The stallion flinched.
Then looked back at Jedediah.
“Come on.”
Another whistle.
Diablo took one step toward Jedediah.
Clara’s eyes filled with tears.
Silas stared.
“No.”
He whistled harder.
Diablo took another step toward Jedediah.
Then another.
Until the stallion stood in front of the man whose family had taught him pain.
Jedediah raised one trembling hand.
Diablo lowered his head into it.
Silas stopped whistling.
For the first time, he looked afraid.
Clara picked up the fallen rifle.
“Don’t move.”
The sheriff arrived before noon.
Silas Rourke confessed enough before reaching town to ensure he would never see Cross Ranch again except perhaps in dreams.
But Jedediah barely listened.
He spent the afternoon alone in his father’s office.
At sunset, Clara found him taking Amos Cross’s portrait from the wall.
“What are you doing?”
“Changing which parts are mine.”
He carried the portrait outside.
Did not burn it.
Did not destroy it.
He simply placed it in a storage crate.
Clara understood.
Some ghosts did not need fire.
They needed to stop being worshiped.
Jedediah returned to the office.
“There’s something I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“You came here because of your father’s letter.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Diablo was connected somehow.”
Clara hesitated.
“Yes.”
“How?”
She reached into her coat.
There was another envelope.
Jedediah stared at it.
“You’ve had another letter this whole time?”
“This one wasn’t my father’s.”
“Whose?”
Clara handed it to him.
The envelope bore a name.
Not Jedediah.
Not Matthew Vale.
Clara Whitfield.
The handwriting was Thomas’s.
Jedediah looked at her sharply.
“You knew my brother?”
She nodded.
“Once.”
“How?”
Clara took a long breath.
“When I was eighteen, my father took me with him whenever he worked.
Thomas used to come watch us train horses.”
Her voice softened.
“He said my father was the first man he had ever seen ask a horse instead of ordering it.”
Jedediah looked at the envelope.
“What does the letter say?”
“I think you should read it.”
He opened it.
Clara—
If anything happens Saturday, find Mercy.
Father doesn’t know I heard Silas discussing her foal.
If Mercy survives, the foal will carry Kingfisher’s private mark.
Silas has been selling those foals under false registrations.
The horse will prove the ledgers are real.
I have already given Jed enough clues.
I only hope he chooses to see them.
Jedediah’s eyes stopped on the final lines.
One more thing.
If I fail, don’t let Jed become Father.
He’ll try.
Not because he’s cruel.
Because grief can look like loyalty when you stare at it long enough.
Jedediah lowered the paper.
Clara was crying silently.
“You spent six years looking for Mercy’s foal.”
“Five.”
“Why five?”
“Because the first year I hated all of you.”
Fair enough.
“How did you find Diablo?”
“A trader in Fort Worth mentioned a black stallion with a hidden scar where an old brand had been burned over.
He’d changed hands three times.”
“You knew before you came here?”
“I suspected.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“Would you have listened?”
Jedediah thought about the man he had been ten days earlier.
“No.”
Clara wiped her cheek.
