The bullet struck the tree six inches above Abigail’s head.
Bark exploded across her hair.
Her mare reared.
Abigail dropped from the saddle before the horse could throw her, landed hard on one knee, and rolled behind a granite boulder.
I drew my revolver.
“Stay down!”
A second shot came from the ridge.
Then a third.
Not warning shots.
They were trying to kill us.
I fired twice toward the muzzle flash and heard someone curse.
That bought us seconds.
I grabbed the bridles and slapped both horses toward a stand of spruce.
They bolted.
“Why’d you do that?” Abigail yelled.
“Because horses make bigger targets than we do.”
“We need them!”
“We need lungs more.”
Another bullet cracked against stone.
Abigail pulled Thomas’s Winchester into her shoulder.
“Where?”
“Two above us. Maybe one downstream.”
She stared through the trees.
“How do you know?”
“The echoes.”
She didn’t argue.
Good.
I pointed toward the creek.
“Water runs into a narrow ravine half a mile east. We reach it, they can’t surround us.”
“And if they reach it first?”
“Then today becomes inconvenient.”
Despite everything, Abigail gave me a look.
“Inconvenient?”
“I’m trying to stay optimistic.”
A shadow shifted between two pines.
Abigail fired.
The man disappeared.
“You hit him?”
“No idea.”
“Move.”
We ran.
Ice cracked beneath my boots at the creek bank.
Abigail stayed behind me, Winchester in both hands, dress gathered enough to keep from tripping.
A bullet hissed past my ear.
I turned and fired blindly.
We reached thicker timber.
The ground rose steeply.
Abigail’s breathing became ragged.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t convincing.”
“I’m angry, not dying.”
“Good.”
We climbed.
Behind us came the unmistakable sound of men forcing their way through brush.
Three, maybe four.
Croft’s men.
I had expected intimidation.
A beating, perhaps.
Maybe an attempt to steal the marriage certificate.
Murder meant something else.
It meant Croft was afraid.
And rich men did not become afraid over four hundred dollars.
That thought stayed with me as we reached the ravine.
A narrow split cut through black rock, barely wide enough for two people.
I pushed Abigail inside.
“Keep moving until you see an old lightning-struck pine.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll discourage our guests.”
“No.”
“Abigail.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You asked me to be your husband for legal purposes. Husbands occasionally become inconvenient shields.”
“That wasn’t part of the agreement.”
“It is now.”
A gunshot echoed.
She flinched.
I pointed.
“Go.”
She went.
I crouched behind fallen timber and waited.
The first man appeared thirty yards away.
Not Dunn.
One of his riders.
I fired into the ground at his feet.
He dove.
“Next one goes higher!” I shouted.
Silence.
Then Silas Dunn called from farther back.
“Hale! Ain’t your fight!”
“You shot at my wife.”
“Temporary wife.”
Abigail heard that.
From somewhere behind me, she shouted, “Still counts!”
I almost laughed.
Dunn answered, “Croft just wants the paper!”
“Then he can ask nicely.”
“We’ll take the girl too.”
Any humor disappeared.
“What for?”
“Insurance.”
I cocked the revolver.
“You come five steps closer and your widow collects whatever Croft pays dead men.”
Dunn went quiet.
Then he said, “You think Thomas Miller died from a horse kick?”
I froze.
The forest seemed to close around me.
“What did you say?”
Dunn laughed.
“You heard me.”
Abigail appeared behind me before I could stop her.
Her face had gone white.
“Say that again.”
I grabbed her arm.
“Get back.”
“No.”
Dunn called, “Your old man stuck his nose somewhere it didn’t belong.”
Abigail’s fingers tightened around the rifle.
“You killed him?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“You just—”
A gunshot interrupted her.
I dragged her down.
The bullet struck the log.
“Enough.”
I fired toward Dunn’s voice.
Someone screamed.
Then the woods erupted.
Three guns.
Maybe four.
Abigail and I crawled deeper into the ravine while lead chipped rock around us.
The passage curved sharply.
That saved us.
Once we were out of their line of sight, we ran.
Half a mile later we reached the lightning-struck pine.
Behind it was something I hadn’t told Abigail about.
An old miner’s shelter.
I had discovered it years ago while trapping.
Not much more than a gap beneath an overhang with a crude plank wall, but dry enough to survive weather and hidden enough that a man could pass ten feet away without noticing.
I pulled aside brush.
“In.”
She stared.
“You’ve been hiding caves on your mountain?”
“Everybody needs a hobby.”
We squeezed inside.
I replaced the brush.
Darkness swallowed us.
For several minutes, we heard nothing except breathing.
Then voices passed outside.
Dunn’s men.
Abigail raised the Winchester.
I covered the barrel with my hand.
She glared.
I leaned close enough to whisper.
“If you shoot, every man out there knows where we are.”
Her nostrils flared.
But she lowered it.
The voices moved away.
We waited an hour.
Maybe two.
Inside the darkness, Abigail finally whispered, “Do you believe him?”
“About Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“I believe Dunn wanted us upset.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I thought before answering.
“No. I don’t think your father’s death was necessarily an accident anymore.”
Her breath trembled.
“I saw Copper kick him.”
“You saw it?”
“No. I found him after.”
“That matters.”
“He said it happened when the horse spooked.”
“What spooked him?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Was anyone else around?”
She went silent.
Then: “There were tracks.”
“What kind?”
“Horse tracks.”
“How many?”
“I thought they belonged to Father.”
“All of them?”
She shifted.
“I don’t know.”
That was enough.
When darkness settled fully outside, we slipped from the shelter.
Dunn’s men were gone.
At least, that was what they wanted us to believe.
We traveled on foot for nearly three miles before finding the horses. They had stopped near a meadow and were grazing beneath the trees.
By the time we reached my cabin, it was after midnight.
Abigail staggered through the doorway.
I bolted it behind us.
“We’re not going to your ranch tomorrow,” I said.
She spun.
“Yes, we are.”
“No.”
“I have livestock.”
“Croft has armed men.”
“I have chickens, six horses, seventeen cattle, and a milk cow.”
“Abigail—”
“My father’s ranch is not being abandoned because Hiram Croft hires cowards.”
I looked at her.
She looked right back.
Thomas Miller’s daughter.
No doubt.
“We go at first light,” I said. “But we do it my way.”
“What’s your way?”
“Quietly.”
The Miller ranch looked peaceful when we reached it the next morning.
That was the first thing that frightened me.
Smoke rose from the chimney.
Barn doors were closed.
Cattle moved in the lower pasture.
But the front door stood open.
Abigail started forward.
I caught her.
“Wait.”
“That’s my house.”
“I know.”
“Someone’s inside.”
“I know that too.”
She lifted the Winchester.
We approached from behind the barn.
No horses tied nearby.
No wagon.
I smelled coffee.
Fresh.
Someone had entered, built a fire, and made themselves comfortable.
I circled to the side window.
Inside stood Sheriff Wade Larkin.
He was going through a desk.
Abigail’s father’s desk.
Dunn was beside him.
Croft himself sat at the kitchen table.
I had seen Hiram Croft dozens of times.
Fifty-five.
Gray hair.
Expensive coat.
Soft hands.
The kind of man who smiled while other men did his hurting.
He held one of Thomas’s ledgers.
Abigail stepped beside me.
Her face tightened.
“What are they looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
Then Croft spoke.
The window was slightly open.
We could hear him.
“Thomas kept records. He always kept records.”
Sheriff Larkin replied, “Maybe the girl already found it.”
“If she had, she wouldn’t be begging men to marry her.”
Dunn leaned against the desk.
“Hale married her.”
Croft looked up.
“That complicates the property transfer.”
“Want me to fix it?”
Croft’s expression changed.
Not much.
Enough.
“No more mistakes.”
Abigail’s fingers dug into my sleeve.
I leaned closer.
Sheriff Larkin opened a drawer.
“What exactly was Thomas writing down?”
Croft answered quietly.
“Names.”
“What names?”
“Men who borrowed from me.”
“That’s not illegal.”
“It becomes inconvenient when paired with figures from the freight books.”
My mind sharpened.
Freight books.
Thomas had discovered something.
Larkin said, “You told me those were destroyed.”
“They were.”
“Then what are we worried about?”
“Thomas made copies.”
Abigail looked at me.
I could almost hear her heartbeat.
Then Dunn said, “If we find the book, what happens to the girl?”
Croft closed Thomas’s ledger.
“By Friday, Abigail Miller will no longer own this property.”
“And Hale?”
Croft’s smile was thin.
“Mountains are dangerous.”
Abigail’s eyes went cold.
We backed away.
At the barn, she whispered, “We have to find whatever Father hid.”
“Yes.”
“Before they do.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
I looked over the ranch.
Barn.
House.
Smokehouse.
Root cellar.
Fields.
Hundreds of places.
“Your father tell you anything strange before he died?”
She shook her head.
“He was barely conscious.”
“Anything.”
Her brow furrowed.
“He kept saying something.”
“What?”
“I thought he was confused.”
“What did he say?”
Abigail closed her eyes.
“Under Mary.”
“Who’s Mary?”
“My mother.”
We both turned toward the hill.
Two graves rested beneath the cottonwood.
Thomas Miller.
And beside him, Mary Miller.
Abigail stared at them.
“He didn’t mean a person.”
“No,” I said.
“He meant the grave.”
We waited until Croft and his men left.
Then we walked up the hill.
Abigail stopped before her mother’s headstone.
Her hands trembled.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“We’re digging up my mother’s grave.”
“Maybe not.”
Thomas had been a careful man.
I examined the headstone.
Loose earth showed along one side.
Not the grave.
The stone itself.
I pushed.
It shifted.
Behind it, buried beneath six inches of soil, was an oilcloth bundle.
Abigail knelt beside me.
I uncovered it.
Inside sat a leather ledger.
And a sealed letter.
Written across the front were four words.
For Abigail. Trust Ethan Hale.
Neither of us spoke.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
Then, from the tree line below the hill, a rifle hammer clicked.
“Don’t move,” Sheriff Larkin called.
We turned slowly.
Six men stood between us and the ranch house.
Hiram Croft walked out from among them.
His eyes settled on the ledger in my hands.
And for the first time since I had known him, the richest man in Oak Haven looked terrified.
“Mr. Hale,” he said softly, “you are holding something that belongs to me.”
I tucked the ledger inside my coat.
“No.”
Croft’s smile disappeared.
“You misunderstand.”
I rested my hand near my revolver.
“I understand perfectly.”
Abigail raised her father’s Winchester.
“And so do I.”
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