Catherine kept the shotgun pointed toward the floor.

“Who is Pendleton?”

Grayson looked at Caleb.

The wounded man had gone pale beneath the sweat on his face.

“Answer her.”

Caleb swallowed.

“Silas Pendleton.”

Catherine knew the name.

Everyone in Miller’s Crossing did.

Pendleton owned a freight company, two warehouses, and enough grazing land south of the river that people had started calling the entire stretch Pendleton country.

He had tried to buy the Miller valley twice while Catherine’s father was alive.

Both offers had been refused.

Her father had never explained why.

Catherine looked at Jedodiah.

“What did you promise him?”

Jedodiah wiped blood from his mouth.

“Nothing.”

She stepped closer.

“What did you promise him?”

Caleb laughed weakly from beside the stove.

“The valley.”

Catherine stared at him.

“You cannot sell what you don’t own.”

“That’s why we needed your signature.”

She looked at the deed lying near the overturned table.

Then something occurred to her.

“If Pendleton knows I haven’t signed it, why are his men coming?”

Neither brother answered.

Grayson’s eyes narrowed.

“That’s a good question.”

He crouched beside the document.

The bottom of the page was smeared with ink.

Catherine’s signature line was empty.

But below it were spaces for two witnesses.

Both had already been signed.

Grayson looked at the brothers.

“Who witnessed a signature that doesn’t exist?”

Jedodiah said nothing.

Catherine picked up the paper.

One name meant nothing to her.

The other did.

“Deputy Rusk.”

Caleb looked away.

Catherine felt colder than the storm outside.

Deputy Nathan Rusk had eaten at her father’s table.

He had attended the funeral.

Three days later, he had brought Catherine a basket from his wife and told her that if she ever felt unsafe alone in the valley, she should send word.

Now his name sat beneath a forged deed.

Grayson stood.

“How many men?”

Caleb closed his eyes.

“Six.”

“Pendleton included?”

“No.”

“Who leads them?”

“Rusk.”

Catherine lowered the shotgun.

Grayson watched her carefully.

“You know him?”

“I thought I did.”

Thunder shook the windows.

She turned toward the dark outside.

Her first instinct was to defend the cabin.

It was her father’s home.

Her land.

Her inheritance.

Everything Caleb and Jedodiah had tried to take.

Then she looked at the broken table.

The flour.

The blood.

Her injured shoulder.

Two men had nearly forced a signature from her while everyone who might have helped was miles away.

Six armed riders would not need her signature if they could simply make her disappear.

“We can’t stay here,” she said.

Grayson nodded immediately.

That surprised her.

“You agree?”

“A cabin is only useful if the people outside don’t know exactly where you are.”

Catherine looked at Caleb.

“Can you ride?”

His face twisted.

“You shot me.”

“I did,” Grayson said. “Can you ride?”

Caleb looked at his damaged shoulder.

“Not well.”

“You won’t need to.”

Grayson pulled a length of rope from a hook near the door.

Jedodiah’s expression changed.

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure neither of you warns Rusk.”

Within minutes, both brothers were secured in the root cellar beneath the kitchen.

Catherine stood at the opening.

Caleb looked up at her.

“You leave us down here and Pendleton’s men will kill us.”

“Why?”

“Because we failed.”

The answer stopped her.

Caleb’s arrogance was gone.

For the first time that night, Catherine saw what had been hiding beneath it.

Fear.

“How much do you owe Pendleton?”

Caleb looked at Jedodiah.

Jedodiah muttered, “Don’t.”

Catherine crouched.

“How much?”

Caleb whispered, “Eight hundred.”

She nearly laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because eight hundred dollars had apparently been enough for her brothers to decide her entire life was negotiable.

“The land is worth more than that.”

“A lot more.”

“Then why would Pendleton erase your debt for it?”

Caleb stared at the dirt.

“He wasn’t erasing it.”

Catherine waited.

“He promised us two thousand after the transfer.”

There it was.

Her brothers had not merely returned desperate.

They had made a business arrangement.

Her blood for cash.

Grayson closed the cellar door.

Catherine flinched as pain tore through her shoulder.

He noticed.

“That needs attention.”

“Later.”

“You may not have later if the joint’s badly damaged.”

“I can still move my fingers.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Catherine almost snapped at him.

Then she stopped.

He was not ordering her.

He was telling her what he saw.

“There’s a doctor in town.”

“Can you ride?”

“Yes.”

“Then we ride.”

Catherine looked at the shotgun.

“What about Rusk?”

“We make him come somewhere he isn’t expecting.”

Miller’s Crossing was seven miles away.

They reached it through freezing rain shortly before midnight.

Catherine’s shoulder screamed with every movement of the horse.

Grayson never told her to hurry.

Never told her she was slowing him down.

When she needed to stop, they stopped.

When she said she could continue, they continued.

The town appeared through the storm as scattered lanterns and dark roofs.

Catherine expected Grayson to take her to the sheriff’s office.

Instead he turned toward the livery.

“Why here?”

“Because Rusk wears a badge.”

She understood.

If Rusk was involved, walking into the law office and announcing everything could tell the wrong person exactly where she was.

They left the horses with old Samuel Pike, the stable owner.

His eyes widened when he saw Catherine’s face.

“Good Lord.”

“I need Sheriff Bell.”

“Rusk’s on duty.”

“I know.”

Pike looked at Grayson.

Then back at Catherine.

Something in her expression stopped him from asking more.

“I’ll fetch Bell myself.”

“And Doc Mercer.”

Pike nodded.

Catherine and Grayson waited in the small room behind the livery office.

The doctor arrived first.

He examined her shoulder, cleaned her split lip, and told her the injury needed rest and further care.

She listened.

Then asked him to bind the arm securely enough that she could travel if necessary.

Sheriff Amos Bell arrived fifteen minutes later.

He was sixty, gray-bearded, and angry before Catherine finished the first sentence.

Not at her.

At himself.

“Rusk asked for tonight’s patrol.”

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

Grayson leaned against the wall.

“Convenient.”

Bell ignored the comment.

Catherine showed him the deed.

The sheriff examined the witness signatures.

His expression hardened.

“That’s Rusk’s writing.”

“Are you certain?”

“I’ve signed reports beside him for four years.”

Catherine watched his face.

“You believe me?”

Bell looked at the bruises on her arms.

Then at the deed.

“I believe this needs answering.”

That was enough.

She did not need another man swearing vengeance on her behalf.

She needed someone willing to look at what was in front of him.

Bell sent Pike quietly to wake two men he trusted.

No bells.

No shouting.

No posse gathering dramatically in the street.

If Rusk believed Catherine was still at the valley cabin, Bell wanted him to keep believing it.

Then Grayson asked the question nobody else had.

“What does Pendleton actually want with the land?”

Catherine frowned.

“Cattle, I suppose.”

“Three hundred acres for cattle?”

“It has water.”

“So does half the valley.”

Sheriff Bell looked at her.

“Your father ever mention mineral rights?”

“No.”

“Timber?”

“No.”

“Railroad?”

Catherine almost dismissed it.

Then she remembered something.

Her father’s desk.

A letter he had received two months before his death.

She had found him reading it at midnight.

When she entered, he folded it immediately.

“Catherine?”

She looked at Grayson.

“There was a survey.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know.”

Her father had complained about strangers measuring land near the northern ridge.

At the time, she assumed it concerned boundaries.

Now she was not sure.

Sheriff Bell asked, “Where are your father’s papers?”

“At the cabin.”

Grayson looked toward the storm.

“Then that may be what Pendleton’s men are actually coming to collect.”

Catherine’s stomach tightened.

Not only the deed.

Something else.

Something her father had known.

Sheriff Bell made the decision.

They would return before dawn.

But not directly.

Two trusted men would approach from the south.

Bell and another from the creek.

Catherine was told she could remain with Doc Mercer.

She refused.

“It’s my property.”

Bell started to object.

Grayson did not.

He simply asked her, “Can you make the ride?”

“Yes.”

“Then make your own choice.”

She did.

They reached the ridge above the Miller cabin while rain still fell.

From there, they saw lanterns.

Six horses.

Caleb had told the truth about that much.

Men moved around the cabin.

One carried papers outside.

Another searched the barn.

Then Catherine recognized Deputy Rusk.

The badge on his coat caught the lantern light.

Something inside her hardened.

Grayson lay beside her behind a fallen pine.

“Do you see Pendleton?”

“No.”

“Your brothers?”

“No.”

Catherine suddenly sat up.

“The cellar.”

“What?”

“They know about it.”

A man emerged from the cabin.

Then another.

Between them stumbled Jedodiah.

His hands were still tied.

Catherine’s pulse hammered.

Rusk grabbed him by the coat.

Even from the ridge, his voice carried.

“Where is she?”

Jedodiah said something they could not hear.

Rusk struck him.

Catherine did not feel satisfaction.

She had imagined, for one ugly moment, that seeing her brothers frightened might make the night feel balanced.

It didn’t.

Violence did not become righteous merely because it reached someone who had hurt her.

Rusk dragged Caleb out next.

Caleb could barely stand.

One of the riders shouted.

“Find the woman!”

Sheriff Bell had heard enough.

He stepped from the trees below.

“Rusk!”

Every lantern turned.

Rusk froze.

Bell’s voice carried across the clearing.

“Put your weapon on the ground.”

For one second, nobody moved.

Then Rusk reached for his revolver.

The night exploded.

A shot struck the dirt near Bell.

Another cracked from the barn.

Grayson pulled Catherine behind the fallen pine as gunfire snapped through the trees.

“Stay down.”

She did.

Not because he commanded her.

Because bullets did not care about pride.

The exchange lasted less than a minute.

One of Pendleton’s men fled toward the horses.

Two surrendered.

Another dropped his weapon after Bell’s men surrounded the barn.

Rusk ran.

He reached the creek before Grayson caught him.

There was no dramatic beating.

No execution in the dark.

Grayson knocked the revolver from his hand, forced him into the mud, and held him there until Bell arrived.

“You should have killed me,” Rusk spat.

Grayson looked at Catherine approaching with her good arm holding the shotgun.

“No.”

Rusk laughed bitterly.

“You think a court will care about her?”

Catherine stopped.

Rusk looked at her bruised face.

“Pendleton owns half the county.”

“Not this half,” Bell said.

He put Rusk in irons.

By sunrise, the cabin looked as though a storm had passed through the inside as well as the outside.

Furniture overturned.

Papers scattered.

Mud across the floor.

Catherine stood in her father’s bedroom.

Someone had torn open the mattress.

Drawers had been emptied.

The desk had been forced.

“They found something,” she said.

Grayson examined the broken lock.

“Or they were looking for something.”

Catherine knelt carefully.

Her father had been suspicious by nature.

He never kept important documents where strangers expected them.

She ran her fingers beneath the desk.

Nothing.

Then she remembered being eight years old and watching him repair the floor.

One board beneath the bed had been cut shorter than the others.

She moved the bed aside.

There.

A narrow seam.

Grayson crouched but did not touch it.

Catherine pried up the board.

Inside was an oilcloth packet.

Her father’s handwriting covered the front.

FOR CATHERINE.

She stopped breathing.

Grayson stood.

“I’ll give you privacy.”

“No.”

He waited.

“Stay.”

She opened it.

Inside were letters.

Maps.

A contract.

And a document bearing the seal of a railroad company planning a route through the northern Bitterroots.

Catherine unfolded the map.

A proposed spur crossed the Miller valley.

Not along its edge.

Straight through it.

There was more.

Her father had negotiated terms before his death.

Not a sale.

A right-of-way agreement.

If the railroad chose the final route, the Miller estate would receive substantial payment while retaining most of the valley and its water rights.

Catherine sat on the bed.

“Pendleton knew.”

Grayson nodded.

“He wanted the land before the agreement became public.”

The remaining papers made the pattern clearer.

Pendleton had tried to buy neighboring parcels quietly.

Catherine’s father had refused to cooperate.

Then he died.

There was nothing in the documents proving Pendleton caused his death.

Catherine did not invent what the papers did not say.

But they explained why the valley suddenly mattered enough for men to ride through a storm with rifles.

Sheriff Bell preserved the papers.

Caleb and Jedodiah were taken into custody as well.

Catherine watched them leave.

Jedodiah would not look at her.

Caleb did.

“Catherine.”

She said nothing.

“We’re brothers and sister.”

She almost laughed.

Now blood mattered.