Chapter 11 - What Really Happened in St. Louis
They reached Fort Mason by afternoon.
For the first time since Clara arrived in Wyoming, she slept without fear of someone breaking through the door.
Soldiers guarded the building.
Federal marshals were coming.
Rusk was officially wanted for questioning.
Judge Keene’s authority had been suspended pending investigation.
By every reasonable measure, Clara should have felt safe.
She didn’t.
Gideon found her sitting outside the barracks after midnight.
The sky was clear.
Stars covered the high plains.
“You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I’m difficult.”
“I noticed.”
He sat several feet away.
Clara looked down at the boots.
They were no longer new.
Mud darkened the leather.
Scratches crossed the toes.
“I ruined them.”
Gideon followed her gaze.
“They’re boots.”
“You paid a lot.”
“They’re supposed to get dirty.”
She smiled faintly.
Then silence.
After a while she said, “I lied to you.”
Gideon waited.
“About what happened in St. Louis.”
“I assumed you left things out.”
“I didn’t just leave things out.”
He looked at her.
Clara took a long breath.
“My father wasn’t dead when I joined the bureau.”
Gideon said nothing.
“He was in prison.”
“For what?”
“Forgery.”
She rubbed her hands.
“He used my name on notes. Debts. Loans.”
Gideon’s expression hardened.
“I found out when collectors came.”
“How old?”
“Nineteen.”
“He went to prison?”
“Eventually.”
“And you paid?”
“For years.”
“Why?”
“Because signatures looked like mine.”
“Were they?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
She laughed bitterly.
“Because poor women don’t hire handwriting experts.”
Gideon understood.
“When your mother died?”
“I had nothing left.”
“So the agency looked like escape.”
“Yes.”
She stared toward the dark parade ground.
“But Rusk knew about my father.”
“How?”
“He investigated applicants.”
“That gave him leverage.”
“He told me if I caused trouble, he could make it appear that I helped with the fraud.”
Gideon’s hands tightened.
Clara continued.
“The bruise…”
She touched her face.
“Dodd.”
Gideon looked away toward the horizon.
He did that when angry.
Clara had learned.
“He hit you?”
“Once.”
“Once is enough.”
“I tried to leave the train in Nebraska.”
Gideon closed his eyes briefly.
“He took my shoes so I couldn’t run.”
There it was.
The missing truth.
“He told the conductor I was hysterical. By the time we reached Wyoming, my feet were so damaged I could barely stand.”
“Why didn’t you tell the driver?”
“He worked for them.”
Gideon’s gaze returned.
“The Bitter Creek driver?”
“I don’t know if he knew everything. But Dodd paid him.”
Gideon remembered the man’s indifference.
Now it made sense.
Clara’s voice trembled.
“There’s more.”
He waited.
“Anna didn’t just give me the key.”
“What else?”
“She told me to leave her.”
Gideon frowned.
“Rusk caught us in the accounting room. Anna pushed me through a service door and stayed behind.”
Clara’s face twisted.
“I ran.”
“You survived.”
“I left her.”
“She told you to.”
“I heard her scream.”
Gideon said nothing for several seconds.
Then, “Look at me.”
She did.
“You did not put her in that room.”
Tears gathered.
“You didn’t build Rusk’s business.”
A tear fell.
“You didn’t bribe Keene.”
Another.
“You didn’t tell Dodd to hurt anyone.”
Her breathing became uneven.
“You escaped because Anna gave you the chance.”
Gideon’s voice softened.
“And you used that chance to carry the thing she risked herself to protect.”
Clara covered her face.
For the first time, she cried without trying to hide it.
Gideon remained where he was.
Not touching.
Not assuming.
After a while Clara lowered her hands.
“Would you hold me?”
The question almost broke him.
Gideon moved slowly.
He sat beside her.
Clara leaned against his chest.
His arms closed around her carefully.
Not possessive.
Not tight.
Just there.
She cried into his coat.
Gideon looked at the stars.
He had imagined a wife sitting beside his fire.
Someone making soup.
Someone mending curtains.
Someone filling silence.
He had been a fool.
A wife was not a remedy for loneliness.
A woman was not something ordered into an empty place.
Clara was not the answer to a problem.
She was a whole life.
Full of wounds and courage and anger and jokes he hadn’t heard yet.
And he wanted to know all of it.
That frightened him more than Rusk.
After a while Clara whispered, “Why did you never marry?”
Gideon’s chest moved beneath her cheek.
“I was engaged once.”
She lifted her head.
“You said you weren’t.”
“I said I hadn’t been married.”
“You said no when I asked engaged.”
“I lied.”
She stared.
“Why?”
“Didn’t want to talk about it.”
“That is infuriating.”
“Seems fair tonight.”
She almost laughed.
“What happened?”
“Her name was Elizabeth.”
Clara waited.
“She died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Influenza.”
“How long?”
“Twelve years.”
Clara understood.
“You never tried again.”
“No.”
“Why me?”
Gideon looked at her.
“I didn’t know it would be you.”
She smiled sadly.
“That isn’t romantic.”
“I warned you.”
“What made you answer the advertisement?”
He thought.
“The quiet.”
Clara leaned against him again.
For a while there was none.
Not the painful kind.
The peaceful kind.
At dawn a rider entered Fort Mason.
Federal Marshal Henry Talbot.
He brought warrants for Rusk, Dodd, and Keene.
He also brought troubling news.
Rail company surveyors were already moving equipment onto Gideon’s ridge.
“They have purchase documents,” Talbot said.
“Forged?”
“Probably.”
“Can we stop them?”
“If you prove ownership before construction begins.”
Gideon laughed.
“I’ve owned it fourteen years.”
Talbot slid a paper across the table.
“Not according to this.”
It was a deed.
Proper seal.
Proper signature.
Recorded two days earlier.
Ownership transferred from Gideon Cobb to the Western Development Trust.
Gideon stared.
“My signature’s forged.”
“I believe you.”
“Keene recorded it.”
“Yes.”
Clara looked at Gideon.
“Then we go back.”
Talbot shook his head.
“Rusk will expect you.”
Gideon folded the deed.
“Good.”
The marshal frowned.
“That isn’t a plan.”
“No.”
Gideon looked at Clara.
She stood.
“But we have one.”
Because hidden inside the North Star mine, beneath the ledgers and letters, Clara remembered seeing something no one had taken.
An original land survey bearing Gideon’s father’s seal.
If it still existed, it could prove the new deed false.
They had to return to Bitter Creek.
Back to the mine.
Back to Rusk.
And this time Clara was no longer arriving barefoot.
May you like
She was going home.
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