CHAPTER 23: NEW ROADS
Three weeks later, the air tasted different — lighter, sharper, washed clean by steady spring rains, free of the heavy, watchful tension that had hung over these mountains for as long as anyone could remember. The last of Governor Hale’s inner circle had been tracked down and taken into custody; state investigators were sorting through boxes of hidden records, untangling decades of bribery and fraud; and for the first time in living memory, no one posted double lookouts at dawn, no one flinched at the sound of a passing car, no one scanned the tree line twice before locking up for the night.
We turned the ruins of the old Vance family homestead — the place Silas had set fire to ten years before, leaving only blackened beams, collapsed chimneys, and foundations choke
