“Gideon discovered it years later.”
Clara’s voice barely worked.
“And Elias knew?”
Bell’s expression answered before his words did.
“Yes.”
She stepped back.
The marriage.
The kindness.
The debts.
The isolation.
Every piece shifted into place.
Elias had not married the poor daughter of a dead bookkeeper.
He had married the lawful heir to land his family had stolen.
Clara felt sick.
“He married me to keep me from finding out.”
Bell nodded.
“And to make any claim you discovered easier to control.”
Silas looked at her.
“That’s why Gideon sent for me.”
Clara’s eyes filled.
“You knew he was in danger?”
“I received his message too late.”
“When?”
“Two weeks after he died.”
Anger broke through the grief.
“And you waited three years?”
Silas flinched.
The first genuine wound she had seen reach him.
“I was in New Mexico.
His letter had been forwarded through six towns.
When I finally reached Deadwood, you’d married Elias.”
“You could have told me.”
“I tried.”
Clara frowned.
“Three letters.”
Her heart stopped.
“I never received them.”
“I know that now.”
Elias.
Of course.
Silas continued.
“Then I heard Gideon had left one final letter with a freight agent in Cheyenne to be delivered if anything happened to him.
Took me months to find it.”
Clara looked toward the black box.
“Is this enough to take Elias’s ranch?”
Judge Bell’s expression darkened.
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?”
“The original deed from Elizabeth Vane is missing.”
Clara’s pulse quickened.
“What original deed?”
“The one transferring the disputed water parcels back to Gideon after Amos’s fraud was discovered.”
Silas looked at Bell.
“I thought Gideon had it.”
“So did I.”
Clara said nothing.
Bell saw her expression.
“Clara?”
Silas turned.
“Do you know where it is?”
She remembered the tin tube.
The single page.
The document hidden behind the kitchen wall.
And suddenly she understood.
That was the paper Elias had tied her to a post to find.
Before she could answer, glass exploded inward.
Silas shouted.
“Down!”
A rifle cracked from the street.
Judge Bell fell.
Clara screamed.
Silas dragged her behind the desk.
Another bullet tore through the wall.
Bell lay on the carpet.
Blood spread beneath his vest.
Silas crawled toward him.
“Horace.”
The old judge gasped.
“Back stairs.”
Another shot.
Silas looked at Clara.
“Go.”
“What about him?”
“GO!”
Clara crawled toward Bell instead.
The judge grabbed her wrist with astonishing strength.
“Listen.”
Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth.
“Sheriff is with them.”
“I know.”
“No.”
His fingers tightened.
“You don’t understand.”
Clara leaned closer.
Bell whispered four words.
“Your father wasn’t killed.”
Clara stared.
“What?”
Bell coughed.
“Find… the grave.”
Then his hand went limp.
“Judge?”
No answer.
“Judge Bell?”
Silas pulled her away as another rifle shot punched through the desk.
They escaped down the back staircase.
By sunset, all of Deadwood was hunting Silas Crow.
Sheriff Dawes posted a warrant accusing him of abducting Clara Calder and murdering Judge Bell.
Elias offered a five-hundred-dollar reward.
Clara and Silas hid inside an abandoned stamp mill near Whitewood Creek.
Clara sat in darkness, hearing Bell’s last words repeat inside her mind.
Your father wasn’t killed.
Find the grave.
Silas crouched near a broken window.
“You should sleep.”
“My father may not be dead.”
Silas said nothing.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
He looked at her.
“After today?”
“Fair point.”
She drew her knees against her chest.
“The grave.”
Silas understood.
“They buried Gideon at Mount Moriah.”
“I watched the coffin go into the ground.”
“You said it was closed.”
She looked at him.
Then stood.
