So she opened it.
Thomas’s handwriting covered seven pages.
The first line almost dropped her to the floor.
Mary, my name was not Thomas Shaw when I was born.
She sat.
Gideon quietly took the twins into the other room.
Mary Ann read.
Thomas had been born Thomas Whitcomb, son of railroad surveyor Nathaniel Whitcomb.
When Thomas was six, Nathaniel discovered something while mapping federal land through the northern mountains.
Not gold.
Something potentially more valuable.
A natural pass.
A route through the cliffs that could shorten a planned railway by nearly seventy miles.
Nathaniel purchased surrounding claims through proxies before the railroad company understood what he had discovered.
Then he told the wrong man.
A financier named Horace Vane.
Vane offered to buy the claims for almost nothing.
Nathaniel refused.
Three weeks later, the Whitcomb home burned.
Nathaniel and his wife died.
Everyone believed Thomas had also perished.
Instead, his seventeen-year-old cousin Rebecca had carried him out through a root cellar and fled west.
She changed his surname to Shaw.
For twelve years, Thomas lived quietly.
Then Rebecca died of fever.
Only afterward did Thomas learn she had saved Nathaniel’s land documents.
The red cliff belonged to Thomas.
Not only the cliff.
Nearly nineteen thousand acres around it.
And according to the survey maps hidden inside the mountain, the new Western Continental Railway had begun buying land south of Bell Creek.
They intended to cross the mountains.
The easiest route went directly through Thomas’s property.
Mary Ann’s heart pounded.
She turned the page.
If they know who I am before the papers are recorded, Vane will kill me as surely as he killed my father.
Mary Ann stopped.
The lantern hissed softly.
Thomas had died beneath a fallen timber while cutting spruce.
That was what everyone believed.
She remembered the wound.
The broken ribs.
The blood.
Gideon had brought him home, saying a hauling chain had snapped.
Mary Ann stood.
“Gideon.”
He returned.
“How did Thomas really die?”
The old man closed his eyes.
Mary Ann understood before he spoke.
“He was murdered.”
Her knees nearly gave way.
“By whom?”
“I didn’t see the face.”
“You were with him.”
“I was fifty yards downhill. Heard a rifle. By the time I got there, Thomas had fallen from the cut. Bullet went through him before the timber struck.”
Mary Ann pressed one hand to her mouth.
A bullet.
For nineteen days she had mourned an accident.
Thomas had been murdered.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Thomas made me swear.”
“To lie to me?”
“To keep you alive.”
Gideon nodded toward the letter.
“He knew somebody had been watching your place.”
Mary Ann looked down at the pages.
Thomas had written more.
The cavern was his refuge, built over six years with Gideon.
Food for winter.
Records.
Survey maps.
Deeds.
Receipts.
Enough evidence to establish Thomas’s identity and ownership.
Then came the final paragraph.
Mary, if I am dead, do not return to Bell Creek until you find the steel box beneath the apple crates. Inside is everything our boys need to inherit what is theirs. Trust Gideon. Trust no one else. Especially not a man named Elias Crowe.
Mary Ann stopped breathing.
Elias Crowe was the Bell Creek county clerk.
The same man who had signed Thomas’s death certificate.
The same man who had come to Mary Ann’s cabin two days after the funeral and gently suggested she sell her land before winter.
The same man who had offered her forty dollars for the property.
“Gideon.”
“Yes?”
“Where’s the steel box?”
They found it beneath the third crate.
It was gone.
For a long moment neither spoke.
Then Gideon swore.
“You moved it?” Mary Ann demanded.
“No.”
“Thomas?”
“He put it there six weeks ago. I watched him.”
Mary Ann stared at the empty cavity beneath the apples.
Snow melted down Gideon’s beard.
“Who else knows about this place?”
“No one.”
“Someone does.”
Mercy suddenly growled.
The sound came low in his throat.
