Chapter 6 - What the Giant Feared
Silas stepped toward the mine shaft and whispered:
“Father?”
August Mercer raised an old revolver and placed it against Elias Crowe’s neck.
A cracked photograph protruded from August’s coat.
On the back, Clara had written:
“THE LAST WITNESS.”
Crowe stopped smiling.
August Mercer looked older than the grave Silas had visited every Sunday for twelve years.
His hair was white.
One eye carried a scar.
But he was alive.
“Get Annie away from him,” August said.
Crowe laughed.
“You’re hardly in a position—”
August struck him with the revolver.
Crowe dropped.
Annie ran toward August.
He lifted her.
Silas stared across the shaft.
“Dad.”
August looked at his son.
“I’m sorry.”
Those two words contained twelve missing years.
They found an alternate tunnel and reunited twenty minutes later.
Silas did not hug his father.
Not immediately.
He stood three feet away.
“You died.”
“I know.”
“I buried you.”
“I know.”
“You let me.”
August lowered his eyes.
“Yes.”
Silas punched him.
August fell.
Mara winced.
Then Silas lifted his father and hugged him.
Both men broke.
Mara turned away with Annie.
Some reunions deserved privacy.
Crowe, unfortunately, remained conscious.
He crawled toward the mine entrance.
Mara placed a boot on his coat.
“Going somewhere?”
“You don’t understand what you’re interfering with.”
“I hear that a lot.”
“You’re a woman carrying another woman’s bastard.”
Mara’s expression became pleasant.
Silas saw it.
“Mara.”
“Yes?”
“Try not to kill him.”
“I’m considering options.”
Crowe spat at her boot.
She looked at Silas.
“Does breaking his nose count?”
“Yes.”
“Shame.”
August explained everything.
He had discovered Hollister’s network twelve years earlier.
When they realized he knew, they staged his death and imprisoned him.
He escaped two years later but remained hidden because exposing himself would have endangered Silas and Nathan.
He built a network of informants.
Nathan eventually found him.
Then Clara joined them.
Every supposed death had been another layer of the same war.
Silas listened.
His anger remained.
But understanding slowly entered beside it.
“You should have trusted me.”
August nodded.
“Yes.”
“You all decided protecting me meant lying to me.”
“Yes.”
“I’m tired of people doing that.”
Mara looked at him.
That sentence belonged to both of them.
August handed over the cracked photograph.
“Then no more lies.”
On the back, beneath Clara’s note, was a list of three witnesses.
August.
Nathan.
Jonas.
All alive.
With the ledger and three witnesses, Hollister’s network could finally be destroyed.
Crowe laughed from the ground.
“You think evidence matters?”
August looked at him.
“It matters when copies went to newspapers in four states yesterday.”
Crowe stopped laughing.
Mara smiled.
“I like him.”
Silas sighed.
“Of course you do.”
They returned to Mercy Hollow.
The scandal exploded across Colorado.
Federal warrants followed.
Judges resigned.
Freight officers disappeared.
Doctors were arrested.
Families began searching for children they had lost years earlier.
The story became too large to bury.
Judge Hollister tried to negotiate.
No one listened.
Elias Crowe attempted bribery.
A federal marshal added another charge.
Dr. Venn confessed.
Names multiplied.
Doors opened.
For weeks, Mercy Hollow became the center of something far larger than itself.
Through all of it, Mara waited for the danger to return.
It did not.
That frightened her more.
She knew how to fight.
She did not know how to be safe.
One evening, Silas found her beside the well.
Eli slept in her arms.
“You’re thinking about leaving.”
Mara looked at him.
“How?”
“You packed your knives.”
“I always pack my knives.”
“All six?”
“Five.”
Silas raised an eyebrow.
“Fine. Six.”
“Why?”
Mara looked toward the mountains.
“Because this is over.”
“That usually makes people stay.”
“You don’t need me now.”
Silas stared at her.
“Is that what you think?”
“You needed help. Eli needed protection. Nathan needed finding. Your father needed—”
“Mara.”
She stopped.
“I never needed a wife to save me.”
“Then why did you send for one?”
“Because I was lonely.”
The simplicity hurt.
Silas continued.
“I told myself I wanted quiet because quiet couldn’t leave me.”
Mara’s expression softened.
“My mother died. Nathan died. Dad died. Everybody I loved disappeared. So I built a ranch big enough to hide inside.”
He stepped closer.
“Then a woman got off a train covered in blood and insulted me before saying hello.”
“I asked whether you were afraid of women.”
“That was the insult.”
“Fair.”
“You dumped a bucket over me.”
“You deserved it.”
“I did.”
He touched Eli’s head.
“You brought a baby into my house. Then a little girl. Then gunmen, federal marshals, my dead brother, my dead father, and half the criminal population of Colorado.”
“Busy month.”
“The busiest.”
Mara smiled.
Silas did not.
“And now you think I don’t need you.”
She looked down.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
“What?”
“Stay.”
That was the most vulnerable thing she had ever told him.
Silas understood.
He held out his hand.
“Then stay one day.”
“What?”
“Don’t promise forever.”
She looked at him.
“Stay tomorrow.”
“And after that?”
“I’ll ask again.”
Mara put her hand in his.
“All right.”
The next morning he asked.
She stayed.
The morning after, he asked again.
She stayed.
For seventeen days, Silas Mercer proposed one day at a time.
On the eighteenth, Mara became irritated.
“Are you ever going to ask properly?”
Silas looked confused.
“You told me not to.”
“I changed my mind.”
“You change your mind frequently.”
“Silas.”
“Yes?”
“Ask me.”
He looked around the kitchen.
Nathan was eating breakfast.
August was repairing a chair.
Annie was drawing.
Eli was throwing oatmeal.
“Here?”
“Why not?”
Silas stood.
Nathan immediately grinned.
Silas ignored him.
He took Mara’s hand.
“Mara Bell.”
“Yes?”
“Will you marry me?”
She waited.
Silas frowned.
“Well?”
“I’m enjoying this.”
“Mara.”
“Yes.”
Nathan cheered.
August laughed.
Annie clapped.
Eli threw oatmeal at Silas.
Mara kissed him.
They set the wedding for Sunday.
No matrimonial contract.
No conditions.
No request for quiet.
Saturday night, Mara sat with Annie on the porch.
The child’s family had been located.
Her father was coming from Kansas.
Annie was happy.
Mara was too.
And somehow that happiness hurt.
“You’ll leave tomorrow,” Mara said.
Annie nodded.
“Papa said he’s coming.”
“He is.”
“Will you miss me?”
Mara hugged her.
“Terribly.”
Annie smiled.
“Good.”
“You’re learning bad habits.”
“From you.”
“Exactly.”
A rider appeared on the road.
Sheriff Pike.
He carried a telegram.
Mara’s stomach tightened.
Not again.
Amos dismounted.
“This came from Denver.”
Silas opened it.
Nathan joined them.
Silas read silently.
Then handed it to Mara.
One final defendant had escaped federal custody.
Dr. Horace Venn.
Mara looked toward Eli.
“Where?”
Amos’s face was grim.
“Nobody knows.”
Then a sound came from inside the house.
Glass breaking.
Silas turned.
The nursery window stood open.
The curtain moved in the night air.
May you like
Eli’s cradle was empty.
And on the floor beside it lay Dr. Venn’s bloody medical bag.
