Chapter 10 - Fire at Crow Ridge
Min was scheduled to leave on Monday.
By Sunday evening, Crow Ridge had become unbearably quiet.
Hilton repaired things that did not need repairing.
Min packed things that did not need packing.
Neither spoke about what mattered.
Finally, Min walked into the barn.
The place where everything had begun.
Hilton was repairing a harness.
“You avoid me.”
“No.”
“You repair same strap one hour.”
Hilton looked down.
She was right.
Min sat on the crate where he had placed the biscuits months earlier.
“Why you say go?”
Hilton put the harness aside.
“Your brother is family.”
“You family?”
The question struck him.
“I don't know.”
“I ask you.”
Hilton looked at her.
“I want to be.”
Min's eyes filled.
“Then why tell me leave?”
“Because I won't become another man deciding where you're allowed to live.”
She stared.
Then understood.
“Hilton.”
He stood.
“I want you to stay so badly I can hardly breathe when I think about Monday.”
Min's lips parted.
“But I need you to know you can leave.”
She crossed the barn.
“And if I choose stay?”
Hilton swallowed.
“Then I'll spend every day grateful you did.”
Min touched his face.
He closed his eyes.
Their first kiss was quiet.
No dramatic embrace.
No forgetting.
No replacement of the people they had lost.
Just two wounded people choosing life.
Then smoke entered the barn.
Hilton pulled away.
“Not again.”
They ran outside.
But the ranch wasn't burning.
The western pasture was.
A wall of flame moved across the dry grass.
Hilton shouted for Min to take the horses.
They worked desperately.
Neighbors saw the smoke.
Within minutes wagons arrived.
The town fought the fire together.
By midnight it was contained.
Silas found the cause.
A lantern deliberately broken near the fence.
Hilton's blood chilled.
Mercer was in jail.
Rourke was in custody.
Reed was imprisoned.
“Who?” Min asked.
Silas looked toward the darkness.
“Someone still wants Crow Ridge destroyed.”
Then Hilton remembered Elizabeth's letter.
There had been payments not only to Reed.
There had been another set of initials.
T.B.
A person nobody had identified.
Someone still free.
Someone who had profited from Silver Mountain.
May you like
And someone who had just tried to burn Hilton's ranch for the second time.
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