If you stay in this broken wagon, girl, the night frost will claim you and that unborn child before moonrise.
Silas Gable stood framed in the doorway of Leo’s mountain cabin, a formidable figure against the heavy freeze settling over Crow Ridge. The wind outside keened like a distant predator. Inside, the woodstove pulsed with warmth, a stark contrast to the icy threat in Silas’s eyes.
Leo was indeed away, wrestling with a downed pine in the lower ravine. It left me alone with Clara, who slept soundly in her cradle, oblivious to the wolf at our door.
“You think you’ve won, girl?” Silas’s voice was a low growl, devoid of his usual pleasantries. He took another step into the room. “You think a few scribbled notes and the blubbering of a paid clerk will stop me?”
My hand, still beneath the blanket, tightened around the pistol. His gaze, however, was fixed on the small leather-bound journal I had placed on the table, Thomas’s journal.
“You will surrender that journal, Martha,” he said, his voice flat and cold. “And you will sign a document stating that you leave Wyoming Territory, never to return. No claims, no appeals. You and your child will be gone.”
He paused, letting his words sink in. “If you refuse, I will use every ounce of influence I have left to ensure Leo Kincaid is jailed as an accomplice to land fraud and kidnapping. He rescued a woman who was legally declared dead, a woman who tried to steal property with forged documents. He’s harboring a fugitive. He’ll rot in a federal prison.”
He gestured vaguely toward Clara’s cradle. “And your baby. She will be taken from you, placed with a ‘competent’ family. A proper Gable family, perhaps.”
He waited, his eyes unblinking, watching for any sign of fear or capitulation. His face was a mask of unyielding greed and desperation. He believed he still held all the cards. He believed I had something he desperately needed.
The fire crackled, popping a stray ember into the hearth. I stared back at him, my heart pounding, but a strange calm was settling over me. He wanted to strip me of everything. My child, my protector, my future. He wanted me to break.
But his words had only cemented my resolve. He could not take what I had already given away.
“You want the journal, Silas?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady. “You want me to sign away my rights? To flee?”
He nodded, a hint of triumph in his eyes. “It’s the only way, Martha. For all of you.”
He hadn’t accounted for a mother’s resolve. He hadn’t accounted for sacrifice.
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