"He has my father's chin," the boy whispered, the words barely audible beneath the distant cracking of rifle fire outside. "My father had a scar right there... where the ear joins the jaw. From an iron trace-chain."
He looked at Emma.
"And she has my mother's hair. Faded red. Like dried clover."
He looked up at Eleanor, his face stained with tears and mud. "For six years, Mrs. Hayes... every time I rode out with Danner to serve an eviction on the north fork, he told me I was doing the work my father died for. He told me the settlers were parasites. He told me the law was a line drawn between civilized men and animals."
"Silas Danner didn't care about the law, Tom," Eleanor said gently, stepping closer and resting her hand on the young man's shoulder. "He cared about forty feet of anthracite coal and a railroad easement."
"I signed the eviction notice for your ranch," Tom choked out, burying his face in his hands. "Three weeks ago. In the clerk's office. Danner laid the paper before me, told me you had failed to meet the survey fee, and told me to sign as acting bailiff. I put my name to the paper that burned your home."
"Then you can put your name to the paper that hangs him," a rasping voice came from the door.
Elias had hauled himself up onto his right elbow, his back propped against the oak deadbolt. He was holding the territorial ledger open across his lap with his right hand, pointing with a bloody forefinger to the blank margin on page forty-four.
"You're an officer of the district court, Tommy," the giant whispered, his breath whistling through his teeth like dry wind. "Your father appointed you deputy under the territorial code before he took the stage. Danner never revoked the original commission because he needed your signature to validate the probate transfers."
Tom looked up, his eyes clearing with a sudden, desperate realization.
"A deputy marshal has the power to deputize a posse," Tom said. "And the power to swear an affidavit directly to the federal circuit judge."
"The circuit judge is sitting in Laramie this week," Eleanor said. "Seventy miles across the pass."
"Danner will never let a rider cross the canyon," Tom said, his voice hardening as he stood up from the communion rail. He wiped the tears from his cheeks with the sleeve of his coat, the grief in his eyes hardening into something cold, deliberate, and lethal. "He has three guards on the toll road and two at the railroad telegraph office."
"Then we don't send a rider to Laramie," Eleanor said, her eyes turning toward the high belfry where Mae Jensen was reloading the heavy Sharps.
"What do you mean?" Tom asked.
"The railroad telegraph line doesn't just run to Cheyenne," Eleanor said, remembering the surveyor's maps Daniel had drawn across their kitchen table during the long winter nights. "It cuts across the south trestle behind the sawmill. Daniel tapped into the copper line three years ago to listen to the cattle market prices. He left the key and the battery jars in the tool chest beneath the water tank."
Tom looked at her, his brow furrowing. "Can you read Morse code?"
"Daniel taught me," Eleanor said simply. "A woman who spends five months alone in a snowbound cabin learns whatever her husband leaves on the shelf. If we can reach the water tank, we don't need to ride seventy miles. We can put the entire transcript of this ledger onto the wire directly to the United States Marshal's office in Omaha before Danner can grease his axles."
The plan had the desperate, narrow margin of a badger caught between hounds and an iron grate.
Outside, the firing had ceased, but the silence was far more ominous than the crack of rifles. Danner had pulled his men back across the square, out of range of Mae’s Sharps, into the shelter of the mercantile and the livery stable. Eleanor knew what the sheriff was waiting for: the arrival of the afternoon teamsters and the heavy kegs of blasting powder stored in the cellar of the assay office. Once the powder was laid against the rear foundation of the church, the tamarack logs would be reduced to matchwood in thirty seconds.
"The old coal tunnel," Elias whispered from the floor. His head had slumped against his chest, but his mind remained sharp despite the fever glaze over his eyes. "Under the communion platform. The Welshmen dug it in '68 to bring stove coal from the creek seam without hauling it across the snow."
"Does it reach the gulch?" Eleanor asked.
"Comes out behind the timber mill," Elias muttered. "Fifty yards from the railroad water tank. But the roof... had three collapses four winters back. A grown man... can't walk it. You'll have to crawl."
"I've crawled through worse," Eleanor said.