Chapter 2 - Echoes of the Past
The second kick against the cabin door was heavier than the first, splintering the dry pine frame near the iron hinge. But instead of returning fire or shouting another warning, Elias moved with a practiced, silent efficiency that spoke of years spent surviving the harshest corners of the Colorado territory.
He didn't fire through the door. Instead, he grabbed a heavy oak storage chest from the foot of the bed and shoved it squarely against the entrance, bracing it with an iron-shod timber.
Outside, Wade’s voice rose in a furious string of curses, followed by the muffled argument of a second man—someone coarser, with a dry, hacking cough that echoed off the canyon walls.
"How many of them are there?" Clara asked, her voice steadying as she forced her aching body to swing her legs over the edge of the cot. The makeshift cedar splint on her wrist throbbed, but the pain kept her anchored in reality.
"Two," Elias said, crouching beside the hearth to check the priming of his Henry rifle. "Wade and some drift-rider he likely bought off with the promise of easy loot in the mining camps." He glanced back at her, his dark eyes narrowing. "You shouldn't be on your feet."
"I've spent enough of my life flat on my back because of that man," Clara said, her chin lifting with a spark of defiance that caught Elias off guard. She gestured toward the locket still clutched in her left hand. "You were saying something before we were interrupted. About my mother. About her name."
Elias stood up slowly, the rifle resting easily in the crook of his arm. He looked at the silver locket, then out the small side window where the horses stamping in the makeshift corral could be heard.
"Her name wasn't Miriam Bennett," Elias said softly, the harshness leaving his tone, replaced by an old, heavy sorrow. "In the spring of sixty-four, right after the war tore the border states apart, a woman named Sarah Vance came through the pass. She was running from a man who thought he owned her—a man with money, law on his side, and a temper like a cougar."
Clara’s breath hitched. "Sarah Vance? My mother always said her family was from Ohio, that her father was a respectable merchant."
"Your grandfather was a judge in Lexington," Elias corrected quietly. "And he didn't sell merchandise; he sold influence. When Sarah refused to marry the man her father chose for her—a cattle baron twice her age with blood on his hands—they locked her in her room. She climbed out the second-story window with nothing but a pocketknife and a handful of silver coins."
Clara stared at him, the pieces of her life clicking together with a sickening, revelatory jolt. All those years her mother had looked over her shoulder in every town they entered. All those strict rules about never speaking to strangers, never staying in one place for more than six months, and never, under any circumstances, letting anyone see the contents of her sewing box.
"If she was Sarah Vance," Clara whispered, "then who is Wade?"
"Wade Bennett," Elias said grimly, "is the son of the man your grandfather tried to force your mother to marry. When your mother disappeared, they didn't stop looking. It took them ten years, but they found her trail. And when your mother died last spring..."
"Wade didn't offer to escort me west out of kindness," Clara finished, the horrible truth dawning on her with crystal clarity. "He found us. He waited until she was gone, and then he took control of everything—not as a cousin, but as a jailer."
Outside, the shouting had stopped. A tense, heavy quiet settled over the clearing, broken only by the whistling wind through the pine boughs.
May you like
Elias walked over to the table, picked up a small whetstone, and began running it along the edge of his hunting knife with a slow, rhythmic rasp. "They think you're alone, Clara. They think you're just a girl with a broken wrist who'll fold the moment things get hard." He looked up, locking his steady gaze onto hers. "They don't know who your mother was. And they sure as hell don't know who you are."
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