“The envelope contained that charm and one sentence.”
“What sentence?”
Silas looked toward the ranch house.
Toward Jonah, who was running across the yard with Peter chasing behind him.
Then he spoke.
“If the winter becomes cruel, watch my family.”
Miriam could not move.
A bird called from somewhere near the creek.
Silas reached into his pocket.
“There was something else.”
He handed her the envelope.
Miriam recognized the handwriting instantly.
Isaac.
Her dead husband.
But the postmark—
Cheyenne.
January 1879.
Nine months after Isaac Vale was supposedly buried.
Her knees nearly gave way.
Silas caught her elbow.
“No.”
She stared at him.
“You said Rusk killed him.”
“Rusk believed he did.”
Miriam’s hands began shaking.
Silas’s voice softened.
“The man in that logging wagon was wearing Isaac’s coat.
He carried Isaac’s papers.”
“No.”
“Miriam—”
“No.”
“There was never a proper identification.”
She remembered.
The closed coffin.
Rusk’s insistence that she not view the body.
The minister saying the injuries were too terrible.
She had never seen Isaac dead.
Not once.
“Then where is he?”
Silas shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Miriam opened the envelope.
Inside, beneath the sentence Silas had quoted, was something he apparently had not noticed.
A crease in the paper.
She unfolded it again.
A second message appeared along the bottom, written so faintly it had almost disappeared.
Miriam read it.
And the world seemed to stop.
Miriam, forgive me.
If I return before Alden is finished, he will find Jonah.
When the boy is safe, I will come home.
A sob escaped her.
Silas stared.
“There’s more?”
She could not answer.
Her eyes moved toward the final line.
Four words.
Only four.
Written by the husband she had mourned for nearly two years.
Tell Peter I remember.
Miriam pressed the letter to her mouth.
Across the yard, Peter laughed as Jonah tackled him into the grass.
Isaac remembered.
Which meant Isaac had known about Peter after his supposed death.
Which meant he had been watching.
Waiting.
Protecting them from somewhere beyond Montana.
Silas looked toward the western road.
“So he may still be alive.”
Miriam wiped her eyes.
For the first time since the terrible winter began, she did not know whether she wanted to laugh, scream, or run until she reached Wyoming.
Then Jonah called from the yard.
“Ma!”
She turned.
The boy stood beside the gate.
A rider was approaching.
Slowly.
From the south.
Silas stiffened.
Miriam’s heart began pounding so violently that she could hear nothing else.
The rider came closer.
Dust curled beneath the horse’s hooves.
Peter ran toward the fence.
Jonah remained still.
Silas moved beside Miriam.
The stranger wore a faded brown coat.
A battered hat.
His right arm rested awkwardly against his body.
Even from a distance, Miriam could see that he was thinner than she remembered.
