March 28.
Before sunrise.
Then she picked up the shovel and drove it into the frozen earth.
The first strike jarred her shoulders.
The second cut through ash.
The third hit something that was not earth at all.
The sound was flat and hard.
Clara stopped breathing.
She knelt and scraped with both hands.
The dirt was cold enough to sting.
Ash packed under her nails.
A splinter opened the side of her thumb.
She kept clearing.
A corner appeared.
Dark wood.
Iron strapped.
Buried deep beneath the cabin floor.
Not lost.
Hidden.
Down by the road, a horse snorted.
Clara looked up.
Gideon Rusk had come back.
This time, he had not come alone.
Mrs. Kettle stood by the split-rail fence with one hand pressed to her mouth.
One of Gideon’s men held a folded paper stamped with the county clerk’s seal.
Gideon saw the hole.
Then he saw the box.
All the smoothness drained out of him.
“Step away from that,” he called.
Clara placed her bleeding hand on the lid.
Mrs. Kettle whispered from the fence, “Clara… don’t open it in front of him.”
That was when Clara knew the box had a history bigger than the fire.
Gideon swung down from the saddle and started up the hill fast.
Too fast for dignity.
Too fast for a man pretending he had only come about taxes.
Clara dug her fingers beneath the iron lip and pulled.
The lid did not open.
Gideon was halfway up the slope.
“That property is under claim,” he shouted.