Chapter 3 - The Man in the Barn
“Put the gun away, Mercer.”
Silas did not.
Harlan raised both hands.
“If I meant to kill you, I wouldn't have walked through the front door.”
Eliza held her father's Bible against her chest.
“My father wrote your name.”
Harlan looked tired.
“I know.”
“You met him the night he died.”
“Yes.”
Silas descended first.
Eliza followed.
Harlan glanced through the barn windows before speaking.
“Your father asked me to help expose Bell.”
“Did you?”
“I tried.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“No,” Harlan said. “I failed.”
He explained that Bell's reach extended beyond Red Wash.
A territorial judge owed him money.
The county assessor was his cousin.
Two deputies had received loans that mysteriously disappeared.
Harlan had agreed to take the ledger to Denver.
Before he could, Calloway died.
“Were you here that night?” Eliza asked.
“Yes.”
Her hand tightened around the Bible.
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Did you see who did?”
Harlan looked toward Silas.
“Yes.”
Eliza stopped breathing.
“Who?”
“Bell's foreman, Wade Pike.”
She knew the name.
Everyone did.
Pike had once worked railroad security.
He had broken a miner's jaw for disputing wages.
“Why didn't you arrest him?”
“Because I found your father alive.”
Eliza stared.
“What?”
“He was alive after the fall.”
Harlan's voice dropped.
“He told me Pike pushed him. I rode for the doctor.”
Eliza felt sick.
“When you came back?”
“Your father was dead.”
“And Pike?”
“Gone.”
“Then why wasn't that enough?”
“Because the doctor changed his report the next morning.”
Silas cursed quietly.
Harlan continued.
“And the statement your father gave me disappeared from my desk.”
Eliza's eyes hardened.
“You were sheriff.”
“Yes.”
“You let them erase his murder.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Harlan looked ashamed.
“Bell threatened my daughter.”
Silence.
Eliza wanted to hate him.
Part of her did.
But she understood fear too well.
“What changed?”
Harlan looked at the Bible.
“You did.”
He had watched Eliza on the platform.
He had done nothing.
That night, he said, he realized Bell had progressed from stealing land to openly treating human beings as collateral.
“I told myself for years I was protecting people by staying in office.”
Harlan shook his head.
“I was protecting myself.”
He gave Silas a key.
“Bell keeps original contracts beneath his office.”
“A safe?”
“A basement archive.”
“How do you know?”
“I've been inside.”
Eliza asked, “Can those records prove it?”
“Yes.”
“Then we get them.”
Silas immediately said, “No.”
She turned.
“Excuse me?”
“You aren't breaking into Bell's office.”
“You bought my debt but apparently not my hearing.”
Harlan almost smiled.
Silas did not.
“We need legal evidence.”
Harlan said, “There's a territorial investigator arriving in six days.”
Silas looked surprised.
“I sent word two weeks ago.”
“Before the auction?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was done being afraid.”
They agreed to wait.
It lasted less than twenty-four hours.
At dawn, smoke rose from the Calloway property.
Someone had burned the barn.
By noon, another family reported missing records.
Bell was destroying evidence.
They no longer had six days.
That evening Eliza entered Silas's study wearing trousers borrowed from a ranch hand's wife beneath a long coat.
Silas looked at her.
“No.”
“I haven't said anything.”
“You're dressed for burglary.”
“Harlan gave us a key.”
“No.”
“You may stay here.”
“Eliza.”
She paused.
It was the first time he had used her given name.
Silas rubbed his face.
“You could be killed.”
“So could you.”
“Yes.”
“And that's acceptable?”
He had no answer.
She stepped closer.
“You didn't buy me, Silas.”
“I know.”
“Then don't become another man deciding what I'm allowed to risk.”
He looked at her for a long time.
Finally he handed her a lantern.
“Stay close.”
Bell's office stood dark at midnight.
Harlan waited behind the livery stable.
He unlocked the rear entrance.
Silas entered first.
Eliza followed.
They found the basement door beneath a rug.
The key worked.
Downstairs were shelves containing fifteen years of contracts.
Eliza's anger grew with every box.
Families she knew.
People driven away.
People called failures.
People who had died believing they had ruined themselves.
Silas found the Calloway file.
Inside was the original contract.
Eliza's signature was absent.
The forged version had been created later.
They had him.
Then Eliza found another file.
MERCER.
Silas opened it.
His face changed.
Inside was a mortgage claim against Black Ridge.
A document bearing his signature.
Forged.
Bell planned to take both halves of the spring.
Silas whispered, “Son of a—”
Footsteps sounded upstairs.
They extinguished the lantern.
Voices.
Wade Pike.
And Amos Bell.
Eliza and Silas hid behind shelving.
Bell descended carrying another manila packet.
Pike said, “Investigator arrives Thursday.”
“He won't find anything.”
“What about the woman?”
“Mercer made her troublesome.”
Eliza felt Silas tense.
Bell laughed softly.
“Should've sold her farther east.”
Pike asked, “And Mercer?”
“His ranch burns easier than his reputation.”
Silas's hand closed around his revolver.
Eliza caught his wrist.
Not yet.
Bell placed documents in a metal furnace.
One page slipped.
Pike picked it up.
Eliza saw a name.
Her father's.
Then Bell said something that turned her blood cold.
“Calloway should've died the first time we tried.”
First time.
Eliza looked at Silas.
Her father's barn fall had not been the first attempt.
Bell and Pike left.
They waited.
Then Eliza retrieved the page that had fallen beside the furnace.
It was a medical invoice.
Dated three months before her father's death.
Payment authorized by Amos Bell.
Recipient:
DR. NATHANIEL VOSS.
Purpose had been abbreviated.
Silas read it.
“What does T.O. mean?”
Eliza knew.
Her father had suffered a mysterious illness three months before his death.
The doctor had called it stomach fever.
She whispered, “Treatment order.”
Silas looked at her.
“No.”
“Maybe.”
They took the files and escaped.
At Black Ridge, Mrs. Finch was waiting.
She had news.
A stranger had arrived.
He was injured.
He claimed to know Eliza's father.
Silas entered the guest room first.
A thin elderly man lay in bed.
When Eliza stepped inside, his eyes filled with tears.
“Eliza Calloway?”
“Yes.”
The man reached beneath his pillow.
He removed a photograph.
It showed Eliza's father beside another man.
On the back was written:
IF I DIE, TRUST THOMAS VALE.
Eliza looked up.
“Are you Thomas Vale?”
The stranger nodded.
Then he said, “Your father didn't die because of the land.”
Eliza froze.
May you like
Vale swallowed.
“He died because of what he discovered underneath it.”
