Arthur dismounted. He walked up the steps and stepped into his foyer.
Molly was sitting in the parlor. Her face was pale, completely drained of the confident warmth she had worn the night before. She was looking at Hosea's ledgers spread out on the coffee table.
When she saw Arthur walk into the room, she gasped. She put her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide with manufactured terror.
"Arthur!" she cried out, standing up. "Thank God! The sheriff just arrived. They told me the carriage was attacked. I was so afraid you were dead!"
She rushed toward him, her arms outstretched to embrace him. Arthur did not move. He did not catch her. He simply stood there like a great oak tree.
Molly stopped just a foot away, her arms slowly falling to her sides. She looked into his eyes. She saw no anger. She saw no grief. She saw absolute, unyielding coldness—the kind of coldness that comes right before a terrible winter.
"He did not attack the carriage, Molly," Arthur said, his voice quiet enough to force everyone in the room to listen. "He stopped it exactly where you told him to."
Molly stepped back. Her breathing became shallow. "Arthur, I don't know what you are talking about. Someone is lying to you."
Hosea stepped into the room. "Micah Bell confessed, Mrs. Miller. The Pinkertons offered him a chance to avoid the rope if he gave them a full statement. He provided the exact details of your arrangement. He also provided the other half of the telegrams you sent to Blackwater."
Molly looked at Hosea, then at the sheriff, and finally back at Arthur. The corner of her mouth trembled. The elegant, refined facade shattered, leaving only the desperate reality of a trapped animal.
"You gave everything to this ranch," she whispered bitterly, the tears finally real. "You loved the dirt more than you loved me. I just wanted my share."
"You had my name," Arthur said. "You had my home. That was your share."
He turned his back to her and nodded to the sheriff. "Take her," Arthur said.
He walked out of the parlor and onto the back porch. He did not stay to watch them put her in the wagon; he did not want that to be his final memory of her. He stood on the porch, leaning against the wooden railing, and watched the sun dip behind the mountains. The long shadow of his house stretched out across the yard. The fever had finally broken.