**Chapter 7: The Coldest Trail**
Merrickville, Ontario. Late February, 1885.
The air inside the Levesque Hotel was thick with the copper-sweet stench of blood and the sour, cloying reek of helplessness. In the makeshift operating theatre of the barroom, the only sounds were the shallow, rasping hitch of Timmy McCormick’s breath and the methodical tick-tick-tick of the grandfather clock in the corner, marking time that felt stolen from a reaper’s ledger.
Bobby Grady sat on a s