“Look.”
He did not move.
“Please.”
Jud finally stepped closer.
Catherine turned pages.
Columns of dates and payments filled the paper.
“Breen kept records because criminals trust one another even less than honest men do. Some entries are coded. Some aren’t.”
Jud’s gaze moved over the pages.
Catherine pointed.
“Five hundred dollars to Sheriff Caleb Pike, six years ago.”
Jud stopped breathing.
“Three hundred to Dr. Benjamin Sloan, county coroner.”
Jud’s hand tightened around the stump.
“Two thousand to Judge Gideon Vale.”
At the judge’s name, Jud looked up sharply.
Catherine continued.
“Three days later, my brother was arrested for murdering Federal Inspector Elias Mercer.”
Something terrifying entered Jud’s face.
Catherine had never seen hatred appear so quietly.
She turned another page.
“Then this.”
Jud looked.
An entry.
PIKE—body certification. SLOAN—identification. VALE—Prescott conviction guaranteed.
Jud’s skin went pale beneath his beard.
Catherine whispered, “They manufactured the entire case.”
His eyes remained fixed on the words.
“My brother worked at the telegraph office. He intercepted coded messages about stolen gold shipments and fraudulent mine deeds. He told someone in the federal government.”
Her voice hardened.
“Three days later, a burned body was found in an abandoned barn. They said it was Elias Mercer. They found Mercer’s badge hidden beneath Thomas’s floorboards. Sheriff Pike testified Thomas confessed.”
Jud closed his eyes.
“Thomas never confessed.”
Jud said nothing.
“They paid everyone.”
Still silence.
“Jud?”
His eyes opened.
For a moment Catherine saw something raw behind them.
Something terrified.
Then it vanished.
“How long until the hanging?”
“Three days.”
Jud looked toward the mountains.
“There is another way.”
Catherine’s heart slammed.
“What?”
“Not through South Pass.”
“Where?”
“Devil’s Backbone.”
She had heard the name.
Every traveler had.
“No one crosses Devil’s Backbone in winter.”
“That’s why it might still be passable.”
“Might?”
Jud glanced at her.
“You wanted hope. Hope and safety aren’t the same thing.”
“When do we leave?”
“First light.”
Catherine stared at him.
“You’ll take me?”
Jud picked up the ledger.
His thumb rested beside Gideon Vale’s name.
“Yes.”
Something in his voice made Catherine shiver despite the sunlight.
Jud Harrison was no longer helping her because she had asked.
He was going to South Pass City because something inside that ledger belonged to him too.
They left before sunrise.
Solomon carried food, blankets, ammunition, rope, and snowshoes.
Jud broke trail.
Catherine followed.
Devil’s Backbone was not a road.
It was a wound through the mountains.
They climbed frozen creek beds, crossed slopes where one wrong sound could trigger an avalanche, and squeezed between black cliffs where sunlight appeared for minutes at a time.
Jud rarely spoke.
But every few hundred yards he looked back to make sure Catherine remained behind him.
On the second afternoon they found horse tracks.
Three horses.
Coming from the west.
Jud crouched beside them.
“How old?”
Catherine asked.
“Hours.”
“The men following me?”
“Probably.”
“How?”
“Breen knows every trapper, stationmaster, and crooked deputy between here and Utah.”
Jud stood.
“We leave the trail.”
“That cliff?”
“That cliff.”
“You’re insane.”
“Useful quality out here.”
They climbed until Catherine’s lungs burned.
Darkness arrived early.
Jud found shelter beneath a rock shelf.
They built no fire.
They ate frozen biscuits.
That night Catherine lay beside him beneath buffalo robes while snow whispered beyond the rocks.
Jud remained awake.
“You ever sleep?”
