading adult faces.
When Silas finished, Pike lay pale beneath two blankets.
“Mercer alive?” Silas asked.
Pike nodded weakly.
“When I saw him last.”
“Why take him?”
“To find out what he knows.”
Emiline folded a cloth.
“What did he know?”
Pike looked at her.
“More than he told Thornton.”
Silas’s eyes narrowed.
Pike swallowed.
“Sheriff’s been watching Crane for months.”
“Why?”
“Missing travelers.”
The room became still.
Pike continued.
“Three widows. One married couple. Two men traveling alone.”
Emiline’s hand stopped moving.
“Children?”
“Not before you.”
Silas looked toward the staircase.
Rose and Violet were supposed to be asleep upstairs.
He suspected neither was.
“Why didn’t Mercer arrest him?”
“No bodies. No witnesses.”
“Until Emiline.”
Pike nodded.
“And Milo.”
“Milo’s dead.”
“Yes.”
Silas stood and began pacing.
“Crane attacked a sheriff on a public road. That gives us something.”
“If we reach territorial authorities.”
“Nearest marshal?”
“Fort Garland. Four days in good weather.”
Outside, wind rattled the shutters.
Bad weather.
Silas looked toward Emiline.
She understood.
Crane had bought time.
Maybe that was all he needed.
Pike struggled upright.
“Mercer said something before they hit us.”
“What?”
“He told me if anything happened, go to the old Fremont stage station.”
Silas frowned.
“Abandoned ten years.”
Pike nodded.
“Under the floor. East wall.”
Emiline looked at Silas.
“A ledger?”
“Maybe.”
Pike coughed.
“Mercer had been keeping copies somewhere Crane couldn’t find.”
Silas’s decision came quickly.
“I’m going.”
Emiline immediately said, “So am I.”
“No.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“You followed my footprints into a canyon.”
“Yes.”
“You found me because I knew what happened.”
“Yes.”
“And now you plan to leave the only witness behind?”
“I plan to keep a mother with her children.”
Emiline’s expression changed.
“Do not use my children to make decisions for me.”
Silas went still.
She stepped closer.
“I know what it means to protect them.”
“I never said you didn’t.”
“You’re saying it now.”
“I’m saying Crane will come here.”
“Exactly.”
Silas frowned.
Emiline continued.
“If there is evidence at that station proving why he took me, then every hour we sit behind this door is an hour he gets to destroy it.”
Silas looked at Pike.
The deputy closed his eyes.
“I’m staying out of married arguments.”
“We aren’t married,” Silas and Emiline said together.
Pike opened one eye.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Josie made a choking sound that might have been laughter.
Emiline looked away.
Silas almost smiled.
Then he became serious.
“Someone has to stay with the children.”
Pike raised one hand weakly.
“I’m shot, not dead.”
“You can’t stand.”
“I can shoot sitting.”
Sam spoke.
“So can I.”
Silas turned.
“No.”
Sam folded his arms.
“You keep saying that.”
“And I’ll keep meaning it.”
Emiline studied her son.
“Sam.”
He looked at her.
“You stay with your sisters.”
His jaw tightened.
“Mama.”
“I need you here.”
Silas saw the same trick he had used.
Not telling the boy he was too young.
Giving him responsibility without forcing him to become an adult.
Sam finally nodded.
They left before dawn.
Emiline wore wool stockings beneath oversized boots Silas had found in an old trunk.
Eleanor’s boots.
He had not opened that trunk in five years.
When Emiline realized, she stopped.
“I can wear yours.”
“You’d fall.”
“These were your wife’s.”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
Silas looked at the boots.
Brown leather.
Scuffed at the toe.
Eleanor had worn them to gather eggs.
To ride to church.
To chase Hannah through summer rain.
For years, Silas had treated every object she touched like a grave marker.
Now a living woman needed warm feet.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m sure.”
They rode south.
The Fremont station appeared by noon.
Half its roof had collapsed.
Snow filled the stable.
Inside, Silas found the east wall.
Emiline searched the floor.
“Here.”
One plank had newer nails.
Silas pried it loose.
Beneath it sat a metal box wrapped in oilcloth.
Inside were papers.
Names.
Dates.
Land descriptions.
Silas read the first page.
Mary Whitcomb.
Widow.
Filed eighty acres near Red Creek.
Missing two weeks after arriving in Cold Water Springs.
Next.
Ada Pierce.
Widow.
One hundred sixty acres south of Las Animas.
Missing.
Then Esther Lowe.
Married.
Her husband had died in a wagon accident three days after they entered Bell’s freight district.
Esther signed a land transfer before disappearing.
Emiline looked sick.
“It wasn’t just me.”
“No.”
At the bottom of the box lay a ledger.
Not Mercer’s handwriting.
Bell’s.
Freight payments.
Bribes.
Land transfers.
And repeated initials.
E.C.
M.R.
Emmett Crane.
Milo Rusk.
Silas turned pages.
Then stopped.
Thornton, E.
He stared.
Emiline saw his face.
“What?”
He handed her the book.
Five years earlier.
THORNTON, E. TRANSFER PRESSURE FAILED.
Emiline looked up.
“What does that mean?”
Silas did not answer.
He grabbed the next page.
Another line.
DOCTOR CARTER DELAYED AT SOUTH PASS. RESULT FAVORABLE.
The room disappeared.
Silas heard another night.
Hannah screaming with fever.
Eleanor begging him to hurry.
Silas riding through darkness toward town.
Doctor Carter telling him later that a freight wagon had overturned across South Pass and delayed him nearly three hours.
By the time he reached the ranch, Hannah’s fever had turned to convulsions.
Eleanor had collapsed from the same infection two days later.
Silas had believed it was misfortune.
Snow.
Disease.
God’s indifference.
Now he saw Bell’s handwriting.
Doctor Carter delayed.
Result favorable.
Emiline whispered, “Silas?”
He could not breathe.
“Five years ago Bell tried to buy my north pasture.”
“Why?”
“Water.”
His voice sounded unfamiliar.
“I refused.”
Emiline understood before he said it.
“The spring.”
Silas nodded.
“If Emiline Hale’s claim borders your ranch…”
“It does.”
“Then together?”
“They control the whole watershed.”
Silas stood so abruptly the ledger fell.
“They killed them.”
Emiline caught his arm.
“We don’t know that.”
“They blocked the doctor.”
“We know somebody wrote that they delayed him.”
“They knew Hannah was sick.”
“Silas.”
“They knew.”
He pulled away.
For five years grief had lived inside him like a stone.
Now the stone cracked and underneath it was rage.
“I’m going to kill Bell.”
Emiline stepped in front of the door.
“Move.”
“No.”
“Emiline.”
“No.”
His face hardened.
“You don’t know what I buried.”
Her eyes filled.
“No. I know what I almost did.”
He stared at her.
“When I woke in that canyon, I thought all five of my children were dead.”
Her voice shook.
“I wanted Crane dead so badly I could taste it.”
Silas said nothing.
“If Josie had died in that snow, there would not be a law on earth strong enough to make me feel what I wanted was wrong.”
She stepped closer.
“But you told Sam something.”
Silas remembered.
If we become men like him to punish men like him, he still wins something.
Emiline’s gaze held his.
“Did you mean it only for children?”
The question struck harder than a fist.
Silas looked away.
For a long time, only the wind moved.
Finally he picked up the ledger.
“No.”
Emiline exhaled.
“No, I didn’t.”
They returned to the ranch at dusk.
Something felt wrong before the house appeared.
Copper sensed it too.
His ears went forward.
Silas smelled smoke.
Then he saw the barn.
Flames climbed through the roof.
“God.”
They kicked the horses forward.
The ranch yard erupted into view.
Sam was hauling water.
Josie carried Lily.
Violet and Rose were nowhere visible.
Silas jumped from the saddle.
“Where are the girls?”
“Root cellar!” Sam shouted. “Deputy made us go down when they came!”
“They?”
“Four men!”
Silas looked toward the house.
The front door hung open.
Pike lay unconscious on the porch.
Emiline ran to him.
“He’s breathing!”
Silas turned.
“Sam, who came?”
The boy’s face went pale.
“Crane.”
Emiline froze.
“Where is he?”
Sam looked toward the burning barn.
“He said to tell you something.”
Silas’s stomach tightened.
“What?”
Sam swallowed.
“He said the next fire would have children inside.”
Emiline’s face went white.
Silas looked at the flames.
Then at the ledger beneath his coat.
Crane had not found what he wanted.
But he knew Silas had.
May you like
And now this was no longer a hunt for one widow’s land.
It was a war over every grave Emmett Crane and August Bell believed money had buried.
