And a note.
PAYMENT COMPLETE.
J.T.
Gideon felt sick.
Too convenient.
Martha crouched beside the body.
“This was meant to be found.”
Elias nodded slowly.
“Frame Taggart?”
“Or confirm what everyone already believes.”
Gideon looked at her.
“Why would someone want war between us?”
Before Martha could answer, another rider appeared.
“Boss!”
It was Sam Boyd.
“The sheriff’s at the ranch.”
Sheriff Nolan Pike waited in the yard with six deputies.
He held papers.
“Gideon Caldwell?”
“You know me.”
“I have an order authorizing seizure of Red Canyon cattle and property pending default.”
Gideon’s face hardened.
“What default?”
Pike handed him the notice.
Gideon read.
Forty-two thousand dollars due against a loan he had never seen.
His signature appeared at the bottom.
Perfectly copied.
Martha stepped closer.
She examined it.
Then went pale.
“Where did you get this?”
“Frontier Consolidated Bank.”
Martha whispered:
“Josiah owns it.”
Gideon looked at her.
She seemed genuinely stunned.
Sheriff Pike shifted.
“Payment’s due tomorrow at noon.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Otherwise property transfers to lienholder.”
“Taggart.”
Pike nodded.
Gideon’s hands curled.
Martha grabbed his arm.
“Don’t.”
“He forged my signature.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Josiah wouldn’t make this mistake.”
“What mistake?”
She pointed at the date.
“February twelfth.”
“So?”
“Josiah was in Chicago. He would never personally execute a document while traveling.”
Gideon stared.
“You remember where your brother was eight months ago?”
“Yes.”
Of course she did.
She remembered everything.
Martha looked toward the signature line.
Then her eyes shifted to the witness.
E. BOONE.
Silence.
Everyone looked at Elias.
The old foreman stared.
“I never witnessed that.”
Martha studied him.
“I believe you.”
Elias exhaled.
Sheriff Pike said, “Court believes paper.”
Martha looked toward the ranch house.
“Then paper will save us.”
For eighteen hours she worked.
She opened every ledger.
Every bill.
Every cattle receipt.
Every supply account.
Gideon sat opposite her.
Neither discussed her leaving.
Near midnight, she found it.
An invoice.
Fence wire.
Bought six months earlier.
Charged to Red Canyon.
But delivered elsewhere.
The receipt bore the initials J.R.
Jebediah Rust.
They found another.
Ammunition.
Another.
Winter feed.
Again J.R.
Then a payroll entry.
Jebediah had been collecting wages for nonexistent ranch hands.
Martha leaned back.
“He was stealing from you.”
Gideon frowned.
“Not enough to explain the loan.”
“No.”
She searched deeper.
At three in the morning she found an account number handwritten beside an old cattle sale.
She stopped breathing.
“What?”
Gideon leaned closer.
Martha whispered:
“I know this number.”
“Taggart’s?”
“No.”
She looked up.
“My father’s.”
Gideon stared.
“Your father is dead.”
“For seventeen years.”
They rode to town at sunrise.
The bank manager refused them records.
Martha asked for the manager’s superior.
He laughed.
Then she gave him a number.
“Telegraph Mr. William Harcourt in Denver. Tell him Martha Taggart is asking about Account 7714.”
The manager’s smile vanished.
Within twenty minutes they were inside the vault office.
The records revealed something impossible.
