Chapter 7 - The Weight of the Ledger
The wooden floorboards of the Fairplay marshal’s office creaked beneath Elias’s heavy boots as they stepped out of the sharp mountain wind and into the dim, warm interior of the building. The room smelled of pipe tobacco, old paper, and woodsmoke from a cast-iron stove glowing red in the corner.
A tall man with iron-gray hair and a star pinned to his canvas vest looked up from a cluttered oak desk. When his eyes landed on Elias, a slow, weathered smile broke across his face.
"Hart," the marshal said, standing up and stretching his long frame. "I thought you'd given up civilization entirely for the winter. What brings you down from the pass?"
"Business, Thomas," Elias said, stepping aside to let Clara come forward into the light of the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. "And a name you haven't heard in about ten years."
Marshal Thomas Vance looked at Clara. As his gaze traveled from her face down to the torn wool coat and the splinted wrist, his professional curiosity instantly shifted into something sharper, more personal. He stepped around the desk, his eyes widening as he stopped a few feet away.
"Good lord," Thomas murmured, staring at her chin and the shape of her brow. "Sarah? No... you're too young."
"Her name is Clara," Elias said. "And her mother was Sarah Vance."
The marshal went dead silent. The room seemed to shrink, the ticking of the wall clock sounding unnaturally loud in the sudden quiet. Thomas looked back and forth between Elias and Clara, his hands resting heavily on his belt.
"Sarah died last spring," Clara said, her voice steady and clear, carrying none of the fear that had defined her conversations with Wade. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the worn leather-bound ledger her mother had kept for a decade, along with the silver locket. She laid them both on the edge of the marshal's desk. "And the man who brought me west—Wade Bennett—has been using forged papers and intimidation to keep control of the property my grandfather left in trust."
Marshal Vance didn't touch the locket immediately. He stared at the ledger, his jaw tightening as he recognized the handwriting on the cover.
"Wade," the marshal said, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. "That miserable whelp followed her all the way out here?"
"He didn't just follow her," Clara said, her eyes flashing with quiet fury. "He kept us moving from town to town, took every dollar I earned working the dry-goods ledgers in Denver, and when I told him I was coming to the sheriff to report the missing funds, he tried to kill me near Monarch Pass."
Thomas looked up at Elias, his expression grim. "Did you find her?"
"Below the pass," Elias answered quietly. "Left for dead in the red stones."
The marshal drew in a long, ragged breath, walking slowly back to his desk. He picked up the leather ledger, flipped it open to a marked page, and studied the columns of figures detailing the systematic draining of Sarah Vance’s emergency funds by Wade Bennett over the past four years.
"He was in town yesterday," Thomas said softly.
Clara’s heart skipped a beat. "Wade was here?"
"Looking for a fresh horse and asking if a battered girl had come through with an old mountain man," the marshal said, looking up with a hard, unyielding glint in his eyes. "He claimed you were his runaway wife, Clara. Said you took off with his savings."
"He's a liar and a thief," Clara said without hesitation.
"I know he is," Marshal Vance replied, dropping the ledger onto the desk and reaching for his Remington pistol belt hanging from the wall peg. He looked at Elias, then back to Clara. "Wade thinks he's got the law on his side because of the false guardianship papers filed in Missouri. But territorial law doesn't recognize a forced indenture, especially not one signed by a dead man's crooked cousin."
"Where is he now?" Elias asked.
May you like
"Saloon down the street," Thomas said, buckling his belt securely around his waist. "Drinking up whatever cash he didn't steal from your mother’s trunk. Let's go pay your cousin a visit, Miss Vance."
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