The hearing was scheduled for January.
That gave Crowe six weeks.
Josephine suspected he would use every day.
She was right.
First came the bank.
The Oak Haven Savings Company suddenly called in a small loan Elias had taken two years earlier to purchase livestock.
Payment was technically due.
But everyone knew ranchers were normally granted extensions through winter.
Not Elias.
“Crowe sits on the bank board,” Josephine said.
Elias stared at the notice.
“I can pay half.”
Josephine reached for her purse.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“My father left me money.”
“No.”
“Elias.”
“I’m not using your inheritance to save my land.”
“Our land.”
“I won’t.”
Josephine folded her arms.
“Would you use my money to buy medicine if I were sick?”
“That’s different.”
“Would you use it to repair the roof?”
“Maybe.”
“To buy food?”
“If we had to.”
“Then explain why using it to protect the property where we live is unacceptable.”
Elias looked away.
Josephine understood.
“Pride.”
“A man should provide.”
“A husband and wife should provide for each other.”
“That ain’t how I was raised.”
“Then whoever raised you was wrong about this.”
He looked at her sharply.
She did not retreat.
“You carried me through a blizzard,” he said.
“Dragged.”
“Not helping your argument.”
“It should.”
Josephine sat beside him.
“Elias, partnership does not mean I contribute only when my contribution makes you comfortable.”
He looked at the paper.
“It’s a lot of money.”
“I have more.”
“I know.”
“Then stop behaving as if accepting help from your wife is a moral failure.”
He rubbed his face.
“You always talk like this?”
“Yes.”
“That explains why Chicago men were scared of you.”
She smiled.
“They should have been.”
Elias laughed.
They paid the loan.
Crowe’s first trap failed.
His second was uglier.
A week later, two government inspectors arrived claiming Elias had illegally trapped on federal land.
Josephine brought out the survey maps.
The accusation disappeared.
Then livestock vanished.
Three goats.
One horse.
Elias found the goats two miles away with their tether ropes cut.
The horse returned alone two days later.
Someone wanted them exhausted.
Distracted.
Afraid.
Crowe misunderstood the effect.
Each attempt made Josephine angrier.
And Josephine Miller Row was particularly effective when angry.
She began collecting evidence.
Dates.
Names.
Witnesses.
Every threat.
Every unusual bank decision.
Every rider seen near their land.
Mercer helped.
So did Martha Bell.
Then others began talking.
A widow named Ruth Carter admitted Crowe had pressured her to sell acreage along the valley road.
A farmer named Ben Harlow said one of Crowe’s men had damaged his irrigation gate after he refused an offer.
An elderly prospector produced a letter offering him half the property’s likely value while falsely claiming unpaid taxes would allow the county to seize it.
Josephine saw the pattern.
“This isn’t about us.”
Elias looked at the papers spread across their table.
“No.”
“It’s everyone along the proposed railroad route.”
Crowe had depended on isolation.
One frightened landowner at a time.
Josephine decided isolation would end.
---
She organized a meeting at Oak Haven’s church.
Elias thought five people might come.
Forty-three arrived.
Crowe sent someone to watch.
Josephine noticed immediately.
She did not care.
Standing at the front of the room frightened her more than facing a blizzard.
The irony nearly made her laugh.
She had been humiliated in drawing rooms.
Ignored at parties.
Talked over by men who assumed wealthy women understood nothing about property.
Now farmers, widows, ranchers, storekeepers, and miners waited for her to speak.
Josephine opened the folder.
“I am not here to tell anyone whether to sell land.”
The room quieted.
“If Mr. Crowe offers you a fair price and you want that price, sell.”
Elias watched from the back.
“But if you are being threatened, lied to, or pressured into believing you have no choice, then you deserve to know you are not alone.”
People shifted.
Josephine continued.
“Mr. Crowe’s strength depends on each family thinking they are the only family being targeted.”
She looked around the room.
“You are not.”
One by one, people began speaking.
Stories emerged.
Some small.
Some serious.
A barn fire.
A poisoned well.
A forged tax notice.
Missing cattle.
Threats.
By the end of the evening, Crowe no longer had a dispute with Elias Row.
He had a problem with half of Oak Haven.
---
The attack came two nights later.
Elias woke to horses screaming.
He sat up.
“Fire.”
Josephine smelled smoke.
Both moved instantly.
The barn roof burned orange against the dark sky.
“Animals!”
Elias ran outside.
Josephine followed.
Flames spread along the dry roof despite snow on the ground.
Someone had poured kerosene beneath the eaves.
Elias opened the corral.
Josephine rushed into the barn.
“Josephine!”
“Horse is still inside!”
Smoke filled the stalls.
The mare kicked wildly.
Josephine covered her mouth.
“Easy!”
The rope had tangled.
She pulled.
Nothing.
“Come on!”
A burning beam fell behind her.
Josephine screamed.
Elias appeared through smoke.
He grabbed the beam and shoved it aside with a gloved hand.
“Out!”
“The mare!”
Together they freed the rope.
The horse bolted.
Elias pushed Josephine toward the door.
They stumbled outside seconds before part of the roof collapsed.
Josephine stood coughing.
Then she saw movement near the tree line.
A rider.
“Elias!”
He turned.
The rider fled.
Elias mounted the nearest horse without a saddle.
“Stay here!”
He disappeared after him.
Josephine wanted to shout.
Instead, she grabbed a bucket.
Neighbors saw the flames from below the ridge.
By the time Elias returned, six men were fighting the fire.
He dismounted.
His expression told Josephine everything.
“You caught him?”
“No.”
“Recognize him?”
Elias looked toward Mercer.
Mercer was among the men carrying water.
“Rusk.”
Mercer stopped.
Josephine’s jaw tightened.
Tom Rusk.
The same man who fired during the blizzard.
Now Crowe had crossed the line from intimidation into attempted murder.
The barn burned to the foundation.
But the cabin survived.
The animals survived.
So did Josephine and Elias.
At dawn, they stood among the blackened timbers.
Josephine’s dress smelled like smoke.
Ash streaked her face.
Elias touched her cheek.
“You could’ve died.”
“So could the mare.”
“That ain’t funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
He pulled her into his arms.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Josephine felt him trembling.
Not from cold.
Fear.
She held him tighter.
“I’m here.”
“I know.”
“We’re both here.”
“I know.”
He buried his face against her hair.
“I don’t care about the land.”
Josephine pulled back.
“What?”
“Not if it gets you killed.”
“Elias—”
“We sell.”
“No.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Josephine.”
“No.”
He stared.
She took both his hands.
“If we decide together that we want another life, we can leave tomorrow.”
She pointed toward the burned barn.
“But we will not leave because a rich man frightened us.”
“I can’t lose you.”
“You don’t get to protect me by deciding my choices for me.”
His expression broke.
Josephine softened.
“I love you.”
“That’s why—”
“I know.”
She touched his scar.
“And I love you enough to understand why you are afraid.”
Then she looked toward the ridge.
“But I spent my entire life shrinking myself to make other people comfortable.”
Her voice grew firmer.
“I will not shrink for Nathaniel Crowe.”
Elias stared at her.
Then slowly nodded.
“All right.”
“All right?”
“We stay.”
Josephine exhaled.
He kissed her forehead.
“But next time a barn is burning, you wait for me.”
“No promises.”
“Josephine.”
She almost smiled.
---
Tom Rusk was arrested the following afternoon.
A ranch hand saw him purchasing kerosene.
Another saw him riding toward Elias’s property.
Rusk denied everything.
Then Sheriff Daniel Hale found a strip of cloth caught on a fence near the barn.
It matched the torn sleeve of Rusk’s coat.
Under questioning, Rusk cracked.
Not entirely.
Enough.
Crowe had paid him.
Paid him to frighten Elias.
Paid him to destroy records.
Paid him to burn the barn.
But Crowe’s lawyer moved quickly.
Rusk suddenly changed his statement.
Said he acted alone.
Money appeared for bail.
Rusk vanished before the hearing.
Crowe believed he had won.
Then Josephine remembered something.
Silas Mercer’s first night in the cabin.
Crowe had sent men searching for the deed.
Why?
Because he needed the original to disappear.
Which meant his competing claim depended on proving Elias’s documents invalid.
Josephine examined the deed again.
The witness signatures.
The survey description.
The official seal.
Then she noticed a name.
Edwin P. Holloway.
The territorial surveyor who had certified Elias’s father’s purchase.
Josephine looked at Elias.
“Is he alive?”
“Holloway?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe.”
“Where?”
“Last I heard, Cheyenne.”
She smiled.
Elias recognized that expression.
“What?”
“Nathaniel Crowe is depending on old records being dead.”
She tapped the signature.
“So we find a living one.”
---