But as she stood on the steps, her hand in Eli's, she didn't feel small anymore. She looked at the distant blue mountains, at the vast sweep of the plains. "It is over," Eli said, pulling her close. No, Maggie corrected him, looking out at the land that was finally truly theirs. It is just beginning.
The silence that followed the gunshot in the church was heavier than the shot itself. It was a silence that marked the end of an era in Bitter Creek, a sudden vacuum where fear used to be. Silas Crane lay on the pine floorboards, his ambition finally checked by a piece of lead, and the town he had ruled with a velvet covered fist stared down at him in collective disbelief. Maggie stood up, brushing the dust from her skirt. She did not look at the body.
She looked at Eli. He was pale, a smear of blood. Silas's are his own. She did not know on his cheek, but he was standing. He was standing like a man who had weathered a hurricane and found his feet on solid ground.
The aftermath was a blur of official papers and hushed conversations. Judge Blackwood was efficient and unsentimental. He set up a temporary office in the back of the mercantile and began the work of untangling Silas Crane's spiderweb of debts and fraudulent claims. The charges against Eli were dismissed with a stroke of a pen. The judge, peering over his spectacles, declared them to be a malicious fabrication.
More importantly, he ordered an audit of the bank's ledgers. It was discovered that Silas had been inflating interest rates and fabricating penalties for years. When the math was corrected, the crushing debt that had hung over the Mercer ranch for a decade shrank to a manageable sum. But the judge offered a warning as he handed Eli the restructuring papers. Do not mistake this for a permanent victory.
Mr. Mercer, Blackwood said, packing his pipe. The law has visited this valley, but it does not live here. Men like Silas are weeds. You pull one, and another grows in the next rain.
You keep your fences strong and your powder dry. Eli nodded, taking the papers. We will be ready, judge. The town's reaction to Maggie was slower to shift. As they walked out of the mercantile, the crowd parted.
There were no jeers, no bold stares, but there was no embrace either. The pastor's wife, Mrs. Higgins, stopped them on the boardwalk. She looked at Maggie's arm, still in a sling, and then at her face. I am sorry for your trouble, Mrs.
Mercer, she said. The words were stiff, like new leather boots that hadn't been broken in. We did not know about the fires, about the threats. We survive. Mrs.
Higgins, Maggie said softly. That is all anyone does out here. It was not forgiveness and it was not friendship, but it was a truce. The ride back to the ranch was quiet. When they crested the final hill and looked down into the valley, the reality of what lay ahead hit them.