Chapter 19 - Sunrise on the Hill
Thomas insisted on going.
Clara bound his wound and did not waste time arguing.
Jacob rode beside him up the hill.
Neither man spoke until the cemetery came into view.
Edwin stood behind Annie’s headstone with one arm around Annie Rose.
A pistol rested against the child’s coat.
The wildflowers from the previous Friday still filled the iron holder.
Edwin demanded the true ledger and Jacob’s public statement renouncing the Hail name.
Jacob carried a wrapped book.
He placed it on the ground.
“I will say whatever releases her.”
Thomas looked at him.
Jacob did not look back.
Edwin pushed Annie Rose forward but kept hold of her collar.
Clara approached from the lower path while federal marshals waited beyond the trees.
Edwin had positioned men behind the stones.
Any shot would endanger the child.
Annie Rose began talking.
She told Edwin that carnations were dishonest.
He stared at her.
She said her other Annie had known that.
Then she pulled a handful of loose dirt from the flower holder and threw it into his eyes.
Jacob lunged.
The pistol fired into the sky.
Thomas pulled Annie Rose away.
Edwin and Jacob crashed against Annie’s headstone.
Edwin reached for a second weapon hidden in his boot.
Gideon stepped from behind the stone and took the blade across his arm.
Sheriff Doyle disarmed Edwin.
Federal marshals surrounded the grave.
Edwin laughed even after they chained him.
“You think this ends with me?”
Miriam held up the morning newspaper.
The Vale ledger filled the front page.
Arrests had begun in Cheyenne and Denver.
“It did not end with you,” she said.
“It started with Annie.”
Edwin was led down the hill.
Jacob remained beside the grave.
He touched the carved name with trembling fingers.
Thomas stood a few feet away, giving him space exactly as Clara had once given Thomas.
Jacob finally looked at him.
“I do not know how to be your son.”
Thomas answered quietly.
“I do not know how to be your father.”
Annie Rose slipped one hand into each of theirs.
“Then practice,” she said.
Behind them, Clara opened the wrapped book Jacob had brought.
It was not the ledger.
It was Annie’s book of opinions.
A new note had been written in the final margin.
In Ruth’s hand.
May you like
Edwin is not Silas’s only son.
