He wedged the sewing shears beneath it.
The stone lifted.
Underneath lay a small iron box.
My breath caught.
Harlan didn’t touch it.
Instead, he handed me the key he’d carried in his leather pouch for twelve years.
“Your mother said this was yours.”
I unlocked the box.
Inside lay a leather journal, three folded documents, a gold wedding band, and a small photograph.
My mother stared back at me.
She was younger than I remembered.
Beside her stood a smiling man I had never seen.
Thomas Mercer.
On the back were three words.
Our first home.
I unfolded the largest document.
It was a land patent.
Eleanor Mercer.
My mother.
Another document transferred her entire share of the property to her only daughter upon her twenty-first birthday.
Josephine Hale.
I stared at the date.
I had turned twenty-one fourteen months earlier.
For fourteen months, the land had legally been mine.
Then I opened the journal.
Most of it described ordinary life.
Gardening.
Winter storms.
My childhood.
But halfway through, the entries changed.
Mother wrote about Father’s gambling debts.
His violence.
His determination to sell timber from land that did not belong to him.
She wrote about forged signatures.
Threats.
Money disappearing.
Then came the final pages.
Gideon knows the railroad survey may pass through the western valley.
If it does, the land will become extraordinarily valuable.
He says what belongs to a wife belongs to her husband.
I told him Thomas left the land to me before I ever met him.
Gideon struck me.
Tonight I heard him speaking with Sheriff Cole.
They intend to declare me mentally incompetent and transfer guardianship of the property to Gideon.
I will leave tomorrow.
I will take the patent.
I will get Josephine after I have help.
My hands shook.
The last entry contained only two sentences.
If Gideon cannot own the land through me, he will try to own it through Josephine.
He must never learn that the railroad’s true survey marker is beneath the north spring.
Harlan swore softly.
“What?”
“The railroad.”
He took a folded newspaper from a shelf.
“The Continental Western announced a new route last month.”
He showed me a map.
The proposed railway crossed directly through my valley.
I finally understood.
This wasn’t about eighteen hundred acres of wilderness.
The railroad needed a mountain pass.
There was only one practical passage through that section of the range.
Mine.
My land could control access to half the territory.
Father hadn’t brought me to Harlan because he wanted to be rid of me.
He expected me to remain ignorant of my inheritance while my new husband believed he’d purchased an obedient bride.
Then Father could negotiate with the railroad himself.
My marriage had been camouflage.
And Harlan had ruined everything by showing me the agreement.
The sound of a rifle being cocked came from behind us.
“Very clever.”
Father stood in the broken doorway.
Three men were behind him.
And beside them stood Sheriff Cole.
“Step away from the box,” Father said.
Harlan moved in front of me.
