The wind in the Wyoming territory did not just blow.

It scoured.

It possessed
a rough, abrasive tongue that licked the paint off the clapboard storefronts of Bitter Creek and drove grit into the
eyes of any man or beast foolish enough to face it headon.

In the year 1883,
this cattle town was little more than a stubborn scar on the face of the sagebrush plains.

a cluster of buildings
huddled together against the vast emptiness, rimmed by broken fences and the distant jagged teeth of snowetched
mountains.

Main Street was a ruted track of frozen mud and horse manure where
tumble weeds skittered like nervous ghosts, and gaunt cattle were driven through dry creek beds with shouts and
whips.

The rhythm of the town was set by the dull thud of blacksmith hammers and the occasional crack of a gunshot.
sounds that had become as unremarkable as the gray sky overhead.

High above the merkantile, in a room
that smelled of stale wool and boiled cabbage, Llaya McKenna pushed a needle
through heavy canvas, her fingers calloused and aching.

At 21, she
possessed a beauty that the harsh country had not yet managed to erode, though it was trying its best.

Her hair
was the color of dried wheat, pulled back severely to keep it out of her work, and her eyes held the watchful,
weary look of someone who had grown up too fast.

Across the small room, her younger brother, Finn, sat near the iron
stove, wheezing.

He was 12 years old, but looked eight, his chest thin and
concave.

The dust of the territory was poisoned to his weak lungs.

Every breath he took rattled, a sound that tore at
Laya’s heart more than the wind outside.

Their mother, May, sat at the small
table, her head in her hands, staring at a ledger that never balanced.

Since
Llaya’s father had died 6 months ago in what the sheriff called a ranch accident, the McKenna family had been
sliding quietly toward ruin.

The official story was that his horse had thrown him in a ravine on the edge of
the ransom property.

The unofficial story whispered in the saloons and
sewing circles was that no horse could throw Tom McKenna and that a man didn’t
end up with a broken neck just for riding too close to a ransom fence line.

But whispers did not pay debts and the
debt they owed was substantial.

It was a debt held by one man.

Caleb Ransom rode
into Bitter Creek on a black stallion that looked as mean as a snake.

He was a man in his late 30s, broad-shouldered
and thick through the chest, wearing a coat of fine wool and boots that gleamed with polish despite the dust.

He owned
the DoubleR, the largest ranch in the valley, and for all intents and purposes, he owned the town.

He tied his
horse outside the merkantile and walked in.

The jingle of his spurs announcing
him.

Men stepped aside.

It was not out of respect, but a primal instinct for
self-preservation.

Caleb had a cold, commanding gaze that assessed everything, cattle, land,
women, in terms of value and submission.

He climbed the stairs to the McKenna
rooms, filling the small space with a scent of tobacco and expensive bay rum.
He did not yell or threaten.

He simply placed his head on the table and looked at May.

I trust you have considered my
offer.

May Caleb said, his voice smooth and deep like stones rolling in a
riverbed.

May looked at him, her hands trembling.

Mister Ransom, we just need a
little more time.

The winter has been hard.

Time is a luxury, Caleb replied,
his eyes sliding over to Laya, who kept her head bent over her sewing.

And luxuries must be paid for.

I am a
reasonable man.

I have offered to absolve the debt entirely.

All I ask is a partnership, a union.

He walked over
to Laya, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder.

She stiffened but did not pull away.

She could not afford to.

Laya
would make a fine wife.

Caleb said she would want for nothing, and neither
would you.

The boy would have the best doctors in Denver.

Laya looked up, then
meeting his gaze.

She saw no love there, only the look of a collector acquiring a
rare piece.

But then she looked at Finn, gasping for air by the stove and at her
mother’s terrified, aged face.

I will marry you.

Caleb, Laya said, her voice
hollow.

Excellent, Caleb smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes.

We will set the date for 2 weeks from now.

As he
left, the town gossips were already busy downstairs, praising Laya’s incredible luck.

They ignored the desperation in
her eyes, choosing instead to envy the imaginary silk dresses she would wear.

To them, she had caught a king.

To Laya,
she had just sold herself to the executioner.

It was 2 days later, in the
dusty silence of the Merkantile Isles, that Laya first truly saw Jonah Ransom.
He was Caleb’s younger brother, a man in his mid30s who had returned from the Civil War and years of drifting with a
silence that seemed stitched into his very skin where Caleb was polished and
loud.

Jonah was weathered and still.

He had a limp in his left leg, a souvenir
from a Confederate bullet, and a jagged white scar that ran from his jaw into his hairline.

He spent his days on the
far ranges of the doubleR, preferring the company of horses to the complexities of people.

Laya was
kneeling on the floor, trying to gather a dozen spools of thread she had dropped in her exhaustion.

A shadow fell over
her, and she flinched.

Let me get that, a low voice said.

She looked up to see
Jonah kneeling beside her.

His hands were large and scarred, but his touch on
the wooden spools was surprisingly gentle.

He gathered them up and held them out to her.

For a moment, their
fingers brushed.

A jolt went through Laya.

A strange static spark that made
her catch her breath.

She looked into Jonah’s eyes and saw something she hadn’t expected, a profound, quiet
sadness that mirrored her own.

There was no greed in his look, only a shy
recognition.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

You look tired.

Miss McKenna, Jonah
said, his voice rough from disuse.

I am marrying your brother, she said as if
that explained the fatigue.

Jonah’s expression tightened.

He looked away, his jaw working.

I know.

He stood up
abruptly, the moment broken by the weight of his name.

Be careful with him, “Lila,” before she could ask what he
meant.

He turned and limped away, fading into the bright glare of the street.

The
pressure mounted as the wedding approached.

May wept with relief, terrified of losing the roof over their
heads, begging Laya to see the practical side.

He is a rich man, Lla, May pleaded
one evening while pinning the hem of the wedding dress.

A cream colored gown Laya had sewn herself from fabric she had
saved for years.

You will be safe.

Finn will be safe.

That is what matters.

Love
is for story books.

Survival is for women like us.

Laya said nothing.

She
stared at her reflection in the darkened window.

She told herself she was strong enough.

She told herself she could
endure a cold marriage if it meant Finn could breathe.

But the dread was a cold stone in her stomach.

3 days before the
wedding, Caleb insisted on taking Laya for a ride to show her the boundaries of the ranch.

He put her on a nervous mare
while he rode his massive black stallion.

Jonah rode with them, a silent
shadow trailing 50 yards behind.

They came to a place where the spring rains had washed out the trail, leaving a
sheer drop into a ravine filled with jagged rocks.

It was the same ravine where her father had been found.

Caleb
pulled his horse up short, forcing Laya’s mare toward the crumbling edge.
The animal skidded, hooves sending pebbles clattering down the slope.

Laya gasped, gripping the rains.

her heart
hammering against her ribs.

“Steady,” Caleb laughed, blocking her path so she
could not back away.

“You have to learn to control fear.

Laya, a rancher’s wife
cannot be skittish.

Please, Caleb, move,” she said, her voice tight.

He
smiled, watching her terror with a detached curiosity.

“Look down there, Laya.

That is where your father died.

A
careless man.

Weak.

The land eats the weak.

Are you weak, Laya? Jonah spurred
his horse forward then, closing the distance.

That is enough, Caleb.

Jonah
said, his voice flat and hard.

Caleb turned his cold eyes to his brother.

I didn’t ask for your opinion.

Little
brother, back off, Jonah said.

The horse is spooked.

Caleb stared at him for a
long moment, the air between them charging with a violence that felt inevitable.
Then Caleb chuckled, a dry, humorless sound.

He turned his horse.

“Come along
then, my dear,” he called to Laya.

Lesson over.

As they rode back, Laya was
shaking.

She felt Caleb’s possession of her not as a protective embrace, but as a cage.

Later, back at the ranch porch,
while Caleb was inside pouring whiskey, she found herself standing near the rail, hugging her arms around herself.
Jonah stepped out from the shadows.

“He did not come too close.” “He should not have done that,” Jonah said quietly.
Laya looked at him.

“He speaks of the land like he hates it and of people like they are cattle.

He has always been that
way,” Jonah admitted, looking out at the horizon.

Power is the only thing he understands.

Why do you stay? Laya
asked.

Jonah looked at his hands.

It is my family’s land, too.

And I made a
promise to our mother before she passed.

To keep the peace, he looked at her then, and the mask of the stoic veteran
slipped.

He frightened you.

I am frightened of more than just the cliffs.
Jonah, she confessed.

They shared a silence then, heavy with things they
could not say.

They spoke briefly of Finn, and Jonah’s face softened when he talked about
teaching the boy to ride one day.

For a moment, Laya forgot the debt, the
wedding, and the fear.

She felt a strange, warm safety standing next to
this scarred, quiet man.

Then the screen door slammed, and Caleb walked out.
Jonah stepped back instantly, his face closing up like a fist, retreating into
his role as the loyal, silent brother.

The wedding day dawned with a sky the color of a bruised plum, heavy low
clouds hung over bitter creek, promising a storm that would freeze the marrow.

The church was decorated with dusty wild
flowers that children had gathered from the plains and cheap ribbon May had managed to buy.

The air inside was
stifling, smelling of damp wool, beeswax candles, and the nervous sweat of the
congregation.

The whole town had packed into the pews.

They whispered behind
their hands, eyes darting from the wealthy rancher to the seamstress.

Poor thing, some thought.

Lucky devil, others
sneered.

Laya walked down the aisle, her legs felt like lead.

She kept a smile
plastered on her face.

A fragile porcelain mask that she feared would crack at any moment.

She wore the cream
dress.

It fit perfectly.

Every stitch a testament to her skill, but she felt as
though she were wearing a shroud.

She reached the altar.

Caleb stood there, tall and imposing.

He took her hand.

His
grip was not the comforting hold of a groom.

It was a vice.

He squeezed her fingers until the bones ground together.
a silent warning to stand still, to smile, to be his.

The preacher droned on
about honor and obedience.

When he asked Caleb if he would take this woman, Caleb’s answer boomed through the small
church.

I will.

When it was Laya’s turn, her voice was a whisper, barely audible
over the rising wind outside.

I will.

Jonah stood to the side as the best man.
He looked rigid, as if he were standing at attention for a firing squad.

His
gaze was conflicted, shifting between the floor and the back of Laya’s head.
Every time Caleb touched her, adjusting her veil, placing his hand on the small of her back, Jonah’s jaw tightened until
the muscle jumped.

Laya glanced at him only once during the ceremony.

She
caught his eye, and for a heartbeat.

She saw a flicker of sorrow so deep it
nearly buckled her knees.

It was a look of apology.

It steadied her oddly.
Knowing that at least one person in this room saw the truth of what was happening, the reception was held in the
town hall.

A drafty building with warped floorboards, fiddles screeched a frantic
tune, and boots thumped a rhythm that shook the dust from the rafters.

Whiskey
sloshed into tin cups and crystal glasses alike.

Outside, the wind began
to howl in earnest, driving sleet against the window panes.

Caleb got drunk quickly.

It was a dark, brooding
drunkenness.

He held court in the center of the room.

One heavy arm draped over
Laya’s shoulders, pulling her off balance.

She won’t want for anything now, he boasted to the banker, his voice
slurring slightly.

I take care of what’s mine.

Look at her.

Prettiest thing in
the territory, and I bought I mean, I won her fair and square.

The men
laughed.

Laya forced a polite smile, her cheeks aching.

The women of the town
circled her.

their compliments thinly veiled insults.

Such a simple dress, dear.

Very practical.

I suppose you
won’t be needing your needle anymore.

Laya, though idle hands do the devil’s work, Laya endured it all.

Then the
music slowed to a waltz.

Caleb was deep in conversation about cattle prices.

Jonah stepped forward.

“May I have this
dance, Mrs.

Ransom?” he asked.

He used her new name, but his tone made it sound
like a question.

Laya nodded.

Caleb waved a dismissive hand.

Go on, dance
with the [ __ ] He needs the practice.

Jonah flinched, but he took Laya’s hand.
He led her to the floor.

He held her at a respectful distance.

His hand hovering
lightly on her waist, his other hand holding hers with a gentleness that made her throat tight.

They moved in a slow
circle.

They did not speak.

They didn’t have to.

The physical proximity, the
heat of his hand through the fabric of her dress, the way he navigated her around the rough floorboards despite his
limp.

It all felt dangerously right.

It felt like a conversation without words.

Laya looked up at him and he looked
down.

And for the duration of that song, the noisy, crowded hall faded away.

Then
the music stopped.

Jonah released her immediately, stepping back as if he had been burned.

“Thank you,” he said
stiffly.

He turned and walked out into the storm, not looking back.

The ride to
the ranch house was a journey into the abyss.

Caleb drove the buggy, snapping
the rains over the backs of the horses.

The sky was a solid sheet of black.

The
wind cut through Laya’s cloak as if it were made of gauze.

They left the lights of the town behind, plunging into the
vast darkness of the open range.

The Ransom Ranch House stood on a rise,
miles from the nearest neighbor.

It was a sprawling two-story structure of timber and stone, isolated and imposing.
Lantern light flickered in the windows, looking like watchful eyes.

As they
pulled up, the barns and corrals creaked in the wind.

Laya looked out at the emptiness surrounding them.

She realized
with a sudden, chilling clarity just how far she was from help.

She was alone.
Caleb practically dragged her up the steps and into the house.

He dismissed the servants who were waiting, barking
at them to get to their quarters in the bunk house.

He led Laya up the stairs to the master bedroom.

It was a large room
with a fine carpet and a heavy oak bed.

He walked in, closed the door, and
turned the key in the lock.

The sound of the bolt sliding home echoed like a gunshot.

Caleb turned to face her.

The
charm was gone.

The mask of the respectable rancher lay in pieces on the floor.

His face was flushed with whiskey
in a dark simmering rage.

“Get undressed,” he commanded.

Laya stood by
the window, her hands clutching her shawl.

“Caleb, please.

I I need a
moment.

I said get undressed,” he snarled.

“You are my wife.

I own the
paper on your mother’s house, and I own the paper on you.” He walked to the dresser and poured himself another
drink, tossing it back, he looked at her with a sneer.

“You think you’re so precious,” he said, pacing toward her.
“Walking around town with your nose in the air.

I enjoyed breaking your mother.

It was easy, like snapping a dry twig.”
Laya stared at him.

“You You did it on purpose.

The debt?” Caleb laughed.

He
threw his head back.

“Of course I did.

I bought your note 6 months ago.

I knew
you’d come crawling eventually.

And my father, Laya asked, her voice trembling.
Caleb stopped.

He stepped close to her, smelling of violence.

Tom McKenna was a
stubborn fool.

Caleb whispered, leaning down to her ear.

If he had just signed
the water rights over to me quietly, he would still be breathing.

But he wanted to argue.

He wanted to fight.

Laya’s
blood ran cold.

You killed him? Caleb shrugged.

I let gravity do the work, but
I watched him fall.

And I’ll watch you fall, too, if you don’t learn your place.

He reached out and grabbed the
neckline of her dress.

No! Laya screamed.

She shoved him.

He stumbled back, surprised by her strength.

“You
murderer!” she yelled.

Caleb’s face twisted into a mask of pure fury.

He backhanded her.

The blow knocked her
across the room.

She hit the bed post hard, tasting copper in her mouth.

He
was on her in a second, pinning her to the mattress.

His weight was crushing.
Laya fought with everything she had.

She clawed at his face, her fingernails raking down his cheek.

“You little
bitch!” Caleb roared.

He grabbed her hair and slammed her head against the mattress.

Laya’s vision blurred.

Tears
streamed from her eyes, hot and stinging.

She reached out blindly, her
hand scrabbling over the bedside table.

A lamp, a book.

Then her hand slipped
under the pillow.

She felt the cold, hard steel of a revolver.

Caleb’s gun.
He always kept it there.

Caleb was tearing at her dress.

His breath hot and
foul on her neck.

Laya’s fingers curled around the grip.

She didn’t think.

She
didn’t plan.

It was pure instinct.

the desperate flailing need to survive.

She pulled the gun out and jammed the barrel
against his ribs.

Caleb froze.

He looked down, his eyes widening in disbelief.
You wouldn’t? Laya pulled the trigger.

The boom was deafening in the enclosed room.

Caleb jerked violently.

He gasped.
A wet gurgling sound.

He rolled off her, clutching his chest.

Blood, dark, and
thick, began to pull on the fine carpet.

Laya scrambled backward, pressing
herself into the corner of the room, the smoking gun still clutched in her shaking hand.

Caleb lay on his back.

He
looked at her, his eyes full of shock and undimmed rage.

He tried to speak,
but only a bubble of blood escaped his lips.

Then, his eyes fixed on the
ceiling, and he was still.

Laya sat there gasping for air, her dress torn,
her lip bleeding.

The silence that followed was heavier than the storm.

Then the door handle rattled.

“Lila!” It
was Jonah.

She heard the heavy thought of boots against the door.

Then a shoulder slammed into the wood.

Once,
twice, the lock splintered and the door flew open.

Jonah burst into the room.

He
was breathless, his coat dusted with snow.

He had heard the shot from the bunk house.

He stopped dead.

He looked
at Caleb’s body.

He looked at the gun in Laya’s hand.

He looked at the bruises blooming on her face and the torn bodice
of her dress.

Laya began to shake violently.

I He said he killed my
father.

He tried to.

I didn’t mean.

She dropped the gun.

It hit the floor with a
heavy thud.

Jonah stepped over his brother’s body.

He didn’t check for a pulse.

He knew death when he saw it.

He
went straight to Laya.

He knelt in front of her, not touching her, but close enough to shield her.

“Did he hurt you?”
Jonah asked, his voice low and urgent.

Laya nodded, tears spilling over.

“I
shot him.” “Jonah, I shot him,” Jonah looked at her.

He saw the terror in her eyes.

He saw the marks on her skin.

He
knew his brother.

He knew exactly what had happened.

He stood up, pulling her with him.

“We have to go,” he said.

Laya
blinked.

“Go.” But the sheriff, the sheriff belongs to the ransoms, Jonah said grimly.

My father will hang you
before the sun comes up.

They will say you seduced me.

They will say we planned this.

They won’t care about the truth.
He grabbed a blanket from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.

Laya, listen to me.

If we
stay here, you die.

Laya looked at Caleb’s body.

Then at Jonah, she saw the
resolve in his face.

He was throwing his life away for her.

“Okay,” she
whispered.

Jonah moved fast.

He blew out the lamp.

“Come on.” They ran down the
back stairs, boots slipping on the polished wood.

The wind hit them like a physical blow when they exited the
kitchen door.

It was snowing now.

Thick wet flakes that swirled in the darkness.
Jonah led her to the stables.

His hands shook as he threw a saddle onto a rone mare for her and his own beay gelding.
He worked in silence, his jaw set so hard it looked like it might snap.

He helped her mount.

She winced as she
settled into the saddle, her body aching from the struggle.

Jonah swung up onto his horse, wincing as his bad leg took
the weight.

He looked at her, snow catching in his eyelashes.

Follow me.
Don’t stop for anything.

Together they turned their horses away from the warmth of the ranch, away from the law, and
rode into the bitter, unforgiving Wyoming night.

Behind them, the dead
body of the most powerful man in the valley began to cool, and the snow began to cover their tracks.

The wind that
night was a living thing, a shrieking banshee that tore across the Wyoming plains with claws of ice.

It whipped the
manses of the horses into frenzied tangles and drove the snow horizontally, stinging the skin like a spray of
needles.

Laya McKenna clung to the saddle horn with hands that had lost all feeling.

She was not guiding the mayor.
She was merely existing a top it, a passenger in her own flight.

The world
had narrowed down to the rhythmic crunch of hooves on frozen ground and the broad dark back of Jonah Ransom riding three
lengths ahead of her.

Her mind was a fractured mirror reflecting only shards of the last hour.

The heavy click of the
lock.

The smell of whiskey and stale sweat.

The weight of Caleb’s body pressing the air from her lungs.

And
then the sound.

That thunderous final crack of the revolver that had divided her life into before and after.

She
squeezed her eyes shut, but the image burned behind her lids.

Caleb sprawling
on the fine carpet, his eyes wide with a rage that death had not been able to extinguish.

She had killed her husband.
She had killed the most powerful man in Bitter Creek.

Laya shivered, a
convulsion that started in her marrow.

It was not just the cold.

It was the crushing realization of what she was
now.

A murderous, a fugitive.

Jonah slowed his horse, a looking back.

His
hat was pulled low, rimmed with white frost.

His face a shadow.

“Keep moving,”
he shouted over the wind.

“The snow will cover the tracks, but we need distance.” He did not ask if she was all right.

He
knew she wasn’t.

He simply turned back into the teeth of the storm, leading them toward the foothills, where the
dark shapes of pine trees swallowed the gray light.

They rode for what felt like hours, though it might have been only
one.

The landscape was a void, stripping away direction and time.

Finally, Jonah
turned off the faint trail, guiding the horses up a narrow rocky draw, nestled
against a sheer rock face, half buried in a drift that reached the eaves, stood
a line cabin.

It was a rough shack of unpeeled logs, built years ago for cow
hands pushing strays out of the high country before winter, and now largely
forgotten.

Jonah dismounted, his boots crunching heavily in the crust.

He moved
with a grim efficiency, ignoring his limp as he waited through the drift to force the door open.

It groaned on
rusted hinges, fighting him before giving way with a screech.

He returned for Laya.

She tried to swing her leg
over the saddle, but her muscles had locked.

She slid down, her knees buckling the moment her feet touched the
ground.

Jonah caught her.

His hands were firm on her arms, holding her upright.
For a second, she was pressed against his coat, smelling wet wool, horse, and
the metallic tang of gun oil.

He did not pull away immediately.

He looked down at
her, his eyes searching her face in the gloom.

Inside, he said.

The cabin
smelled of ancient dust, mouse droppings, and the sour ghost of old wood smoke.

It was freezing, the air
inside stagnant and heavy.

Jonah guided her to a rough bench near the stone hearth and turned to the wood pile
stacked in the corner.

His hands shook as he struck a match.

It took three tries, the sulfur flaring and dying
before a flame finally caught on the dry kindling.

As the fire grew, casting
dancing orange shadows against the chanked walls, the reality of their situation seemed to settle in the room
with them.

Jonah stood up, brushing bark dust from his hands.

He turned to look
at her fully for the first time since the bedroom.

Laya had lost her cloak in the chaos of the ride.

She sat shivering
in her torn wedding dress, the cream fabric stained with mud at the hem and flexcks of Caleb’s blood on the sleeve.
But it was not the dress that made Jonah’s stomach knot with a sick, cold anger.

It was the purple bruise blooming
like a dark flower along her jawline.

It was the red raw marks on her wrists where Caleb had pinned her.

It was the
torn ribbon at her bodice, exposing the violent desperation of the struggle.
Jonah looked at the marks, his jaw tightening until the cords of his neck stood out.

He looked at the woman his
brother had vowed to cherish only hours ago.

I should have killed him years ago, Jonah said.

His voice was quiet, devoid
of inflection, which made it all the more terrifying.

Laya looked up, her
teeth chattering.

Jonah, don’t.

He walked to the single and narrow bunk built into the wall and stripped the
threadbear blanket from it.

He shook it out, dust moat swirling in the fire light, and brought it to her.

Wrap this
around you.

You’re freezing.

He sat on the dirt floor across from her, his back against the logs, stretching his bad leg
out.

He watched the fire, refusing to look at her bruises again, as if looking
would make him do something reckless.

There is only one bed, Laya whispered,
clutching the blanket.

You take it, Jonah said.

You are hurt, too.

I saw you
limping.

I have slept on worse than dirt.

Mrs.

Laya, take the bed.

He
corrected himself on her name, the slip hanging in the air.

Mrs.

Ransom.

The
name felt like a curse now.

Laya moved to the bunk, the straw mattress rustling
loudly in the small space.

She lay down, curling into a tight ball, but sleep was
a distant country.

The temperature in the cabin dropped as the fire burned down to coals.

The wind shrieked through
the chinks in the logs, a high, lonely sound that mimicked the screams trapped in her throat.

From the floor, she heard
Jonah cough, a rough, wet sound that he tried to stifle in his sleeve.

“Jonah,”
she asked into the dark.

“Go to sleep, Laya.

I can’t.” Silence stretched
between them, heavy and thick.

“He is going to take everything,” Laya said,
her voice trembling.

Your father, he will take the house.

He will throw May
and Finn into the street.

My father will be too busy hunting us to worry about evictions for a few days,” Jonah replied
grimly.

“That doesn’t help them.

I did this to save them, and now I have doomed
them.” “You didn’t do this, Laya?” Jonah said, his voice hard.

Caleb did this.

He
did it the moment he touched you.

Laya rolled over, staring at the flickering embers.

I always felt it.

Whenever he
smiled at me in town, I felt cold, like I was a prize heer.

He was checking for ticks.

I told myself it was just nerves.
I told myself a man that rich must be decent.

Money doesn’t buy decency, Jonah muttered.

It just buys silence.

Why
didn’t you warn me? Laya asked.

The question was soft.

Not an accusation,
but it hit Jonah like a whip.

He sat up, feeding another log into the fire.

The
flare of light illuminated his scarred face.

The guilt etched deep into lines around his mouth.

“Because I was a
coward,” he said.

“No,” Laya said.

“You are not a coward.

You came for me
tonight.

Tonight was too late,” Jonah said.

I saw him threaten a hand once.

A
boy named Thomas.

They were out by the north ravine.

Caleb had a gun to the boy’s head.

I was watching from the
ridge.

I had a rifle.

I could have stopped it.

I could have written down, but I didn’t.

I told myself it was
family business.

I told myself Caleb was just scaring him and and Thomas was gone
the next day.

Caleb said he rode on, but he left his saddle in the tack room.

A
man doesn’t ride on without his saddle.

Laya stared at him.

The ravine.

That is
where my father died.

Jonah nodded slowly.

I know.

A fragile silence
settled over them.

They were two people stained by the same man.

Laya by his
blood, Jonah by his own silence.

But in that small, dirty cabin with a storm
raging outside, the shared stain began to look something like a bond 5 miles
away in the valley of Bitter Creek.

The storm was just as fierce, but the rage
inside the ransom ranch house was hotter.

The news had traveled fast, carried by the terrified servants who
had found the body.

Ranch hands were saddling horses despite the snow, their
faces grim.

Lanterns bobbed in the dark like angry fireflies.

Inside the main
parlor, Elias Ransom stood by the fireplace.

He was a lion of a man, old and grizzled, with a mane of white hair
and hands that looked like gnarled oak roots.

He held a glass of whiskey in one hand, squeezing it so hard the crystal
threatened to shatter.

Sheriff Amos Pike stood near the door, turning his hat in his hands.

Pike was a man who had spent
his life walking the line between the law and the men who paid for the law.

“Tonight,” that line had vanished.

She
put a bullet in his heart.

“Amos!” Elas roared, his voice shaking the mounted
elkheads on the wall.

A [ __ ] of a seamstress on his wedding night.

We
don’t know exactly what happened.

Elias, Pike said carefully.

The room.

There
were signs of a struggle.

Her dress was torn.

Don’t you speak to me of struggle.
Elias threw the glass into the fire.

The alcohol flared blue and gold.

She seduced my boy Jonah.

That is what
happened.

They planned it.

The [ __ ] and the [ __ ] They waited until Caleb was vulnerable.

And they murdered him to
take this ranch.

Pike looked down at his boots.

He had seen the bruising on the discarded wedding dress the maid had
found.

He knew Caleb’s temper.

He knew the rumors, but he also knew that Elias
Ransom could end a sheriff’s career and life with a single word.

“I’ll get a
posi together,” Pike said.

“But in this weather, I don’t care about the weather,” Elias shouted.

“You find them,
you find them, and you drag them back here.

I want to see them hang from the same branch.” By morning, the town of
Bitter Creek was a hive of poisoned whispers.

In the saloon, men huddled
around the stove, trading theories with the currency of certainty.

Always knew that quiet one was trouble.

A cattleman
spat, slamming his beer down.

Jonah, the quiet ones are the snakes.

Waited for
his brother to do the hard work of courting, then stole the prize and killed the man who fed him.

Another
added, Cain and Abel.

Plain and simple, the women were no kinder.

In the mercantile, beneath the very room where
Laya had lived, they gathered like crows.

I saw the way she looked at men.

A heavy set woman sniffed, “Too bold, a
girl like her, raised in poverty.

She gets a taste of luxury and loses her head.

She probably killed him because he
wouldn’t give her the combination to the safe.

Even the church was not a sanctuary.” The preacher, a thin man who
feared the ransoms as much as he feared God, stood at his pulpit and thundered against the sins of the flesh.

He spoke
of Jezebels who lured good men to their doom, of broken vows and blood on the marriage bed.

He did not name Laya, but
he didn’t have to.

The condemnation was heavy in the air, solid as a stone wall.
Laya and Jonah were already tried.

Convicted and damned before the sun had
even touched the snow.

They left the line cabin before dawn.

The wind had died down, leaving a silence that was
almost ringing in its intensity.

The world was a blinding expanse of white, the snow drifting waist deep in the
hollows.

The horses struggled.

Jonah led the way, his bay geling plunging through
the drifts, breaking a trail for Laya’s lighter mare.

It was brutal, exhausting
work.

The cold was a physical weight pressing against their chests.

They rode
toward the broken country to the west, a land of canyons, timber, and abandoned
mining shacks where the law hesitated to go.

Hunger began to gnaw at them by
midday.

They had left with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Jonah spotted a snowshoe hair frozen near a
patch of sage brush.

He drew his revolver, not the one Laya had used, but
his own Navy colt.

He aimed.

His hand trembled, not just from the cold, but
from a bone deep exhaustion.

He steadied his breathing, exhaling a cloud of white vapor, and fired.

The crack of the gun
made Laya flinch, her hands jerking to her ears.

She looked at Jonah, eyes wide.

“Supper,” he said, holstering the
gun.

His face was gray with fatigue.

They made camp that night in a canyon where the red rock walls offered some
shelter from the wind.

Jonah skinned the rabbit with a pocketk knife.

His
movements efficient but slow.

They roasted the meat over a small fire of twisted juniper wood.

It was tough and
stringy, but to it tasted like salvation.

As they ate, she watched him.
He was always scanning the horizon, his eyes moving over the ridge line.

He looked like a man expecting a bullet.
“How long can we run?” she asked.

“As long as we have to, they will find us
eventually.” “Not if we get into the high timber.

The snow will block the passes.” “And then what?” Laya asked.
“We freeze? We starve?” Jonah looked at her, fire light reflecting in his dark
eyes.

“Then we live another day.

That is the only plan I have.” Laya.

The next
day, the weather turned on them again.

A fresh blizzard rolled down from the peaks, a white wall that swallowed the
world.

The temperature plummeted until the air burned the lungs.

“We can’t stay in the open,” Jonah shouted over the
gale.

He spotted the ruin of a prospector’s shack against a hillside.

It was in worse shape than the line
cabin, windows broken, door missing.

Snow drifted halfway across the dirt
floor.

They dragged the horses into the lee of the remaining wall and scrambled inside.

Jonah tried to stuff the broken
windows with old rags and debris he found in the corners, but the cold was absolute.

It was a killing cold.

They
huddled in the corner furthest from the door.

Jonah lit a small fire, but the
wind sucked the heat away as fast as the wood could produce it.

Laya was shaking
uncontrollably.

Her teeth clattered together and her lips were turning a frightening shade of blue.

“The blankets aren’t enough,”
Jonah said.

He looked at her, his face grim.

We have to share body heat.

It is
the only way.

Laya looked at him.

She thought of Caleb.

She thought of the violation of her wedding night.

Panic
fluttered in her chest.

Jonah saw it.

I am not him.

Laya, he said softly.

I
swear to you, I will not touch you except to keep you alive.

She nodded, trusting him because she had no choice
and because deep down she wanted to trust him.

They lay down on the dirt
floor, spreading one blanket beneath them and pulling the other over them.

They lay side by side, fully clothed.
Jonah hesitated, then put his arm awkwardly over her, pulling her back against his chest.

Laya stiffened at
first, but as the heat from his body began to seep into hers, the shivering
slowly subsided.

She felt the solid rhythmic thud of his heart against her
shoulder blade.

She smelled the scent of pine smoke, wet wool, and the man
himself.

It was intimate in a way that terrified her, lying in the dark, the storm howling outside.

She felt
strangely, impossibly safe.

She closed her eyes, fighting a wave of guilt.

This
was Caleb’s brother.

Her husband’s blood was barely dry, and she was seeking comfort in the arms of his kin.

It felt
like a betrayal.

Yet, it felt like the only honest thing that had happened to her in months.

Jonah lay awake, staring
into the darkness.

He could feel every breath Laya took.

He could feel the curve of her spine against him.

His body
responded to her closeness with a traitorous ache, a desire that had been smoldering since he first saw her
kneeling in the merkantile.

He hated himself for it.

She was a widow.

She was
a victim.

She was under his protection.

I will not be like him.

He promised
himself, clenching his jaw.

I will cut my own heart out before I become another
man, taking what isn’t his.

He shifted slightly, giving her more room, but keeping his arm around her like an iron
bar of defense.

Morning brought a stillness that was almost holy.

The sun broke through the clouds, lighting the
fresh snow with blinding brilliance.

They sat up, stiff and sore, pulling
apart with a sudden awkward awareness.

Laya smoothed her ruined dress.

Jonah
checked his gun.

Refusing to meet her eyes.

We can’t just keep riding west,
Laya said suddenly.

Her voice was raspy.

Jonah looked at her.

We have to know,
she said, standing up and pacing the small shack.

Think about it, Jonah.

If
we disappear, the story they are telling in town becomes the truth.

I become the murderous.

You become the traitor.

May
and Finn live in shame forever.

It is better than you hanging, Jonah said.

Is
it? Laya asked.

She turned to him, her eyes fierce.

Is it a life to be hunted
like an animal until we die in the snow? What do you want to do? Jonah asked.

Go
back.

Pike will throw you in a cell before you can say a word.

I want proof, Laya said.

You said there were others.
The boy Thomas.

My father.

Jonah stood up slowly.

Proof? Caleb bragged to me.
Laya said before I shot him.

He said he engineered the dead.

He said he watched my father fall.

If he did those things,
there must be a record.

There must be witnesses.

Jonah rubbed his face with a calloused hand.

Witnesses who are
terrified of Elias.

Witnesses who might talk if they knew the monster was dead.

Laya countered.

Jonah looked at her.

She
was standing in a shaft of sunlight, bruised and dirty, but there was a fire
in her eyes that Caleb had never managed to extinguish.

She was not the victim he had held last night.

She was a fighter.
He nodded slowly.

You are right.

Running confirms the lie.

So we stop running.

We
stop running away.

Jonah corrected.

And we start running towards something.

We
need to find the people Caleb hurt.

They packed their meager gear and rode out.

But this time they did not head blindly
into the wilderness.

They turned south, looping back toward the mining camps where rumors drifted like smoke.

Their
path took them past the north ravine.

It was a desolate place.

The earth was
scarred and broken.

The rocks sharp as knives.

Snow crusted the edges of the
drop off like dried bone.

Laya pulled her mare to a stop.

She dismounted and
walked to the edge.

She looked down into the shadows where her father had fallen.

She imagined him there.

Tom McKenna, a
proud man who loved to laugh.

She imagined Caleb sitting on his horse, watching him die with that cold,
detached curiosity.

Jonah came up beside her.

He took off his hat, the wind ruffling his dark
hair.

“It was a Tuesday,” Jonah said quietly.

“Caleb came back to the ranch
alone.

He told the hands your father had an accident.

He told us to bring the wagon.

When we got here, your father was
already gone.” He paused, looking at the rocks.

Caleb wouldn’t let us take him to
town right away.

He made us wait until dark.

Said he didn’t want to upset the town ladies, but I saw him checking your
father’s pockets.

He took a paper.

I don’t know what it was, but he burned it in the bunk house stove later.

Laya
turned to him, tears freezing on her cheeks.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” “Who would I tell?” Jonah asked
helplessly.

“The sheriff, the judge?” They all drank Caleb’s whiskey.

And I I
was ashamed of my own blood.

He turned to her, his face open and raw.

I am
sorry, Laya.

I am so sorry.

Laya looked at him.

She saw the weight he was
carrying, a burden of guilt that matched her own.

She reached out and took his hand.

His fingers were rough and cold.
“We can’t change the past, Jonah,” she said.

“But we can make them pay for it
now.” That night they made a small camp in the shelter of a rock overhang.

The
fire was small, barely enough to warm their hands.

Jonah wet a rag with melted snow.

“Sit
still,” he murmured.

He gently wiped the cut on her brow where the bedpost had struck her.

His touch was reverent,
incredibly careful, as if she were made of glass.

He moved to her wrists, cleaning the raw skin where Caleb’s grip
had burned her.

Laya watched his face.

He was focused, his brow furrowed in
concentration.

He was so different from his brother.

Caleb had wanted to own her.

Jonah just wanted to heal her.

A
warmth spread through her chest that had nothing to do with the fire.

It was a terrifying, beautiful feeling.

It was
the ache of being seen.

Jonah looked up.

Their eyes met.

The rag stilled in his
hand.

The distance between them seemed to vanish.

Laya leaned in slightly,
drawn by a gravity she couldn’t resist.

She saw Jonah’s gaze dropped to her lips.

Saw the sudden flare of want in
his eyes.

Her heart hammered against her ribs.

She wanted him to kiss her.

She
wanted to wash the memory of Caleb’s violence away with something gentle and real.

Their faces drew closer.

She could
feel his breath.

Then Jonah pulled back.

He pulled back sharply, dropping his
hand.

He turned away, staring into the fire, his breathing ragged.

“No,” he
whispered.

Laya felt cold again.

“Jonah, you are hurt.

Laya,” he said, his voice
thick.

“You are scared and you are running and you are hurt.

I won’t be another man who takes advantage of that.
It’s not taking if I give it,” Laya said softly.

“You don’t know what you want right now,” Jonah said firmly, though
his hands were clenched into fists.

“You need a friend, Laya.” Not not this.

Laya
looked at his broad back.

She felt a sting of rejection, but beneath it, a
profound gratitude that made her throat ache.

He was protecting her even from
himself.

She wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she
whispered.

Jonah didn’t answer.

He just sat watching the dark, guarding her from
the wolves and from the demons inside his own heart.

The storm broke on the
third day, leaving the Wyoming territory smothered under a shroud of blinding white.

The world had lost its edges.

The
sagebrush plains were smoothed into rolling drifts, and the mountains on the horizon were no longer jagged teeth, but
soft, looming ghosts against a sky of piercing blue.

Jonah Ransom and Laya
McKenna rode out of the high country, their horses floundering in snow that reached the stirrups.

As they descended
toward the lower elevations, the thaw began.

The white purity of the storm
gave way to a slick, churning mess of mud and slush.

The trail turned into a
slurry that sucked at the horse’s hooves, and the air grew heavy with the smell of wet earth and rotting pine
needles.

They were no longer the frantic fugitives who had fled the ranch house.

They were specters coated in a layer of
grime that seemed permanently etched into their skin.

Lla’s cream dress was
ruined.

The hem stiff with dried mud, the bodice stained with smoke and
grease.

She wore a rough woolen coat Jonah had scavenged from the prospector’s shack and a battered hat
pulled low over her eyes.

Jonah looked a little better, his beard growing and dark and patchy, his eyes rimmed with
red exhaustion.

We are heading for Iron Ridge, Jonah said, pointing toward a smear of gray smoke in the distance.

It
is a mining camp.

Rough place.

Men there don’t ask questions, mostly because they
are running from answers themselves.

Laya nodded, too tired to speak.

The
fear of being caught had dulled into a constant throbbing ache in the back of her skull.

Caleb had money in the mines.
Jonah continued, his voice tight.

silent partner, but he squeezed the operators
just like he squeezed the ranchers.

If there is anyone who hated my brother enough to talk, we will find them there.
Iron Ridge was a scar on the side of a canyon, a haphazard collection of canvas tents and shacks built from stolen
lumber.

It smelled of sulfur, unwashed bodies, and desperation.

As they rode
down the single muddy street, men stopped their work to stare.

They were hard men with faces like leather,
leaning on pickaxes or sitting on crates, watching the newcomers with predatory curiosity.

Jonah kept his hand
near his holster.

“Keep your head down,” he murmured.

“Let me do the talking.”
They tied the horses outside a structure that claimed to be a saloon, though it was little more than a leanto with a
plank bar.

Inside, the air was thick enough to chew, swirling with tobacco
smoke and the acid fumes of cheap kerosene.

Jonah led Laya to a table in the corner.
He ordered whiskey and a plate of beans, tossing a coin onto the sticky wood.

To
the bartender, he said, just passing through, looking for work if there is any.

The bartender grunted and slid the
bottle over.

They ate in silence.

The hunger gnawing at their bellies making
them ravenous.

As the room filled up with the shift change, Jonah began to
work.

He didn’t ask direct questions.

He just listened, offering a drink here, a
nod there.

Eventually, an old minor named Silas hobbled over, eyeing the bottle.

He was a wreck of a man.

His
lungs wheezing with coal dust, his fingers twisted by arthritis.

“You got the look of a cowman, not a minor,”
Silas wheezed, accepting the poor Jonah offered.

Ranching didn’t pay out.

Jonah lied smoothly.

Worked a bit for the
double R a few years back.

Silas spat on the floor.

DoubleR? That is Ransom Land,
Devil’s Ground.

That is you knew Caleb Ransom? Jonah asked keeping his voice
even.

Knew him? Silas laughed.

A dry rattling sound.

I worked a claim he
bankrolled.

Promised us a fair split.

6 months of breaking our backs.

And when
we struck a vein, he came in with his hired guns and told us the contract had changed.

Said we owed him for equipment
fees.

Took it all.

Left us with nothing but blisters.

He was a hard man, Jonah
said.

Hard? He was rotten, Silas said, slamming his glass down.

I remember a
boy, Thomas, young buck.

Worked the horses for ransom.

Came up here looking
for work one winter.

Said he saw something he wasn’t supposed to.

What did he see? Laya asked.

It was the first
time she had spoken, and her voice was sharp.

Silas looked at her, surprised by
the intensity in her eyes.

said he saw Ransom arguing with a fellow near the ravine.

Said Ransom pulled a gun.

Next
thing you know, Tomas goes back to get his gear and vanishes.

Ransom said he rode on, but Tomas owed me $5.

He
wouldn’t have left without paying me.

He was a good boy.

Laya’s hand gripped the edge of the table until her knuckles
turned white.

It was the first confirmation.

Thomas, the boy Jonah had
mentioned, the boy who had disappeared.

Silas leaned in whispering now.

It
wasn’t just men neither.

There was a woman, washer woman named Martha.

She is
over at the laundry tent now.

Ask her why she left the valley.

Ransom had a
taste for things he couldn’t buy, and he didn’t like hearing the word no.

Jonah thanked the man and poured him the rest
of the bottle.

He took Laya’s arm and led her out into the muddy street.

“I need to talk to her,” Lla said.

Jonah
nodded.

I will watch the horses.

Laya found Martha in a steaming tent,
scrubbing heavy denim trousers in a tub of gray water.

She was a woman of 40,
but her face was lined with the weariness of 60.

When Laya asked her about Caleb, Martha went still.

She
looked at the door, fear darting in her eyes.

“He is dead,” Laya said quickly.
“You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore.” Martha looked at Laya, really looked at her, and saw the bruises that
were still fading on Laya’s jaw.

A flash of recognition passed between them, a
silent language of women who had survived powerful men.

“He killed him?” Martha asked softly.

“Yes, good,” Martha
said.

She wiped her soapy hands on her apron.

“I worked in the kitchen at the big house.

He would come down at night.
He would stand in the doorway and just watch.

Then he started leaving money on the table.

I told him I wasn’t that kind
of woman.

He told me every woman was that kind of woman if the price was right or if the threat was big enough.
She looked down at the soapy water.

One night he tried to force his way into my room.

I screamed.

The cook came running.
Caleb laughed it off.

Said I was imagining things.

But the next day the
foreman told me to pack my bags.

said I was stealing silver.

I never stole a
thing in my life.

Laya reached out and touched Martha’s wet hand.

“Thank you,”
Martha gripped Laya’s handbag.

“You are the one, aren’t you? The bride,” Laya
stiffened.

“News travels fast,” Martha said sadly.

“Even up here,” Laya hurried
back to the horses, her heart pounding.

“They had stories now.

They had pieces
of the truth.

But as she stepped into the street, she saw Jonah standing by a
hitching post, his body rigid.

He was holding a newspaper.

A writer had just
come in on a lthered horse delivering a bundle of the Wyoming Territorial Gazette.

Jonah was staring at the front
page.

Laya walked up to him.

Jonah? He didn’t want to show her.

She saw the
hesitation in his eyes, the desire to protect her from one more blow, but he handed it to her silently.

The headline
screamed in bold.

Black ink.

Rancher murdered on wedding night.

Bride fleas with brother.

Laya’s hands shook as she
read the text.

It was a masterpiece of fiction.

It described Caleb as a pillar of the community and a generous
benefactor.

It painted Laya not as a desperate daughter saving her family, but as a
temptress of low standing who had ens snared the wealthy rancher.

The article
went on.

Sheriff Pike reports that the younger brother, Jonah Ransom, had been
seen quarreling with the deceased, driven by jealousy.

It is believed the pair plotted the assassination to seize
the ransom estate.

The bride, a seamstress of considerable beauty, but questionable character, is said to have
lured the victim to his bed before the cowardly act was committed.

There was no mention of the debt, no mention of the
bruises, no mention of self-defense.

Laya felt the world tilt.

She read the
words questionable character and assassination over and over.

They had taken her life, her trauma, and twisted
it into a sorted dime novel.

“They hate us,” she whispered.

Jonah took the paper
from her and crumpled it in his fist.

“They don’t know us.

They don’t want to know us,” Laya said, her voice rising.
“Look at this, Jonah.

They have already hanged us.

We are monsters to them.
People are looking, Jonah warned, his eyes scanning the street.

Let them look,
Laya cried, tears of frustration hot in her eyes.

I have nothing left to hide.
Jonah grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the livery stable where they had rented a stall in a small room in the
loft above.

Come on.

He dragged her up the ladder into the small hay smelling
room.

He kicked the door shut and barred.

Laya collapsed onto the straw pallet, burying her face in her hands.
The sobs that had been trapped in her chest since the wedding night finally broke loose.

They were ugly.

Ragged
sounds that tore at her throat.

I should have let him kill me.

She gasped.

Jonah
froze.

He crossed the room in two strides and knelt beside her, gripping her shoulders.

Don’t you ever say that,
he growled.

It would be better.

Laya sobbed, looking up at him.

Her face stre
with tears and grime.

May and Finn wouldn’t be related to a murderous.

You
wouldn’t be a hunted man.

I am ruining everyone I touch.

You survived, Jonah
said fiercely, shaking her slightly.

You fought back.

That is not a sin, Laya.
That is the only thing that matters.

He isn’t dead, Laya cried.

He is still
doing it.

He is still controlling everything.

Even from the grave, he is
twisting the truth.

I can’t fight him.

Jonah, he is too big.

He is just a man,
Jonah said, and he is rotting in the ground.

He pulled her into his arms.

It wasn’t a calculated move.

It was a
desperate attempt to hold her together before she shattered completely.

He wrapped his arms around her, pressing
her head against his chest.

Laya clung to him.

She grabbed handfuls of his
shirt, burying her face in the rough wool.

She shook against him, letting the
grief and the terror drain out of her.

Jonah held her, stroking her hair with a
clumsy, gentle hand, murmuring things he didn’t even know he was saying.

“I have
you,” he whispered.

“I have you.

You are not alone.” Slowly, the sobbing subsided
into hiccups.

The room was dim, lit only by the sliver of light coming through
the cracks in the floorboards.

The silence returned, but it was different
now.

It was charged.

Laya pulled back slightly, wiping her eyes.

She looked up
at Jonah.

His face was inches from hers.

She saw the lines of worry etched around
his eyes, the gray in his beard, the scar that ran down his cheek like a
river on a map.

She realized suddenly that he was the only solid thing in her world, the only man who had ever seen
her weakness and not tried to exploit it.

Jonah looked at her.

He saw her swollen eyes, her trembling lips, the
fierce wounded spirit that refused to die.

The protective instinct that had driven him for days shifted.

Heat
flaring in his chest.

Lla.

He breathed.

Laya didn’t think.

She didn’t plan.

She
just needed to feel something other than pain.

She needed to feel life.

She leaned up and pressed her lips to his.
It was a tentative kiss, tasting of salt and tears.

Jonah went still, his muscles
locking up.

For a second, he resisted, the ghost of his brother standing
between them.

But then Laya made a small, desperate sound in her throat,
and his resistance shattered.

He kissed her back.

It wasn’t gentle.

It was
aching and hungry, born of the adrenaline of survival and the crushing weight of their shared trauma.

His hands
slid up her back, tangling in her hair, pulling her closer until there was no air left between them.

Laya’s fingers
dug into his shoulders, feeling the hard muscle, the reality of him.

For a
moment, they weren’t fugitives.

They weren’t a widow and a brother-in-law.

They were just two people clinging to
each other on the edge of the world.

The desire was a sudden roaring fire.

Laya
felt a yearning she had never known.

Not to be possessed, but to be met, to be wanted for the woman she was, not the
debt she could pay.

Jonah’s hand moved to her waist, pulling her hips against
his.

The friction sent a shock wave through him.

He wanted her.

God help
him.

He wanted her more than he wanted.

His next breath.

Then the thought struck
him like a bucket of ice water.

This is Caleb’s wife.

The world thinks you stole
her.

If you do this, you make the lie true.

He tore himself away, gasping as
if he had surfaced from deep water.

He scrambled back, putting space between them.

His chest was heaving.

He looked
at Laya, his eyes wide and dark with a mix of passion and horror.

Laya sat there, her lips swollen, her breath
coming in short bursts.

She looked at him confused, then ashamed.

I I am
sorry,” she whispered, pulling her coat tight around herself.

Jonah ran a hand
through his hair, turning his back to her.

He paced to the small window,
staring out at the sliver of gray sky.

“No,” he said, his voice rough.

“Don’t
apologize.

It is me.

I I can’t because of him,” Laya asked.

“Because of you,”
Jonah said, turning back.

Look at what they are writing.

Laya, they say you are
a [ __ ] They say I am a traitor.

If I touch you, if I take you now, then we
are exactly what they say we are.

I don’t care what they say, Laya said, though her voice wavered.

I do, Jonah
said intensely.

I care about your name.

I care about your life.

I won’t be
another ransom man using you for his own comfort.

Laya looked at him, seeing the war in his eyes.

He wasn’t rejecting
her.

He was honoring her in a twisted, painful way.

So, what do we do? She
asked.

We can’t stay here.

The news is out.

Someone will recognize us.

Jonah nodded, his demeanor shifting back to
the soldier.

We leave now and go where? To find Haron.

Jonah said, “The
bookkeeper.

He is the only one who knows where the money went.” Jonah said, “Silas and Martha.

Their stories are
good, but they are hearsay.

A jury won’t hang a dead man’s reputation on the word
of a washerwoman.

We need paper.

We need proof.

He walked over to her and held out his
hand.

He didn’t pull her into an embrace this time.

He just offered his hand
steady and open.

We are going to clear your name, Laya.

That is the mission.
Nothing else matters until that is done.

Laya looked at his hand.

She took it.
She felt the calluses, the warmth.

She squeezed it, a silent pact.

“Okay,” she
said.

“Let’s go find him.” They rode south, leaving the mining camp behind.
As the sun began to dip toward the western peaks, the country changed again.

The pine forests giving way to a
landscape of red rock canyons and scrub oak.

The mud dried into hard, cracked earth that dusted their clothes in a
fine red powder.

The journey to find Harland took two days of hard riding.

They avoided the main trails, sticking
to the deer paths and dry creek beds.

At night, the coyotes howled, a lonely,
yipping chorus that echoed off the canyon walls.

The stars burned cold and indifferent above them.

They sat by
small fires, keeping a careful distance from each other now.

The memory of the
kiss lay between them like a drawn sword, dangerous, shiny, and impossible
to ignore, to fill the silence.

They talked, real talk, not just survival
plans.

Laya spoke of her father.

He taught me to shoot before he taught me to sew.

She said, staring into the
flames.

He said a needle could mend a coat, but a gun could save a life.

He
wanted a son, I think.

But he got me.

He would be proud of you, Jonah said.

He
would be ashamed I got us into this mess.

No, Jonah said firmly.

He would be
proud you didn’t let them break you.

Jonah spoke of the war.

He told her about the long marches in the rain, the
smell of black powder, the day he took the bullet in his leg at Shiloh.

I lost
my faith in men back then.

He admitted, “I saw what people do when there is no law.

I came back here thinking the ranch
would be different.

But Caleb, he was running his own little war.

And I just
swapped one uniform for another.

I let him give me orders because it was easier than fighting him.

“You are fighting him
now,” Lla reminded him.

“Only because you fired the first shot,” Jonah said.
“You have more courage in your little finger than I have in my whole body.” Laya looked at him across the fire.

“You
are leading us through hell.” Jonah ransom.

That doesn’t look like cowardice
to me.

On the third day, they found the place the old miner had hinted at.

It was a miserable patch of land near a
dried up creek bed miles from civilization.

A shack stood there, leaning drunkenly to one side.

The roof
patched with tin sheets that rattled in the wind.

Jonah drew his gun as they approached.

“Stay behind me,” he called
out.

“Harlen!” There was no movement from the shack.

“Harlen, it’s Jonah
Ransom.” A shotgun barrel poked out of the glassless window.

Get off my land.

A
ready voice screech.

I got nothing for your ransoms.

I paid my dues.

We aren’t
here to collect, Jonah shouted, keeping his hands visible.

Caleb is dead.
Harlon.

There was a long silence.

Then the shotgun wavered.

Dead? Dead as a
doornail.

I need to talk to you.

The door creaked open.

Harlon emerged.

He
was a small man with inkstained fingers and spectacles that were cracked down the middle.

He looked like a rodent
blinking in the sunlight.

He lowered the shotgun, squinting at them.

“Who is the
girl?” Harlon asked.

“This is Laya,” Jonah said.

“The one who shot him?” Harlland’s eyes widened.

He looked at
Laya, taking in the travelworn clothes, the bruises, the haunted look in her eyes that spoke of things seen and done.
“Well,” Harlon said, spitting into the dust.

I guess you better come inside.
The inside of the shack was a nest of paper.

Stacks of ledgers, loose sheets,
and newspapers were piled everywhere.

It smelled of mold and old ink.

Harlon
cleared a space on a rickety table.

“So, the bastard is finally gone.

I figured
one of the husbands would get him eventually.

Didn’t figure it would be a bride.

He kept a book on everyone,
didn’t he?” Jonah asked, cutting to the chase.

Harlon chuckled nervously.

Caleb
Ransom never sneezed without writing down how much the handkerchief cost.

He documented everything.

Said it was
leverage.

If anyone crossed him, he had the dates, the amounts, the sins.

Did he
write about land grabs? Laya asked.

Harlon nodded.

Every acre, who he squeezed, who he bribed.

What about
accidents? Jonah asked.

Harlon went still.

He looked at Jonah, then at Laya.
He kept a separate book for that, the Black Ledger.

Do you have it? Harlon hesitated.

He looked terrified.

If Elias
knows I have it, Elias is already hunting us, Jonah said.

If we go down, the truth dies with us.

And Caleb wins.
Haron looked at Laya again.

He seemed to be weighing the danger against the satisfaction of revenge.

He saw the
resolve in her face.

He walked to a loose floorboard in the corner and pried it up.

He pulled out a small
leatherbound book wrapped in oil cloth.

He handed it to Jonah.

Jonah opened it.
The pages were filled with Caleb’s cramped, meticulous handwriting.

He flipped through the dates.

Here, Jonah
said, his finger stopping on a page.

August, payment to Sheriff Pike.

$50.

To
lose the witness report on the barnfire.

He flipped further.

October land acquisition.

McKenna parcel.

Laya moved
closer.

Holding her breath.

Jonah read the entry aloud.

McKenna refused final
offer.

Instructed Foreman to pressure him toward the north ravine.

Horse spooked.

Problem resolved.

Coroner paid
$20 to rule accidental.

Laya let out a sound that was half sobb, half growl.

He
wrote it down.

He wrote it down like he was buying a sack of flour.

He was arrogant.

Harlon said.

He thought he was
untouchable.

There is more, Jonah said, scanning the pages.

Payments to the
judge.

Bribes to the land office.

It is all here.

This destroys the whole
network.

This proves it wasn’t murder, Laya said, touching the book as if it
were a holy relic.

It proves he was a monster.

It proves I was defending myself.

It proves a lot of things,
Harlon said.

But a book ain’t a bulletproof vest.

You take that back to Bitter Creek and they will kill you
before you get to the courthouse steps.

We have to try, Jonah said.

He looked at
Laya.

She was staring at the ledger, her eyes burning with a cold, hard light.
She looked up at him and nodded.

“We go back,” she said.

“They camped that night in a canyon a day’s ride from Bitter
Creek.

They were close enough now to smell the smoke of the town on the wind.

The mood had shifted.

The desperate
flight was over.

Now they were soldiers preparing for a suicide mission.

They
sat shouldertosh shoulder by the small fire, the ledger resting on a rock between them.

The night was vast and
silent.

Laya rested her head against Jonah’s shoulder.

It was a natural
movement now, stripped of the awkwardness of the previous days.

I am scared, she admitted softly.

I am too,
Jonah said.

But I feel clean, she said.

For the first time since he walked into
our apartment, I have the truth in my hands.

She looked at Jonah’s profile,
illuminated by the flickering light.

You saved me, Jonah, not just from the ranch
house, but from the madness.

If you hadn’t believed me, I would have believed them.

I would have believed I
was the villain.

I didn’t do much, Jonah said.

Just rode a horse.

You stayed,
Laya said.

You are the first man who ever stayed.

She lifted her head to look at him.

I know we can’t be together like
that, she said, her voice steady.

I know the town is watching.

I know the rules,
but I need you to know something.

What? Jonah asked, turning to her.

I feel safe
with you.

And that kiss, I didn’t regret it.

I only regretted that the world made it wrong.

Jonah looked at her, his heart
hammering against his ribs.

He wanted to kiss her again.

He wanted to take the world and break it until it fit the
shape of them.

I have thought about you every day since I saw you in the merkantile, he confessed, his voice low
and rough, picking up that thread.

I saw your hands, and I thought those hands
deserve to hold something better than worry.

He reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead.

I
fought it, Laya.

I fought it because you were his, but I am not fighting it anymore.

I’m just putting it aside until
we are free.

Until we are free, Laya repeated.

They sat there as the fire
died down.

Two outcasts plotting to overthrow a kingdom with nothing but a book and the truth.

Tomorrow we ride in.
Jonah said, “Tomorrow.” Laya agreed.

They would face the town that wanted them dead.

They would face the father
who wanted blood.

They would face the judge who had been bought.

But they would do it standing up.

And they would
do it together.

The ride back to Bitter Creek was a penance.

The weather, as if conspiring
with the town’s mood, turned vile.

A sharp, stinging sleep, began to fall,
driven by gusts that rattled the bones and soaked through the heavy wool coats they had scavenged.

The road was a
ruined ribbon of ruted mud, freezing and thawing in a cycle that made every step
a gamble for the horses.

Laya rode with her head bowed against the wind, her
hands numb inside her gloves.

The physical misery was a distraction, a welcome dull ache that kept her from
thinking too hard about what lay ahead.

But as they crested the final rise, the distraction vanished.

Bitter creek lay
below them in the gray distance.

Smoke rose from the chimneys in thin, accusing
fingers.

the church steeple, where she had stood only days ago in a cream dress, spiked stubbornly against the low
sky.

To a stranger, it might have looked like a sanctuary.

To Laya, it looked
like a trap.

Her stomach twisted, a cold knot of dread tightening under her ribs.
Down there, behind those walls, people were waiting.

They were trading stories that painted her as a monster.

They were
waiting to see her hang.

Jonah pulled his horse up beside hers.

He looked at
the town, his face grim, water dripping from the brim of his hat.

“We don’t ride
down Main Street,” he said, his voice rough over the wind.

“We need to know the lay of the land before we show our
faces.” “Who can we trust?” Laya asked.

“The whole town belongs to your father
or the bank.” “Rosie,” Jonah said.

“The saloon girl? She has no love for the
ransoms.” Jonah said Caleb got her fired from the hotel 2 years ago because she
spilled a drink on his boot.

She works at the Golden Steer now.

She sees everything and she owes us nothing.

They
waited until nightfall.

The darkness was absolute, heavy with clouds that blotted
out the moon.

They left the horses in a stand of cottonwoods a mile out and walked the rest of the way, keeping to
the shadows of the alleys and the backs of buildings.

The rear entrance of the Golden Steer smelled of stale beer and
rotting garbage.

Jonah knocked a specific rhythm on the door.

Two sharp wraps, a pause, then one more.

It opened
a crack.

A woman with hair dyed a brassy red peered out.

A shawl wrapped tight
around her shoulders.

Her eyes widened when she saw Jonah, and she moved to slam the door.

Jonah’s boot blocked it.
Rosie, “It’s us,” he whispered.

“You’re crazy coming back here,” Rosie hissed,
looking past them into the dark alley.

Elias has a bounty on your heads.

$500, dead or alive, mostly dead.

We need to
talk.

Rosie, please.

Rosie hesitated, then pulled them inside into a narrow
storage room stacked with kegs.

She lit a single candle, her hands shaking.

The
flickering light cast long, dancing shadows on the walls.

She looked at Laya.

You look like you have been to
Helen back.

Honey, I have, Laya said, leaning against a barrel, her legs
trembling from exhaustion.

They are saying terrible things, Rosie said,
keeping her voice low.

The whole town is saying you planned it.

That you seduced Jonah weeks ago and you two plotted to
kill Caleb to get the money.

We didn’t, Laya said.

I shot him because he was
going to kill me.

Rosie looked at the bruise on Laya’s jaw.

still faint and
yellowing and the way she held herself.

“I believe you.” Caleb was a mean son of
a [ __ ] But the town, they like a scandal more than they like the truth.

“What about my family?” Laya asked, the
question sticking in her throat.

“May and Finn,” Rosy’s face fell.

She looked
away.

“Tell me,” Laya demanded.

“They are having a hard time,” Rosie admitted.
Ransom men have been at the house every day.

Turning the place upside down, looking for letters or clues.

They
scared the boy.

Finn, half to death.

He had an attack, couldn’t breathe for an
hour.

Laya made a sound of pain.

Her hands curling into fists at her sides.
And the town, Jonah asked, shunning them.

Rosie said, “The women won’t sit
near May at church.

The grosser makes her wait until everyone else is served.” The preacher gave a sermon on Sunday
about the sins of the daughter visiting the mother.

They are making them pay for what you did.

Laya felt a surge of heat
that had nothing to do with the warmth of the room.

It was a pure white hot anger.

Guilt had been her companion for
days, but now it was being displaced by fury.

Caleb was dead, but he was still
hurting them.

“We have the ledger,” Jonah said.

“We have proof of what Caleb was.

Proof doesn’t matter if you get
shot in the street, Rosie said.

Sheriff Pike is leading the hunt.

He is under a lot of pressure from Elias.

Where is
Pike now? Jonah asked.

In his office or the stable behind it.

He has been
sleeping there.

His wife threw him out because he wouldn’t arrest Elias for threatening the grosser.

Jonah looked at
Laya.

We go to Pike.

He will arrest us.

Laya said he might.

Jonah said, but he
is the only law we have.

and his name is in that book.

That gives us leverage.
They thanked Rosie, who pressed a loaf of stale bread into Yla’s hands before letting them out.

The walk to the
sheriff’s office was a gauntlet of nerves.

Every shadow looked like a gunman.

Every burst of laughter from a
saloon sounded like a mob forming.

They slipped into the stable behind the jail house.

The smell of horse manure and
damp hay was strong.

A single lantern burned on a hook, illuminating Sheriff Amos Pike sitting on a crate, polishing
a rifle.

Pike looked up as the door creaked.

He didn’t reach for his gun.

He
just froze, his eyes locking on Jonah.

I figured you would be halfway to Mexico by now, Pike said slowly.

Mexico is too
far, Jonah said, stepping into the light.

And we have unfinished business here.

Pike looked at Laya.

You got a lot
of nerve, Mrs.

Ransom.

Coming back to the scene of the crime.

It wasn’t a
crime, Laya said, her voice steady despite the hammering of her heart.

It
was survival.

Pike snorted.

Tell that to the judge.

If you make it that far,
Elias wants your head on a spike.

We know what Elias wants, Jonah said.

We
want to show you what Caleb was doing.

Jonah pulled the oil cloth wrapped packet from his coat.

He placed it on a
bail of hay and opened it to a marked page.

“Read it, Amos.” Pike hesitated.
He stood up, his knees cracking, and walked over.

He peered at the ledger.

As
he read, the color drained from his ruddy face.

“Where did you get this?” Pike whispered.

“Harlon,” Jonah said.
“That little rat,” Pike muttered.

“Look at the date, Amos.” Jonah pointed.

“August 12th.

$50 to Sheriff Pike.” Pike
looked up, fear flashing in his eyes.

That was a donation for the jail renovations.

It is listed under witness
suppression, Jonah said coldly.

And here’s another one.

$20 to ignore the
complaint about the water rights.

Pike stepped back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

You can’t use this.
This implicates half the town.

It implicates the men who let Caleb run this valley like a tyrant.

Laya said,
“Including you.” Pike looked at them.

He was a man cornered.

He could pull his
gun, shoot them both, burn the book, and be the hero who brought down the fugitives.

Laya saw the thought cross
his mind.

His hand drifted toward his holster.

“Don’t do it, Amos,” Jonah said
softly.

“You are not a killer.

You are just a man who got in too deep.

This is
your chance to climb out.” Pike’s hand hovered.

He looked at the ledger, then at Laya.

He looked at the bruises that
were still visible in the lantern light.

“He hit you?” Pike asked, his voice gruff.

“He beat me, Laya said.

He threw
me against the bed post.

He told me he killed my father and he would kill me, too.

I didn’t want to shoot him.
Sheriff, I just wanted to live.” Pike let out a long, ragged breath.

His hand
dropped away from his gun.

“If I take you in,” Pike said.

“Elias will bring a
mob.

He has men watching the jail day and night.

Then don’t put us in the jail yet.

Jonah said, “Send for a circuit
judge, a territorial judge.

Someone Elias can’t buy.

That will take 2 days.”
Pike said, “We can wait.” Laya said, “But we do it by the book.

I want a
trial.

I want to stand up in front of this town and tell them what happened.” Pike shook his head, looking tired.

You
are asking for a miracle, girl.

But hell, I never liked Caleb anyway.

He
reached for the ledger.

I will keep this safe.

No, Jonah said, pulling it back.
We keep the book.

You get the judge.

When the judge is sitting on the bench, we surrender the book.

Pike smiled
grimly.

Smart.

All right, we do it your way, but you need to surrender to me
now.

If someone sees you on the street, before he could finish, the stable door
banged open.

A ranch hand named Dutch stood there swaying slightly, a bottle
in his hand.

He had come in to check on his horse.

He blinked, staring at Jonah.
Jonah ransom? Dutch slurred.

Jonah moved, but it was too late.

Dutch turned
and ran out into the alley, yelling at the top of his lungs.

They are here.

The
killers.

They are at the stable.

The cry went up like a flare.

Within seconds,
the muffled sounds of the town sharpened into a roar.

Doors slammed.

Boots
pounded on the boardwalks.

Pike cursed.

Get behind me.

He drew his gun and
pushed them toward the rear of the stable.

But the mob was too fast.

They poured into the alley.

A dozen men, then
20, ranch hands, miners, shopkeepers.

The anger that had been brewing for days found its target.

They dragged Laya and
Jonah out into the street.

The scene was chaos.

Lanterns swung wildly, casting
dizzying shadows.

Men were shouting, their faces twisted with hate.

Murderer, [ __ ] string them up.

Someone grabbed
Laya’s arm, spinning her around.

A hand tore at her shawl, ripping it away.

The
cold night air hit her skin, but the insults were colder.

Look at her.

A
woman’s voice screeched from the boardwalk.

Dressed in rags like the trash she is.

You liked it, didn’t you?
A man jered, grabbing Laya’s shoulder.

You liked it rough.

Is that why you
killed him? Jonah roared.

A sound of pure animal rage.

He shoved a man
backward, sending him sprawling into the mud.

Get your hands off her, Jonah
shouted.

He threw a punch that connected with a ranchand’s jaw, but there were too many of them.

A fist slammed into
Jonah’s ribs.

Another caught him in the eye.

He went down, boots thutting into
his side.

“Stop it!” Laya screamed, her voice tearing at her throat.

“Stop it!
He didn’t do anything.” She tried to reach him, but rough hands held her back.

She saw a boot draw back to kick
Jonah in the head.

“Bang!” A gunshot cracked through the air, silencing the
shouting.

Sheriff Pike stood on a rain barrel, his pistol smoking, pointing at
the sky.

“Enough!” Pike bellowed.

His voice carried the weight of the law,
however tarnished.

“Back off, all of you.

This is justice.” “Pike!” a man
shouted.

“This is a lynching,” Pike yelled back.

“And it won’t happen in my town.

These two are my prisoners.
They’re going to jail, and they are going to see a judge.

Anyone who touches them again gets a bullet.” The crowd
wavered.

The heat of the moment cooled just enough for authority to reassert itself.

Pike jumped down, waving his gun
to clear a path.

“Get them inside,” he ordered his deputy, who had just arrived, looking terrified.

Jonah was
hauled to his feet, blood streaming from a cut above his eye.

He didn’t look at the crowd.

He looked only at Laya.

“Are
you hurt?” he rasped.

Laya shook her head, tears streaming down her face.
They were marched into the jail house.

The heavy iron door slammed shut, cutting off the roar of the mob.

Though
the angry murmurs still filtered through the walls, Laya was shoved into the single cell in the back.

It was a stone
box, cold and damp with a pile of sour straw in the corner.

The bars were thick
black iron.

Jonah was not put in the cell.

He stays out here, Pike said,
pointing to a wooden bench bolted to the wall opposite the cell.

I ain’t putting a man and a woman in the same cage.

Not
with what people are saying.

But he is hurt,” Lla cried, gripping the bars.

“He
needs a doctor.

No doctor is going to come for him tonight.” Pike said grimly,
locking the cell door.

“I will get him some water and a rag.

That is the best I
can do.” The office quieted down as Pike sat at his desk, shotgun across his lap,
watching the door.

The deputy stood by the window.

Laya sank to the floor of her cell, wrapping her arms around her
knees.

She watched Jonah.

He sat on the bench, leaning his head back against the wall, eyes closed.

Blood dripped slowly
from his brow onto his collar.

“Jonah,” she whispered.

“I’m all right,” he
murmured without opening his eyes.

They sat like that for hours.

The noise outside slowly died away as the mob
dispersed to the saloons to drink and speculate.

The candle on Pike’s desk burned low.

Pike eventually nodded off,
his chin resting on his chest, though his hand stayed on the shotgun.

Jonah
opened his eyes.

He looked at the deputy, who was dozing by the window.

He
stood up slowly, grimacing as his ribs shifted.

He walked quietly to the cell
bars.

Laya scrambled up to meet him.

They stood there, separated by 3 in of
cold iron.

You took a beating for me,” Lla whispered.

She reached through the bars.
Her hand trembled as she touched his face.

Jonah didn’t flinch.

He leaned into her touch.

Her thumb brushed the
split in his lip, wiping away a smear of dried blood.

Her fingers were calloused from needle work.

But to Jonah, they
felt like silk.

It was nothing.

Jonah said, “It wasn’t nothing.

They wanted to
kill you.

They want to kill both of us.” Laya,” Jonah said.

Laya looked into his
eyes.

They were dark and full of pain, but also something else.

A fierce,
terrifying tenderness.

She pressed her face against the bars.

“He did the
same.” Their foreheads touched the cold metal, their eyes locked.

Jonah,” she
said softly.

“If if this goes wrong, if the judge is bought or the mob comes
back, we will fight.” Jonah said, “I know, but I need to say this.” She took
a breath, her fingers sliding from his lip to cup his bruised cheek.

“When I
rode away with you that night, I was terrified.

I thought I was dead already.

But these last few days, sleeping in the
snow, reading that ledger, being with you.

It is the first time in my life I felt free.

Lla, I chose to go with you,
Laya said fiercely.

Not just because I was running from him, but because I was running to you.

I chose myself and I
chose you, Jonah closed his eyes.

Her words hit him harder than the fists of the mob.

He reached up and covered her
hand with his own, pressing it tighter against his face.

He opened his eyes and
they were wet.

“I love you, Laya,” he whispered.

The words came out raw,
scraped from the bottom of his soul.

“I have loved you since the moment you dropped that thread in the merkantile.

I
loved you when you walked down the aisle to marry my brother, and I hated myself for it.

I loved you when you were
covered in mud and blood in that cabin.” He leaned closer, straining against the
iron.

I don’t care what they call me.

Traitor, coward, murderer.

As long as I
am standing between you and them, I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

Laya let out a sob.

Tears slipped down her
cheeks hot and fast.

She pressed her face as close as she could, her lips brushing the iron bar that separated
their mouths.

Jonah moved his hand.

He placed his fingers on the bar right where her lips were.

Laya kissed his
fingers.

It was a fragile, desperate gesture, a standin for the kiss they couldn’t have.

It was salt and iron and
love, all mixed together.

I won’t let the last word on your life be murderous,
Jonah vowed.

I swear it.

The moment stretched, suspending time, until Pike
snorted in his sleep and shifted in his chair.

Jonah stepped back slightly,
though his hand lingered near hers on the bars.

The morning brought a cold,
gray light and a renewed sense of danger.

Pike woke up looking haggarded.
He sent the deputy to the telegraph office with a message for the territorial judge in Cheyenne.

Elias
knows you are here.

Pike told them as he poured coffee.

He is at the hotel.

He is
gathering men.

He says he wants to watch the trial.

Says he wants to see the rope go around your neck personally.

Let him
watch.

Jonah said you need a lawyer.

Pike said.

No lawyer in this town will
take the case.

Laya said they are all afraid of Elias.

Then I will defend myself.

Laya said, I will tell them the
truth.

It is risky.

Pike warned.

A woman speaking against a dead husband in this
territory.

It is all we have.

Jonah said, “We need witnesses.” Pike sighed.
“Who? Rosie?” Jonah said, “And Harlon and the minor, Silas.

and Martha the
washer woman.

They are scared rabbits.

Pike said they are.

Jonah agreed.

But
they hate Caleb almost as much as they fear Elias.

If you go to them, Amos, if
you tell them you are standing with us, they might come.

Pike rubbed his face.
You want me to round up a posy of witnesses against the richest man in the valley? I want you to be the sheriff,
Jonah said.

Pike looked at the ledger, which sat on his desk.

He looked at his
own name written in ink.

He looked at Laya, sitting in the cell with her head held high.

“Damn it,” Pike muttered.

He
stood up and put his hat on.

“I will talk to them, but don’t expect miracles.” He left the deputy to guard
them and went out into the hostile morning.

The day passed in agonizing slowness.

The town outside was a hive of
activity.

through the small barred window of the cell.

Laya could hear the
rhythmic hammering of carpenters building something in the square.

She didn’t have to ask what it was.

They
were building a gallows.

Jonah sat on the bench, cleaning the blood from his face with the rag Pike had left.

He
talked to her, keeping her focused.

He quizzed her on the ledger, on the dates,
on the details.

He was drilling her like a soldier.

Late in the afternoon, Pike
returned.

He looked exhausted.

“Well,” Jonah asked.

“Rosie is in.” Pike said.
“She said she has nothing to lose but her job, and she hates the whiskey there anyway.” “And the others?” Harlon is
terrified.

“He packed a bag to run.

I had to threaten to arrest him for embezzlement to make him stay, but he
has the other pages of the ledger.” “What about Martha?” Laya asked.

Pike nodded.

She cried, but she said she
would do it for you.

A small, fragile circle of truth was forming.

It wasn’t
much, a saloon girl, a crook, and a washerw woman, but it was something.

The
judge arrives tomorrow on the noon stage.

Pike said, “Judge Thaddius Moore.
He is a hard man.

Doesn’t like nonsense.

That is good.” Jonah said, “We don’t
have nonsense.

We have facts.” That night, the noise in the square grew
louder.

Men were drinking, shouting Laya’s name, firing guns into the air.
Laya lay on the straw mattress, listening to the hate.

It felt like a physical weight pressing on the roof of
the jail.

“Jonah,” she whispered.

“I am here,” he answered from the dark.

“Are
we going to die tomorrow?” Jonah was silent for a long moment.

Not if I have
anything to say about it, he said, but his hand drifted to his holster, checking the smooth wood of his gun grip
in the dark.

He knew the odds.

He knew his father, and he knew that truth in
the West was often just a story told by the man with the best aim, but he also
knew Laya.

He looked at her silhouette in the dim cell.

She was broken and bruised and terrified, but she was
unbroken.

She was the bravest thing he had ever seen.

Get some sleep, Laya.

He said softy.

You
need your strength.

Tomorrow we fight.

Laya closed her eyes, visualizing the
ledger, visualizing the truth, visualizing Jonah’s hand on hers.
Tomorrow, she thought.

Tomorrow it ends.

One way or another.

Judge Thaddius Moore
stepped off the midday stage coach with the weary precision of a man who had spent three decades traveling between
dusty hell holes, dispensing law in a land that preferred lead.

He was a
scarecrow of a man, tall and gaunt, with a face carved from granite and eyes that
had seen every variation of human ugliness.

He carried a leather satchel that contained his gavvel and a worn
Bible, the only two tools he trusted to keep civilization from sliding back into the mud.

Bitter Creek was seething.

The
town square was packed tight with wagons and horses.

Men stood in knots on the boardwalks, their hands drifting near
their holsters, eyes hard and expectant.

They were not here for justice.

They
were here for a show.

They were here to see the bride who killed a king hang by her pretty neck.

The courthouse was a
stifling box of a building.

The air inside already thick with the smell of sweat, wet wool, and stale tobacco.
Every bench was filled.

People spilled out of the doorways and pressed their faces against the glass of the windows.
Laya McKenna sat at the defense table.

Her wrists were bound in heavy iron cuffs that chafed her raw skin.

She wore
the simple gray dress Rosie had lent her, scrubbed clean but ill-fitting.

Her
hair was pulled back, revealing the pale face that had become the subject of every dark whisper in the territory.

Her
stomach twisted into tight, painful knots, but she kept her chin lifted.

She
would not give them the satisfaction of seeing her tremble.

Beside her sat Arthur Vance, the young lawyer Sheriff
Pike had bullied into taking the case.

Vance was sweating profusely, wiping his
spectacles every 30 seconds.

He looked like a man standing on the tracks with a train bearing down on him.

On the other
side of the aisle sat the prosecutor, Horus Blackwood.

He was a bulldog of a
man from Cheyenne, hired by Elias Ransom’s money to ensure a swift hanging.

And behind him, in the front
row, sat Elias himself.

The patriarch of the Ransom Empire looked diminished but
dangerous.

his arm in a sling from a riding accident, his eyes burning with a
cold, hate filled fire fixed squarely on Laya.

“All rise!” the baiff shouted.
Judge Moore swept in, his black robes billowing like storm clouds.

He took his
seat, banged the gavvel once, a sound like a gunshot that silenced the room instantly, and looked over his
spectacles.

“We are here to try the case of the territory versus Laya Ransom, formerly McKenna, for the murder of
Caleb Ransom.” the judge in toned, his voice dry as parchment.

Blackwood stood
up.

He hooked his thumbs into his waist coat and paced before the jury.

12 men,
mostly ranchers and merchants who owed money or fear to the ransom name.

Gentlemen, Blackwood began, his voice
booming.

This is a simple case, a tragic case.

A woman of low means desperate for
wealth entrapped a good and generous man.

She married him for his land, and
on her very wedding night, having secured his name, she conspired with his
jealous brother to murder him in cold blood.

She is not a victim.

She is a
black widow, and she must pay the price.” Vance stood up, his voice
shaking slightly.

“Gentlemen, we will show that this was not murder.

It was a
desperate act of self-defense by a terrified woman fighting for her life against a brutal assault.

A ripple of
scoffing laughter moved through the room.

A man in the back shouted.

She didn’t look terrified when she ran off
with the brother.

“Order!” Judge Moore shouted, banging the gavl.

“One more outburst and I will clear this court.”
The trial moved with the grinding slowness of a nightmare.

Witnesses were called.

ranch hands who swore Caleb was
a saint, the preacher who testified to the sanctity of marriage vows.

Then it
was Laya’s turn.

She stood up, the irons clanking softly.

She walked to the
witness stand and placed her hand on the Bible.

She swore to tell the truth.

She
looked out at the sea of hostile faces until she found Jonah.

He was sitting in the second row behind the defense table.
His face was a map of violence, one eye swollen shut, a cut on his lip, bruises
blooming on his cheekbone from the mob’s beating, but his good eye was clear and steady on hers.

He nodded, a microscopic
movement that gave her the strength to draw breath.

“Tell us about that night,” Vance asked gently.

Laya gripped the
wooden rail.

Her hands shook, but her voice was clear.

“He took me to the
room.

He locked the door.

He told me that he owned me.

He told me he had bought my family’s debt specifically to
trap me.

She paused, swallowing the bile in her throat.

He was drinking.

He
became violent.

He told me.

He told me that my father’s death was no accident.
He said he watched him fall.

He said my father would still be breathing if he had just sold the land quietly.

A murmur
ran through the courtroom.

Elias Ransom turned a shade of purple, gripping his cane.

He threw me against the bed post.
Laya continued, her voice cracking.

He pinned me to the bed.

I couldn’t
breathe.

I could smell the whiskey and the sweat.

I knew I knew in my soul that
I was not leaving that room alive.

Or if I did, I wouldn’t be Laya anymore.

I
would just be a broken thing he owned.

She looked at the jury, pleading with them to see her humanity.

I grabbed the
gun from under the pillow.

I didn’t want to kill him.

I just wanted him to stop.

I wanted to live.

Is that a crime to
want to live? In the back of the room, May McKenna let out a sob.

She was
clutching Finn, whose thin chest was heaving with silent tears.

They looked
small and fragile against the wall of hostility.

Blackwood stood for the cross-examination.
He circled Laya like a shark.

You say you were afraid, Mrs.

Ransom.

Yet you
rode away into a blizzard with his brother minutes later.

A brother you had been seen whispering with in town.

A
brother you danced with at your wedding.

He saved me, Laya said.

Did he? Or was
he waiting? Was this the plan all along? Get rid of the husband.

Keep the money and the brother.

I didn’t want his
money, Laya cried.

I wanted my freedom and these bruises.

Blackwood sneered, gesturing to her face.

A husband has
rights.

Mrs.

Ransom.

Sometimes passion can be mistaken for violence by a delicate, inexperienced girl.

Laya went
cold.

She leaned forward, the chains rattling.

There was no passion.

Mr.
Blackwood, there was only hate, and a man’s ring does not buy a woman’s body to use as a punching bag.

Silence hung
in the room for a heartbeat.

Heavy and uncomfortable.

Blackwood smirked.

No
further questions.

Vance called his witnesses.

They were a mly group,
terrified and trembling, but they came.

Harlon, the bookkeeper, took the stand.
He looked like he wanted to vomit, but he produced the pages.

This is Caleb’s handwriting, Harlon said, his voice
barely a squeak.

It details payments, bribes.

Judge Moore took the pages.

He
adjusted his spectacles.

He read in silence for a long time.

The scratching
of his pen was the only sound in the room.

August 12th, the judge read aloud, “Payment to Sheriff Pike, $50 to lose
the witness report on the barnfire.” He looked up at Pike, who was standing by the door.

“Is this true, Sheriff?” Pike
stepped forward, taking his hat off.

His face was pale, but he didn’t look away.
It is, your honor.

I took the money.

I told myself it was for the town.

But I
knew what Caleb was.

I knew he was crooked.

I didn’t know about the murder.

Sir, I swear on my mother’s grave, but I
took the money.

The admission hit the room like a physical blow.

The sheriff,
the man who represented order, had just admitted the system was rigged.

The town’s people exchanged uneasy glances.
The certainty of their hatred began to crack.

Then the judge read the next entry.

McKenna refused final offer,
instructed Foreman to pressure him toward the ravine.

Problem resolved.

Judge Moore lowered the paper.

He looked
at Elias Ransom.

“This court takes a very dim view of land theft and murder disguised as accidents.” “Mr.

Ransom!”
Elliot stood up.

He was shaking with rage.

“Lies!” Elias shouted, his voice cracking.

“This is a fabrication.

That
rat Harlon wrote those pages himself.

My son was a businessman, a pillar of this community.” “Sit down, sir,” the judge
warned.

“I will not sit down,” Ias roared.

You are letting this [ __ ] make a mockery of my family.

She bewitched my
son Jonah.

She turned brother against brother.

She is a witch and a murderer.

Baleiff, the judge barked.

Restrain that
man.

The baleiff moved toward Elias who finally sank back into his seat.
Breathing hard, his face a mask of poisonous hate.

Then Jonah took the
stand.

He limped to the chair, swearing the oath.

He looked out at the crowd,
then turned to the jury.

I rode into town after the war,” Jonah said, his
voice low and grally.

“I thought I was done with killing.

I thought I was done with seeing men treat each other like
animals.

But I came home to a war my brother was fighting against his own neighbors.” He looked at Laya.

I entered
that room on the wedding night.

I saw the bruises on her throat.

I saw her dress torn.

I saw the terror in her
eyes.

It wasn’t the look of a woman who had plotted a murder.

It was the look of a trapped animal who had bitten the hand
that was choking it.

Blackwood stood up.

Mister Ransom, is it true you are in
love with the defendant? Jonah didn’t hesitate.

Yes.

A collective gasp went
through the room.

And when did this love begin? Blackwood asked triumphantly.
Before she killed your brother.

Yes, Jonah said steadily.

It began the moment
I met her.

But I never touched her.

I never spoke of it.

I buried it because she was Caleb’s.

So, you admit you had a
motive to want your brother dead? I had a motive to want her safe.

Jonah said,
“I failed her.

I should have stood up to Caleb years ago.

I should have stopped
him before he hurt her father.

My crime is not that I helped her run.

My crime
is that I waited until she had to pull the trigger herself.” He looked at the jury, his eyes burning.

She fought for
her life.

If that is murder in this territory, then you might as well hang every one of us who ever raised a hand
to defend our own.

The closing arguments were brief.

Blackwood thundered about
the sanctity of marriage and social order, warning that if wives were allowed to kill husbands, chaos would
reign.

Vance spoke quietly about the right to live, about the ledger, about
the bruises.

The jury went out.

The weight was agonizing.

The sun began to
dip.

casting long, bloody streaks of light across the floorboards.
Finally, they returned.

The foreman, a rancher named Miller, who had once lost
a water dispute to Caleb, stood up.

He wouldn’t look at Elias.

“Have you
reached a verdict?” the judge asked.

“We have, your honor.” “What say you? On the
charge of murder, we find the defendant, Llaya Ransom, not guilty.

By reason of
self-defense.

The silence held for one second, then shattered.

Laya let out a
sound that was half laugh, half sobb.

Her knees buckled.

She collapsed sideways.

Jonah vulted over the railing,
ignoring the baleiff and caught her before she hit the floor.

He held her, his arms wrapping around her shaking
shoulders, burying his face in her hair.

It’s over, he whispered.

It’s over.

May
and Finn pushed through the crowd, weeping, grabbing at Laya’s hands, hugging Jonah.

It was a knot of joy and
exhaustion in the center of the room.

But around them, the mood was not one of celebration.

Half the room was angry.
They felt cheated.

They felt that a rich man’s blood had been spilled without payment.

They glared at the group,
muttering curses, spitting on the floor as they filed out.

Judge Moore banged
his gavvel.

This court is adjourned.

Sheriff, clear the building.

Pike moved
in, looking relieved, but wary.

We need to get you out the back way.

He told
Jonah and Laya.

The crowd outside isn’t happy.

I am not going out the back, Laya
said, wiping her tears.

She stood up, leaning on Jonah, but standing on her own feet.

I am done hiding.

She walked
toward the main doors.

Jonah at her side, his hand hovering near his gun.
May and Finn trailed behind, shielded by Pike.

They pushed open the heavy double
doors and stepped out onto the courthouse steps.

The sun was setting, painting the sky in violent shades of
purple and orange.

A crowd of 50 or 60 people had lingered.

They went silent as
Laya appeared.

It was a heavy, sullen silence.

Then a movement at the bottom
of the steps broke the stillness.

Elias Ransom stepped out from behind a wagon.
He was trembling, his face slick with sweat and madness.

In his good hand, he
held a heavy colt revolver.

He raised it, the barrel shaking, but aimed directly at Laya’s chest.

“There is no
justice in this world,” Elias screamed.

“If the law won’t do it, I will.” Time
seemed to warp, slowing down into a series of jagged images.

Laya saw the
black bore of the gun.

She saw the spit flying from Elias’s mouth.

She saw the crowd shrinking back.

Jonah saw it, too.
He didn’t think.

He didn’t hesitate.

He stepped in front of Laya, spreading his arms, placing his body directly in the
line of fire.

“No!” Jonah shouted.

Laya saw his back.

She saw the target he was
making of himself.

And something in her snapped.

She had not survived Caleb, the
blizzard, the hunger, and the trial just to watch the man she loved die on a set of wooden steps.

She didn’t scream.

She
moved.

She shoved Jonah hard, throwing her weight against his bad leg.

He
stumbled, falling to the side, exposing her, but she didn’t stand there to be
shot.

She lunged to the right toward Sheriff Pike, who was frozen in shock.
Her hand snaked out and ripped his revolver from its holster.

It was a smooth, desperate motion, born of the
muscle memory her father had drilled into her on the range.

She spun, leveling the heavy gun.

She didn’t aim
for Elias’s heart.

She didn’t aim for his head.

She aimed for the threat.

She fired.

The recoil jarred her arm to the
shoulder.

The bullet tore through the air and struck Elias’s hand.

The hand holding the gun.

There was a spray of
red mist.

Elias screamed, a high, thin sound, and his revolver sent spinning
away into the dust.

He clutched his mangled hand, dropping to his knees,
wailing in pain.

The crowd gasped, a collective intake of breath that sucked
the air out of the square.

Laya stood there, chest heaving, the sheriff’s gun
still raised, smoke drifting from the barrel.

She looked wild and terrifying and magnificent.

She was not a victim.
She was a force of nature.

Jonah scrambled up from where he had fallen.

He looked at Laya, then at his father
bleeding in the dirt.

He looked at Laya with a mixture of shock and awe.

Sheriff
Pike snapped out of his trance.

He ran down the steps, kicking Elias’s gun away.

“Get the dock!” Pike shouted to
the crowd.

“Get the dock now!” he looked up at the town’s people, his face flushed with adrenaline.

“This is over!”
Pike bellowed, his voice echoing off the storefronts.

There will be no more killing today.

There will be no more
lynchings in my town.

The ledger is open and the law has spoken.

Go home.

The
crowd stared.

They looked at the sobbing patriarch in the dust.

The man they had feared for 20 years, now brought low by
a seamstress.

They looked at Laya, who slowly lowered the gun, but did not drop
it.

Something shifted in their eyes.

It wasn’t love.

It wasn’t forgiveness, but
it was respect.

The grudging hard one respect of the frontier for anyone who
could stand their ground against a storm.

Laya turned to Pike and handed him the gun.

“Handle first.

He is not
dead,” she said, her voice shaking now that the adrenaline was fading.

“I just
stopped him.” Pike took the gun.

He looked at her with a new expression.
“You surely did, Mrs.

Ransom.

You surely did.

Jonah limped over to her.

He didn’t
care about the crowd.

He didn’t care about his father wailing in the dirt.

He pulled her to him, checking her
frantically.

“Are you hit?” he demanded.

“No,” she whispered.

He wrapped his arms
around her, holding her so tight she could barely breathe.

She buried her face in his neck, smelling the dust and
the sweat and the life of him.

“Let’s go,” Jonah said.

“Let’s get out of
here.” May and Finn rushed down, surrounding them.

They walked away from
the courthouse, moving through the parting crowd.

No one shouted insults.
No one threw stones.

The town’s people just watched them go.

Silent witnesses
to the end of an era.

They walked toward the edge of town, toward the open plains where the wind was blowing, cold and
clean, washing away the stench of the courtroom and the blood in the dust.

The
aqu quiddle was a legal victory, but it was not a cure.

Bitter Creek had seen
the truth laid bare in the courthouse, but truth is a hard thing to swallow for a town built on comfortable lies.
Laya walked down Main Street 2 days after the trial.

Her head high, but she
could feel the eyes on her.

They watched from behind lace curtains and the dusty windows of the merkantile.

The whispers
followed her like dry leaves skittering on the pavement.

To the men in the saloon, she was the woman who had shot a
ransom.

To the women in the church, she was the widow who had run off with her brother-in-law before the body was cold.
The verdict said innocent, but the town said scandal.

Jonah felt it, too.

He had
been cut off from the double R.

Elias, recovering from his shattered hand in a fury of opium and brandy, had formally
disowned him.

Jonah was a man without land, without a name, and without a
place in the only valley he had ever known.

They stood in the small parlor of May’s house, the air thick with a smell
of packing dust and brewing coffee.

“We can’t stay,” Laya said quietly.

She
looked out the window at the street where a group of children stopped to point at the house.

“We will never just
be people here, Jonah.

We will always be the story.” Jonah nodded, leaning
against the doorframe.

He looked tired, the bruises on his face fading to a sickly yellow, but his eyes were clear.
“I know,” he said.

“There is no peace for us in this valley, the shadow of the ranch is too long.” May sat at the
table, her hands resting on her Bible.

She looked older since the trial, but
her eyes held a new strength.

She had seen her daughter stand against a giant and win.

You have to go, May said
firmly.

You have to go find a place where the wind doesn’t whisper the name ransom.

But we can’t leave you, Laya
protested, turning to her mother.

The dead is gone, but the hate isn’t.

We
will be fine, Finn piped up from the corner.

He was whittling a piece of pine, his breathing easier now that the
stress of the trial had lifted.

I can handle a few old bitties at the market.

Laya May smiled a thin brave smile.

We
will follow you, Laya.

Once you are settled, once you have a roof that doesn’t leak and a stove that works,
send for us then.

But for now, you two need to disappear.

You need to heal.
Jonah pushed off the doorframe.

I know a place.

It is a few days ride north over the pass, a valley called Silver Hollow.
It is rough country.

The winters are hard and the soil is full of rocks, but
it is empty.

No one claims it.

Empty sounds perfect, Laya whispered.

The
departure was set for dawn the next morning.

It was a tearful, hurried affair.

The sky was a bruised purple in
the east when Jonah brought the horses around.

Two sturdy paints he had bought with the last of his army pay and a pack
mule loaded with supplies.

May hugged Laya fiercely, pressing a small
leatherbound book into her hands.

It is not much, May said, her voice thick with
tears.

But it comforted me when your father passed.

Maybe it will give you
peace when the nights are quiet.

Laya took the Bible, her fingers tracing the worn cover.

I will write to you, Mama.
The moment we stop, Finn walked up to Jonah.

The boy looked up at the scarred man who had been the villain in
everyone’s stories.

And then the hero.

Finn didn’t offer a handshake.

He threw
his thin arms around Jonah’s waist, burying his face in Jonah’s coat.

You take care of her, Finn muffled against
the wool.

You make sure she is safe.

I will, Jonah promised, his hand resting
gently on the boy’s head.

With my life, Finn.

They mounted up as the sun crested
the horizon, painting the town of Bitter Creek in a deceptively soft light.

They
did not look back.

They rode past the church, past the jail house where they had confessed their love through iron
bars, and past the turnoff to the ransom ranch.

They rode north toward the
mountains that stood like a wall between their past and their future.

The journey into the high country was a trial by
stone and ice.

The trail Jonah knew was little more than a deer track that wound through narrow passes where the wind
howled like a wounded animal.

They rode in silence for long stretches.

The only
sounds, the clatter of hooves on shale, and the rush of wind in the pines, the luxury of the ransom estate, and the
cramped confinement of the town, were replaced by a vast, indifferent wildness.
Here there was no gossip.

There was only the sun, the wind, and the relentless
demand of the trail.

They crossed rivers that ran fast and frigid with snow melt,
the water numbing their legs as the horses fought the current.

They climbed ridges where the air was so thin it
burned their lungs.

Looking out over a sea of pine and granite that stretched forever.

At night the temperature
dropped until the air snapped.

They made camp in the shelter of rock overhangs or dense timber.

Jonah built the fires.

His
hands efficient and sure.

Laya cooked their meager rations of beans and salt pork in the single iron skillet they had
brought.

They sat by the fire, the darkness pressing in around them.

This was the intimacy they had craved in the
jail cell.

But out here, stripped of the drama of the trial, it was quiet and
tentative.

They were two people learning the shape of each other without the threat of death hanging over them.

Laya
watched Jonah tend the horses, speaking to them in a low, rumbling voice.

She
saw the way he favored his bad leg after a long day in the saddle, and the way he always positioned his bed roll between
her and the darkness of the woods.

“Do you think we can really do this?” Laya
asked one night, staring into the flames.

“Build a life out of nothing.”
Jonah poured coffee into a tin cup and handed it to her.

“We aren’t building it out of nothing,” he said.

“We are
building it out of truth.

That is a stronger foundation than my father ever had.

Five days of riding brought them to
the valley.

It was not a paradise.

It was a rugged slash in the earth, walled in by gray cliffs and thick with scrub
oak and pine.

A crooked creek wound through the center.

The water clear and cold.

The soil when Jonah dismounted and
dug his heel into it was dark but rocky.

“It needs work,” Jonah said, looking at
the overgrown meadow.

“A lot of work.” Laya climbed down from her horse.

She
stood beside him, her boots sinking into the grass.

She looked at the wild,
untamed land.

“It looked difficult.

It looked harsh.

It looks like home,” she
said.

They set to work immediately.

The first order of business was shelter.

They couldn’t live in the tent forever.
The autumn storms were already gathering on the peaks.

They chose a spot near the creek.

On a slight rise, protected by a
stand of ponderosa pines.

Felling the trees was brutal labor.

Jonah swung the
axe until his hands blistered and broke.

His shirt soaked with sweat despite the chill air.

Laya didn’t just watch.

She
stripped the branches, hauled the logs with the help of the mule, and mixed the mud and moss to [ __ ] the gaps.

Her
hands, once prized for their delicate needle work, became rough and stained.
Her fingernails broke.

Her palms developed calluses as thick as leather.

But every time she looked at her hands,
she didn’t feel shame.

She felt pride.

These were not the hands of a victim.
They were the hands of a woman building her own walls.

They put up a small cabin.

It was barely 12 ft x 12 with a
roof of sod and timber that leaked in three places when it rained, but it was theirs.

They built a stone hearth that
drew smoke perfectly, a skill Jonah had learned in the army.

Domestic life in
the wilderness was a dance of survival.

Jonah taught Laya how to mend a fence post using rawhide and wire.

He taught
her how to shoe a horse, guiding her hands as she held the heavy hoof, showing her where the quick was.

He
taught her to read the clouds, to know that a halo around the moon meant snow within 24 hours.

In turn, Laya softened
the rough edges of their existence.

She taught Jonah how to patch his own trousers, laughing softly when his large
clumsy fingers struggled with the needle.

She learned to bake bread in a Dutch oven buried in the coals,
producing loaves that were dense but warm and filling.

She gathered wild sage
and dried it to make the cabin smell sweet, chasing away the scent of wet dog and wood smoke.

They settled into a
rhythm, fetching water, chopping wood, hunting for deer.

Every task was a
shared burden.

They spoke less of the past now.

The names Caleb and Elias were
rarely spoken.

Instead, they spoke of the roof, the horses, the winter wheat
they hoped to plant in the spring.

But the wild was not done testing them.

It was late October when the storm hit.

It
came out of the north with a ferocity that caught them off guard.

It wasn’t snow, but a freezing lashing rain that
fell in sheets, turning the ground to soup.

The creek, usually a gentle murmur, began to roar.

Jonah woke in the
middle of the night to the sound of water.

He threw open the door.

The creek had swollen, bursting its banks.

The
water was rising fast, creeping up the rise toward the cabin and the makeshift corral.

“The horses!” Jonah shouted over
the thunder of the rain.

He pulled on his boots and ran out into the deluge.

Laya was right behind him, grabbing a
lantern that sputtered in the wind.

The water was already calf deep in the yard,
freezing cold, and moving with terrifying speed.

The horses were screaming, thrashing in the corral as
the water swirled around their legs.

Jonah fought his way to the gate.

He had to cut them loose or they would break
their legs in the panic.

He struggled with the soden knots, the water pushing against his bad leg, threatening to
knock him over.

“Lila, get the tools,” Jonah yelled.

“Get the axe and the saw
up the hill.

If we lose them, we can’t build.” Laya didn’t argue.

She splashed
back toward the shed where they kept their precious tools.

The water was rising by the second, dark and churning
with debris.

She grabbed the heavy tool bag and the axe, hoisting them onto her shoulder.

She turned to head for the
high ground behind the cabin.

Her boot slipped on a patch of slick mud.

She went down hard.

The heavy tool bag
pinned her for a second.

And in that second, the current caught her.

The
water dragged her sideways, pulling her toward the main channel of the creek where jagged rocks tore the water into
white foam.

“Jonah!” she screamed, the water filling her mouth.

Jonah heard
her.

He let the horses go.

They bolted for the trees and turned.

He saw the
lantern bobbing wildly in the water, moving away from him.

He didn’t think
about the cold.

He didn’t think about his leg.

He dove.

He hit the water and
the shock was like a hammer blow.

He swam with frantic, powerful strokes, fighting the current that wanted to
smash him against the boulders.

He saw Laya’s pale hand break the surface,
grasping at a willow branch that snapped under her weight.

He reached her just as she was being pulled into the rapids.

He
grabbed her waist, his arm locking around her like an iron band.

“Hold on,” he roared.

They slammed against a
submerged rock.

Jonah took the brunt of the impact with his shoulder, grunting in pain, but he didn’t let go.

He dug
his boots into the creek bed.

Finding purchase on the gravel, he hauled them both toward the bank.

It was a brutal
struggle.

Inch by inch against the crushing weight of the river.

Finally,
they collapsed onto a large flat boulder that rose above the floodwaters.

They
lay there gasping, soaked to the bone, the rain hammering down on them.

Laya
was coughing up water, shivering violently.

Jonah wrapped his body around
hers, shielding her from the wind.

“We are alive,” he rasped, his voice
shaking.

We are alive.

They waited on the rock until the dawn broke and the waters began to recede.

The cabin was
flooded.

Inches of mud covering the floor, but it was still standing.

They stumbled back inside, their limbs heavy
and numb.

The cold was a dangerous thing now, seeping into their core.

“We have
to get dry,” Jonah said, his teeth chattering.

They stripped off their
soden clothes behind the blanket they had hung to divide the room.

There was no modesty in it.

It was a medical
necessity.

They dried themselves with rough towels, shivering uncontrollably.
They huddled together under the drywool blankets on the bunk, seeking warmth.
Laya lay against Jonah’s chest.

She could feel the heat slowly returning to his skin.

She could trace the jagged
line of the old bullet wound on his thigh and the fresh bruise on his shoulder from the rock.

She lifted her
hand and touched the scar on his chest.

A remnant of the war.

Her fingertips
trembled.

It wasn’t the cold anymore.

It was something else.

They had survived the law.

They had survived the mob.

And
now they had survived the flood.

The adrenaline of the rescue was fading, leaving behind a raw, aching clarity.
Jonah looked down at her.

His hair was damp, falling into his eyes.

He looked
at her not as a brother, not as a protector, but as a man who had almost lost the only thing that tethered him to
the earth.

“Lila,” he whispered.

She looked up.

Her eyes
were wide, dark, and bottomless.

He cuped her face in his hands.

His thumbs
brushed her cheekbones.

The reverence in his touch made her heartache.

“Are you sure?” he asked softly.

His voice was
rough with emotion.

This life it is hard.

I am a broken man with nothing but
a patch of mud.

You could have had soft things, Laya.

Laya reached up and
covered his hands with hers.

I had soft things, Jonah.

And they were cold.

She
leaned in, pressing her forehead against his.

I don’t want soft.

I want real.

I want this.

I want you.

She kissed him.
It wasn’t like the kiss in the mining camp.

Desperate and stolen.

This was a claiming.

It was slow and deep, tasting
of rain and survival.

It was a hunger that had been denied for too long.

Finally, given permission to breathe,
Jonah made a low sound in his throat and pulled her closer, his arms wrapping around her bare back.

The skin-to-skin
contact was electric, a shock that banished the last of the winter chill.
They came together in the dim light of the cabin, the storm still drumming on the roof.

It was slow and reverent.
There was no violence here, no taking.

There was only giving.

Every touch was a
question and an answer.

Every movement was a shedding of the past.

Laya felt
the weight of Caleb.

The memory of his grasping hands and cruel laugh dissolve.
In Jonah’s arms, she wasn’t a possession.

She was a partner.

She was
cherished.

She traced the muscles of his back, feeling the strength he used to build their home, and pulled him closer,
blurring the lines between them until there was no Jonah and Laya, only us.

For the first time in her life, the act
of love didn’t feel like a transaction.

It felt like a prayer.

Morning came quietly.

The storm had passed, leaving
the sky a brilliant, washed out blue.

Sunlight filtered through the cracks in the cabin walls, painting stripes of
pale gold across the tangled blankets.

Laya woke slowly.

She was warm, a deep,
steady warmth that seemed to radiate from her bones.

She realized she was draped across Jonah’s chest, his arm
heavy and protective over her waist.

She listened to his breathing.

It was steady and deep.

She listened to the creek
outside.

It was no longer a roar, but a gentle rushing song.

She lay there for a
long time, waiting for the guilt to come.

She waited for the voice of the preacher or the town gossips to whisper
in her ear that she was a sinner.

But the voices didn’t come.

There was only peace.

She looked at Jonah’s sleeping
face.

The tension finally smoothed away from his brow.

She felt a fierce surge
of love.

Not the frantic, frightened love of the fugitive, but the grounded, enduring love of the wife, a true wife.
She chose him.

She had chosen him in the jail cell, and she had chosen him in the
storm, and she chose him now in the quiet of the morning.

It was not stolen.
It was earned.

Jonah stirred.

His eyes opened, focusing on her.

A slow smile
spread across his face, lighting up his features in a way she had never seen.
Morning, he rasped.

Morning, she whispered.

He pulled her down for a
kiss.

Lazy and sweet.

The roof is leaking, he murmured against her lips.
“I know,” she said.

“And the fence is probably down.” “Probably,” he sighed,
but his arms tightened around her.

“We have a lot of work to do.” Laya rested
her head on his shoulder.

We have all day.

We have all our lives.

Time moved
differently in the valley.

It measured itself in seasons.

In the height of the corn in the thickness of the horse’s
winter coats, they repaired the cabin.

They planted a garden.

They built a
second room for May and Finn.

Letters arrived from Bitter Creek carried by passing traders.

May wrote that the town
was changing without Caleb’s strangle hold.

Other men were stepping up.

The
bank was under new management.

Sheriff Pike had retired, quietly, drinking
himself into oblivion.

But the ledger had done its work.

The corruption was
rotting away.

The gossip about Laya and Jonah still lingered.

May wrote, but it
had lost its teeth.

It was just an old story now, fading like ink in the sun.
But out here in Silver Hollow, they were not defined by that story.

When
neighbors eventually came, a family settling 10 miles down the creek.

They didn’t know Laya as the bride who shot
her husband.

They knew her as the woman with the best vegetable garden in the territory and the steady hand who helped
birth their breach calf.

They knew Jonah not as the trader brother, but as the quiet, hardworking rancher who always
gave fair weight in a trade.

They built a life that was hard, simple, and entirely their own.

One evening, a year
after they had arrived, Laya and Jonah stood on the porch of the expanded cabin.

The sun was setting the valley on
fire with shades of red and gold.

The wind carried the scent of pine resin and
damp earth.

In the corral, two new fos were chasing each other.

Inside the
house, the table was set for four, waiting for the arrival of May and Finn,
who were due within the week.

Jonah stepped up behind Laya.

He wrapped his
arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder, his hands, scarred and
strong, rested over hers on the railing.

He looked out at the valley, then turned
his face into her hair.

“I still can’t believe it sometimes,” he murmured.
“What?” Lla asked, leaning back into him.

“That you rode away with me that
night? You could have stayed? You could have testified and then left alone.

You could have found a man with a whole face
and a straight leg.

Laya turned in his arms.

She looked up at him, studying the
face she knew better than her own.

She traced the white line of the scar on his cheek.

I didn’t want a man who was whole
because he had never been broken.

Laya said softly.

I wanted a man who knew what it cost to put himself back
together.

She took his hand and pressed it to her heart.

If I could go back to that moment, Jonah, terrified, bruised,
running into the dark, I would do it again every single time.

I would choose
your hand.

I would choose the unknown because a life where I am not allowed to be myself is not a life.

Jonah looked at
her, his eyes shining.

You are my life, “Lila,” he whispered.

She smiled.

The
last shadows of Bitter Creek vanishing in the golden light.

And you are mine.
They stood together as the sun dipped below the peaks, battered but unbroken.

Two survivors who had walked through the
fire and found water.

They faced a future that would never be easy.

The land would always be hard.

The winter
would always be cold, but it would be theirs.

And that they knew was the
truest kind of justice.

Thank you, dear reader, for riding this long, dusty
trail with Laya and Jonah.

It has been a journey of heartbreak, danger, and
ultimately the healing power of love.

I would love to hear from you.

Please
leave a comment telling me where in the world you are listening or reading from today.

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Until next
time, keep your powder dry and your heart open.