Chapter 3 - The Name Inside the Oilcloth
Micah extinguished the stove fire.
Rebecca protested immediately.
“It’s going to freeze.”
“Better cold than visible.”
The three lanterns continued descending the ridge.
Micah moved through the shack with surprising speed, gathering anything that suggested recent discovery.
He replaced the floorboard.
Rebecca hid the oilcloth bundle beneath loose hay in Juno’s lean-to.
The iron box remained a problem.
“Too heavy to move quickly,” she whispered.
Micah crouched beside it.
“Help me.”
Together they dragged it beneath the bunk.
Micah pulled old sacking over the front.
Then he looked at Rebecca.
“Did you open it?”
“No key.”
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Because if whoever’s coming sees it open, they’ll know you found what was hidden.”
Rebecca stared.
“They already know enough to come here.”
“Maybe.”
The riders entered the clearing.
Micah motioned Rebecca away from the window.
A voice called through the darkness.
“Hollister?”
Rebecca recognized Sheriff Kums.
Micah muttered something unkind beneath his breath.
He opened the door.
“Evening, Sheriff.”
Kums sat astride a gray horse.
Harlon Puit rode beside him.
Delbert Marsh made three.
The same men who had marched Rebecca from Pine Hollow.
Harlon looked toward Rebecca.
“That didn’t take long.”
“For what?” she asked.
“For you to make trouble.”
Rebecca folded her arms.
“I arrived six hours ago.”
“You have a gift.”
Sheriff Kums dismounted.
“We heard Micah rode this way.”
Micah leaned against the doorframe.
“Tracking old men now?”
“We were concerned.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Kums’s eyes moved into the shack.
“We’ll have a look around.”
Rebecca stepped forward.
“No.”
The sheriff raised one eyebrow.
“You forget where you stand.”
“No. I remember exactly where I stand.”
Harlon dismounted.
“You don’t own this place.”
Rebecca looked directly at him.
“Do you?”
The question changed the air.
Delbert Marsh’s gaze snapped toward Harlon.
Harlon smiled too quickly.
“No one does.”
“Then you have no more right inside than I do.”
Kums rested a hand on his belt.
“Rebecca.”
Micah shifted beside her.
For several seconds nobody spoke.
Finally Kums said, “We’re not here to fight.”
“You brought rifles.”
“We travel with rifles.”
“You marched me out with them too.”
Harlon exhaled impatiently.
“Girl, we’re trying to prevent you from getting hurt.”
Rebecca nearly laughed.
“By whom?”
Harlon glanced toward the dark valley.
“There are old mine shafts. Bad ground. Wolves.”
“Anything else?”
His eyes returned to hers.
“Old stories.”
There it was.
Rebecca felt Micah’s warning without looking at him.
Do not show them what you know.
She shrugged.
“I found mice.”
Harlon watched her.
“And?”
“A broken chair.”
“And?”
“A stove.”
“And?”
Rebecca opened the door wider.
“You want the mice?”
Delbert gave a short involuntary laugh.
Harlon glared at him.
Kums stepped into the doorway but did not cross.
His gaze swept the floor.
The walls.
The table.
The bunk.
He paused on the third board from the north wall.
Rebecca felt every heartbeat.
The board sat almost correctly.
Almost.
A thin line of fresh dust showed where she had disturbed it.
Kums looked up.
Rebecca yawned.
“If you’re done protecting me, I’d like to sleep.”
The sheriff looked toward Micah.
Then Rebecca.
Finally he stepped back.
“Be careful.”
Rebecca smiled faintly.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed back. Why would you care what happens to me?”
Kums had no answer.
The three men mounted.
Before Harlon rode away, he turned.
“Some things in abandoned places don’t belong to the people who find them.”
Rebecca touched the wooden button beneath her dress.
“Then I suppose whoever owns them should come claim them.”
Harlon stared at her.
Micah closed the door.
They waited.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Then Micah moved to the window.
“Gone.”
Rebecca relit the stove.
Her hands were trembling.
“Did they know?”
“Harlon suspected.”
“Kums saw the floor.”
“He sees everything.”
“Why didn’t he search?”
Micah sat.
“Because he doesn’t know how much you know.”
Rebecca retrieved the bundle from the lean-to.
She placed Elias Mercer’s journal on the table.
“I know my mother lied about her family.”
“Hannah didn’t lie often.”
“That’s supposed to help?”
“No.”
Rebecca flipped pages.
“Tell me everything.”
Micah sighed.
“I don’t know everything.”
“Start with what you do.”
Twenty-two years earlier, according to Micah, Elias Mercer had arrived in Pine Hollow with his sister Mara and teenage daughter Hannah.
Elias had bought supplies with money from somewhere east.
He claimed the northern valley under a federal land patent.
At first nobody cared.
Then a geological survey passed through.
Surveyors found indications of valuable mineral deposits in the northern cliffs.
Not a rich gold strike.
Something less romantic and more useful.
Silver-bearing ore.
Harlon Puit’s father had begun buying nearby claims.
Elias refused to sell.
Two years later, Elias disappeared.
“So they killed him.”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“And Mara?”
“She vanished shortly afterward.”
“What about my mother?”
“Hannah married Silas.”
“Why?”
Micah frowned.
“You ask that like marriage requires conspiracy.”
Rebecca gave him a look.
He sighed.
“They loved each other.”
That answer hurt more than expected.
Because if Hannah had loved Silas, why had she left him?
“Did Father know about the land?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Not all.”
“How much?”
“Enough to be afraid.”
Rebecca looked at the sealed papers.
“Who added the letter addressed to Hannah?”
“I believe Mara did.”
“After Elias vanished.”
“Yes.”
“Then somebody opened this hiding place after Elias disappeared.”
“Seems so.”
Rebecca looked at the floor.
“Maybe Mara.”
“Maybe.”
“Then why leave it?”
“Perhaps she couldn’t carry it.”
“Or expected to return.”
Micah said nothing.
Rebecca pulled out the second notebook.
Unlike the first, it contained mostly names and numbers.
Freight weights.
Dates.
Payments.
Some entries had initials.
H.P.
W.K.
D.M.
Rebecca pointed.
“They were stealing from him.”
“Could be.”
“There are payment records.”
“Records aren’t proof unless we know what the payments purchased.”
Rebecca turned another page.
Near the back she found a list of six names.
Two had been crossed out.
One was Silas Boon.
Rebecca’s finger stopped.
Beside Silas’s name was written:
TRUST HIM WITH HANNAH.
Rebecca stared.
Her father had known Elias.
Not merely heard about him.
He had been trusted by him.
“Why didn’t Father ever tell me?”
Micah looked tired.
“Your father believed silence kept people alive.”
“Did it?”
The question landed harder than Rebecca intended.
Micah did not answer.
Rebecca closed the notebook.
“What was my mother doing when she disappeared six years ago?”
“She told Silas she was going to Silver Junction.”
“Why?”
“To meet somebody who had information about her father.”
Rebecca’s heart sped up.
“Who?”
“She never said.”
“Did Father go after her?”
“He tried.”
“What happened?”
“He found her horse wandering near the south road.”
Rebecca remembered that horse.
A chestnut mare named Belle.
She had been twelve.
Her father had returned leading Belle by the reins.
Rebecca had asked where Mama was.
Silas had walked past her without speaking.
Rebecca had not understood the look on his face until years later.
“What else did he find?”
Micah looked down.
“A torn piece of Hannah’s coat.”
Rebecca swallowed.
“No body.”
“No.”
“Blood?”
“None.”
“Tracks?”
“Rain destroyed them.”
Rebecca stood.
“So everybody decided she was dead?”
“Not everybody.”
“You think she lived?”
Micah studied her.
“Your father did.”
Rebecca’s eyes burned.
“Until when?”
“Until the day he died.”
The shack became painfully quiet.
Rebecca looked at the photograph again.
Elias Mercer beside the unidentified woman.
“Who is she?”
Micah leaned closer.
“I don’t know.”
“Could it be Mara?”
“No. I remember Mara.”
“Then who?”
Micah turned the picture over.
Something caught his attention.
He brought it nearer the lamp.
“There’s writing beneath the name.”
Rebecca had missed it because the ink was almost gone.
Micah angled the card.
Two more words appeared.
Rebecca read them slowly.
Lydia Vale.
“Who was Lydia Vale?”
Micah’s expression changed.
Rebecca immediately knew he recognized it.
“Micah.”
“I heard that name once.”
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
Rebecca gripped the photograph.
“From my mother?”
“No.”
Micah looked at her.
“From the last person who claimed to see Hannah alive.”
Rebecca’s breath caught.
“Who?”
Micah hesitated.
“A woman passing through Pine Hollow.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she say?”
“That if Hannah Boon ever disappeared, we should look for Lydia Vale.”
Rebecca looked down at the photograph.
Lydia Vale had been standing in this valley twenty years ago beside her grandfather.
And six years ago, that same name had surfaced when Hannah vanished.
Rebecca stared at the face of the young woman in the faded photograph.
Then she saw something else.
Around Lydia’s neck hung a carved wooden button.
Not like Rebecca’s.
Exactly like the one on the shack wall.
Outside, wind moved through the ponderosas.
May you like
Rebecca suddenly felt as though the dead had been trying to speak for twenty years.
And she had finally begun listening.
