Chapter 7 - Elias Ward’s Two Graves
Smoke swallowed Elias before he reached the stairs.
He pulled his bandana over his mouth.
“Boy!”
A cough answered above.
Elias climbed.
Flames crawled along the wall.
He found Samuel's twelve-year-old son, Ben, crouched behind a bed.
“Come here.”
“I can't!”
“Yes, you can.”
“The stairs—”
“I've got you.”
Elias lifted him.
The ceiling cracked.
For one terrifying instant, Elias saw another child.
Another room.
Another fire.
Mercer.
He froze.
Then Ben coughed against his shoulder.
Alive.
Now.
Not six years ago.
Elias moved.
He reached the stairs as part of the ceiling collapsed behind them.
Outside, Mara watched flames burst through the upper window.
Samuel screamed his son's name.
Then Elias appeared.
He stumbled through the doorway carrying Ben.
The crowd erupted.
Samuel took his son.
Mara reached Elias as he dropped to one knee coughing.
“You fool.”
He looked up.
“You sound relieved.”
“I am furious.”
“Close enough.”
She helped him stand.
Then Nathan shouted from behind the store.
“Oil!”
They found a broken lamp and a trail of kerosene.
The fire had been set.
Samuel looked toward Creed's ranch hands watching from across the street.
Nobody needed to say the name.
Creed had answered the copies.
But something had changed.
He had burned Mara's isolated cabin and gotten silence.
He burned Samuel Pike's store after Samuel distributed evidence.
Now everyone understood.
Silence was no longer protection.
Nathan Cole walked into the street.
“Harlan!”
The foreman emerged from the saloon.
Nathan held up the broken lamp.
“You do this?”
Harlan smiled.
“Careful.”
Nathan looked around.
A dozen townspeople stood behind him.
“No,” he said. “You be careful.”
For the first time, Harlan's favorite word came back to him.
His smile vanished.
Later, Mara treated the burn on Elias's forearm in Abigail's kitchen.
He watched her wrap the cloth.
“You've done this before.”
“Thomas burned himself constantly working metal.”
“You miss him.”
“Every day.”
Elias nodded.
Mara looked at him.
“You don't have to look guilty when I say his name.”
“I don't.”
“You do.”
She tied the bandage.
“Thomas is dead. Caring whether you live doesn't betray him.”
Elias said nothing.
That sentence frightened him more than Harlan ever had.
Mara sat opposite.
“Tell me about the graves.”
He stared at the table.
Eventually he did.
The Mercers had been attacked over a land dispute. Elias rode for help instead of entering alone.
When he returned, the house was burning.
He saved the mother and two children.
The father and eldest daughter died.
“For six years,” Elias said, “I've wondered whether they'd be alive if I'd gone in sooner.”
“You don't know.”
“No.”
“Then you've sentenced yourself for a crime nobody proved.”
He looked at her.
“You always talk like this?”
“Only to stubborn cowboys.”
A faint smile passed between them.
Then someone knocked.
Three times.
Abigail opened the door.
Nathan entered carrying a leather satchel.
“Found this behind the store.”
Inside was a metal seal.
The county land office seal.
Mara stared.
“Why would that be there?”
Nathan turned it over.
Initials had been scratched into the handle.
S.C.
Silas Creed.
Elias looked at Abigail.
“Fraudulent deeds.”
She nodded.
“If Creed has the official seal, he can make almost anything look legitimate.”
Mara whispered, “Including taking my land.”
Nathan sat.
“There's more.”
He produced a key.
“Ben saw the man who started the fire.”
Samuel's son had been awake upstairs.
“He says it wasn't Harlan.”
“Who?”
Nathan looked toward the sheriff's office.
“Deputy Frank Miller.”
Silence.
Boone's deputy.
A lawman.
Elias understood.
Creed wasn't merely bribing the law.
May you like
He had built the law around himself.
And if Deputy Miller had tried to burn a child alive to destroy evidence, then there was no line left that Creed's people would not cross.
