Chapter 7 - The Price of a Son
Edwin ordered Sheriff Doyle to take the documents.
Gideon stepped between the rifle and Clara.
“You promised no one would be harmed,” Gideon said.
Edwin laughed softly.
“My father made promises to weak men.”
Clara understood then that Gideon had led them to the chamber deliberately.
He had wanted them to find what Edwin could not.
Thomas had been jailed.
The ranch had been burned.
Annie Rose had been used as bait.
And Clara had trusted the wrong man.
Edwin offered a bargain.
He would reveal James’s location if Clara signed over the South Creek land and surrendered Annie’s letters.
She refused.
Doyle raised the rifle.
Gideon moved suddenly.
He knocked the barrel into the wall as Clara threw the lantern.
Darkness swallowed the chamber.
Clara crawled beneath a shelf while two men struggled near the entrance.
A shot exploded.
Someone fell.
She found Gideon’s second key and escaped through a narrow drainage tunnel that opened beside the creek.
She ran barefoot after losing one shoe in the mud.
When she reached town, Thomas was no longer in the jail.
The cell door stood open.
Blood marked the floor.
Sheriff Doyle’s deputy lay unconscious behind the desk.
A note had been pinned to the wall.
Bring the letters to the north bridge by midnight.
Come alone if you want both Hail men alive.
Clara went to Reverend Cole.
She showed him the photograph and the baptism record.
He rang the church bell once, then gathered six townsmen he trusted.
Pete from the general store brought rifles.
The schoolteacher brought Annie Rose and refused to leave.
“This family has had enough people deciding what truths they can survive,” she said.
At midnight Clara approached the north bridge carrying a satchel.
Edwin waited beside a covered wagon.
Thomas was tied to the railing.
Beside him stood a tall young man with dark hair and Thomas’s gray eyes.
The young man looked at Clara with confusion.
Edwin placed a pistol against his back.
“Clara Bennett Hail,” Edwin said.
May you like
“Meet your husband’s son.”
