Chapter Thirteen
Collins Ranch and Bozeman, Montana Territory
Sadie had been ready since six.
Wade came in from the morning feeding at half past seven to find his niece seated at the kitchen table in her Sunday dress, her yellow hair in two perfect braids, her hands folded on the table in front of her, and her expression one of such studied composure that it was clearly costing her a great deal.
“You said after breakfast,” Sadie announced.
“Good morning, Sadie,” Wade replied.
“Good morning, Uncle Wade. You said after breakfast. I have eaten breakfast. I have been sitting here.”
Zoe, at the stove, kept her eyes on the skillet. The corner of her mouth pulled. Her wooden spoon turned a half rotation in her hand and stopped.
“Where’s your coat?” Wade asked.
Sadie pointed. The coat was already on the peg by the back door, along with Sadie’s hat and her small drawstring bag and the piece of paper on which she had written, in her careful copperplate, blue and green and possibly yellow, which Wade had read twice since it appeared on the table yesterday and which he had said nothing about.
He poured his coffee.
“Zoe,” he said.
“Mmm,” Zoe replied at the stove.
“Are you also packed?”
She turned from the skillet with a spatula in her hand and a look that combined patience and amusement in equal proportions.
“I have a list, Wade,” she said pleasantly. “The list has been revised three times. I am prepared.”
He drank his coffee.
Sadie, at the table, allowed herself a small victorious exhale.
The wagon left at eight.
The road to Bozeman ran south along the valley in the clear October morning, the cottonwoods along the creek already in full gold, the Bridger Range sharp and close against a sky that had no clouds in it at all. The air smelled of pine and frost and the clean bite of October.
Wade kept the bays at a steady road pace. On the bench beside him, Sadie sat between him and Zoe with her drawstring bag on her lap and her list folded inside it.
She lasted four minutes before she took out the list and read it again.
“What do we make?” Sadie announced to the valley in general. “I think we make something for the church.”
“Tell me more,” Zoe said, beside her.
“A verse. For the inside. There used to be verses on the walls. Uncle Wade has not put any up since Mama left. There was one above the door that I liked.” Sadie’s brow creased slightly. “For I know the plans I have for you. I don’t remember the rest.”
“Jeremiah twenty-nine eleven,” Zoe answered. “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
“That one.”
Zoe glanced at Wade over Sadie’s braids. He kept his eyes on the road.
“I think that is a very good choice,” Zoe answered, the wooden spoon coming to rest at the edge of the pan.
For I know the plans I have for you.
Bozeman on a Saturday morning carried the full noon traffic of a Bozeman Wednesday, which was a respectable showing for a town of its size.
The hitching posts along the main street were filling up by the time Wade turned the bays toward Hargrove’s livery.
Two farm wagons were already at the feed store.
The hotel had a stage at its door, fresh in, its passengers still carrying their travel on their faces.
A group of Crow women moved along the boardwalk on the far side of the street with their blankets and their baskets, and a pair of dogs of uncertain ancestry disputed something near the alley beside the assayer’s office.
Wade handed the bays to Hargrove's boy and stood on the boardwalk with his list of errands and his niece and his niece's list of embroidery requirements and Zoe at his right elbow with her own list.
“Mr. Collins.”
“Yes, son?”
“Pretty fine-looking family you brought in today, sir.” The boy lifted his cap an inch to Zoe. “Ma'am.”
Zoe’s chin lifted.
“Thank you, son,” Wade answered, low.
The boy led the bays down the alley to the back of the livery.
Wade stood on the boardwalk with his hat in his hand.
He looked at the main street of Bozeman, Montana Territory, and the back of his neck warmed above his collar in a manner the sun had no business doing this late in September.
He let the warmth sit where it was. He had little wish to put a name on it on the boardwalk in front of his niece and the woman at his right elbow.
Her eyes had gone to the awning of the post office across the street.
Wade set his hat back on his head.
“Right,” he said, a dry edge back to his voice. “Feed store first,” he said. Then I will take you to Morrison’s Mercantile and leave you there while I pick up the wire order, and I will come back.”
“Wire?” Sadie asked, her hand stilling at the cuff of Zoe's sleeve.
“Fence wire,” Wade answered, his eyes on the awning of the hardware store across the street. “George ordered it Tuesday.”
“Is there a problem with the fence?” Sadie asked, the small line between her brows setting deep.
“There’s always a problem with the fence,” Wade replied. “Come.”
The feed store took longer than intended because Mr. Birch's store had an opinion about winter oat pricing that he required thirty minutes to express.
Wade bore the opinion with steady patience, and when Mr. Birch had finished his opinion, Wade paid for the oats and the hay order, arranged for delivery on Thursday, and went back out to the boardwalk, where Sadie had been sitting on the step with her drawstring bag, and Zoe had kept watch.
He took them to Morrison’s Mercantile.
The mercantile smelled of cedar sawdust, dry goods, coffee beans, and the lanolin of new wool, a smell Wade associated with his mother’s fabric orders and the winter coats she had sewn at the big table.
Mr. Morrison’s establishment ran the full depth of the building: dry goods at the front, fabric bolts and notions at the back, with a glass-topped counter down the right side where the good things lived: thread spools on wooden pins in long rows, along the wall above the counter, organized by color family from the warm reds at the south end to the cool blues and greens at the north.
The moment Wade stepped aside to let his niece and Zoe through, Sadie was gone.
A light run, a dart between two older women examining calico, and she was at the north end of the thread wall with both hands already reaching up to the blue section, the drawstring bag swinging.
“Sadie,” Wade said.
“I am looking,” Sadie replied firmly.
“Look with your eyes.”
“That is how looking works, Uncle Wade.”
Zoe, beside him, pressed her lips together.
He stayed near the door and watched.
Ranch errands had kept him on the dry goods side of Morrison’s.
Thread, when it was required, meant handing Mr. Morrison a list and collecting the order, and that had been sufficient.
Standing at the notions wall while someone chose, he had few occasions for that, and no occasion at all to watch Zoe Preston choose.
She moved along the wall with the same unhurried attention she brought to the kitchen garden when she was deciding where to plant.
A spool lifted to the window, angled slightly away from her body.
She set it back, lifted another, brought it close, turned it in the window light once, twice.
The copper in her dark hair caught the same light and for a moment the two warm colors, thread and hair, occupied the same angle.
Wade looked at the floor, then at the door.
Sadie appeared at Zoe’s elbow with three spools and a monologue.
He watched Zoe tilt her head to listen, take the spools one by one and hold each to the light at the same careful angle, then hand back two and keep one.
Sadie’s face at the verdict showed a short, fierce negotiation that resolved in her favor.
Then Zoe set her hand briefly on the back of Sadie’s neck, the same gesture Wade had used in the church, and Sadie leaned into it for a half-second before pulling away to reach for something on the next pin.
Twelve minutes.
He counted twelve minutes at the door of Morrison’s Mercantile while Zoe Preston and his niece chose embroidery thread for a church verse, and at no point in those twelve minutes did either of them look toward him, which he was grateful for.
He was still at the door when Mr. Morrison’s voice came from behind the glass counter.
“Mr. Collins. There is also a new sampler canvas in from Philadelphia, if the ladies are interested. The backing is finer than what we had in August.”
Wade looked at Morrison.
“Show them,” Wade answered, his voice gone soft in a manner that must have given him away.
He went to pick up the wire order.
The wire order was at the back of Larkin’s hardware, two hundred feet of galvanized five-strand fencing that had arrived Tuesday from Gallatin and had been sitting in a pile with Wade’s name on it.
He loaded it with the hardware boy and tied it to the wagon bed and was walking back up the boardwalk when he heard his name.
Ben stood outside the assayer’s office with his hat in his hand and his deputy, Cord, at his shoulder.
“Wade.”
“Ben.”
Ben looked at him for a moment with the quiet appraising look he had brought to every conversation for twelve years.
“I heard you brought Miss Preston to town today,” he said.
“Mercantile,” Wade replied. “She and Sadie are at the thread.”
“Good.” Ben glanced down the street toward Morrison’s. “I’m headed that direction. I’ll walk with you.”
Something in how Ben said it, the flatness of it, a statement rather than a question, made Wade look at him more carefully.
“What?” Wade asked.
“Nothing urgent,” Ben replied, evenly. “Walk with me a moment.”
They walked half a block.
“Jameson Dawson was at the assayer’s on Wednesday,” Ben said quietly, eyes forward. “Third time since August. He has been asking questions about the southeast quarter of your property line. The parcel your grandfather filed in fifty-two.”
Wade kept his pace steady.
“The parcel is filed,” Wade said. “The filing is twenty years old.”