Chapter Eleven #2
The bank letter occupied her entire mind on the walk back, crowding out everything else.
How much did the woman owe? Fifty dollars?
A hundred? More? Interest on a decades-old debt could pile up to monstrous figures, and Mrs. Montgomery had no income to speak of besides jam and eggs.
The bank would seize the property, and an old woman with a bad hip and a failing memory and three jars of chokecherry jam would end up—where? A charity home in Helena?
***
Sam sat at the kitchen table cleaning his Winchester when she pushed through the door, the rifle broken down into its parts on a cloth spread over the wood.
"Sam, Mrs. Montgomery is in trouble."
He set down the rag, though he kept the rifle bolt in his other hand, turning it between his fingers. "What manner of trouble we talkin' about?"
"The bank aims to take her house." Evelyn sat down across from him because her legs had decided they'd carried her far enough.
"Her husband took out a loan years back, and she's been fallin' behind ever since he died.
They sent her a letter sayin' she's got till month's end, or they seize the whole property.
She don't even know the full figure of what she owes, Sam. She's too afeard to ask."
He picked up the rag again, running it along the rifle bolt slow and deliberate. "That's a sorry state of affairs."
"It's worse'n sorry. It's an old woman about to lose everything she's got."
"And what d'you reckon I'm able to do about it?"
"I need you to ride to the bank. Talk to whoever holds her paper. Find out exactly what's owed, the full sum, with the interest, the whole of it. We can't do a blessed thing until we know the number."
He set the bolt on the cloth and wiped his hands on the rag, taking his time about it before drawing a long breath through his nose, the kind of breath a person drew when they were fixing to say a thing the other party wouldn't take kindly to.
"Evelyn. You gotta mind yourself about takin' on other folks' burdens. I ain't sayin' her predicament don't matter none. I'm sayin' you been here all of a week. You got your own concerns to be tendin'. You can't go haulin' every hard-luck soul in the territory up outta the ditch."
Her jaw clenched so tight her teeth ached. She leaned forward in her chair.
"So I ought to just leave her to her fate, is that what you're sayin'? Just walk on past and let 'em take her home while I trot on back to Springfield and carry on like I never—"
"That ain't what I said, and you know it."
"That's sure enough what it sounds like from this side of the table.
She ain't got nobody, Sam. Not a living soul.
You savvy what that's like? Because I do.
I come up with nobody. I know right well what it's like to stand in a room and holler out for help and have nothin' but the walls holler back. "
Sam's hands stilled on the rifle cloth, and he looked at her across the table, across the spread of oiled gun parts, his jaw working once before he spoke.
"I ain't tellin' you not to care about the woman. I'm tellin' you to be practical about it. We don't even know the figure yet. Could be ten dollars, could be two hundred. You can't save every soul you come across, Evelyn. That ain't how the world's built."
"Maybe I can't save every soul I come across." She stood up from the table because sitting still while her blood ran this hot would burn her alive from the inside. "But I can sure enough try to save this one. Will you ride to the bank come mornin'? Find out the truth of what she owes?"
"You want me to ride all the way into town to jaw with some banker about another person's debt?"
"That is precisely the thing I'm askin'."
"On account of a woman I've scarce laid eyes on."
"On account of a woman who deserves a sight better'n dyin' alone in a charity ward because nobody cared enough to put a question to a man at a bank counter. Yes, Sam Cooper. That is what I am askin' you to do."
Neither of them moved for a long moment. The stove ticked in the silence between them while she gripped the back of her chair hard enough to whiten her knuckles, because letting go would mean pacing, and pacing would lead to worse words than she'd already turned loose.
"I'll ride to the bank." He picked up the rifle bolt and fitted it back into the receiver with a click.
"But I'm tellin' you plain—don't go makin' promises you ain't able to keep.
That woman's countin' on you now, whether you aimed for it or not.
A promise that falls through cuts deeper than no promise at all. "
"I'd sooner make a promise I might break than stand idle while a good woman loses every last thing she's got."
"You're stubborner'n a Missouri mule, you know that?"
"I been called a sight worse. Will you go?"
He slid the rifle back together and worked the lever to check the action before laying it across his knees. "I'll go first light. I ain't promisin' nothin' good comes of it, mind. Banks don't deal in charity."
"I ain't askin' for charity. I'm askin' for the straight truth of the matter. The rest we'll cipher out once we know what we're dealin' with."
He held her gaze another long moment with the rifle across his knees and the lamplight throwing shadows across his face, then stood from the table, gathered the cleaning supplies, and carried the Winchester to the rack by the door.
"You're fixin' to get your heart broke over this, Evelyn. I surely hope you know that."
She watched him hang the rifle on its pegs, his back to her, his shoulders carrying that particular set they took on when he'd spoken his piece and shut the gate behind it.
The argument sat between them, unfinished, the way a seam looked when you stopped stitching halfway through—thread dangling, fabric loose, the whole thing liable to come apart if you pulled from either end.
She dropped into her chair and stared down at her own hands while her mind went back to Mrs. Montgomery alone in her cabin, the bank letter tucked behind her books, the chokecherry jam on the windowsill, the kettle she'd misplaced on the stove where she'd just set it.
She'd figure it out. She had to.