They Shamed Her for Carrying Another Man’s Child—Then the Feared Mountain Man Stood and Claimed It

Chapter 4

Silas Reed read the second letter aloud, and each word landed in the clearing like a falling tree.

“After the girl is recovered, Montgomery must not survive.”

Nobody breathed.

“There’s more,” Silas said.

Billy lunged. “Give me that!”

Morgan caught him by the throat of his coat and shoved him into the snow. “Let him finish.”

Silas’s voice dropped.

“If confusion during the rescue should unfortunately result in the deaths of additional witnesses, compensation will be doubled.”

The seven riders stared at their own hands.

They understood now. They had not ridden up the mountain to save anyone. They had been hired as casualties — men who would die in a “rescue gone wrong,” their deaths blamed on a murderous trapper, every trace of the truth buried under the bodies.

“You brought us here to die,” Silas said.

“No.” Billy scrambled backward in the snow.

“You looked toward the trees before the first shot.”

“I didn’t—”

“You knew about Crowe.”

Silas raised his rifle.

Morgan stepped between them. “No.”

Silas stared at him. “After everything he did?”

“We take him alive.”

“To who? Your mountain court?”

“There’s a federal marshal in Fort Bridger,” Morgan said. “Someone his father can’t buy.”

Billy laughed — a broken, desperate sound. “You’ll never make it down the mountain. You understand what my father owns? The sheriff. The bank. The freight contracts. Half the land around Bitter Creek. You think some marshal is going to unravel all of that because a frightened girl tells a story?”

Morgan held up the silver cufflink.

Billy’s smile weakened. “One cufflink?”

“Plus a witness.”

“You?”

“No.”

Everyone looked at him.

“I wasn’t the only one near the harvest tents that night,” Morgan said.

Before anyone could ask who — a horse appeared on the lower trail.

One rider. Black coat. A grey mare moving slowly through the snow.

Billy’s face drained to the color of the drifts.

“No,” he whispered.

Abigail forgot how to breathe.

An old man dismounted. Tall. Thin. Silver hair beneath a black minister’s coat and a heavy wool cloak.

“Father?” she said.

Reverend Preston looked at his daughter, and for a moment the years of pulpit authority fell away, leaving only a man who had carried a terrible weight and could no longer hold it up.

“I deserve that,” he said.

Billy shouted, “Reverend, tell them! Tell them Montgomery kidnapped her!”

The reverend turned toward him.

And Abigail saw something she had never expected to see in her father’s eyes.

Hatred.

Not for her.

For Billy.

“I heard you,” Reverend Preston said. His voice shook. “That night. Behind the harvest tents.”

The world tilted.

Abigail’s lips parted. “You knew?”

“I heard you crying. I heard him threaten the church.”

“You knew.” The words came out broken. “You knew, and you stood in front of the whole town and called me a liar.”

“I was afraid.”

Abigail laughed once — a terrible sound.

“So you let them destroy me.”

“I thought if I forced you to name him publicly, the town would stand with us.”

“You raised your hand to me.”

“I know.”

“You called me a harlot.”

His face crumpled. “I know.”

Morgan’s jaw was granite. If Reverend Preston had been anyone else, the mountain man might have taken him apart with his bare hands.

The reverend reached inside his coat.

Billy shouted, “Don’t!”

Everyone turned.

Reverend Preston drew out a small, worn book.

A church ledger.

“I began writing down every payment Mayor Hastings made to the church after that night,” he said. “Large donations. Too large.” He held up several folded pages. “Then I found the mayor’s duplicate account book. The money wasn’t his. It was town money. Land taxes. Relief funds. Railroad money. Even donations meant for families who lost their homes last winter.”

The riders stared.

And for the first time, Abigail understood that the scandal of her pregnancy had never been the largest secret in Bitter Creek.

It had only been the one the Hastings family needed everyone to look at.

“Why come now?” Morgan asked.

“Because yesterday Mayor Hastings came to my church.” The reverend’s eyes moved to Billy. “He told me eight men were going into the mountains. He said you would be killed. And he said Abigail would probably not survive the crossfire.”

Abigail stared at Billy.

Billy stared at the ground.

“He planned to kill me,” she whispered.

No one answered. They didn’t need to.

“My father already knows,” Billy said suddenly. The smile returned to his face like a snake sliding back into tall grass. “He knows the reverend stole those books. And he isn’t waiting in Bitter Creek. He’s coming here.”

Morgan tightened his grip on the rifle. “Where is he?”

Billy looked directly at Abigail.

“He’s already on his way.”

A distant boom rolled through the mountains.

Not thunder.

The sky was clear.

Morgan spun toward the ridge. Another boom. Then another. Snow shifted high above them, cracked, and began to move.

Morgan’s eyes went wide.

“EVERYONE MOVE!”

A low roar built in the upper valley, growing, deepening, swallowing every other sound.

The entire white mountainside was sliding toward the cabin.