Chapter 7 - Seven Names on a Missing-Person List
Amos sent telegrams beyond Harland's jurisdiction.
Responses arrived slowly.
Then one changed everything.
A federal marshal in Denver had been investigating disappearances for eighteen months.
He sent a list.
Forty-three names.
Eda read them.
Clara recognized five.
Ruth recognized three.
Then Joelle screamed.
Her sister's name was there.
Margaret Vale.
Joelle had believed Margaret abandoned her years earlier.
She hadn't.
She had vanished through the same network.
The fight became personal in a new way.
They were no longer seeking only freedom.
They were seeking the missing.
Records led to properties.
Work camps.
Private households.
Remote farms.
Some women had escaped.
Others remained trapped by debts that never ended.
Silas looked around his kitchen at seven faces.
Once, the house had felt impossibly empty.
Now maps covered the table.
Coffee boiled constantly.
People argued.
Planned.
Laughed occasionally.
Abigail's house was alive again.
But Harland was approaching.
And according to a telegram intercepted by Amos, he wasn't coming alone.
Twenty armed men were traveling with him.
Officially, they were deputies.
Unofficially, they were coming for the evidence.
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The law itself was riding toward Silas Boon's ranch.
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