said.
Her father looked at her.
“God doesn’t get this choice.”
She closed the book.
“You answer to the living first.”
Sheriff Nathan Cole arrived twenty minutes later.
Merrick had fetched him himself.
Silas did not resist when the sheriff heard enough to decide the matter required investigation.
The frontier did not provide clean justice.
Evidence aged.
Witnesses died.
Memories shifted.
Accidents and crimes tangled together.
But written confessions mattered.
So did falsified medical records.
So did a dead wife whose surviving son now testified that a physician deliberately withheld aid.
Silas Ashford walked out of his house between the sheriff and deputy shortly before sunset.
Half of Coldwater watched.
For once, nobody watched Gideon.
They watched the doctor.
Rosalie stood on the porch beside her husband.
Silas paused before stepping into the sheriff’s wagon.
“Rosalie.”
She did not move.
“I am your father.”
Rosalie looked at him for a
