“It’s a foreclosure trap,” Clara said simply. “I saw two cattle syndicates do the same thing to small farmers outside Las Vegas three years ago. They use the law until the owner is broken, and if the law takes too long, they burn a haystack to speed things up.”
Elias glanced at her in surprise. “You know cattle syndicates?”
“I know men who think numbers are weapons,” she said, her voice dropping into a colder register. “My father built quality furniture for three merchants in Santa Fe. When the freight costs rose, one merchant altered the delivery receipts and claimed the timber was green. They tied him up in county court for three years until his savings were gone and his heart gave out. When he died, they offered to buy his workshop for the price of firewood.”
She looked across the bleak, snow-dusted plain toward the mountains.
“I spent four years working eighty hours a week with needles and ledger books to pay every supplier my father owed,” she said. “Not because I cared about the merchants, but because nobody was going to say John Reyes died a thief. When the last receipt was stamped, I had seventeen dollars and an empty room.”
Elias gripped the leather reins tighter. “Why didn't you marry someone in Santa Fe?”
Clara looked at him, her dark eyes steady and unblinking. “The men who asked wanted a servant who didn't require wages, or an ornament to sit in the parlor and look grateful. I am not an ornament, Mr. Ward. And I will never be anyone’s servant again.”
“Here, you’ll be a partner,” Elias said. “If you want it.”
“We will see what the work looks like first,” she replied.
They crested the southern ridge just as the winter sun dropped behind the granite teeth of the mountains, throwing an explosion of purple, crimson, and gold across the snowfields. Below them, cradled in the curve of the foothills, lay Black Creek Ranch.
The old two-story log house stood beneath the sheltering arms of three ancient cottonwoods. The barn was massive, its squared-log timbers weathered to a deep silver-gray, with high hay-doors and a stone foundation built into the slope. Beyond the corrals, the frozen creek gleamed like polished slate, bordered by willow thickets and broad, snow-covered meadows.
Clara leaned forward slightly, her breath catching in her throat.
“It is not a shack,” she murmured.
“My grandfather laid the first logs in sixty-two,” Elias said quietly. “My father finished the roof before I was born. It’s solid. But it’s neglected. I haven't had money for paint or wire in two years.”
“Paint doesn't keep the cold out,” Clara said, turning to him with the first genuine glimmer of a smile he had seen on her lips. “Timber does.”
They reached the yard as twilight thickened into night. Elias helped her down from the wagon, took her bag, and led her through the kitchen into the narrow hallway. He pushed open the door to the spare bedroom, struck a match, and touched it to the wick of an oil lamp on the bedside table.
The room was clean. The floorboards smelled faintly of lye soap, a cast-iron stove sat in the corner with a box of dry split birch beside it, and the bed was made up with heavy wool blankets and a clean linen sheet.
Elias set her suitcase on the wooden bench at the foot of the bed. He pointed to the iron bolt on the door.
“The lock works,” he said. “You can throw it from the inside.”
Clara looked at the bolt, then turned to face him. “Do you think I need to lock my door against you, Mr. Ward?”
“I don't think you do,” Elias answered evenly. “But a woman traveling seven hundred miles to a strange ranch in the middle of winter ought to have the right to decide that for herself.”
Clara watched him in silence for a moment, her gaze softening almost imperceptibly.
“Thank you, Elias.”
It was the first time she had spoken his given name.
“I’ll start the stove and fry some salt pork,” he said, stepping back into the hallway. “Take what time you need.”
“I don't need much time,” she called out as he turned toward the kitchen. “And tomorrow morning, Mr. Ward, you can show me those books.”
Clara woke before the first gray streak of light touched the eastern horizon.
She did not need an alarm. Years of rising at four in the morning to prepare lessons, sew cuffs, and tally merchant receipts had ingrained a clock in her bones. The room was bitter cold; her breath formed clouds of mist above the heavy wool blankets, and the water in the porcelain washbasin on the nightstand had developed a skin of crackling ice.