Chapter 20 - The Man Who Ran
No one knew whether Gideon stole the ledger or someone stole him.
Eli hated the distinction.
Dorsey organized a search.
Hale denied involvement.
Naturally.
Nathan blamed himself.
Also naturally.
“I should've watched him.”
“He's fifty-eight years old,” Eli said. “Not a child.”
“He's my father.”
“That doesn't make him your prisoner.”
Nathan looked at him.
“You don't care if he lives.”
Eli started to answer.
Stopped.
Chaska watched from across the room.
Eli tried again.
“I care what happens.”
“That isn't the same.”
“No.”
Nathan looked away.
Eli understood something then.
Honesty could sound cruel when you wanted a cleaner feeling.
He did not love Gideon.
Not anymore.
Perhaps he never would again.
But he did not want him dead.
The search followed horse tracks north.
One rider.
Then two.
Then signs of struggle.
A dropped hat.
Gideon's.
Dorsey crouched.
“He wasn't alone by this point.”
Waya examined the ground.
“One horse came from west.”
“Hale?”
“Could be anyone.”
They followed into Red Knife Canyon.
Eli felt the decade folding over itself again.
Same walls.
Same dust.
Different chase.
At the narrow passage where he had once drawn riders away from Chaska, Waya, and Serina, they found Gideon's horse.
No Gideon.
Then a voice echoed.
“Eli!”
Nathan.
He had ridden ahead.
They found Gideon sitting against a rock shelf.
Alive.
Hands tied.
Lip split.
Angry.
No serious injury.
Eli dismounted.
Gideon looked at him.
“Took you long enough.”
Eli almost laughed.
“You're welcome.”
Waya searched the area.
“No ledger.”
Gideon looked at her.
“They took it.”
“Who?”
“Cole's men.”
Arthur Cole.
San Aurelio.
“Hale?”
“No.”
Gideon shook his head.
“Victor doesn't control this anymore.”
That changed everything.
San Aurelio's other investors were cutting loose compromised partners.
Hale might now be expendable too.
Eli untied Gideon.
His uncle rubbed his wrists.
“You came after me.”
“Don't make too much of it.”
Gideon looked at him strangely.
Then toward Chaska.
“Same canyon.”
She nodded.
“Some places repeat themselves until people learn.”
Gideon scoffed.
“Poetic.”
“Accurate.”
On the ride back Gideon explained.
He had indeed tried to flee.
He took the black ledger from Pike's evidence case using a duplicate key he had arranged years earlier.
He intended to trade it to Arthur Cole for enough money to disappear.
Cole's men instead took the book and left Gideon in the canyon.
“You stole evidence,” Pike said later.
“Yes.”
“You understand how bad that looks?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Nathan sat across from his father.
“Why?”
Gideon looked at him.
“Because I was afraid.”
Nathan's face changed.
It might have been the first honest sentence Gideon had spoken to him in years.
Fear.
Not strategy.
Not family duty.
Not protection.
Fear.
Gideon looked at Eli.
“I spent thirty years believing control meant safety.”
Nobody interrupted.
“My father lost land when I was a boy. Debt. Bad harvest. Men came and measured our house while we still lived in it.”
Eli had never heard this.
“Thomas remembered hardship and decided people mattered more than property.”
Gideon laughed bitterly.
“I remembered the same hardship and decided property was the only thing that mattered.”
Chaska listened without sympathy, but with attention.
Gideon continued.
“When Thomas refused Hale, I thought he was being weak.”
“So you forged papers.”
“Yes.”
“Manipulated my debt.”
“Yes.”
“Anna.”
Gideon looked down.
“Yes.”
Eli waited.
There was no excuse.
Good.
“I thought if you had nobody, you'd eventually let me make decisions for you.”
“You wanted the ranch.”
“At first.”
“At first?”
Gideon looked toward Nathan.
“Later I wanted to prove I had been right.”
That was worse.
Years of harm continued not for profit alone but ego.
Eli understood.
“I can't forgive you.”
Nathan flinched.
Gideon nodded.
“I know.”
It was the first time he did not argue.
Pike asked the question that mattered.
“Where will Cole take the ledger?”
Gideon answered immediately.
“Santa Fe.”
“How?”
“Stage route.”
Waya shook her head.
“Too visible.”
“Cole doesn't care. The pages incriminate men with enough influence to make searches disappear.”
Amos spoke.
“Then we need another copy.”
“There isn't one.”
Gideon paused.
“Except.”
Everyone groaned.
Eli rubbed his face.
“Of course.”
“Thomas copied some entries.”
“Where?”
Gideon looked toward the porch.
“No.”
“The iron box?”
“No.”
He pointed at the house.
“Your mother.”
Eli went still.
“My mother died before this.”
“She suspected me earlier.”
“What did she do?”
“She kept household accounts.”
Eli frowned.
“So?”
“Your mother never trusted banks.”
Gideon almost smiled.
“She hid cash in her sewing cabinet.”
Eli remembered the cabinet.
Gone.
Sold after his father's death.
“To whom?”
Gideon answered.
“Anna.”
Silence.
“Anna took it?”
“Yes.”
“When she left?”
Gideon nodded.
Eli closed his eyes.
The woman he had spent twelve years trying not to remember might possess the only surviving record capable of reconstructing the conspiracy.
“Where is she?”
Nathan answered quietly.
“Missouri.”
Eli looked at the calendar.
The full hearing was eleven days away.
Missouri might as well have been another continent.
Then Pike said, “Telegraph.”
Eli looked at him.
“We can send a message.”
“To where?”
Nathan knew.
“St. Joseph.”
Eli stared.
“How?”
Nathan looked embarrassed.
“Father had me track Daniel Reed's business two years ago.”
Of course he had.
Family control did not die easily.
Eli took paper.
For several minutes he could not write.
What do you say to a woman after twelve years?
Finally he wrote:
ANNA—
I HAVE LEARNED GIDEON LIED TO BOTH OF US.
I ALSO KNOW MY SILENCE HURT YOU.
I AM NOT ASKING YOU TO RETURN.
I NEED TO KNOW WHETHER YOU STILL POSSESS MY MOTHER'S SEWING CABINET OR ANY PAPERS FOUND INSIDE IT.
THE ANSWER MAY SAVE THE RANCH.
ELI.
He read it twice.
Then added:
I HOPE YOU BUILT THE LIFE YOU WANTED.
That was harder than asking for evidence.
Pike took the message.
At the door he stopped.
“What if she doesn't answer?”
Eli looked toward the canyon.
“Then we win another way.”
He sounded confident.
He was not.
That night he sat at the table where the original sale document still lay.
The pen beside it.
Eleven days.
A missing ledger.
A former wife hundreds of miles away.
A broken family.
Three women who had crossed ten years to return.
Eli touched the unsigned line.
Then pushed the paper aside.
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For the first time, the document no longer looked like an escape.
It looked like a weapon someone had expected him to use against himself.
