If you stay in this broken wagon, girl, the night frost will claim you and that unborn child before moonrise.
The wind howled outside Silas Gable’s ranch house, rattling the windowpanes. Ephraim Finch lay awake in his cot in the bunkhouse, shivering not from cold, but from a deeper, colder fear. The image of Martha, stranded and pregnant, haunted him. The cries of her newborn baby, echoing in his mind.
He remembered the sight of Silas and the deputies riding off toward the mountain cabin that morning. He knew what Silas was capable of.
Ephraim’s eyes fell on the small, locked chest in the corner of Silas’s private office, just across the yard. He’d seen Silas unlock it many times. It contained his ledger book, filled with figures and names. Payouts.
Silas kept it locked tight. He was too arrogant to believe anyone would dare touch it.
Driven by a surge of desperate courage, Ephraim quietly slipped out of the bunkhouse. The snow was still falling, thick and heavy. He crept across the yard, his heart pounding like a drum against his ribs.
The office door was locked, but the window latch was old and corroded. With a rusty creak, it gave way. Ephraim slipped inside, the frigid air biting at his exposed skin.
He moved quickly to Silas’s chest. He knew where the spare key was hidden—beneath a loose floorboard in the corner, a secret he’d accidentally discovered months ago.
His fingers fumbled, cold and clumsy, as he retrieved the key. The lock clicked. Ephraim lifted the heavy lid.
Inside lay a thick leather-bound ledger. He pulled it out, his fingers tracing the embossed title: “Gable Ranch: Private Accounts.”
He flipped it open, his eyes widening at the neat columns of figures and names. Dates. Specific payments. Jonas Albright’s name appeared multiple times, followed by significant sums and notes like “fees for expedited processing” and “boundary certification.”
Even more damning were the entries detailing negotiations with the “Continental Rail Conglomerate” for timber rights on the very valley land Silas was claiming. Silas wasn’t just stealing the land; he was planning to sell it off to the railroad, stripping it bare.
Ephraim knew he couldn’t keep this here. Not if it was to do any good. He had to get it to Martha. To Leo. To someone who could expose Silas.
His mind flashed to Hettie O’Rourke, the woman who ran the broadsheet. She printed the truth.
Clutching the heavy ledger to his chest, Ephraim slipped back out into the blizzard. He knew he was risking everything. But the image of that helpless baby, taken from its mother, was a far greater fear than Silas’s wrath.
He ran, head down, through the blinding snow, toward South Pass City. Toward the printing shop.
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