Under Siege at Full Speed – Extended Epilogue

---

OFFER: A BRAND NEW SERIES AND 2 FREEBIES FOR YOU!

Grab my new series, "Grit and Glory on the Frontier", and get 2 FREE novels as a gift! Have a look here!

---

The first thing Cole Brennan noticed as he rode into Silver Stone was the way the town’s dust stuck to his boots differently than before. Fifteen months as a lawman would teach a man to recognize changes like that. He noticed how dust turned slick in the autumn or picked up the bitter tang of cinders after a cold snap. This dust, today, was mixed with the green pollen of new grass and the faint iron of dried blood, though the latter was a memory more than a presence. He could still taste the old grit in his mouth, but it no longer made him flinch.

The second thing he noticed was the train, parked at the depot. Gus had painted it since Cole last saw it: “Silver Stone Express” lettered in gold leaf along the side, as if a little polish could erase the bullet holes and the gouges in the siding. Still, the engine shone like it had a second life ahead of it. Most days, Cole preferred to walk past and not look, but he always did anyway.

He stepped off his horse and walked her to the hitching post outside the livery. The animal, a sorrel with one clouded eye, nuzzled his hand for a moment before settling in. Cole ran a palm along the old girl’s neck and muttered, “You did good.” He was talking to himself as much as the horse.

The livery boy came out, hat in hand. “Deputy Brennan. Heard you were tracking rustlers out by the creek.”

Cole grunted, more a sound than a word. “They won’t be back,” he said. “You see Gus around?”

The boy nodded toward the workshop down the street. “He’s been tinkering with the new engine all week. Says it’ll run clear to the ocean and back if he can keep the boiler from bursting.”

Cole raised his hat and squinted down the street, where the workshop’s windows steamed with sun and the promise of another invention that would never quite work as planned. He let himself smile, just a little.

He made his way past the hotel with flowerpots on every windowsill and a faint smell of coffee drifting from the kitchen. Cole had lived there, once. Now he only visited to pay his tab and collect the stories Elena traded for gossip. He’d grown used to seeing the widow in the lobby, her hair combed and her smile no longer forced. Maria, taller now and louder than a jaybird, could be found running messages between the hotel and the new schoolhouse or, more often, sitting at Sarah’s knee in the clinic, pestering for tales of the big city or the siege that made them all famous for a time.

Cole took the alley behind the general store, cut across the yard where Sarah liked to grow her wildflowers, and stopped at the back door of their house. She always left it open a crack on Sundays.

Inside, the place was warm and smelled of apples and cloves. Sarah was at the table, bent over a ledger, her hair bound up in a loose bun that let the copper show through. She was heavy with child now, her belly rounding the edges of her blue dress. He watched her for a moment as she pressed her fingers into the small of her back before shifting the ink pot closer. She had a new habit of humming while she worked—songs from her girlhood and new songs she heard from travelers or the church on Sunday. Cole listened, silent, then stepped inside.

She didn’t look up right away. “How was it out by the creek?” she asked, voice low.

He shrugged off his duster and set it over the back of a chair. “Wet. And some fool thinks he can drive unbranded cattle through our hills and not get noticed.”

Sarah smiled, slow and sly. “Did you have to shoot him?”

“No. Just scared him off.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the wall. “He won’t try again.”

She set her pen aside and looked at him with those sharp green eyes. “You ever miss it?” she said.

He didn’t answer at first. He let the question hang in the kitchen. “Miss what?”

“The running. The fighting.”

Cole’s hands tightened on the mug. He thought about it: the old world of blood and iron and the feeling of being alive only when a bullet snapped the air beside your ear. He thought about the bank in Merino, the taste of whiskey and the fear that nothing would ever change, no matter how far you rode or how fast.

“I don’t miss it,” he said, “but sometimes I remember less clearly.”

Sarah’s face softened, and she set both hands on her belly. “Sometimes in the middle of a quiet morning, I think: what would I be, if not for Red Creek?”

He crossed to her and pressed a palm to the top of her hand, where the veins ran blue under the pale skin. “You’d still be the bravest woman I ever met,” he said. He meant it. She let her head rest against his arm, and for a long minute they just listened to the tick of the clock and the distant clang from Gus’s shop.

“I thought I’d see you at the memorial today,” she said, eventually.

He nodded. “I had to clear up the creek first. Didn’t seem right to show up late.” He looked at her, and she knew what he meant.

She rose, slowly and carefully, and reached for her shawl. “Walk with me?” she said.

Cole grinned and said, “Always.”

They left the house and walked side by side through the town, past the hotel and the workshop, where Gus was wrestling a length of pipe into submission with a monkey wrench.

Gus waved and called, “If I see another damn rustler, I’ll shoot him myself!” His beard was whiter than before, but his eyes had the same blue fire. He hobbled over, favoring his good leg, and offered Sarah a hand.

“You take care of the Deputy, Miss Sarah. He’s liable to get himself shot chasing someone else’s problems.”

She smiled. “That’s always been his trouble.”

Gus grinned, then looked at Cole. “Heard from Crane lately?”

Cole shook his head. “Last letter came two months ago. Said he’d won a riverboat in a hand of poker and lost it the next night.”

Gus snorted. “Sounds right.”

They said their goodbyes and wandered on. The street was quieter now, most folks at the midday meal.

The memorial sat just beyond the fence line. Judge Blackwood had paid for it himself—two slabs of red granite set in the earth; the names chiseled in lines so neat you could read them from the road. Sarah stopped a few feet away, her hand tightening on Cole’s.

He read the names as he always did, starting from the top. Dr. James Moreau. Thomas and Martha Brennan. The schoolteacher, the minister, the railroad men. Forty-six names in all, the last ones added after Luther’s trunk was opened and the old marshal’s evidence set it all straight.

Cole’s eyes always caught on his parents’ names first. He wondered if it would ever stop feeling like a lie, seeing them together in stone but knowing they’d died hours apart, never knowing if the other had made it out. He wondered if it mattered.

Sarah reached out and traced her father’s name. “Do you think they’d be proud of us?” she asked, her voice a whisper now.

Cole thought about the answer, then said, “They’d be proud of you. I don’t know what they’d think of me.”

She turned to him, her face stubborn. “You’re the reason this memorial is here. You’re the reason any of us are.”

He snorted. “Luther’s the reason. And you.”

“Luther’s gone,” she said softly. “But you’re not.” She looked down at her belly, then back at the stone. “He’ll grow up reading every name on this marker. But he’ll grow up knowing you.”

They stood in silence for a long time. The wind moved the grass, and somewhere a hawk called out, thin and sharp. Cole could feel the ache in his bones, the price of survival, he guessed. But he also felt Sarah’s hand in his, solid and warm, and he felt at peace.

---

OFFER: A BRAND NEW SERIES AND 2 FREEBIES FOR YOU!

Grab my new series, "Grit and Glory on the Frontier", and get 2 FREE novels as a gift! Have a look here!

---