Read Chapter 17: The Preacher's Sermon

Morning light came weak through the pines, gray as dishwater, and Eli smelled smoke on the wind. Not the clean smoke of a campfire—the thick, greasy smoke of a burned stable, still drifting from town. Dorothea’s fire. It had bought them the night. Whether it would buy them the day was another question.

He knelt at the edge of the claim’s shallow cut, dirt still fresh over Otis’s grave. No marker. No words. Just a mound of turned earth and a man who’d died with a name half-spoken on his lips. Eli pressed his palm flat against the ground, then stood.

Behind him, the strongbox sat open in the saddlebag he’d taken from a dead man’s horse—Barnes’s horse, he corrected himself. Barnes’s sacrifice. The deeds, the letters, the photograph of Jack Rourke swinging from a beam with Calvin Cross smiling beneath him. Evidence. But evidence meant nothing if he was dead before he could use it.

He needed the ledger. And the ledger was under the altar of the church.

The hills were quiet in a way that felt wrong. Too many birds gone silent. Eli moved low along the ridgeline, keeping to the thickest brush, working his way down toward the town’s eastern edge. He’d gone maybe half a mile when he heard them—horses, three of them, coming up the switchback trail he’d meant to cross.

He dropped into a shallow gully, pressing himself against the cold earth. The riders crested the rise forty yards off. Calvin’s men. He recognized the big bay mare ridden by a man named Purdy, who’d once tried to cheat him at cards in a Sacramento saloon. Purdy had a Winchester across his saddle and a hangman’s coil tied to his pommel.

They stopped at the ridge, scanning the valley.

“He’s not up here,” Purdy said. “Cross said to check the claim. We checked the claim. Nothin’ but a fresh grave and some boot prints heading east.”

“Fresh grave?” the other man said.

“Somebody buried somebody up there. Don’t know who. Don’t care. Stone’s the target. Let’s ride the north tree line.”

The third rider—a younger man, maybe nineteen—spit into the dirt. “Preacher said Cross pays double if we bring him in alive so the hanging’s a show.”

“Preacher don’t pay us. Cross pays us. And Cross said hang on sight. You want to argue with Cross?”

The young man shook his head. Purdy turned his horse down the trail and the others followed, disappearing into the tree line east of Eli’s position.

Eli stayed in the gully until the hoofbeats faded. Preacher. Calvin Cross’s influence ran so deep even the pulpit was in on the bounty. That fit with what Otis had said—the preacher kept the ledger of secrets. But if the preacher was in Calvin’s pocket, he wouldn’t just hand it over.

Eli needed a different angle.

He made his way down the eastern slope as the sun climbed, burning off the morning haze. The town sprawled below him, still streaked with soot from the stable fire. People moved through the streets, but not with the easy rhythm of a market morning. They hurried. They looked over their shoulders.

By the time he reached the edge of town, he’d stripped off his trail coat and turned it inside out—a dark, sober black. He’d found a collarless shirt in Barnes’s saddlebag, and he put it on beneath the coat. Not much of a disguise, but enough if he kept his head down and his hat brim low.

He was crossing behind the livery when he heard boots on the boardwalk ahead. Two men, both armed, both wearing Calvin’s colors—a red bandanna tied around the left arm. They were checking doorways, peering into alleys.

Eli ducked into the narrow gap between the livery and the saddlery. His options were thin. Calvin’s men were sweeping the town in a grid. The church was two streets over, but the open ground between here and there was a killing field if anyone recognized him.

Then he heard it—a voice, raised in a singsong cadence, coming from the direction of the church. A sermon. But it was early for Sunday service. Unless Calvin had ordered a gathering.

Eli moved to the edge of the gap and peered toward the church. A knot of people stood outside the double doors—maybe thirty of them, mostly women and old men. A man in a black cassock stood on the steps, arms raised, preaching loudly about sin and retribution. The congregants nodded along, but Eli caught the flicker in their eyes. Fear, not faith.

The preacher’s sermon was aimed at them, but the words were for Calvin. A performance. A reminder of who held the whip.

Eli’s mind turned. A disguise. A preacher. It was risky, laughably risky—but the search parties were checking travelers, miners, men on foot. Would they stop a man of the cloth walking between buildings?

He waited until the sermon ended and the congregants dispersed, drifting back to their homes and shops. The preacher stepped down from the church steps and walked toward the parsonage beside the chapel. Eli followed at a distance, keeping to the shadows.

The preacher entered the small house and closed the door. Eli circled around the back and found a window with a warped shutter. Through the gap, he saw the preacher inside—not changing out of his cassock, but kneeling at a table, writing something on a scrap of paper. His hands shook.

Eli tried the back door. Unlocked.

He slipped inside, closing it soft behind him. The preacher didn’t hear him. He was muttering under his breath, hunched over the paper.

“Dear God,” the preacher whispered, “forgive me for what I have done in your house. Forgive me for the ledger. Forgive me for—“

“For what, exactly?”

The preacher went rigid. He turned slowly, eyes wide, and saw Eli standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Don’t scream,” Eli said. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here for the ledger.”

The preacher’s face went pale. “You’re him. You’re Stone. They’re hunting you everywhere.”

“I know. They won’t find me if I look like you.”

The preacher shook his head, backing toward the table. “You don’t understand. Calvin Cross owns this town. He owns the sheriff. He owns the mayor. He owns me. If I give you that ledger, he’ll kill me.”

“He’ll kill you either way when he finds out I was here.”

The preacher’s hand moved under the table. Eli saw it too late—a small bell pull attached to a wire running through the wall. The preacher yanked it.

Eli crossed the room in three strides, grabbing the preacher by the cassock and dragging him away from the wall. The bell had already rung somewhere. Someone would come.

“Where’s the ledger?” Eli hissed.

The preacher’s face crumbled. “Under the altar. Beneath the loose stone at the foot of the cross. But you’ll never make it—they’ll be here in minutes.”

Eli shoved the preacher toward the back room and slammed the door. He stripped off his coat and pulled the cassock over his head—it was too big, hanging loose on his frame, but it would do. He grabbed a Bible off the table, tucked it under his arm, and walked out the front door of the parsonage just as three of Calvin’s men rounded the corner.

Purdy was in the lead. He saw the cassock, the Bible, and slowed.

“Preacher,” Purdy said. “You rang the bell?”

Eli lowered his chin, deepened his voice. “False alarm. Thought I saw a man in the brush behind the house. Turned out to be a deer.”

Purdy squinted. “You feeling all right, Preacher? You look peaky.”

“Haven’t been sleeping. This business with Stone has the whole town on edge.”

Purdy nodded slowly. “We’ll do a sweep of the parsonage anyway, just to be safe.”

“Of course,” Eli said, stepping aside. “I’ll be in the church if you need me. I’m going to pray for the good Lord to deliver justice.”

Purdy grunted and waved his men toward the house. Eli walked down the short path to the church doors, heart hammering against his ribs. He pushed open the heavy oak door and stepped inside.

The church was dim, lit only by the morning light through high windows. He walked to the altar, dropped to his knees, and reached beneath the foot of the cross. The stone was loose, just as the preacher said. He pried it up.

Inside the hollow was a thick leather-bound book.

Eli pulled it free and opened it. Names. Deeds. Bribes. Threats. Dates going back years. The sheriff’s signature appeared on page after page, notarizing Calvin’s purchases of men’s souls. The current sheriff—the man Otis had told him about, the one Calvin had put in office after the last one died in a mysterious mining accident—his signature was all over the recent pages.

But it was the last entry that froze Eli’s blood.

*September 14. Mayor Ellis found dead in his office. Ruled a suicide. C.C. paid Sheriff Barnes $500 to file the report. New mayor to be sworn in Friday.*

Barnes. The sheriff Eli had trusted. The sheriff who’d given him the map. The same Barnes who had told Otis to stay quiet about the cache.

Barnes had been Calvin’s man all along.