Chapter 11 - The Woman Who Remembered Thomas
Margaret Lyle’s house was empty.
The front door stood open.
A teacup remained on the table.
Cold.
A chair lay overturned.
Hannah felt fear settle into her stomach.
Samuel searched upstairs.
Walter checked the stable.
Eli found tracks.
“One wagon,” he said. “Heading west.”
“How long?”
“Maybe yesterday.”
Hannah closed her eyes.
Too late.
Then she noticed the stove.
Cold house.
Cold tea.
But warm ashes.
Someone had returned recently.
“Margaret?”
Nothing.
Hannah walked toward the pantry.
A sound.
Very small.
Breathing.
She opened the door.
An elderly woman stood behind sacks of flour holding a shotgun.
“Don’t move.”
Hannah raised both hands.
“Margaret Lyle?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Hannah Mercer.”
The gun lowered.
“Thomas’s wife?”
“Yes.”
Margaret began crying.
They sat at the kitchen table.
Margaret had been hiding since men came looking for her the previous afternoon.
She escaped through the cellar.
“What do you know about Gideon Vane?” Hannah asked.
Margaret gave a humorless laugh.
“Enough to have been hiding in my pantry.”
For six years she had served Commissioner Harlow.
She typed letters.
Filed deeds.
Recorded railway communications.
At first she thought Harlow was merely careless.
Then payments appeared.
Cash.
Land shares.
Gifts.
From Prairie Continental.
Gideon Vane visited often.
“Thomas came to me,” Margaret said.
“When?”
“Three months before his death.”
Hannah leaned forward.
“He already suspected everything.”
Margaret gave him copies of correspondence.
One letter connected Vane directly to stolen railway route information.
Another instructed Harlow to recognize amended bank deeds.
“Do you still have them?”
Margaret shook her head.
“Thomas took them.”
Hannah felt disappointment.
“Then they may be gone.”
“No.”
Margaret looked toward her.
“He sent them somewhere.”
“Where?”
“He said someplace Vane could never reach.”
Hannah immediately thought of Thomas’s coat.
But they had searched every seam.
“What about Daniel Hale?”
Margaret’s expression became sad.
“Daniel discovered the route fraud first.”
“Is he alive?”
“He was last month.”
“You saw him?”
“I received a letter.”
She retrieved it from beneath a floorboard.
Daniel wrote from a federal work camp.
He had been convicted under the name David Hart.
Two initials.
D.H.
Thomas’s ledger.
“He knew Rebecca was pregnant?” Caleb had never said.
Margaret nodded.
“He wrote that surviving prison only mattered because he hoped she was alive.”
Hannah looked away.
Rebecca was dead.
But Lucy lived.
Daniel Hale had a daughter he had never met.
Marshal Cross could reopen the conviction.
But they needed to reach him.
Margaret agreed to testify.
On the return journey they encountered a storm in Black Pine Pass.
Rain became sleet.
Sleet became snow.
Hannah’s horse stumbled.
Pain tightened around her abdomen.
Again.
Harder.
Samuel panicked.
“Hannah?”
“I’m fine.”
She was not.
They sheltered in an abandoned trapper’s cabin.
Margaret examined her.
“Not labor.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
“Comforting.”
Margaret smiled.
“You need to stop riding mountains while pregnant.”
“Everyone keeps mentioning that.”
They remained overnight.
Hannah slept badly.
She dreamed Thomas stood in the doorway wearing his coat.
But when he turned around, Caleb’s face appeared.
Hannah woke before dawn.
The dream disturbed her more than the storm.
Guilt came instantly.
Thomas had been dead only six months.
How could another man already occupy even a dream?
She moved outside.
Snow covered the pass.
Margaret joined her.
“You loved your husband.”
Hannah stiffened.
“Of course.”
“I wasn’t questioning it.”
Hannah looked at the older woman.
Margaret continued.
“Grief convinces us loving someone who remains is betrayal of someone who left.”
Hannah said nothing.
“My husband died eighteen years ago,” Margaret said. “I spent ten years proving my loyalty by being lonely.”
“What happened?”
“I realized dead men do not need us to suffer for them.”
Hannah looked at the mountains.
“I don’t know what I feel.”
“You don’t have to.”
Hannah touched her belly.
“There are too many lives depending on me.”
“Then live one day at a time.”
When the storm cleared, they continued.
Two days later Red Willow appeared below.
Something was wrong.
People filled the street.
Hannah urged her horse faster.
At the courthouse she found Caleb standing outside.
Unchained.
She dismounted too quickly.
Pain shot through her back.
Caleb reached her.
“You rode to Cheyenne?”
“Yes.”
“Through Black Pine?”
“Yes.”
“While seven months pregnant?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes.
“You are impossible.”
“You were arrested.”
“That does not make mountains disappear.”
Hannah looked at his wrists.
“You’re free?”
“Judge Ridley released me.”
“Why?”
Caleb glanced toward the courthouse.
“Because Deputy Rusk disappeared.”
Hannah froze.
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Why?”
“Before leaving, he took Gideon Vane’s bank ledger.”
Samuel swore behind them.
Caleb continued.
“And he left a note.”
“What did it say?”
Caleb handed it to Hannah.
Three sentences.
Vane knows the federal marshal is coming.
He is leaving Red Willow tonight.
If you want the real ledger, follow the old freight road.
Do not trust Gideon alone.
Hannah read it twice.
Then looked at Caleb.
“Where does the freight road go?”
His expression turned grim.
“Straight through Black Pine Pass.”
May you like
The same road where Thomas Mercer had died.
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