Garrick drew his revolver.
Eloin stepped backward.
The feed-room latch shifted again.
Not far.
Just enough to lift and fall against the wood with a small metallic click.
Garrick positioned himself beside the door.
“Stay behind me.”
Eloin’s eyes narrowed.
“I can see better from here.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“Neither was mine.”
Under different circumstances, Garrick might have laughed.
Instead he pulled the door open.
Nothing charged out.
The room appeared empty.
Sacks of oats stood along one wall. Bran barrels occupied the other. Harness oil, veterinary supplies, salt blocks, and feed scoops rested on shelves.
Then something gray streaked past Garrick’s boot.
Eloin gasped.
A barn cat shot into the stable and disappeared beneath a wagon.
Garrick lowered the revolver.
“Your intruder.”
“No.”
Eloin pointed toward a rear window.
The latch hung broken.
Dust beneath the sill had been disturbed.
Someone had entered that way.
The cat had merely been trapped inside afterward.
Eloin crouched beside the unfamiliar grain dust.
“Don’t let anyone feed the horses.”
Garrick looked at her.
“You think it’s poisoned?”
“I think it doesn’t belong here.”
They worked by lantern light.
Eloin opened one sack after another, smelling oats, feeling kernels, examining the bottom corners.
At the sixth sack she stopped.
“Here.”
The oats looked normal.
Almost.
Mixed through them were tiny blackened seeds.
Garrick picked one out.
“You recognize this?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“I’d rather be uncertain than confidently wrong.”
She wrapped several seeds in cloth.
“Do you have chickens?”
May Dow, who had appeared in the doorway without either of them hearing her, answered, “Had twelve this morning.”
Eloin stood.
“I’m not feeding poison to a chicken.”
May grunted approval.
“What do you need?”
“A clean jar. And I need to know whether any livestock became sick after eating from this batch.”
May and Garrick exchanged a glance.
“What?” Eloin asked.
Garrick’s voice turned grim.
“Two mares went off feed yesterday.”
They crossed to the south stable.
One mare stood with her head lowered.
The second shifted uneasily, sweating despite the cool evening.
Eloin examined both.
“How much did they eat?”
“Not enough to make them seriously ill,” Garrick said.
“We don’t know that.”
She listened to their gut sounds, checked their gums, and asked for water.
Garrick watched her work.
“You’re not a veterinarian.”
“No.”
“You know more than some I’ve paid.”
“My father bred carriage horses.”
“You never mentioned him in the letters.”
Her hands paused.
“There are reasons.”
He wanted to ask.
He did not.
By morning, no animal on the ranch had received feed from the compromised sacks.
May boiled a small sample of the suspicious seeds and brought the liquid to the kitchen.
Eloin examined it.
“Jimsonweed.”
Garrick frowned.
“Enough to kill?”
“In quantity, yes.”
His chair scraped the floor as he stood.
“Who received this shipment?”
“Silas,” May answered.
The foreman entered ten minutes later.
Silas Boone was fifty-one, rawboned and gray at the temples. He had worked at Vain Hollow nearly nine years.
When Garrick showed him the seeds, genuine confusion crossed his face.
“Where?”
“Sixth sack.”
Silas swore.
“I checked that delivery.”
“From who?”
“Merrick Grain.”
“Who unloaded it?”
“Tom, Eli, and me.”
“Anyone else near the room?”
Silas hesitated.
“Calder’s man came yesterday.”
Garrick went still.
“Which man?”
“Victor Hale.”
“Why?”
“Said Rufus wanted another answer on the north meadow.”
“I already gave him an answer.”
Silas shrugged.
“I told him that.”
“And?”
“He laughed.”
Eloin watched the foreman carefully.
“What exactly did he say?”
Silas looked at her for the first time.
“Who are you?”
“Someone trying to keep your horses alive.”
Silas turned back to Garrick.
“Hale said every man has a price. If money won’t find it, winter will.”
The room went quiet.
Garrick’s jaw tightened.
Rufus Calder owned thirty thousand acres east of Vain Hollow. He was wealthy, politically connected, and patient when patience served him.
Three years earlier, Calder had offered Garrick twenty thousand dollars for the northern meadow.
Garrick refused.
The offer increased.
Then doubled.
Garrick still refused.
That meadow was not simply acreage.
It contained one of the region’s most reliable underground springs.
During severe winters, it could mean the difference between surviving and losing half a herd.
Eloin leaned against the table.
“Why does Calder need it?”
Garrick answered slowly.
“His eastern creek has been shrinking.”
“Then he isn’t buying grass.”
“No.”
“He’s buying water.”
May crossed her arms.
“And if Garrick refuses?”
Eloin glanced toward the stable.
“Maybe he makes the ranch worthless first.”
For the next two days, they searched.
Garrick canceled the remaining work that could wait.
He and Eloin inspected every fence line, feed shipment, stable lock, and veterinary record from the previous three years.
The pattern grew uglier.
Four fence breaks had occurred on nights when valuable mares occupied vulnerable pastures.
A barn fire started beside an oil-soaked rag no one admitted leaving there.
Two buyers claimed someone had warned them Vain Hollow horses carried a hereditary weakness.
No such weakness existed.
Three breeding contracts had disappeared from Garrick’s office.
Then Eloin found something else.
Near the northern spring sat a line shack used during calving season.
Inside, beneath loose floorboards, she discovered a small canvas pouch.
It contained copper wire, fence cutters, and a ledger page.
The page listed dates.
Some matched accidents.
Others matched Calder’s purchase offers.
Garrick read them twice.
“How did you know to look under there?”
“Someone swept the floor.”
“So?”
“No ranch hand sweeps an unused line shack unless he’s hiding signs that someone has been inside.”
Garrick stared at her.
“You notice everything.”
“No.”
“What don’t you notice?”
“Things I don’t understand.”
“That list getting shorter?”
A flicker of amusement appeared.
“Not fast enough.”
But later that evening, the humor vanished.
Garrick walked into the stable and found Eloin standing beside Nightfire with tears in her eyes.
Not crying.
Holding them back.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s rarely true when people say it.”
She looked away.
Nightfire pressed his muzzle against her shoulder.
Eloin rested her hand against his face.
“My father had a stallion like him.”
Garrick waited.
“He was difficult. Brilliant. Frightened of men.”
“What happened?”
“My father sold him.”
“That made you cry?”
“No.”
She took a slow breath.
“My father sold him after breaking him nearly to death.”
Garrick said nothing.
Eloin’s voice stayed controlled.
“My father believed every living thing had to understand who was stronger. Horses. Dogs. Employees.”
She finally looked at Garrick.
“Daughters.”
The last word landed harder than the others.
“He taught me everything I know about horses because I was useful to him. Then when I started disagreeing with how he handled them, he decided usefulness had become disobedience.”
“What did he do?”
Eloin’s expression warned him not to ask farther.
Garrick respected it.
“Is that why Beatrice wrote that you’d never been somewhere strange was useful?”
A sad smile touched her mouth.
“Probably.”
Garrick looked at Nightfire.
“I think he disagrees.”
Eloin blinked.
“So do I.”
The words changed the air between them.
Neither moved.
Then footsteps approached.
Silas appeared at the stable entrance.
“Garrick.”
The moment vanished.
“What?”
“You’ve got company.”
Rufus Calder rode into the yard with Victor Hale and three hired men.
Calder was fifty-five, heavy through the chest, dressed too well for someone claiming to make a neighborly visit.
He dismounted slowly.
“Vain.”
“Calder.”
Rufus smiled.
“I hear you’ve had trouble.”
“You hear quickly.”
“I have neighbors.”
“You have spies.”
Calder’s smile did not disappear.
Then his gaze moved to Eloin.
“Well.”
She did not react.
Rufus removed his gloves.
“I heard your mail-order bride died before arriving.”
Garrick’s face hardened.
“That isn’t your concern.”
“No offense intended.”
“You managed some anyway.”
Rufus studied Eloin.
“And you are?”
“Eloin Hartley.”
“The replacement?”
“No.”
Garrick stepped slightly between them.
Rufus noticed.
His smile returned.
“I came to renew my offer.”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard it.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Forty thousand for the northern meadow.”
“No.”
“Fifty.”
“No.”
Rufus’s expression changed by one degree.
“Pride is expensive.”
“So is water.”
That surprised him.
Only briefly.
Eloin saw it.
Rufus put his gloves back on.
“Winter is coming, Vain. Your herd is smaller than three years ago. Your breeding operation is failing. Banks dislike uncertainty.”
“My bank is my concern.”
“Of course.”
Rufus mounted his horse.
Before riding away, he looked directly at Eloin.
“Thursday train still runs at nine.”
The implication was unmistakable.
He knew when she planned to leave.
Garrick’s hand tightened.
Eloin remained calm.
“How did you know I was leaving Thursday?”
Rufus smiled.
“Small towns talk.”
Then he rode away.
That night, Garrick found Eloin packing.
His chest tightened unexpectedly.
“You’re leaving early?”
“No.”
“Then why pack?”
“Because someone searched my room.”
Garrick crossed the doorway in two strides.
“What?”
Eloin opened her suitcase.
“Nothing obvious was taken.”
“How do you know it was searched?”
“I leave the clasp facing inward.”
It now faced outward.
Garrick checked the window.
Unlocked.
A thin line of dirt marked the sill.
“What were they looking for?”
Eloin reached beneath the mattress and removed Beatrice’s final letter.
“Maybe this.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
She unfolded it.
There was nothing about Calder.
Nothing about Vain Hollow.
Then Eloin held the sheet toward the lamp.
“Wait.”
Faint impressions appeared across the lower margin.
Someone had written on a sheet that once rested on top of it.
Garrick brought charcoal.
They rubbed lightly across the back.
Letters emerged.
A name.
A date.
And a sentence.
RUFUS CALDER — HARTLEY BREEDING COMPANY — $7,500.
Garrick looked at Eloin.
All color had left her face.
“What is it?”
She whispered, “My father’s company.”
“Why would Beatrice have this?”
“I don’t know.”
Her hands began trembling.
Then she remembered something.
A conversation from years earlier.
Her father complaining about a western rancher who refused to sell land.
A black-haired buyer from Wyoming.
A contract she had once been forbidden to read.
Eloin stared at Garrick.
“This didn’t begin three years ago.”
“How long?”
Her voice dropped.
“I think Rufus Calder knew my father.”
Outside, Nightfire suddenly screamed.
Garrick and Eloin ran downstairs.
Flames were climbing the side of the hay shed.
And bolted to the stable door was a single piece of paper.
Garrick ripped it free.
Four words had been written across it.
SEND THE WOMAN HOME.
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