He pointed the pistol at Caleb.
That was when Nathaniel bit him.
Price screamed.
The gun fired.
Caleb lunged.
All three fell into the snow.
Eleanor ran forward.
Price struck Caleb with the pistol.
Caleb staggered.
Price raised it again.
Then Sarah screamed.
“Papa!”
Everyone froze.
Not Caleb.
Not Price.
Everyone.
Sarah stood beside the trees.
Her face had gone completely white.
She was staring beyond them.
A man stepped into the moonlight.
Thin.
Bearded.
One arm hanging stiffly at his side.
A scar running from his temple to his jaw.
Eleanor forgot how to breathe.
The world disappeared.
“Samuel?”
The dead man walked toward them.
Eleanor could not move.
Her husband had been dead for two years.
She had mourned him.
Starved without him.
Crossed half a continent because of his debts.
Married another man because she believed Samuel lay beneath frozen Pennsylvania earth.
Yet Samuel Hayes stood beside a Wyoming creek.
Alive.
Sarah ran first.
“Papa!”
Samuel caught her with one arm.
Thomas followed.
Then James.
Eleanor remained where she stood.
Her knees shook.
Caleb had Price pinned in the snow.
Nathaniel stared at the stranger who was supposedly his father.
Samuel looked at Eleanor.
“El.”
She slapped him.
The sound cracked through the night.
Nobody spoke.
Then she struck his chest.
Again.
Again.
“You were alive!”
Samuel did not defend himself.
“You were alive!”
“I know.”
“Two years!”
“I know.”
“You let your children believe you were dead!”
“I had no choice.”
“There is always a choice!”
She struck him again.
Samuel caught her wrists.
“They were watching you.”
“Who?”
Price laughed from the snow.
“All of us.”
Samuel looked toward him.
“Not for much longer.”
A gunshot echoed from the house.
Then another.
Marshal Crowe shouted somewhere beyond the trees.
The remaining attackers were surrendering.
Eleanor stared at Samuel.
“Caleb told me you died at Black Ridge.”
Samuel looked at Caleb.
For the first time, uncertainty crossed Caleb’s face.
“I thought he did.”
Samuel touched the scar on his face.
“So did they.”
Price had shot him and thrown him into an abandoned mine shaft.
He survived the fall.
Barely.
A band of railroad workers found him three days later.
His skull was fractured.
He could not remember his name.
Months passed before fragments returned.
By the time he remembered Eleanor, he was hundreds of miles west and still being hunted.
“So you came here?”
Samuel nodded.
“To find Caleb.”
Eleanor turned toward Caleb.
Something was wrong.
He wasn’t relieved.
He looked devastated.
Because Eleanor understood what Samuel’s return meant.
Her marriage to Caleb was invalid.
The thought should have brought relief.
Instead, something in her chest broke.
Caleb looked away.
Price laughed again.
“Touching.”
Samuel walked toward him.
“You should have killed me properly.”
Price’s smile disappeared.
Marshal Crowe emerged through the trees with two armed ranch hands.
He dragged Price upright.
“Reverend Gideon Price, you’re under arrest.”
Price spat blood.
“For what?”
Crowe smiled coldly.
“Kidnapping. Fraud. trafficking. Murder.”
“You have no witnesses.”
Samuel stepped forward.
“You have me.”
Price laughed.
“One ruined man’s testimony?”
