He never came. But late that night, men came to my door. She looked at Jonah, her eyes wide with a horror that was finally making sense. They laughed. I heard them in the hallway.
They said, "The old man is done. Now we just need to scare the girl off. " They tried the handle. I pushed the dresser against the door. I sat there all night with a knife in my hand. Jonah looked at her and his heart broke for the terrified girl she had been.
But alongside the heartbreak, a dark familiar shame coiled in his gut. He looked at the ledger. He saw the dates from 2 years prior. Millie, Jonah said quietly. She looked at him.
Two years ago. He said, "Before I came back to this valley to trap, I worked a season as a guide for a survey crew. " He swallowed hard, forcing the truth out. It was Pritchard's crew. I didn't know him then. I just needed the money.
I led them up the north drainage. I showed them where the timber was thickest. I helped them map the very land he stole. Millie stared at him. The silence stretched thin and brittle.
"You worked for him? " she asked. I did, Jonah said. I took his coin. I helped him build the map he used to bleed this mountain dry. Guilt flared in his chest, hot and suffocating.
He had spent his life trying to be a good man, or at least a harmless one, but the web of corruption was so wide that he had been caught in it without even knowing. He had helped build the monster that was now hunting the woman he loved. "I didn't know," Jonah said, his voice rough. But that doesn't change that I did it. Millie looked at his face.
She saw the self-loathing there, the old scars of a man who believed he was destined to cause pain. She reached out across the table. She did not pull away. She covered his hand with hers. You were surviving.
Jonah, she said firmly, just like I was. Pritchard uses people. That is his sin, not yours. She squeezed his hand. But now we know.
And now we have the weapon to stop him. We have to take this to the judge. Not the one in Silverton. We have to go to Durango or Denver. We can't, Jonah said.
The passes are 10 ft deep in snow. And if we go down to town with this now, Pritchard will kill us before we get to the train station. We have to try, Millie cried. This is the truth, Jonah. It is right here, and you are alive right here.