The Unread Confession

He carried the truth two hundred miles. He never read a word of it.

Colorado, 1882. Barnaby Krell has ridden shotgun on the Oakhaven line for eleven years, guarding other men's paper across country he knows by the feel of it under a wheel. He cannot read a line of any of it. He has never needed to. A locked box is not an insult; it is a locked box.

Then a man comes through a coach window in the rain with a knife, and dies, and what Krell takes out of his coat is a sealed confession in the han...