Now a ledger connected someone named
N.
Rusk
to the most powerful family in Mercy Bend.
Caleb looked at Mae.
“Your mother’s first name?”
Mae hesitated.
“Miriam.”
The hope inside him died slightly.
Not Nora.
Of course not.
He had been chasing ghosts too long.
They left for Mercy Bend the next morning.
Mae wanted to go.
Caleb argued.
Mae won.
“If I keep hiding,” she told him,
“then I’m still living by Owen’s rules.”
They reached town shortly before noon.
People noticed immediately.
Mercy Bend had one broad main street, and news could travel from the livery stable to the church faster than a horse could gallop it.
Mae sat beside Caleb in the wagon wearing his brown coat over her repaired dress.
Storekeepers stopped sweeping.
Women stopped talking.
A barber stepped halfway into the street.
Someone whispered Mae’s name.
Then Owen appeared.
He stood outside the bank with Silas Drayton.
Silas was nearly sixty-five, silver-haired and straight-backed.
Caleb saw the resemblance.
Owen had inherited his father’s mouth.
Silas removed his hat.
“Mae.”
She ignored him.
“We’ve been worried sick.”
Mae’s hand clenched.
Caleb stopped the wagon outside Tilda Pike’s boardinghouse.
Silas crossed the street.
“Caleb.”
“Silas.”
“You’re involving yourself in a family matter.”
“Funny how many family matters require sheriffs.”
A few townspeople heard.
Silas smiled.
“Mrs.
Drayton needs rest.”
Mae climbed down.
Everyone watched.
For the first time, she did not lower her head.
“What I need is for your family to stop lying.”
The street became perfectly silent.
Silas’s face barely changed.
But his eyes did.
That night somebody threw a burning bottle through Tilda Pike’s front window.
Caleb smothered the flames with a blanket.
Mae stood in the hallway holding a shotgun.
She wasn’t crying.
That frightened him more than tears would have.
Tilda Pike was seventy-one and feared nobody.
She stared at the burned curtains.
“Drayton boys never were subtle.”
“You know something?”
Caleb asked.
Tilda looked at Mae.
Then she locked the front door.
“I know plenty.”
For thirty years, widows had lost claims around Mercy Bend.
A husband drowned.
A barn burned.
A rancher disappeared.
A farmer supposedly signed away six hundred acres the day after his death.
“People talked,” Tilda said.
“Then they learned not to.”
“Why?”
“Because judges changed.
Sheriffs changed.
Preachers changed.”
She looked toward the hill where the Drayton mansion glowed beneath moonlight.
“But the Draytons stayed.”
Mae unfolded the ledger page.
Tilda’s face changed when she saw Joseph Larkin.
“Oh, child.”
“What?”
Tilda touched the paper.
“Your father didn’t owe Silas money.”
Mae froze.
“What?”
“He owned the spring.”
“What spring?”
Tilda stared at her.
“Mercy Spring.”
Caleb understood immediately.
Every ranch south of town depended on water originating beneath Larkin land.
