Chapter 17 - The Last Letter from Annie
Thomas survived the night.
Dr. Pike removed the bullet on the church altar because the doctor’s office had burned.
The entire town waited outside.
Jacob refused to leave Thomas’s side.
At dawn, Thomas opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was Jacob holding Annie’s letters.
“Did they burn?” Thomas asked.
“No.”
“Good.”
Jacob swallowed.
“My name is Jacob.”
Thomas nodded.
“Then Jacob it is.”
For the first time, anger left the young man’s face.
Clara discovered one letter remained unread.
It had been sealed inside the blue ribbon itself.
Annie had written it during labor.
Dr. Pike admitted she forced him to provide paper.
The letter was addressed to Thomas and their child.
Clara read it aloud.
Annie wrote that fear had entered their house through men who believed land mattered more than people.
She begged Thomas not to let hatred become James’s inheritance.
She also described the ledger’s true mark.
Every genuine page carried a pressed wildflower beneath the binding.
The ledger Edwin displayed in court had no flowers.
It was a copy.
The real ledger remained hidden.
Jacob remembered Annie Rose’s shoe floating toward the side passage in the mine.
The iron chest they found had contained documents, but its bottom was unusually thick.
Clara, Jacob, Miriam, and Pete returned to the mine.
They opened the false bottom.
The true ledger was there, each section marked with a flattened blossom.
It contained names far beyond Millfield.
Railroad executives.
State judges.
Mine owners.
Edwin had not acted alone.
He was protecting a network powerful enough to erase towns.
Miriam said local justice would never be enough.
They needed federal authorities and a newspaper willing to print everything at once.
Jacob knew a journalist in Denver who hated Edwin.
They sent copies in three directions.
By evening, telegraph wires carried the story across Wyoming.
Edwin returned to the South Creek tunnel to destroy the source of the poisoned water.
His plan was to blast the mine and flood Millfield with contaminated runoff.
Thomas overheard the warning from his bed.
He tried to stand.
Clara pushed him back.
“You have already taken one bullet.”
Thomas looked toward the eastern window.
May you like
“And my son is riding toward the man who fired it.”
