Chapter 8 - The Ledger in the Rafters
Before dawn, while the desert air still held the sharp, metallic chill of the high plateau, Gideon was up and moving through the dark house. The grease on his boots was cold, and the floorboards groaned under his weight as he crossed the kitchen toward the back hallway.
The door to Henry's room stood half-open, the wedge of light from the moon cutting across the bare floorboards. He didn't look inside. He walked past it, his hand sliding along the rough plaster of the wall until he reached the low scuttle hole that led up into the attic space above the lean-to kitchen.
He hooked his fingers into the wooden panel and pulled. It came down with a shower of dry plaster dust and ancient, undisturbed cobwebs.
A hand reached up from the shadows beside him, steady and light as a bird settling on a branch. Nala stood on the step-stool below, holding a tin lantern with a low-trimmed wick. Her face was pale in the yellow glow, framed by the dark wool shawl she had pulled over her hair.
"You don't have to go up there," Gideon said, his voice rough with the morning cold.
"I do," she said. "Because if Miller comes back with the deputies today, they won't search the kitchen. They won't search the barn. They will search the place where a grieving man keeps his ghosts."
Gideon didn't argue. He hooked his elbows over the edge of the joist and hauled himself up into the dry, stifling heat of the attic. The air smelled of old cedar shingles, sun-baked adobe dust, and the dry, sweet scent of bundled sage he had hung from the rafters five summers ago.
He moved on his hands and knees across the rough planking, his shoulders brushing against the underside of the roof. In the far corner, tucked behind an old crate of harness leather and a stack of back-issues of the Arizona Weekly Star, sat a heavy leather saddlebag—the kind used by government couriers, its brass buckles tarnished green with age.
He pulled it out into the dim circle of light cast by the lantern below.
Nala’s face appeared in the scuttle hole, her hands gripping the edges of the opening as she pulled herself halfway up. She didn't wait for him to open it. She reached out, her fingers pressing the brass clasp. It gave way with a dry, muffled snap.
Inside, resting on a bed of folded wool rag, was a thick ledger bound in calfskin, its pages yellowed and filled with the neat, cramped copperplate handwriting of a man who took pride in every line he drew.
"Is this it?" Gideon asked, lifting the book.
"This is it," Nala whispered, her hand reaching out to touch the worn leather spine as if it were something fragile and holy. "Tomas spent three weeks copying the manifests from the agency safe. Every signature, every bribe, every head of stock delivered to Sodto's corral."
She looked up at him, the yellow lantern light catching the moisture in her dark eyes. "If this book reaches the territorial attorney in Prescott, Sodto's council is broken, the mining leases are voided, and the land comes back to the people who actually walk on it."
"And if Miller gets his hands on it before we reach the telegraph office?" Gideon asked.
"Then we burn it," Nala said without a second's hesitation. "And we spend the rest of our lives running."
Gideon looked down at the book, then at her face—so steady, so entirely devoid of the self-pity that had kept him locked in his own private cellar for four long years. He felt something shift inside him, hard and deep, like a frozen spring finally cracking under the weight of the thaw.
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"We aren't running," Gideon said. He tucked the ledger securely inside his wool vest, buttoning the heavy horn buttons all the way to his throat. "We're going to harness the buckboard. We're going to Tucson."
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