“My name is not Beatrice Gallagher.”
Caleb said nothing.
“My name is Beatrice Bell.”
Something about it struck him.
Bell.
He knew that name.
Every miner in western Colorado knew it.
Samuel Bell.
A prospector who had vanished eleven years earlier after losing a disputed claim to a rising young miner named Caleb Whitmore.
Caleb’s blood went cold.
“Samuel Bell was your father.”
“Yes.”
The station seemed to tilt.
He remembered Samuel.
Thin.
Gray-eyed.
Quiet.
A widower with a ledger always tucked inside his coat.
They had once worked neighboring claims.
Then Samuel disappeared.
People assumed he had gone east.
Caleb whispered, “Why did you change your name?”
“Because when my father vanished, creditors descended on us. Men accused him of theft. My mother could not survive the shame. Gallagher was her maiden name.”
“Vanished?”
Bee stared at him.
“You truly don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“My father did not abandon us.”
The whistle of an approaching locomotive echoed down the valley.
“He was murdered.”
Caleb felt a chill colder than the November wind.
“By whom?”
“That is what I am going to Denver to prove.”
The train appeared beyond the bend, smoke rising dark against the white hills.
Bee gripped her bag.
“Last night, I recognized something in Pendleton’s papers.”
“What?”
“The name Harker.”
Caleb knew it.
“Harker Industrial Syndicate.”
“Yes.”
Her voice trembled now.
“My father kept books for Cyrus Harker before he came to Oakhaven. Eleven years ago he discovered Harker was acquiring mineral claims through forged transfers.”
Caleb stopped breathing.
Bee continued.
“Father gathered evidence. He hid copies somewhere before going to meet a federal investigator in Denver.”
“He never arrived.”
“No.”
The train drew closer.
“Three days after he disappeared,” she said, “his mining claim was transferred.”
Caleb already knew the next words.
“To you.”
“Yes.”
For the first time in years, Caleb Whitmore looked frightened.
“I bought that claim legally.”
“From Martin Vale’s father.”
The world narrowed.
Amos Vale.
The contractor who built Ridge View.
The man who had shown Caleb the supposedly abandoned Bell claim.
The man who swore Samuel Bell had sold it before leaving Colorado.
And from that claim Caleb had struck the first vein that made him rich.
Everything he possessed had begun with Samuel Bell’s disappearance.
“I didn’t know,” Caleb said.
“I believe you.”
“Why?”
“Because if you did know, you would have destroyed Pendleton’s papers instead of exposing them.”
The locomotive screamed into the station.
Passengers moved around them.
Bee looked toward the carriage.
“I have an appointment tomorrow with an investigator in Denver.”
“You’re going alone?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Her eyes flashed.
“There is that word again.”
“You think Harker’s men will allow you to walk into Denver carrying evidence about an eleven-year-old murder?”
“I have survived alone for eleven years.”
“And last night someone planned to kill forty miners because of the same syndicate.”
She hesitated.
Caleb lowered his voice.
“Take me.”
“This is not your fight.”
His expression hardened.
“If the fortune I built rests on your father’s grave, it became my fight eleven years ago.”
The conductor called boarding.
Bee stared at Caleb.
“You’re wounded.”
“I have another arm.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I have been told.”
She looked at the train.
Then back at him.
“Fine.”
