sleigh runners over crusted snow, a horse blowing through its nose, Clara’s spoon against a tin cup.

He asked her to repeat sounds not because he doubted them, but because each one felt like a piece of life returning too late.

Back at the ranch, Clara kept searching.

Rosalie’s note mentioned the north spring deed.

Two evenings later, she found it hidden in the torn lining of an old Bible cover at the back of a shelf.

The pasture Mercer had been underpaying for was not merely grazing ground.

A year-round spring ran through it, the only dependable water on that side of the valley.

Whoever controlled that land controlled the neighboring leases and the timber road as well.

That was motive big enough to rot a man from the inside.

Mercer’s notice arrived the next morning, ordering Elias to come into Saint Jude on Saturday to sign the annual timber contract.

Clara read it once and set it down.

We’ll be there, she said.

The bank was full by noon.

Men stamped snow from their boots.

Women gathered near the stove and pretended not to watch.

Tom was already drunk, one shoulder against the wall and a grin loose on his face.

Julian Vance looked twenty years older than he had on Clara’s wedding day.

Mercer Hale stood behind his desk in a black coat lined with dark red silk.

Clara felt her pulse strike once in her throat.

Dark red.

The same color thread twisted through the wool she had pulled from Elias’s ear.

Mercer looked from Elias to Clara and smiled with the confidence of a man who believed the room belonged to him.

‘Barragan,’ he said.

‘Glad you could make it.

I trust married life has settled everyone nicely.’

Tom snorted.

‘Told you he’d do it for fifty and a laugh.’

The room changed.

Faces tightened.

Julian flinched as if struck.

Clara turned to her brother slowly enough to sober him by degrees.

You wagered on me? she asked.

Tom’s mouth worked.

‘It was only talk.’

No, Clara said.

It was a price.

Mercer tried to move things back to business, but Clara laid three objects on his polished desk before he could.

Doctor Ellison’s statement.

Rosalie Barragan’s note.

And a mason jar.

Inside the jar, floating in clear spirits, was the blackened plug of wool, the earwig curled around itself, and the lead pellet shining at the bottom.

Every eye in the bank went to it.

Mercer’s smile slipped.

Doctor Pike, who had been standing near the stove with his hat in both hands, went visibly pale.

Elias stepped forward.

He had not spoken publicly in years.

When he did, the words came rough and uneven, but they were his.

You shot me.

No one in the room moved.

Mercer gave a brittle laugh.

‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

I know what I remember, Elias said.

I know what she pulled out of my head.

And I know what you stole afterward.

Sheriff Boone took Doctor Ellison’s statement and read it twice.

Rosalie’s note passed from one hand to another.

Pike’s face grew wet with sweat.

Mercer called Elias unstable, Clara hysterical, and Rosalie dead too long to defend herself.

Then Clara lifted the jar and held it toward Pike.

Look at it, she