The Gunslinger Who Came to Bury His Past — Then the Town Gave Him a Reason to Draw Again
CHAPTER 3
Ada found Gabriel outside town the next morning.
He was repairing a fence.
She stood beside the gate.
“You know you’re terrible at hiding.”
Gabriel didn’t look up.
“I wasn’t hiding.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’ve been working.”
“You’ve been staring at that fence for twenty minutes.”
He stopped.
“Maybe it’s an interesting fence.”
Ada smiled.
“You’re strange.”
“I’ve been told.”
She held out a photograph.
Gabriel froze.
It showed an old army camp.
Several soldiers stood beside a wagon.
One man had been circled in ink.
Gabriel.
“You were a scout.”
“Once.”
“You disappeared after the Battle of Red Mesa.”
His expression hardened.
“Where did you get that?”
“My father kept it.”
“Why?”
“He knew you.”
Gabriel stepped closer.
“Who was your father?”
“Samuel Monroe.”
Gabriel’s face changed.
Samuel Monroe had been a surveyor.
A respected one.
And a dead one.
“He died twenty years ago,” Ada continued.
“People said he was killed by bandits.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Ada studied him.
“You know something.”
“I knew him.”
“What happened?”
Gabriel looked away.
“Nothing good.”
Before she could ask more, a rider appeared on the road.
Marshal Jonah Reed.
He was bleeding.
Badly.
Gabriel immediately moved toward him.
Reed collapsed from the saddle.
Ada ran forward.
“What happened?”
The marshal struggled to breathe.
“Boone.”
Gabriel caught him.
“Where?”
Reed looked at Gabriel.
“He knows you’re here.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“Who told him?”
Reed’s eyes closed.
“Your father.”
Gabriel went still.
“My father?”
The marshal tried to speak again.
“Your father wasn’t killed by bandits.”
Then he fainted.
Ada stared at Gabriel.
He looked toward the horizon.
For twelve years, Gabriel had believed his father died during a robbery.
Now, for the first time, he wondered if the story had been a lie.
That night, someone broke into Ada’s newspaper office.
They searched every drawer.
Every cabinet.
Every box.
But they took only one thing.
A ledger.
Ada had never seen it before.
Gabriel had.
It belonged to Samuel Monroe.
And on its final page was one sentence:
THE SHAW FAMILY WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE.
