The wind shifted again, carrying a faint smell of smoke from somewhere down the ridge. Anthony’s eyes flicked to the tree line.
“Could be residual or a lookout,” he said. “Someone watching. Could be Vanburgh’s boys.”
He crouched by the side of the cabin and tapped at the blackened soil near the remains of the front porch.
“Footprints,” he said quietly. “Small, light. Quick. No telling if they’re fresh. Could be hours old. Could be minutes.”
Anthony straightened, glancing around, whispering to himself as he paced.
“No match for me. But who knows what Vanburgh’s got stashed out here?”
He moved back toward the doorway, crouching low to examine the burned threshold. He paused at a collapsed window frame.
“No soot on the outside glass,” he said. “They wanted it to burn in, not out. Makes sense.”
Anthony crouched beside a half-burned table. He plucked a warped nail from the ash and turned it over in his hand. He stood abruptly, glancing at Spirit. She was shifting nervously.
“Don’t worry, girl,” he said. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
Anthony straightened, taking a step back and surveying the homestead as a whole. The light was catching the distant peaks now, but the shadow over his land felt heavy.
“Check every corner,” he said to himself. “Check for clues they didn’t mean to leave.”
He kicked a pile of debris, uncovering a faint streak of dark liquid along the floor.
“Oil,” he said. “There’s a spill pattern here.”
Anthony stood in the ashes of his homestead, fists curling and uncurling at his sides. The charred beams groaned as the morning wind stirred through them, sounding almost like voices of the past. He had pieced together enough to know the fire was no accident.
Everything in his gut pointed to Vanburgh.
But standing here and knowing it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t fight Vanburgh’s men and the bounty hunters breathing down his neck without proof, without someone who would believe him.
The sheriff wouldn’t. Muldoon had made that clear in the office when he locked him up instead of listening. And the townsfolk wouldn’t risk themselves. Not against Vanburgh’s money, not against killers like Tate.
That left only one person.
Abigail.
Anthony’s jaw tightened as he thought of her face and her sharp eyes that saw more than most and the steel in her voice when she spoke her mind. She’d listened before, when no one else would. She’d seen what Vanburgh was capable of. She’d seen how far the man would go to choke the life out of anything that stood in his way. If there was anyone who might stand with him now, it was her.
Though reaching her wouldn’t be simple. Not with bounty hunters combing the ridges, rifles ready to cut him down the second he slipped. Not with Muldoon watching the streets of Silver Cross, waiting for him to stumble back into town where the law could pin him again.
He crouched low, tracing one finger across the blackened soil at his feet. He smeared soot across his skin.
“Every trail leads back to Vanburgh,” he muttered. “But I can’t face him alone. Not yet.”
Spirit snorted softly behind him, pawing at the dirt as if urging him on. Anthony rose and gave her a steadying pat on the neck.
“We’ll ride light, girl,” he said. “Keep to the draws and the back trails. Stay out of sight until we hit the valley floor.”
He lifted his eyes toward the horizon where the town lay hidden behind folds of rock and pine. Somewhere beyond that, Abigail would be waiting. Or maybe she’d already heard whispers of what Vanburgh was up to.
Either way, she was the only voice he trusted in a place full of bought silence.
Anthony took one last look at the ruins of his homestead. The skeletal frame of the cabin stood like a monument to everything Vanburgh had taken from him. He burned the sight into his memory, knowing it would be fuel for the fight ahead.
“Not the end,” he said quietly. “Not yet. You didn’t finish me, Vanburgh. Not by a sight.”
