Chapter 8 - The Ghost of Powder River
The heavy glass doors of the bank swung open, letting in a bitter gust of mountain wind and a single shaft of brilliant winter sunlight.
A man stepped across the threshold.
He wore a battered cavalry overcoat, worn thin at the cuffs and stained with old camp dust. A wide-brimmed campaign hat shadowed the upper half of his face, but the lower half revealed a firm, square jawline and a jagged white scar running from the corner of his left lip down to his collarbone.
In his right hand, he carried a heavy, iron-headed walking cane; in his left, he held the exact duplicate of the silver Seventh Scouts token that Cora had shown Caleb in the cabin.
Thomas Sterling staggered backward, his boots colliding with the edge of his mahogany desk. He looked as though he were staring straight out of the grave at a phantom walking in broad daylight.
“Marcus...” Sterling whispered, the name escaping his lips like a dying breath. “No... that’s impossible. I saw you take the bullet. I watched you bleed out in the ravine!”
Lieutenant Marcus Vance stopped ten feet from the counter. He slowly lifted his head, his deep amber eyes—the exact same eyes as Julian, the mechanic from the docks—locking onto Sterling with an intensity that could melt steel.
“You’re a terrible shot, Thomas,” Marcus said, his voice deep, gravelly, and echoing with five years of cold, calculating patience. “A bullet through the shoulder doesn't kill a man when he has a score to settle.”
Sheriff Miller’s hand hovered nervously over his gun holster, his eyes darting between Caleb, Marcus, and Sterling. “Major... what is the meaning of this? Who is this vagrant?”
“He’s a dead man!” Sterling shrieked, panic finally shattering his composure. “Shoot him, Sheriff! Kill them all!”
Before the sheriff’s fingers could wrap around his pistol grip, Caleb’s hand flashed out like a striking viper. His thumb hauled back the hammer of his Colt Navy, the metallic click echoing like a thunderclap across the silent lobby. The muzzle was locked dead center on the sheriff’s chest.
“Try it, Sheriff,” Caleb said softly, his voice cold as winter ice. “And you’ll be the first one to join the audit.”
Marcus walked slowly past Caleb and Cora, stepping right up to the mahogany counter. He picked up the oilskin packet, pulled out the folded ledger pages, and laid them out flat beneath Sterling’s nose.
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“Twenty years of corruption, Thomas,” Marcus said quietly, tracing his finger along the signature line of page fourteen. “You thought you bought everyone in Wyoming Territory. But you forgot one simple rule of the frontier: dead men tell no tales... unless they left friends behind to dig up the graves.”
Sterling swallowed hard, his face turning the color of wet chalk. He looked around the lobby, realizing with sickening certainty that his empire had collapsed in less than five minutes.
