Chapter 4 - The Voice from the Ridge
Caleb was on his feet in a fraction of a second, his Winchester already leveled toward the narrow cleft in the rocks that served as the entrance to Devil's Pocket. Mara moved with equal speed, dropping into a low crouch behind the limestone outcrop, her revolver drawn and cocked with practiced silence.
The sound came again—the unmistakable scrape of a boot heel against loose shale.
"Hold your fire," a voice called out from the shadows of the rock wall. "If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't have used a loose pebble to announce myself."
A figure stepped out from behind a jagged pillar of granite, pulling down a heavy woolen scarf to reveal a weathered, deeply lined face with a long, thin scar running down the left side of his jaw. It wasn't one of Ror's clean-shaved enforcers, and it wasn't Deputy Hail. The man wore a tattered Union cavalry coat over faded denim, carried an old Springfield carbine slung casually across his back, and looked like he had lived off rainwater and hardtack for the better part of a decade.
"Who goes there?" Caleb demanded, not lowering the barrel of his rifle an inch.
"Name's Garrett," the stranger said, holding his empty hands out where both of them could see them. "Used to run dispatches for the quartermaster back in sixty-four, and used to keep books for the Blackwood mining syndicate before I grew a conscience and took off with a ledger I shouldn't have seen."
Mara’s eyes widened slightly in the dim light of the alcove. She slowly lowered her revolver, though she didn't uncock it. "Blackwood," she whispered. "I remember that name. You were the clerk at Camp Three before the fire."
Garrett looked over at her, his sharp eyes narrowing with sudden recognition. "And you're the girl they called the ghost. The one who slipped through the barbed wire the night the payroll vault was cleaned out."
"I didn't touch their vault," Mara said fiercely, stepping out from behind the boulder. "I just wanted out."
"I know you didn't," Garrett said, walking closer with a slow, cautious limp. "I saw who took the coin, and I saw who forged the ledger entries to pin the shortage on the indentured hands so the bosses could write off the losses to the territorial government. Judge Vance was knee-deep in that swindle from day one. He’s not just a corrupt magistrate, Mercer. He’s Silas Ror’s silent partner."
Caleb kept his rifle raised, his instincts warring between suspicion and the undeniable ring of truth in the old man's voice. "If Vance is his partner, why are you out here freezing your bones in the high passes instead of cashing in with them?"
"Because Ror doesn't like loose ends," Garrett said bitterly, pulling a battered tin flask from his coat and taking a small sip before offering it toward them. "And I've got the only surviving copy of the original indenture manifests—the ones that prove Vance and Ror systematically altered the debt terms of three hundred workers to keep them tied to the mines indefinitely."
Mara stepped forward, her heart pounding against her ribs. "You have the manifests? The real ones?"
"Every last page," Garrett said, tapping his breast pocket. "And they're heading this way. Ror knows you left the ranch, Mercer, and he knows you didn't head south. He’s got four men sweeping the lower timberline, and he’s bringing Judge Vance up with him to make the 'legal' arrest official before the sheriff gets back from his cattle run."
Caleb lowered his rifle slowly, his jaw set in a hard, unyielding line. "They think they can corner us up here where no one's watching."
"They're counting on it," Garrett agreed. "And once they have your wife back on that paper, Mercer, they'll bury her so deep in the new diggings down by the river that nobody will ever find her bones."
Mara looked at Caleb, the fear she had carried for years suddenly transforming into something sharper, hotter, and far more dangerous: cold, calculated resolve.
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"We don't run anymore," she said.
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