Her Husband Sold Her and Her Baby to a Feared Mountain Giant for $100—But His First Demand Made Her Fall to Her Knees and Cry
PART 2
The g*nsH๏τ tore through the frozen mountain air, the bullet kicking up a spray of crimson snow as Evelyn collapsed to her knees with a choked cry.
“EVELYN!” Garrison roared.
The six-foot-nine mountain giant didn’t hesitate. He launched himself through the splintered window frame, his mᴀssive boots crushing the porch planks beneath him. He didn’t fire his rifle—he swung it like an iron club, smashing the barrel into the skull of the nearest gunman with bone-snapping force. The man went limp instantly, crashing into the snowdrifts.
“GET THE GIRL! SHOOT THE BEAST!” Edward Ellison screamed, leveling his revolver at Garrison.
“DON’T YOU TOUCH MY FAMILY!” a furious young voice shrieked from the barn.
Eleven-year-old Grace, her dark hair whipping in the gale, didn’t cower. She grabbed an iron pitchfork from the barn wall and lunged directly at Earl Whitlock, driving the tines into the coward’s leg. Earl howled in agony, dropping his weapon and collapsing into the slush.
Samuel Ellison racked his sH๏τgun from the barn door, blasting a cloud of lead over the heads of the remaining outlaws. “GET INSIDE! ALL OF YOU!”
Garrison scooped the bleeding Evelyn off the ground with one enormous arm while his other hand locked around Edward Ellison’s throat. He lifted the treacherous older man clean off his feet, slamming him into the log wall of the cabin until the timbers shook.
“Where is Hannah’s real child, Edward?” Garrison growled, his deep voice vibrating with pure, murderous fury. “TELL ME BEFORE I SNAP YOUR NECK IN TWO!”
Edward choked, clawing desperately at Garrison’s iron grip, but his lips curled into a bloody, venomous sneer.
“Ask your precious, faithful wife, Blackwood!” Edward wheezed, spitting crimson into the snow. “Ask Evelyn who she was sleeping with while you were out scouting for the army seven years ago!”
Hannah stood frozen in the cabin doorway, shielding baby Noah with her own body. The words struck the freezing yard like a lightning bolt.
An affair.
Evelyn, clutching her bleeding shoulder, looked up from the porch floor, her face pale as ash, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks.
“No… Garrison, listen to me!” Evelyn sobbed, her voice breaking. “It wasn’t like that! Edward threatened you! He swore he would butcher you in your sleep if I didn’t help him access the Blackwater silver survey!”
“You betrayed me?” Garrison whispered, his hand trembling on Edward’s throat. His gray eyes held seven years of agonizing, buried grief. “I tore these mountains apart looking for you and Grace. I lived like a wild beast in the dirt because I thought I failed you!”
“I never touched him, Garrison! I swear before God!” Evelyn cried, crawling toward her husband’s boots. “Edward wanted an affair! When I rejected him, he burned our homestead, dragged Grace and me down into the Blackwater mine, and kept us chained in the dark! He forged my name on the mining transfers, but he needed a male heir to claim the trust under territorial law!”
Hannah stepped forward into the cold, Noah crying softly against her chest. “Then who is this baby? Who is Noah?!”
Edward laughed, a dry, rattling sound as Garrison squeezed his airway. “Noah isn’t a Blackwood, girl. And he’s not an Ellison.”
Edward’s eyes flicked to Hannah, filled with pure malice.
“Noah is Earl Whitlock’s son, alright… but not by you, Hannah. Eight months ago, you gave birth to a baby girl in that squalid mining shanty. But Earl was sleeping with the saloon keeper’s daughter! They swapped your healthy daughter for the dying bastard boy, shoved you into the cabin, and made you believe Noah was yours so Earl could claim your inheritance!”
Hannah’s entire world shattered into pieces.
A daughter.
The baby she had carried, the tiny life she had fought to protect through starving winters… was out there somewhere.
“Where is my baby girl?” Hannah screamed, dropping to her knees beside the bleeding Evelyn, her fingernails digging into the porch wood. “WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?!”
“She’s with the county commissioner in Denver,” Earl groaned from the snow, clutching his punctured leg. “Sold for five hundred dollars the night she was born! The adoption papers were signed with your forged signature, Hannah!”
“And what Samuel said about me?” Hannah turned to her uncle, her voice shaking with terror. “Samuel, you said I wasn’t Edward’s daughter. You said I was Garrison’s!”
Samuel lowered his sH๏τgun, stepping into the lantern light beside little Grace. His weathered face was grim with sorrow.
“That part was the lie Edward made me tell to keep Grace alive,” Samuel confessed, bowing his head in shame. “Edward forced me to ride here and spin that tale to turn Garrison against you, Hannah. If Garrison believed you were his own daughter, he would never marry you, never protect you, and never combine the two halves of the Ellison-Blackwood deed.”
Garrison stared down at Edward. The mᴀssive rancher’s chest heaved.
“You used my grief,” Garrison whispered, his voice dangerously soft—the terrifying calm before an avalanche. “You tortured my wife. You stole my daughter’s childhood. And you sold an innocent mother and child like cattle.”
With a swift, brutal jerk of his forearm, Garrison hurled Edward Ellison twenty feet across the yard, sending the mastermind crashing into the heavy timber trough. Edward lay motionless in the mud, groaning in agony.
Garrison turned toward Hannah.
His enormous shadow fell over her trembling frame, but his gray eyes were filled with an ocean of fierce, protective warmth. He knelt in the red-stained snow, his mᴀssive, scarred hands reaching out to gently cup Noah’s cheek before resting on Hannah’s shoulder.
“We’re going to get your daughter back, Hannah,” Garrison said, his voice deep as mountain granite. “I swear it on my life. Every man who touched your child will answer to me.”
Hannah wept, leaning her forehead against his broad chest, feeling the steady, unbroken beat of his heart.
Suddenly, Grace screamed from the barn door.
“PAPA! LOOK AT THE RIDGE!”
Garrison’s head snapped toward the mountain crest.
Through the howling blizzard, twelve mounted horsemen had appeared along the tree line, holding burning torches that hissed against the falling snow.
At the front of the riders was a carriage bearing the gold crest of the United States Territorial Marshal.
Beside the carriage rode a tall, dapper gentleman wearing an expensive beaver-skin coat, holding a heavy repeating carbine.
Sheriff Walter Vance of Misery Bend.
Beside Vance sat the county commissioner, holding a wicker basket swaddled in pink wool.
A baby’s faint cry drifted through the freezing wind.
“Garrison Blackwood!” Sheriff Vance’s voice echoed down into the hollow through an iron horn. “Step away from the women! By order of the governor, Raven’s Peak is seized, and you are under arrest for the kidnapping of Earl Whitlock’s wife and child!”
Vance raised his carbine, pointing it straight at the wicker basket in the commissioner’s lap.
“Surrender the original silver deed, Blackwood,” Vance shouted with a sickening smile. “Or we toss the little girl off the gorge into the rapids before you can take another breath!”
Want Part 3? Comment YES!
