Then I looked back at her.
"Even then."
She reached for my hand.
This time, I took hers without hesitation.
And somewhere inside me, a part of my life that had been empty for eight years began to feel less empty.
The following morning, the deputy marshal received news that changed our plans.
A messenger arrived from Willow Bend carrying a reply from the district office. Additional officers were being sent, and the marshal had obtained authority to pursue the investigation beyond Cuervo Creek. The local doctor's statement had been documented, and requests were being prepared for records held by the freight company.
But there was another problem.
The red-mustached deputy had disappeared.
His horse was gone. His room above the freight office had been emptied. And the two husbands were nowhere to be found.
The marshal found me near the stable.
"They've run."
I stopped tightening Chester's saddle.
"All three?"
"Looks that way."
"Which direction?"
"North, according to a stable boy."
I looked toward the distant mesas.
"Silver Mesa."
The marshal nodded.
"Possibly."
We stood in silence for a moment.
Then he said, "If they're headed there, they may be trying to warn someone."
I thought about the younger woman's daughter.
A little girl who had been taken from her mother's arms and placed with strangers.
If the deputy reached Silver Mesa first, he might convince the family to hide the child or move her beyond our reach.
"We need to go," I said.
The marshal looked at me.
"We need to go carefully."
I nodded.
He continued.
"I'm not riding into a private estate and taking a child based on a copied entry and one frightened doctor's statement. If we do this badly, we could make it harder to prove what happened."
"I understand."
"Do you?"
I looked toward the stagehouse.
"Those women have waited long enough."
His expression softened.
"I know. And that's why we need evidence nobody can explain away."
We agreed that he would travel north with another officer, the freight records obtained so far, and the doctor's statement. I would accompany them as a witness and guide, but I would have no authority to search homes or take custody of anyone.
The two women wanted to come.
The marshal objected at first.
He explained the risks of long travel, uncertain conditions, and the possibility that the suspected offenders were nearby.
But the younger woman listened to him without lowering her eyes.
Then she asked a question that made all of us quiet.
"If that little girl is my daughter, who will know her when they bring her out?"
The marshal hesitated.
She continued.