And finally:

IF CALDWELL DISCOVERS WHO TAUGHT YOU TO KEEP BOOKS, COUNT CATTLE AND RUN MEN, HE’LL PUT YOU ON THE NEXT TRAIN EAST.

Gideon lowered the papers.

“Who are you?”

Martha’s lips parted.

Nothing emerged.

“Your name isn’t Higgins?”

“It is.”

“Taggart says it won’t hide you.”

“My mother’s name was Higgins.”

“What was your father’s?”

Silence.

Gideon suddenly knew.

He didn’t understand how.

But some instinct said the answer had been sitting in front of him since her first letter.

Martha looked at him.

“Taggart.”

Gideon’s chest tightened.

“Josiah Taggart is your father?”

“No.”

She stood.

“My brother.”

The words struck harder.

Gideon stared at her.

Josiah Taggart was forty-seven.

Martha thirty-four.

Possible.

Painfully possible.

“You married me knowing he was trying to destroy me.”

“Yes.”

“You asked about my cattle.”

“Yes.”

“My debts.”

“Yes.”

“My payroll.”

“Yes.”

“My winter reserves.”

“Yes.”

Each answer struck like a hammer.

Gideon backed away.

“Were you spying?”

“No.”

“How do I know?”

“You don’t.”

“You expect me to believe—”

“I expect nothing.”

Her voice cracked.

It was the first weakness he’d heard in it.

She gathered the telegrams.

“My father had two families.”

Gideon said nothing.

Martha continued.

“Josiah’s mother died when he was young. My father remarried years later. My mother was Clara Higgins. When Father died, Josiah inherited Taggart Holdings. I inherited nothing except the knowledge that I was an inconvenience.”

“Holdings?”

“Rail contracts. Stockyards. Lending companies. Land.”

Gideon frowned.

“Taggart isn’t only a rancher?”

Martha almost laughed.

“No. The ranch is decoration.”

She walked toward the window.

“Josiah controls banks in three counties through silent partnerships. He owns freight contracts. Grain warehouses. Stock pens. He can ruin a rancher without ever touching a cow.”

Gideon thought of his disappearing credit.

The inexplicable increase in feed prices.

Cattle buyers refusing good stock.

His stomach dropped.

“You knew.”

“I suspected.”

“And didn’t tell me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

Martha turned.

“Because the last man I tried to help ended up dead.”

The room became very still.

She told him.

Seven years earlier, Martha had worked in Taggart’s Denver office under the name Martha Higgins.

She had managed ledgers, contracts, shipments.

Josiah thought women invisible.

So did his businessmen.

They discussed schemes in front of her.

Rigged loans.

Foreclosures.

Cattle theft disguised as range loss.

Bribed inspectors.

One rancher, Thomas Vale, discovered part of it.

Martha warned him.

Three weeks later he was found beneath a cliff.

They called it an accident.

Martha fled to St. Louis.

Josiah let her go because she had taken nothing.

Or so he believed.

Gideon stared.

“What did you take?”

Martha looked toward the carpetbag.

“My memory.”

That answer frightened him more than papers would have.

She remembered numbers.

Accounts.

Names.

Dates.

Bank officers.

Branding records.

Loan schedules.

Seven years of them.

“And now you married me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Martha’s eyes filled.

Gideon expected strategy.

Revenge.

Some confession about bringing down Josiah through Red Canyon.