“What happened?”
“Let me in.”
“Who did that?”
“Please.”
She opened wider.
He stumbled inside.
The cowboy immediately shut and barred the door.
The older man saw him.
His expression shifted from desperation to distrust.
“You.”
The cowboy ignored the insult.
“Who followed you?”
The father looked toward his daughter.
“You have the ledger.”
Not a question.
The frontier woman stepped backward.
Her sympathy vanished.
“How do you know?”
“Your father told me.”
The cowboy's eyes sharpened.
“My father?”
The older man realized the mistake.
Too late.
The frontier woman crossed her arms.
“You two have been talking.”
Her father wiped rainwater from his face.
“Give me the book.”
“No.”
“Girl—”
“No.”
“I am still your father.”
She laughed once.
“That title stopped working when you attached my body to a water-rights contract.”
The older man flinched.
The cowboy moved half a step closer.
The frontier woman lifted one hand.
She did not need rescue yet.
Her father saw.
Something like shame passed across his face.
Then fear replaced it.
“You don't understand.”
“You've said that often.”
“Your husband’s father knows the book exists.”
“We know.”
“He knows it's here.”
The cowboy stiffened.
“How?”
The older man looked away.
The frontier woman stepped toward him.
“How?”
Her father whispered:
“I told him.”
Silence.
Thunder rolled.
The cowboy stared.
“You told him where the evidence against him was?”
“I was trying to negotiate.”
His daughter looked as though he had slapped her.
“Negotiate.”
“He has men watching my property.”
“You sold me to him.”
“I was trying to save us.”
“Then you discovered proof he created the debts.”
“Yes.”
“And your response was to sell him the proof too?”
“No.”
The frontier woman pointed toward the door.
“What do you call telling him where it is?”
Her father raised his voice.
“I was buying time!”
“For whom?”
“For you!”
She laughed again.
It sounded painful.
“You keep ruining my life and calling it protection.”
Her father looked toward the cowboy.
“Tell her.”
The cowboy's face hardened.
“Don't ask me to translate cowardice.”
The older man stared.
“You think you're different?”
“Yes.”
“You're a Whitmore.”
The cowboy's jaw tightened.
“That's becoming less important by the hour.”
The frontier woman looked toward her father.
“How much?”
He said nothing.
“How much did he offer?”
“No money.”
“What?”
Her father sank onto a chair.
His wet clothes dripped onto the floor.
“He offered to forgive everything.”
The frontier woman's anger faltered.
“What everything?”
Her father looked at her.
Not like a patriarch.