Silas Crowe attended the funeral.
Caleb looked toward Mara.
“He helped carry her coffin.”
Chapter 6: The Sheriff’s Name
Caleb wanted to ride into town immediately. His first thought was Sheriff Pike, partly because that was what ordinary people were supposed to do when they found evidence of serious fraud. Mara stopped him before he reached the door.
“Read the ledger again.”
He turned.
“We have enough to ask questions.”
“You have enough to tell whoever frightened Ruth that her evidence survived.”
Caleb stared at her.
Mara turned several pages.
Near the back, Ruth had written a series of initials beside payments.
One appeared repeatedly.
O.P.
Seventy dollars.
Fifty dollars.
Ninety dollars.
One entry contained the full surname.
PIKE.
Caleb’s anger became quieter.
“You think the sheriff was taking money?”
“I think Ruth considered the payments important enough to record.”
“That isn’t proof.”
“No.”
Mara closed the ledger.
“And until we know what it is, we do not hand him the only evidence.”
Caleb paced the kitchen.
“If Crowe had something to do with Ruth’s death, every day we wait helps him.”
“If Crowe had something to do with it, surviving long enough to prove it helps us more.”
He stopped.
Mara looked at him.
“We let everyone believe that box is still buried.”
Chapter 7: The Yard Was Never a Yard
Winter came hard to Dry Creek County. Snow filled the ruts between the barn and house, cattle needed extra feed, and the stone yard became a flat white field broken only where wind exposed pale rock underneath. Mara and Caleb said nothing publicly about the ledger.
At night they read Ruth’s papers.
Several names in the ledger belonged to families no longer in the county.
One widow had lost her wheat farm.
A miller moved east after bankruptcy.
Two brothers sold their freight company to a buyer later linked to Crowe.
The pattern was too consistent to ignore.
Still, they lacked direct proof connecting Crowe to each loss.
Mara began studying the yard itself.
The stones no longer looked decorative.
They looked organized.
Certain sections followed lines too straight to be aesthetic.
When spring softened the ground, Mara asked Caleb to help remove a narrow strip behind the kitchen.
This time he agreed.
They lifted stones carefully.
Four feet from the porch they found another metal container.
Then another near the well.
By May, three more had surfaced.
Ruth had turned the entire yard into an archive.
One box contained copied railroad contracts.
Another held statements from farmers.
A third contained freight manifests bearing numbers different from those Crowe submitted for payment.
Mara spread everything across the dining table.
“She knew somebody might search the house.”
Caleb looked toward the yard.
“So she buried the evidence outside.”
“And covered the hiding places with hundreds of stones.”
Caleb sat down.
For the first time, he understood why Ruth spent months hauling river rock after her marriage.
She had not been making a garden.