Wade shot me while I held our baby.
The force knocked me backward into the prairie grass. I curled around Elsie as I fell, keeping her beneath my shoulder and away from the ground. She began to cry.
I pressed my hand against the wound below my ribs. Blood warmed my fingers.
“She is your daughter,” I told him.
Wade stood a few paces away with the revolver at his side.
“Not according to the letter.”
Three days earlier, an envelope had arrived at our camp. It claimed that a doctor in Missouri had examined Elsie and found that Wade could not be her father. It carried his mother’s signature beneath a warning about me.
Elsie had never been examined by any doctor in Missouri. I had told Wade that as soon as he showed me the letter. He had believed the signature instead.
“She warned me about you,” he said then.
Now we were alone in the prairie, far from the wagon road. Wade had said we were going to speak to his mother in town. I had brought Elsie because I thought an argument in front of her grandmother was the worst that could happen.
Wade crouched beside us. Elsie gripped my dress with one small fist.
He reached for her blanket.
“If she isn’t mine,” he said, “you can take her secret to the grave.”
“Then why are you reaching for her?”
His hand stopped.
He was staring at the fold of cloth beneath Elsie’s head. Inside it was an envelope I had hidden that morning: the last letter his father, Samuel, had written before he died.
Samuel had named Elsie in his will. He had also left her a trust large enough to change the future of Wade’s family. His letter asked me to protect the child’s claim until it could be settled.
I had shown Wade the letter once. I had not known he would come looking for it with a gun.
He pulled at the blanket. I caught his wrist and pushed his hand away.
“His father wanted her provided for,” I said. “Is that why your mother suddenly says Elsie isn’t yours?”
Wade’s face tightened. “Give me the envelope.”
“No.”
He stood. For a moment I thought he would raise the revolver again. Instead, he backed toward his horse.
“You’ll be dead before anyone finds you.”
He mounted and rode west.
I waited until the hoofbeats faded before moving. Elsie was crying hard, but she was unhurt. I drew the blanket around her and tried to stand. Pain drove me back to my knees.
A fence line crossed the distant rise. I remembered passing a small sheep camp beyond it on our way out. If anyone was there, they were our best chance.
I held Elsie against me and walked.
I do not know how long it took. The sky had changed color by the time a woman near the fence saw us. She came running, took Elsie and called for her husband. They brought us into their wagon and drove to town.
The doctor treated my wound. When I woke after dark, Elsie was asleep in a basket beside my bed. The woman from the sheep camp sat with her.
A sheriff was waiting outside.
I told him Wade had shot me. I told him about Samuel’s letter and the false claim from Missouri. Then I remembered something I had noticed when Wade first unfolded the accusation.
Its ink was violet.
Months earlier, the stationery merchant in Cheyenne had shown me a small bottle of the same color. He said few people bought it because it cost more than ordinary ink. He kept a ledger of special orders.
The sheriff sent a man to Cheyenne at first light.
While we waited, he brought Wade’s mother to the doctor’s house. She arrived pale and angry. I watched her expression as the sheriff read the accusation aloud.
“That is not my signature,” she said.
“You told Wade I was lying about Elsie.”
“I told him to ask you about Samuel’s will,” she answered. “I never told him the child wasn’t his.”
She sat down heavily. Wade had taken a letter bearing her name and left without speaking to her. She had spent two days trying to find him.
The sheriff showed her Samuel’s final letter. She read the first page, then asked where Wade had gone.
“He rode toward the next town,” I said.
“The family lawyer has an office there.” Her voice fell. “Mr. Bellamy told Wade the Missouri doctor was reliable.”
Bellamy had prepared the trust papers. Samuel’s instructions named him as its temporary manager if Elsie lost both parents before another guardian could be appointed.
The sheriff sent deputies down the western road.
Late that afternoon, the messenger returned from Cheyenne. The merchant’s ledger showed that Bellamy had bought a bottle of violet ink the week before the accusation arrived. The purchase alone did not prove he wrote the letter, but it gave the sheriff reason to find him quickly.
The deputies reached Bellamy’s office before Wade did. They found a draft of the accusation among papers on his desk, with corrections in the same handwriting as his notes on Elsie’s trust. Bellamy tried to claim he had kept it to investigate a forgery. The sheriff placed him in custody while the evidence was examined.
Wade arrived an hour later. He still had the forged letter in his coat.
He did not resist when the deputies took his revolver. The sheriff told him I was alive, and Wade sank onto the office steps. Whatever Bellamy had said to him, Wade had chosen to bring a gun to the prairie and fire it. I gave my account of that choice without leaving anything out.
Several days passed before I could sit up long enough to hold Elsie comfortably. Wade’s mother came once. She asked if I would let her see the baby.
I studied her face. She had doubted me before the letter arrived, and she had let Bellamy speak for her family. But when she held Elsie, she cried and returned her as soon as I reached out.
“I should have come to you myself,” she said.
“Yes,” I answered.
The sheriff continued gathering evidence against Bellamy and Wade. Samuel’s letter was placed with the other trust documents so no one could hide it again.
That evening, I tucked Elsie into her basket beside my bed. She opened her eyes when I drew the blanket over her. The stitched corner where I had hidden Samuel’s envelope was torn from Wade’s pulling, but the blanket was clean and warm.
I rested my hand beside her until she fell asleep. We had reached the fence line together. Whatever happened in court, no forged letter would decide whether she belonged to me.
