Chapter 29
Ella spotted him crossing the street outside the mercantile, and her stomach dropped before her mind had even finished placing the face.
Trunk Palmer. She'd known him in Wheatrow, sort of. She knew his face, knew his name. To her recollection, they might never have exchanged a meaningful word. Or any word.
Still, she’d seen him about town often enough, mostly at Mrs. Terrance's shop when he came in to have a hem fixed for his wife. He’d never looked her way while he was in there, though. She knew why he was here. It had only been a matter of time, but she’d hoped to have a little bit longer.
He hadn't seen her yet. He was occupied with a porter, and Ella used the moment to think faster than she'd thought in days. She caught sight of a boy loitering near the mercantile steps, perhaps ten years old, kicking at the dust with the aggrieved boredom of a child sent to wait for someone.
"You," she said, crossing to him quickly. "I need you to run to the general store, quick as you can. Tell the lady there, Maria, that Samson needs her right away, on the far side of the hill west of town. Tell her it's urgent."
The boy looked at her, uncertain. "What's wrong with him?"
"No time to explain, just run and tell her exactly that. There's a coin in it for you if you're quick." She pressed one into his hand before he could ask anything further, and he took off down the street at a sprint, exactly as she'd hoped.
She didn't wait to watch him go. Trunk was still occupied with his bag, and she turned and walked, quickly but without running, toward the general store herself, arriving breathless just as Maria came around the counter, already pale and reaching for her shawl.
"Ella, thank goodness," Maria said. "A boy just came through, said Samson needs me, out past the hill west of town. He didn’t say what for. Do you know anything about it?"
"I don't," Ella said, which was, in its narrowest sense, true. "But if Samson sent for you, you'd best go quickly. I can mind the store while you're gone."
Maria hesitated only a moment, the hesitation of someone who didn't fully trust the offer but had no better option in front of her. "Are you sure? I don't know how long I'll be."
"Take whatever time you need. I've minded this store before, I can manage an hour or two." Ella softened her voice, made it sound like nothing but kindness. "Go on, Maria. If something's wrong, you'll want to be there."
"Thank you," Maria said, and was gone through the door a moment later, hurrying up the street in the direction the boy had pointed her, and Ella watched her go with a flicker of something that might, in a kinder woman, have been guilt, and settled instead into simple relief that the plan had worked as quickly as it had.
She had only minutes before Trunk finished with his bag and made his way to the store, and she used them to steady her breathing and settle herself behind the counter, carefully arranging her posture to appear as though she belonged there. As though she always had.
The bell rang, and Trunk Palmer stepped through the door, glancing around the store before his eyes landed on her, and his face went through surprise plainly enough that she had her answer before he'd said a word.
"Ella Canning," he said. "Well, I didn't expect to find you all the way out here. Heard you left town, but didn’t know you’d come this way.”
He did know who she was. The same way, Ella supposed, that she knew who he was. Hopefully, though, he didn’t know too much about her. That wouldn’t be an advantage right now.
"Mr. Palmer." She smiled, warm, unbothered, as though there were nothing at all unusual in the meeting. "It's good to see a familiar face this far from home. What brings you to Mason's Clear?"
"Business. I'm looking for Samson Tolliver, he runs this store, I'm told. I’m also told he was once married to your sister.” He set his bag down, still studying her with open curiosity. “When did you get here?”
"Samson's my husband," Ella said, the lie coming out smooth and quick, the same practiced ease she'd used on the train, on Mrs. Shelbourne, on anyone who'd asked. "I married my sister's widower. Just this week.”
"Is that so?” Trunk's face relaxed into a smile, and Ella felt the small triumph of watching a lie land exactly where she'd aimed it. "Well, that's fine news, in that case, because I've got more fine news for the both of you."
"Oh?"
"You'll remember the mine claim, back home? The one that came in big a few weeks back?” He was already reaching into his bag for the paperwork, pulling out a folder thick with documents.
“No?”
“Perhaps you left before it was news.”
“Perhaps. What of it?”
"Samson's got a stake in it. Old claim, filed years back, when he was living around Wheatrow. Never worth much of anything until now. But now it's worth a considerable fortune, Mrs. Tolliver. Your husband's one of the richest men on this whole frontier, whether he knows it yet or not."
Ella took the folder from him, her hands steadier than she had any right to expect them to be, and looked over the top page without truly reading it, her mind already racing ahead of the words in front of her.
"That's remarkable," she managed. "He'll be so pleased."
"I imagine he will be. Wasn't an easy trip out here, but I wanted to see it done proper, not trust a fortune this size to a letter that might get lost or misread.
" Trunk glanced around the store again, taking in the shelves, the till, the general modesty of the place.
"Doesn't look like a rich man's store yet, does it. I expect that'll change soon enough."
"I expect it will," Ella said, and found herself smiling in a way that felt, for the first time in days, entirely genuine.
"I'll leave the papers with you, then, since he's not about. Everything he needs is there, the claim numbers, the assay report, the contact for the bank handling the initial payout in Denver." Trunk picked his bag back up. "You'll pass it along?"
"Of course," Ella said. "The very moment he's back."
"Well. Congratulations, Mrs. Tolliver." Trunk touched his hat and turned toward the door. "I'll be in town a day or two yet, seeing to the other claim holders in the region, if he's got questions and wants to find me."
"I'll let him know," Ella said, and watched him go, the bell ringing behind him.
She stood alone in the quiet of the store with the folder heavy in her hands and a fortune's worth of paperwork spread out in front of her, and understood, with a cold and steady clarity, that she had perhaps only minutes before Maria returned from her fruitless errand up the hill.
There was a very real possibility that this might not work.
She had a tiny window now in which to convince Samson to marry her.
Only minutes. But she would do it. She’d use family, and guilt, and her likeness to Livvy.
She’d offer him something he thought he’d lost forever, and he’d find it all but impossible to say “no” when she held herself close to him.