Jonah hated being injured.
He hated doctors more.
The physician who stitched his arm was a tired man named Dr. Abel Turner, who had practiced medicine long enough to recognize stubbornness when it walked through his door.
“You’re lucky,” Turner said.
Jonah looked at the bandage.
“I’ve been luckier.”
“The bullet passed through.”
“So I noticed.”
“You could lose the arm if the wound turns bad.”
Nia stood near the window.
Jonah glanced at her expression and sighed.
“I’ll behave.”
Dr. Turner laughed.
“No, you won’t. But perhaps she can make you.”
Nia frowned.
“I cannot make him do anything.”
“That makes two of us.”
Jonah’s mouth twitched.
Nia did not smile.
Since hearing Silas Crowe’s name, something had changed in her.
She watched doors.
Windows.
Reflections.
Whenever footsteps sounded on the stairs, her shoulders tightened.
Jonah recognized the signs because he had lived with danger before.
This was different.
Nia wasn’t simply afraid of Silas.
She understood him.
That worried Jonah more.
After the doctor left, Jonah sat on the bed.
“Tell me about him.”
Nia kept looking through the window.
“Silas?”
“Yes.”
“He led them.”
“Harlan acted like the leader.”
“Harlan liked people thinking he was important.”
“And Silas?”
“Silas didn’t care what people thought.”
That was not the answer Jonah wanted.
Nia finally turned.
“He watched. He waited. When the others drank, he drank less. When they argued, he listened. When someone tried to escape…”
Her voice stopped.
Jonah waited.
“He planned what happened afterward.”
Jonah’s jaw tightened.
“Why didn’t he come with Harlan?”
“Because Silas would know Harlan would make noise.”
“And if Harlan succeeded, Silas loses nothing.”
“Yes.”
“If Harlan failed…”
“Silas learns who helped me.”
Jonah looked toward the street.
Meaning Silas now knew about Jonah, Sheriff Mercer, and probably anyone else who stood between him and Nia.
“Then we don’t go home yet.”
Nia stared at him.
“You love that cabin.”
“I like being alive more.”
“But—”
“We stay in town until Mercer figures out what to do with those men.”
Nia lowered her gaze.
Jonah understood the emotion before she spoke.
“I brought this to you.”
“No.”
“If I had never knocked—”
“You’d be dead.”
“And you would be safe.”
Jonah leaned forward despite the pain in his arm.
“Nia, listen carefully. Harlan made his choices. Silas made his. I made mine. Stop carrying responsibility for decisions cruel men made before you ever saw my door.”
She stared at him.
No one had ever put it that way.
Jonah continued.
“You didn’t bring violence into my life. Violence followed you. There’s a difference.”
Nia turned back toward the window.
Snow drifted past the glass.
“You speak as though everything is simple.”
“No.”
“Then why do you make it sound simple?”
“Because some things are.”
She looked at him.
“People belong to themselves. That’s simple.”
The words remained with her.
For the next several days, they stayed in town.
Harlan, Foster, and Wade were held in the small county jail while Sheriff Mercer sent messages to territorial authorities.
Questions began spreading.
There were rumors of other missing travelers.
A Mexican ranch hand who had vanished the previous spring.
Two Navajo women who had disappeared near a trading road.
A young white woman from a wagon train who had never reached Santa Fe.
Harlan’s capture opened doors men like him had relied upon keeping closed.
Nia gave her statement to Sheriff Mercer.
It took nearly three hours.
Jonah waited outside.
He did not ask what she said when she emerged.
He simply handed her a cup of coffee.
She held it with both hands.
“You didn’t listen?”
“Wasn’t my story to hear unless you wanted me to.”
Nia looked at him for a long time.
“Margaret was fortunate.”
Jonah froze.
Nia had never spoken his wife’s name.
He had told her only once.
“What makes you say that?”
“She had a husband who knew when silence was kindness.”
Jonah looked away.
Pain moved behind his eyes.
“She deserved better than what happened.”
“So did you.”
He almost laughed.
“You don’t know much about me.”
“I know you opened a door.”
“That proves very little.”
“To someone freezing outside, it proves enough.”
Jonah had no answer.
That evening Amos Bell invited them to supper with his wife, Ruth.
Ruth had a gentle voice, silver hair, and the fearless curiosity of a woman who had raised six children and survived four decades of frontier winters.
She did not ask Nia where she had been captured.
She did not ask about her bruises.
Instead, she asked whether Nia preferred chicken stew or beef.
Nia seemed startled.
“Chicken.”
“Good. Jonah eats enough beef for three men anyway.”
Jonah groaned.
Nia smiled.
It was the first full smile he had seen.
The sight struck him harder than Harlan’s bullet.
For a little while, they felt almost ordinary.
Then the church bell rang.
Not for worship.
Alarm.
Sheriff Mercer burst through the trading post door.
“Jonah.”
Everyone stood.
“What?”
“Harlan’s dead.”
Silence.
Jonah’s hand instinctively moved toward his revolver.
“How?”
“Knife between the ribs.”
“In jail?”
Mercer nodded.
“Foster and Wade?”
“Alive. Terrified.”
Nia’s face went pale.
“Silas.”
The sheriff looked at her.
“We think so.”
“How did he get inside?”
“Didn’t.”
Mercer placed something on the table.
A narrow knife.
“Harlan was found in the exercise yard. Somebody threw this over the back wall.”
Jonah studied it.
Nia did not need to.
She recognized the leather wrapping around the handle.
Silas.
A message.
Not merely to Harlan.
To everyone.
If Silas could kill a prisoner inside Mercer’s jail, he wanted them wondering where he could reach next.
Foster and Wade began talking that night.
Fear accomplished what conscience never had.
They described routes.
Hideouts.
Names.
Men who bought stolen livestock and men who bought human beings.
They named Silas Crowe as the organizer.
More importantly, Foster revealed that Silas kept records.
“Records?” Mercer asked.
“Names. Payments. Places.”
“Where?”
Foster swallowed.
“Old mining station west of the ridge.”
Jonah knew the place.
Everyone did.
Abandoned fifteen years earlier when silver ran thin.
Two bunkhouses, a collapsed mill, and a storage cabin tucked between cliffs.
“How many men with him?” Jonah asked.
Foster hesitated.
“Could be six. Could be twelve.”
Mercer swore.
Nia stood near the back of the room.
“What is in those records?”
Foster glanced at her.
“Everything.”
That changed the situation.
Silas was dangerous because he had survived by leaving little evidence.
Those books could prove an entire network existed.
They could also identify people who had disappeared and perhaps help reunite families who had spent years searching.
Sheriff Mercer planned to wait for territorial marshals.
Jonah agreed.
Nia did not.
“If Silas knows Foster told you about the books, he will burn them.”
Mercer nodded.
“Probably.”
“Then waiting destroys the evidence.”
“I’m not taking civilians into a mining camp full of armed men.”
Nia stepped closer.
“You will never find where he hides them.”
Foster looked down.
She noticed.
“You don’t know either, do you?”
Foster reluctantly shook his head.
“Silas never showed us.”
“But I saw him.”
Jonah stared at her.
“When?”
“The night before I escaped.”
She explained.
Silas had moved a ledger after discovering moisture inside the storage cabin. Nia had watched him take it into the abandoned mill.
She remembered because he had left her tied near the cookfire while the others slept.
“There’s a stone foundation beneath the mill,” she said. “A loose board under the old stamping frame.”
Mercer looked impressed.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Jonah shook his head.
“She’s not going.”
Nia turned.
“You do not decide that.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“Because I’m hoping you’ll listen to good sense.”
“I listened when you told me to hide.”
“And then ignored half of it.”
“It saved you.”
Jonah opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Mercer almost smiled.
Nia continued.
“If those books disappear, Silas can hurt others.”
“That doesn’t make you responsible for stopping him.”
“No.”
Her voice remained calm.
“It means I choose to.”
Jonah saw the difference.
Weeks earlier, Nia had offered herself because she believed survival required surrendering control.
Now she stood in a sheriff’s office insisting upon making her own decision.
He could not tell her people belonged to themselves and then become another man deciding for her.
So he nodded.
“I’m going too.”
Mercer pointed at Jonah’s bandaged arm.
“You’ve got a hole in you.”
“Still got another arm.”
“You two are going to kill me before Silas gets the chance.”
The plan was made before dawn.
Mercer, two deputies, Jonah, and Nia would ride toward the old mining station while Amos sent a rider to hurry the territorial marshals.
They would not attack.
They would observe.
If the camp looked lightly guarded and the mill could be reached safely, Mercer would retrieve the ledger.
Otherwise they would wait.
That was the plan.
Plans rarely survive frightened men.
They reached the ridge overlooking the mining station near sunset.
Smoke rose from one chimney.
Three horses stood outside.
No movement.
Mercer whispered, “Too quiet.”
Jonah agreed.
Nia scanned the clearing.
Something was wrong.
Silas was careful.
He would never leave three horses exposed without a guard.
Then she saw the tracks.
Many tracks.
Leading away.
“Sheriff.”
Mercer followed her gaze.
“They left?”
“Most of them.”
“Why?”
Jonah’s eyes narrowed.
“Because they knew we were coming.”
A gunshot cracked.
One deputy fell from his horse.
Chaos exploded.
Rifle fire came from both cliffs.
Ambush.
Jonah dragged Nia behind a boulder.
Mercer returned fire.
Another bullet shattered stone inches from Nia’s face.
Then a voice echoed across the ravine.
Silas Crowe.
“Send the woman down!”
Nia’s blood ran cold.
Silas continued.
“And maybe the rest of you get to ride home.”
Jonah looked at her.
She expected to see fear.
Instead she saw something she had never imagined when she first knocked on his door.
Trust.
Not Jonah deciding for her.
Not Jonah ordering her to hide.
Trusting her to decide what came next.
Nia slowly looked toward the abandoned mill.
Then she saw something Silas had overlooked.
Smoke.
Not from the chimney.
From beneath the mill.
He was already burning the records.
Nia pointed.
“The books.”
Jonah followed her gaze.
Mercer saw it too.
They had minutes.
Maybe less.
Nia tightened her grip on the rifle.
“I know another way inside.”
Jonah stared at her.
“How?”
“The creek runs beneath the mill.”
Of course.
Water once powered part of the old operation.
A drainage tunnel.
“Can you reach it?”
“Yes.”
Jonah started to rise.
“We reach it.”
Nia stopped him.
“Your arm.”
“Don’t start.”
Despite the bullets striking rocks around them, she almost smiled.
Together, while Mercer and his deputies kept Silas’s men occupied, Jonah and Nia crawled down the back side of the ridge.
They reached the frozen creek.
The tunnel entrance was half buried in snow.
Jonah cleared the opening.
Smoke drifted from inside.
Nia looked at him.
“You don’t have to come.”
Jonah gave her the same answer he had given at the door during the storm.
“Get in.”
This time Nia did smile.
Then they disappeared into the dark tunnel beneath the burning mill.