Chapter 13 - The Gilded Cage
The sound of shattering mahogany exploded inside the Governor's private parlor car.
One second, Bartholomew Sterling was raising a crystal snifter of twenty-year-old rye toward Governor Sterling Bell; the next, the reinforced rear door was kicked off its brass hinges, splintering into the velvet-lined corridor.
Bartholomew leapt from his tufted leather chair, his hand trembling so violently that amber liquor splashed across his crisp silk cravat. Governor Bell, a broad-shouldered man with silver hair and ruthless, slate-gray eyes, didn't flinch. He slowly laid his silver pocket watch onto the dining table and leaned back against the plush damask seat, his hand resting casually near an ivory-handled revolver tucked beneath the table napkin.
"Clara," Bartholomew stammered, his face blanching to the color of ash. "You... Vance was supposed to—"
"Vance is lying face down in the frozen dirt beside my mother’s headstone," Clara said, stepping over the threshold.
She was a vision of frontier nightmare. The white tulle of her bridal gown was ripped to shreds, smeared with soot and Vance’s blood. In her hands, she held a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun, cocked and leveled directly at her uncle’s chest. Behind her, Nathaniel stepped into the warm glow of the kerosene chandeliers, his bloodied coat hanging open, his Henry rifle trained directly on the Governor's forehead.
"You look well for a corpse, Nathaniel," Governor Bell remarked calmly, though a flicker of tension twitched along his jawline. "I was told your bones were rotting at the bottom of the mine shaft."
"Your contractors didn't dig deep enough, Governor," Nathaniel replied, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "I crawled out of the dark. And I brought the bill."
Bartholomew looked frantically between Clara and the Governor. "Sterling, call the guards! Shoot them! They're outlaws! They're trespassers!"
"Quiet, you fool," Bell snapped with venomous disgust. The Governor looked at Clara, assessing her with the calculating coldness of a predator. "So, the runaway bride returns. Clara, put the gun down. You’re playing a game far larger than Black Ridge. Your father understood that, which is why he had to be removed. Progress requires coal. Coal requires sacrifice."
"My father died because he discovered you were smuggling unregistered dynamite into the deep veins to trigger cave-ins for insurance fraud," Clara snarled, her knuckles whitening on the shotgun stock. "You didn't just kill forty miners. You murdered my family."
"And who will believe a traumatized girl in a ruined wedding dress?" Bell sneered softly.
May you like
"No one has to believe her," Nathaniel said, racking the lever of his rifle with a metallic clatter that echoed through the parlor car. "Because we have the vault ledger."
***
