Chapter 3
The afternoon sun began its slow, inevitable descent, casting long, bruised shadows across the porch of the dilapidated boarding house. Eli pushed the wooden bowl away, his appetite entirely vanished. The mention of a box—and the legal release tied to it—complicated a trip he had planned to be short, quiet, and final. He reached into his coat pocket, retrieved a small pouch of tobacco, and began the slow, rhythmic process of rolling a cigarette without breaking eye contact with his newly discovered niece.
"A box," Eli murmured, licking the edge of the paper to seal it. "Your father never was a man of many possessions, but the few things he did keep, he guarded like a dog with a bone. What's supposed to be inside this little treasure of his?"
Clara crossed her arms defensively over the green dress, her shoulders squaring against the chill creeping into the evening air. "Land deeds, mostly. And a ledger from the freight company he worked for down in the valley before the company went belly-up under suspicious circumstances. People in town have been asking about that ledger for three weeks. Men who don't look like they care much about freight schedules."
Eli struck a wooden match against the heel of his boot, shielding the tiny flame with his cupped hand until the tobacco caught. He took a slow drag, exhaling a thin stream of blue smoke into the fading light. "Men with badges or men with guns?"
"Both," Clara answered quietly. "The sheriff acts like he owns the town, but he answers to a syndicate out of Denver that bought up the local rail spurs. They want whatever is written in those pages, and they aren't particular about who they have to step over to get it."
Eli nodded once, the smoke stinging his eyes just enough to make them water. He knew how those syndicates operated. They didn't build towns; they bought them, squeezed them dry of timber, mineral, and blood, and then left the carcasses for the buzzards. If Tom had stumbled onto something incriminating in a freight ledger, it explained why his disappearance hadn't raised any official eyebrows. A dead man couldn't testify in court about stolen land grants or rigged shipping manifests.
"Where is the box now?" Eli asked, his voice low and deliberate.
"Safe," Clara said, though the slight hesitation in her voice betrayed her. "Or at least, it was safe until the hardware store burned down last Tuesday. The cellar under the floorboards is where we kept the dry goods, but the heat warped the iron latch. I can't get it open by myself without breaking the lock, and if I break the lock, everyone in three blocks will hear the iron snap."
May you like
Eli finished his cigarette, pinching the ember out between his calloused fingers and slipping the stub into his vest pocket. He stood up slowly, testing his left knee as the joint popped audibly in the quiet air. The protective instincts he had buried under years of solitary wandering stirred back to life, unwanted yet impossible to ignore. Family was a trap, he had always told himself—a liability that got good people killed in dusty streets for nothing more than pride. But looking at Clara standing there in her patched green dress, he knew he couldn't just climb back on his horse and ride south.
"Get your shawl," Eli said, adjusting the brim of his brown hat. "Let's go take a look at this cellar before the sun goes down completely. If we're lucky, your father's lock is as stubborn as he was, and we'll need a proper pry bar to save us both a lot of trouble."
