PART 2: THE SECRET THAT BROUGHT DEATH TO HIS DOOR
Elias opened the door only halfway, keeping his rifle pointed at the stranger standing on his porch. Three armed riders waited behind him.

“We’re looking for a runaway servant,” the leader announced. “She stole something valuable from our employer.”

Elias remained silent.

The man glanced past him and noticed the wooden cradle beside the fireplace.

“Those children don’t belong to her. Hand them over, and nobody gets hurt.”

From the bed, the mother suddenly cried out.

“Don’t believe him! His name is Sheriff Dalton. He was there when they whipped me!”

Elias felt his blood turn cold.

Dalton smiled faintly. “Careful, woman. You’re making accusations against respectable men.”

But Elias noticed something hanging from the sheriff’s saddle: a silver pocket watch engraved with the initials of the powerful Harrington family.

The mother finally revealed the truth. Her name was Rebecca Miller. She had worked at the Harrington ranch, where she discovered that the family’s patriarch was secretly stealing land from poor settlers through forged documents. When she threatened to expose him, the men beat her, took her husband away, and abandoned her with her newborn daughters.

She had escaped, carrying the only evidence capable of destroying them.

Dalton demanded that Elias surrender her.

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Instead, the mountain recluse stepped onto the porch, raising his rifle.

“Three armed men against one old mountain hunter. You boys must be feeling lucky.”

A gunshot suddenly shattered the morning silence.

Elias stumbled backward as a bullet struck his shoulder. Rebecca screamed and pulled her babies close.

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But Elias had another advantage. He knew every trail, every hidden ridge, and every narrow passage through those mountains.

Before sunset, the sheriff’s men would discover that hunting Elias Vance on his own land was a terrible mistake.

And when Rebecca finally revealed what she had hidden beneath the lining of her dress, Elias understood something even more frightening.

The men outside hadn’t come merely to silence a witness.

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They had come to recover a document bearing the names of powerful people across Wyoming.

And this time, Elias wasn’t just protecting three innocent lives.

He was about to start a war.