18 Months Later

Aldridge was convicted on seven counts of land fraud and two counts of conspiracy to unlawful imprisonment.

Cormac sat beside Nora in the gallery when the verdict was read, and he watched the man’s face for some sign of the fear he deserved to feel. There was none. Aldridge straightened his coat, as though the words being spoken about him belonged to someone else entirely.

Eight years, territorial prison. Land transfers voided where documentation existed.

“Eight years,” Nora murmured, once they’d stepped out onto Helena Street. “It doesn’t feel like enough.”

“No,” Cormac agreed. “It never does.”

“Patrick got nothing. Clara got three weeks in a shed. Ruth Halverson lost everything she and Carl built together.” Nora shook her head, some of the old anger flashing through. “Eight years feels like a mockery next to that.”

“It’s what the law could give,” Cormac said. “It isn’t what he deserves. Those aren’t the same thing, and I don’t expect they ever will be.”

Nora was quiet a moment, watching the courthouse doors. “I suppose I should be grateful it’s anything at all.”

“You fought for it. Don’t let yourself forget that.”

She looked at him then, something softening in her expression. “We fought for it.”

Clara Voss filed for divorce on grounds of felony conviction and pursued it through an overworked territorial court with the patience of a woman who had already waited long enough. It was a relief that Clara no longer had to be tethered to that man.

One wondered if Elias Aldridge would ever face justice for what he had done. But he had. Finally.

“They keep asking me the same questions,” Clara said one evening, setting down a stack of papers with more force than was strictly necessary. “As though asking them a third time will produce a different answer than the first two.”

“Bureaucracy doesn’t hurry for anyone,” Cormac said.

“Bureaucracy can go hang itself.” Clara reached for her tea, then softened, the fight going out of her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I know you’re only trying to help.”

“No need to apologize to me. I’ve heard worse said about better institutions.”

That earned a tired laugh from her, the first real one Cormac had heard in days.

She came back to Harlan’s Crossing in the summer of 1880 as she had said she would—sharp-eyed and certain, with opinions about the north fence line that she shared with Cormac at length on her first evening back. He listened without interrupting, which she noted and approved of.

“You’ve let the posts go too far apart on the eastern stretch,” Clara said, tracing the line with one finger over a rough sketch she’d made at the table. “Cattle will push right through a gap that size, given time and inclination.”

“Duly noted.”

“I’m not simply making conversation, Mr. Doyle.”

“I never assumed you were.”

Clara studied him, something like approval passing behind her sharp grey eyes. “Good. Nora warned me you’d nod along and do as you please regardless. I’ve started to realize this the more time we spend together.”

“Your sister exaggerates,” Cormac muttered, though the corner of his mouth was quirking upwards into a smile. He looked at her, his smile growing when she let out a laugh.

It was nice to hear Clara laugh again. Nora used to say she laughed all the time, but she didn’t laugh much anymore, not after what happened with Elias—that time with him had left a scar that no one would be able to heal. It would always be there.

“My sister rarely exaggerates,” Clara said. “Though I understand she may make an exception where you’re concerned.”

The Voss parcel was cleared and fenced by then. The water access was documented and held in Helena. Two women holding land in the Yellowstone Valley in 1880 was not a simple thing. Cormac had stayed, doing his best to help her and her sister keep it.

“There will be men who try again,” Clara said one night, staring into the fire. “Not Aldridge. Someone else. There’s always someone else.”

“There might be,” Cormac allowed. “But this time the deed’s recorded proper, the water’s documented, and the whole territory knows what happened here. That’s nothing.”

“No,” Clara admitted. “It isn’t.”

Both of them had worked so hard to keep their land, and they weren’t going to let it go. Not again. Not for anyone.

Ezra Cole had not stayed with Aldridge’s outfit after the trial. His testimony had helped confirm the patrol routes, the line shack, and Clara’s movements among Aldridge’s men, and though the court hadn’t treated his word with the respect it deserved, Nora and Cormac knew how much of the case depended on him.

“Court barely looked at him twice,” Nora said, still indignant about it weeks later. “After everything he risked.”

“Courts rarely look kindly on ranch hands,” Cormac said. “Doesn’t make what he did any less true, or any less brave. What matters is what he said it was. What matters is that he was able to tell the truth. That does count for something.”

He took work afterward with Hector Aldridge, who had returned quietly months later to run what remained of the ranch as a lawful cattle operation, and Ezra was made foreman before the first winter ended—not as charity, but because he was the best man for the work.

Hector seemed regretful for what his father had done. He wished that he had spoken up sooner. He wished that he had said anything before it came to this. All he could do was take over his father’s ranch and try his best to run it the way it should’ve been run.

“Never thought I’d end up working for an Aldridge again,” Ezra admitted to Cormac one afternoon at the fence line, shaking his head at the strangeness of it.

“Hector’s not his father.”

“No,” Ezra said slowly. “Reckon he isn’t. Took some doing, but he isn’t. Hopefully he doesn’t start to change into him. Don’t they say we end up like our parents?”

Cormac grew quiet. “I’ve never found that to be true.”

Ezra just nodded.

***

During the sentencing hearing in Helena, Nora didn’t say much. She was quiet, watching the gavel come down, and seemed tired afterward. Once they were outside, Cormac watched Clara loop her arms around her sister, the two taking a walk down one of Helena’s streets.

He left them be, hanging back so they could have a moment. The last thing Cormac wanted to do was get in the way of the two sisters.

He found a bench near the courthouse steps and settled onto it, watching the sisters grow smaller down the street, heads bent close together in conversation he couldn’t hear and had no business hearing. Whatever passed between them belonged to them alone, three weeks of fear and months of silence finally finding their way into words. He could wait. He’d waited this long already.

On the way back, Nora was just as quiet as she was on the way there. Cormac glanced at her, smiling faintly. He didn’t press her. Didn’t want to push her when she was trying to gather all her thoughts.

Soon they came over the ridge above Harlan’s Crossing. The schoolhouse windows caught the last of the afternoon light, and Nora paused, stopping her horse in its tracks. He looked with her, watching as she took in the repaired door, the new glass, the fence line that ran straight along the river.

“Ready to continue?” Cormac asked gently, not wanting to push her any more than he needed to.

She nodded. “Yes, let’s go.”

At the River’s crossing, Cormac slowed his horse and stopped where the Voss land opened wide before them. For a while he only looked at the place they had fought so hard to keep.

It had come a long way in the past eighteen months. The water running clean, the posts standing straight. The home Clara spoke of building one day was standing strong, getting closer to being finished every day.

When he dismounted, he came up beside her and helped Nora down. She smiled down at him, giving her this smile that made his pulse race a little faster. No one had ever done that before. But then he met Nora. It took a while to realize it, but he had come a long way since he first came to Harlan’s Crossing.

The day he came to Harlan’s Crossing, he had been filled with nothing but grief and grave to settle. He hadn’t come here thinking he would find a home. Cormac was convinced he was going to settle his brother’s affairs and then leave. There would be nothing else after that.

But then Nora came to him, asking him for help.

It had changed everything.

This passionate schoolteacher, who wanted to find her sister, was the one who had taught him that there was more than vengeance. She had given Cormac a reason to stay that had more to do with revenge. Gave him a purpose.

Every truth—every road led back to Nora.

He never thought about it like that until a few weeks ago.

The two of them walked along the river crossing, hands together.

Cormac slowed his steps until they stopped altogether, the water running clean and quiet beside them, the fence posts standing straight where he’d set them himself.

“Nora.”

She turned to him, curious at the change in his voice.

He had no fine words ready, no polished speech fit for a schoolteacher’s ears—only the truth.

“Marry me.”

Nora looked at him, staring with wide eyes in shock.

The silence persisted, and Cormac wondered if perhaps he had said the wrong thing. He wondered if he had asked—

“Yes.”

—too soon.

Nora threw her arms around him, kissing his cheek.

He laughed, wrapping his arm around her waist.

The two of them sat there for a while, just enjoying the fact that they were to be wed.

Patrick would be happy for him. If he were alive, he would’ve been thrilled to know that the two of them were engaged to be married. Later, when he had a moment, he was going to go to Patrick’s grave marker and tell him all about it.

He told him he was now engaged to be married to Nora and that they were going to take the next step in a couple of months.

Clara would be thrilled.

It was not what he expected when he first stepped into Harlan’s Crossing. He thought he would’ve left long ago, but now Cormac was glad he’d decided to stay. This was one of the best decisions he had ever made.

Patrick would have laughed at him for taking so long to see it.

THE END