Chapter 9 - The Brother’s Claim
At first light, the tracks in the snow told the story.
A single horse and a low-slung, city-built cutter had braved the lower drifts, guided by a rider who clearly knew nothing of mountain travel.
The horse was half-foundered, its ribs heaving, tied to the post outside the old line cabin three miles below the Boone homestead.
Elias and Cora rode down on the heavy buckboard, the team breaking path through the fresh crust.
When Elias kicked open the door of the rough shelter, the man huddled beside the smoking hearth of green pine was not a deputy.
He wore a broadcloth coat with a soiled velvet collar, thin leather shoes that were already soaked through, and a beaver hat squashed flat against his ears.
It was Arthur Miller.
Cora’s brother looked up, his pale, soft face gray with exhaustion, his teeth clicking together so violently he could barely form a word.
"C-Cora?" he stammered, scrambling back against the log wall as Elias entered behind her, his massive frame completely blocking the daylight.
"Arthur," Cora said, her voice flat, cold, and devoid of surprise.
"What are you doing in Wyoming?"
"I... I came to get you," Arthur chattered, clutching his thin arms around his belly.
"You have to come home. The contract... the proxy marriage... it isn't legal."
Elias stepped forward, his boots crushing the dry pine needles on the floor.
"She has my name on the territorial register, Miller," Elias said, his hand resting on the hilt of his hunting knife.
"The magistrate signed the papers three weeks ago."
Arthur shrank from the sound of Elias's voice, his small, watery eyes darting between the mountain man and his sister.
"He didn't have the probate authority!" Arthur cried, his voice shrill with panic.
"Our uncle died in Chicago three days after you left Omaha, Cora! Uncle Bartholomew! He... he left the brickyard to you!"
The silence in the small shelter became suffocating.
Cora stared at her brother, her eyes narrowing into cold slits.
Bartholomew Miller had been a wealthy bachelor, a man who had despised his brother’s family for years, but who had always sent Cora a five-dollar gold piece on her birthday with a note saying: For the only one who works.
"The brickyard?" Cora asked, her tone dangerously quiet.
"He left it to you, Cora," Arthur pleaded, reaching into his coat and pulling out a rumpled, legal document with a red seal.
"The whole property. The kilns, the rail siding, the house on Michigan Avenue. But there's a clause. A condition!"
"What condition, Arthur?"
"You had to be unmarried on your thirty-third birthday, or married to a man of business approved by the estate executors!" Arthur wailed, tears of sheer cold and frustration spilling down his dirty cheeks.
"If you're married to a common laborer or a squatter, the entire property reverts to me! But... but the lawyers say if you were coerced into a proxy marriage, we can have it annulled in the circuit court! We can split the shares, Cora! Fifty-fifty! You don't have to stay out here in the dirt with this... this brute!"
Elias stood motionless.
His eyes flicked from Arthur’s face to Cora’s profile.
He did not speak.
He did not move to take the paper.
He simply waited, his shoulders dropping slightly, as if the heavy weight of his whole life were once again settling onto his back.
A brickyard in Chicago.
A house on Michigan Avenue.
Wealth enough to never smell bear grease or wood-ash lye again for the rest of her days.
Cora walked across the dirt floor, her heavy shoes crunching on the soot.
She took the paper from Arthur’s trembling fingers.
She held it up to the gray morning light coming through the door, reading the dry, legal copperplate with practiced ease.
To my niece, Cora Miller, whose labor was stolen by her kin, I leave the means of her own freedom...
Arthur watched her eagerly, a pathetic, desperate smile beginning to curl the corners of his mouth.
"You see, Cora? We're rich. You can buy yourself dresses from Paris. You can hire servants. You won't have to bake another pie for as long as you live. Just come back to the train with me. Judge Vance in town said he'd sign the annulment papers for fifty dollars. He's waiting at the hotel right now."
Cora lowered the paper.
She looked at her brother—the man who had spent thirty years making sure she felt every ounce of her weight as a sin, the man who had sold her to an outpost for twenty dollars to clear his own gambling debt.
"Judge Vance sent you up here, didn't he?" Cora asked.
Arthur blinked, caught off guard.
"He... he telegraphed the law office in Omaha when your name appeared on the marriage registry. He said there was money involved. He said he’d help me get you out if I leased the North Ridge timber rights to his syndicate."
Elias let out a low, grim sound—the sound of a man who had seen the trap sprung and knew its teeth were already in his leg.
"So," Cora said, her voice turning to pure ice.
"You didn't come to save me, Arthur. You came to sell me twice."
Arthur scrambled to his feet, his hands waving frantically.
"It's a fortune, Cora! You can't stay here with an animal who murdered his first wife! The whole town knows what he is!"
Cora did not answer with words.
She took the legal document, held it in both hands, and with a deliberate, slow movement, tore it cleanly down the middle.
She placed the two halves together and tore them again, letting the four pieces of heavy parchment flutter into the dirty snow near the hearth.
"Cora, no!" Arthur screamed, dropping to his knees to grab the scraps.
May you like
"My name is not Cora Miller," she said, looking down at him with an expression of cold, absolute disgust.
"My name is Cora Boone. And you are trespassing on my husband's land."
