Chapter 2 - The Bundle Beneath the Floor
The first thing Rebecca found was money.
Not paper currency.
Silver.
Old coins wrapped in a strip of faded canvas.
She lifted the roll from the oilcloth bundle and felt its weight settle into her palms.
For several seconds she simply stared.
There were more than fifty coins.
Perhaps more than seventy.
Rebecca had never held that much money in her entire life.
Her eleven dollars and forty cents suddenly seemed almost ridiculous.
But the silver was not the heaviest thing inside the bundle.
Beneath it lay a rectangular object wrapped in wool.
Rebecca unfolded the cloth.
An iron lockbox appeared.
Rust stained the corners, but the metal remained sound.
There was no key.
Alongside it were three leather-bound notebooks, a small pouch, several folded papers sealed with wax, and a photograph protected between two pieces of thin wood.
Rebecca picked up the photograph.
A man stood beside the very shack she was sitting in.
He appeared perhaps thirty-five.
Dark hair.
Heavy mustache.
Work shirt.
One hand rested against the shoulder of a young woman.
Rebecca brought the image closer to the fire.
The woman was holding something.
A wooden button.
Rebecca’s pulse quickened.
She turned the photograph over.
Two words had been written on the back.
Elias Mercer.
No name for the woman.
Rebecca looked toward the wooden button she had removed from the wall.
“Who were you?”
The fire popped.
Outside, Juno moved restlessly beneath the lean-to.
Rebecca placed the photograph down and opened the first notebook.
Most pages contained ordinary ranch records.
Fence posts.
Hay.
Weather.
Cattle losses.
Supply lists.
Then the entries changed.
Names began appearing repeatedly.
Kums.
Puit.
Marsh.
Rebecca stopped breathing for a moment.
She turned pages faster.
The entries had been written twenty years earlier.
Wyatt Kums had been much younger then, not yet sheriff.
Harlon Puit’s father appeared at first.
Then Harlon himself.
Delbert Marsh’s family freight company appeared on nearly every third page.
Rebecca found references to land filings.
Creek rights.
Timber shipments.
A survey.
Then one sentence had been underlined twice.
THE NORTH VALLEY CLAIM IS MINE BY FEDERAL PATENT. PUIT KNOWS IT. KUMS SAW THE ORIGINAL.
Rebecca looked around the shack.
The north valley.
This valley.
She turned another page.
September 18.
Puit offered $400. Refused.
September 23.
Two men cut eastern fence.
October 1.
Marsh wagons crossed without permission.
October 6.
Kums says no record exists in county office.
October 9.
Original patent remains secure.
Rebecca glanced at the iron box.
Her heart began beating faster.
She tried the lid.
Locked.
She searched the bundle for a key.
Nothing.
The pouch contained three strange metal tokens and a woman’s hair ribbon gone brown with age.
One sealed paper was addressed:
TO HANNAH.
Rebecca dropped it.
The paper landed beside her knee.
For several seconds she could not touch it.
The name might have belonged to anyone.
Hannah was not rare.
But the button.
Micah’s warning.
The names in the journal.
Rebecca picked up the paper.
The wax seal cracked beneath her thumb.
Inside was a letter.
The handwriting differed from the journal.
A woman had written it.
Hannah,
If Elias does not return by morning, take Rebecca nowhere near Pine Hollow.
Rebecca stopped.
Her entire body went cold.
She reread the sentence.
Rebecca.
Her name.
Twenty years ago.
But Rebecca was eighteen.
She read on.
You know what Silas promised. You know what the Puits will do if they learn the patent survived. The child must never carry this burden unless there is no other choice.
Rebecca’s vision blurred.
Silas.
Hannah.
The child.
Her hands began shaking.
At the bottom was a signature.
Mara Mercer.
Rebecca stared at it.
Who was Mara Mercer?
Who was Elias?
And why had somebody been writing about Rebecca before she had even been born?
She unfolded the next paper.
This one was not a letter.
It was a hand-drawn map.
The valley.
The shack.
The creek.
A section of gray rock north of the water had been circled.
Beside it someone had written:
SECOND RECORD. WINTER MARKER.
Rebecca heard Juno snort again.
This time the sound was followed unmistakably by hoofbeats.
Close.
Rebecca blew out the lamp.
Only firelight remained.
She gathered the silver, notebooks, letters, photograph, and pouch, wrapped them quickly, and pushed everything except the iron box back beneath the floor.
The box was too heavy.
She dragged it behind the stove and covered it with an old blanket.
Then she took her father’s rifle from the wall.
The single-shot weapon suddenly felt painfully inadequate.
Rebecca moved to the door.
Moonlight was beginning to silver the valley.
A rider emerged from the trees.
Only one.
Rebecca raised the rifle.
“Stop there.”
The rider stopped.
“Rebecca?”
She recognized the voice.
Micah.
Rebecca lowered the gun.
“What are you doing here?”
Micah dismounted slowly.
“Checking whether you reached the shack.”
“You told me not to bring anything I found back to Pine Hollow.”
Micah became still.
“You found something.”
It was not a question.
Rebecca studied him.
“How did you know?”
Micah looked toward the open doorway.
His face seemed older than it had that morning.
“What did you find?”
“A bundle under the floor.”
Micah closed his eyes.
For one second.
Only one.
But Rebecca saw it.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“There was a letter.”
Micah said nothing.
“It had my mother’s name on it.”
Still nothing.
“It had my name.”
Micah finally looked at her.
Rebecca’s anger arrived so quickly it frightened her.
“Twenty years old, Micah.”
“I know.”
“I’m eighteen.”
“I know.”
“Then tell me why a dead stranger wrote about me before I was born.”
Micah removed his hat.
“He didn’t.”
“What?”
“The letter wasn’t written twenty years ago.”
“The bundle was hidden twenty years ago.”
“Most of it was.”
Rebecca stared.
Micah stepped inside.
He saw the lifted floorboard.
Then his gaze moved to the iron box behind the stove.
His shoulders dropped.
“Lord.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
“No.”
“But you know what it is.”
“I know what might be inside.”
Rebecca blocked his path.
“No more half-answers.”
Micah looked at her.
Then he sat heavily on the stool.
“Elias Mercer owned this valley.”
“Twenty years ago.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him?”
“He vanished.”
“Murdered?”
“Probably.”
“By Kums?”
“I don’t know.”
“Puit?”
“I don’t know.”
“Marsh?”
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca slammed the notebook onto the table.
“All their names are in there.”
“I figured they would be.”
“Then why did you send me here?”
Micah’s eyes lifted.
“Because your father asked me to.”
That silenced her.
“When?”
“Four nights before he died.”
Rebecca gripped the table.
Micah continued.
“Silas knew Harlon would take the house. He knew nobody in town would stand against those men openly.”
“Why didn’t Father tell me?”
“He was afraid you’d refuse to leave.”
“He was right.”
“He knew.”
Rebecca looked away.
“What does Elias Mercer have to do with us?”
Micah rubbed his face.
“That is where it becomes complicated.”
“I have nowhere else to go. Complicated is all I have.”
Micah almost smiled.
Then he didn’t.
“Elias Mercer had a sister.”
Rebecca waited.
“Mara.”
The name from the letter.
“She worked this valley with him.”
“What happened to her?”
“Nobody knows for certain.”
“And Hannah?”
Micah looked toward the fire.
“Your mother came here once.”
“When?”
“Before you were born.”
Rebecca’s chest tightened.
“She knew Elias?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Micah hesitated.
That hesitation again.
“Micah.”
“Hannah Mercer was Elias Mercer’s daughter.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Rebecca held the table.
“My mother’s name was Hannah Boon.”
“After she married Silas.”
Rebecca stared at him.
The old man’s words slowly rearranged eighteen years of her life.
Elias Mercer.
The photograph.
The wooden button.
Her mother.
The valley.
Rebecca looked down at her own button.
“Elias was my grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“And this valley—”
“May belong to you.”
Rebecca almost laughed from disbelief.
“May?”
“If the original patent is inside that box.”
Rebecca looked toward the iron lockbox.
“Why would my mother hide this from me?”
Micah’s face changed.
Pain crossed it.
“Because people had already disappeared over that land.”
Outside, somewhere far beyond the trees, another horse called.
Micah stood.
Rebecca turned toward the doorway.
“That isn’t Juno.”
“No.”
Micah reached for his rifle.
“How many people know I’m here?”
“Too many.”
Rebecca looked toward the hidden bundle.
“What do we do?”
Micah walked to the door and listened.
“We make them think you found nothing.”
But from the ridge above the valley, three tiny lights had appeared.
Lanterns.
Moving slowly downhill.
Rebecca counted them.
One.
Two.
Three.
May you like
And she suddenly understood that Pine Hollow had not merely thrown her away.
Someone had sent her exactly where they were afraid she might go.
