If you are looking for Silas O’Driscoll, you are staring right at him, the grey-bearded man said, holding out a weathered hand on the muddy wooden platform of the Fort Griffin depot.
The county seat of Albany was a collection of brick and stone buildings clustered around a small, dusty square. The courthouse was the largest, a stern, two-story structure of grey stone. Its windows seemed to stare out with a cold, unblinking gaze.
I dismounted Blue, my legs stiff and aching, and tied her to a post near a water trough. The rain had finally let up, leaving everything slick and smelling of wet earth. My dress was a disaster, my hair plastered to my head. I must have looked like a wild thing, newly emerged from the brush.
I walked directly into the courthouse, my boots squelching on the polished wood floor. A quiet hum of activity filled the main hall. I found the archive clerk in a cramped, damp stone basement, surrounded by towering shelves of moldering ledgers. The air was thick with the smell of old paper and mildew.
He was a thin man with spectacles perched on his nose, meticulously dusting a ledger with a feather duster. He looked up, his expression a mixture of surprise and disapproval at my disheveled appearance.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” he asked, his voice reedy.
“I need to see the 1861 Texas Militia Paternity and Heir Ledgers,” I stated, trying to sound more composed than I felt.
He frowned. “That’s quite specific. And old. Why do you need those?”
“It’s a matter of inheritance,” I said, holding his gaze. “For the O’Driscoll ranch in Shackelford County.”
He sighed, then gestured vaguely. “Over there. Section C. Be careful, they’re fragile.”
I spent the next four frustrating hours sifting through dusty, leather-bound ledgers. Each one was heavy, its pages brittle. My fingers grew grimy, my head began to ache from the concentration and the damp air. Meanwhile, I could almost feel the town rumors circulating upstairs, whispered echoes of Gentry’s handbills already reaching Albany.
“A woman alone, asking about old records for a dead rancher,” I imagined them saying. “Must be that swindler from Baltimore.”
But I pushed the thoughts away, focusing on the task. Ledger after ledger, filled with names, dates, ranks. Soldiers who had gone off to fight, leaving behind families, legacies.
Then, deep within a ledger titled “Texas Militia, Co. B, 1861-1865,” I found it. An entry, almost illegible, but there.
*O’Driscoll, Silas. Paternity claim for Thomas O’Driscoll. Son. Born May 1861. Certified by military surgeon, Dr. E. Kincaid.*
It was proof. Irrefutable, official proof that Thomas was Silas’s biological and lawful heir. It nullified Gentry’s argument that Thomas had no bloodline rights to the land.
As I carefully copied the entry, another name caught my eye on an adjacent page, in a different ledger. A tax record from 1860, for a small property near Galveston.
*Elihu Vance. Accountant, Baltimore.*
My blood ran cold. Elihu Vance. The name hit me like a physical blow. Vance was the name of the junior accountant in my father’s firm, the one who had absconded with funds, leaving my father’s business in ruins. The same fraud that had bankrupted my family and driven me to Texas.
My mind raced. Elihu Vance. Elihu Claggett. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The corrupt notary, Gentry’s enabler, was the same man who had ruined my family in Baltimore. He had fled south, reinvented himself, and was now involved in another scheme, another act of fraud.
A wave of righteous fury, cold and clear, washed over me. This wasn’t just about Silas’s ranch anymore. It was personal.
I looked at the paternity record, then at the details of Elihu Vance. Armed with this official paternity result and the evidence of Claggett’s fraud, I finally had the ammunition I needed. I had to expose him. I had to expose them all.
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