PART 3 — THE MAN WHO PAID TO MAKE HER DISAPPEAR

By sundown, Nathaniel Price was tied to a chair inside Gideon Hayes’s cabin.

Deputy Marshal Reed sat across from him, studying the hidden payroll receipt.

The second Pinkerton, Thomas Bell, had surrendered his revolver and insisted he knew nothing about the conspiracy.

Gideon stood near the window, watching the darkening tree line.

Clementine had prepared supper, but nobody seemed hungry.

“Who hired you?” Reed asked.

Price laughed.

“You have a badge, Marshal. That doesn’t mean you have power.”

“Answer the question.”

“Men with more money than this entire valley.”

Reed placed the receipt on the table.

“Then why is your signature on this document?”

Price’s smile disappeared.

“Because Amos Higgins was supposed to deliver the money, not keep it.”

Clementine slowly set down her spoon.

“What do you mean?”

Price looked at her with open contempt.

“Your husband wasn’t stealing from Meyer Brothers. He was stealing for someone inside the company.”

Reed leaned forward.

“Who?”

Price remained silent.

Gideon stepped away from the window.

“Listen carefully. Someone abandoned this woman in a blizzard because she knew too much. You’re going to tell us who ordered it.”

Price stared at him.

“You were a soldier once, Hayes. You should understand that some orders come from men you never meet.”

Gideon’s expression hardened.

“I also learned that following orders doesn’t excuse cowardice.”

For the first time, Price looked away.

Then Clementine spoke.

“His name is Edward Whitcomb.”

Every man in the room turned toward her.

Reed frowned.

“Edward Whitcomb? The president of Meyer Brothers Mining?”

Clementine nodded.

“Amos mentioned him several times. I thought he was only trying to impress me.”

Price’s face had gone pale.

That was answer enough.

Reed pushed back his chair.

“Whitcomb is one of the wealthiest men in southern Colorado.”

“And apparently one of the most dangerous,” Gideon replied.

Before Reed could speak again, a sharp whistle sounded outside.

Gideon extinguished the lantern immediately.

“Everybody down.”

A gunsH๏τ shattered the cabin window.

Glᴀss scattered across the floor.

Another sH๏τ struck the doorframe.

Reed dragged Price behind the heavy timber table.

Thomas Bell crawled toward the stove.

Gideon moved through the darkness with the practiced silence of a man who had survived battlefields.

He reached a narrow opening beside the chimney and looked outside.

Four mounted figures waited among the pines.

One carried a lantern.

Another held a rifle.

“They followed you,” Gideon told Reed.

The marshal cursed under his breath.

Price began laughing.

“I warned you.”

Clementine crouched beside the stove, her heart pounding.

Then she noticed something.

The attackers were not trying to enter.

They were positioning themselves around the cabin.

And one man was carrying a metal can.

“Oil,” she whispered.

Gideon turned.

“What?”

“They’re going to burn us out.”

A moment later, something heavy struck the cabin wall.

The unmistakable smell of kerosene seeped through the cracks.

Reed’s face тιԍнтened.

“We need another exit.”

Gideon pointed toward the floor.

“Trapdoor beneath the bearskin. Leads into an old root cellar. There’s a narrow drainage pᴀssage to the creek.”

“Will everyone fit?”

Gideon looked toward Clementine.

The question hung between them.

For one painful instant, she remembered the wagon train.

The starving oxen.

Her husband’s disgust.

The terrible words that had followed her into the snow.

You’re too much weight.

Clementine straightened.

“Don’t you dare leave me behind.”

Gideon crossed the room and took her hand.

“I dragged you through two miles of blizzard, Clementine. I’m not losing you to a hole in the ground.”

He pulled back the bearskin rug.

One by one, they descended.

Bell went first, followed by Reed and his prisoner.

Clementine lowered herself carefully into the opening.

The pᴀssage was narrow, but the old timbers held.

Gideon followed last.

Above them, flames began climbing the cabin walls.

They crawled through freezing mud until the pᴀssage opened behind a stand of willows near the creek.

The cabin was already burning.

Clementine watched orange fire consume the home she had spent four months transforming.

Her patched curtains.

Her carefully stacked dishes.

The table where Gideon had first told her she could stay.

Tears filled her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Gideon turned toward her.

“For what?”

“Your home. Everything you owned.”

He looked back at the flames.

Then he placed his rough hand against her cheek.

“Clementine, that cabin was just timber until you came.”

Before she could answer, Reed called from the creek bank.

“Hayes! Come look at this!”

One of the attackers had ridden too close to the frozen water and fallen from his horse.

The man was injured but conscious.

Reed had already taken his rifle.

Gideon approached cautiously.

“Who sent you?”

The rider spat blood into the snow.

“You don’t understand. Whitcomb wants the woman.”

“Why?” Reed demanded.

The rider looked at Clementine.

“Because she has something worth more than eight thousand dollars.”

Clementine felt her stomach тιԍнтen.

“What something?”

The man swallowed.

“A ledger. The original company ledger.”

Clementine shook her head.

“I don’t have any ledger.”

The rider stared at her.

“Then your husband lied to everyone.”

He looked toward the burning cabin.

“And Whitcomb will keep coming until he knows where it is.”

To be continued in Part 4.