Chapter Twelve #2
Sam folded the handbill into his coat pocket, untied the mare from the hitching post, and rode for home with the morning's haul sitting in his head. A hundred and twenty-seven dollars, fifty cents. No sign of Wilkes, confirmed or denied, and a fair poster for which he had no use.
***
Evelyn met him at the door, which told him she'd been watching for him the way Mrs. Montgomery watched for Evelyn, from the window, tracking the trail, counting the minutes. She had flour on her apron again. He was starting to suspect the flour lived there permanently.
"Well? What'd the bank have to say?"
He hung his coat on the peg, set his hat on the shelf, and sat down at the table because this conversation required sitting.
"The debt comes to a hundred and twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents."
Evelyn's hand went to the back of the nearest chair, gripping it hard.
"Her husband took out a loan for forty dollars back in fifty-eight.
Built the place with it. He paid regular till he died, then she carried on as best she could, but the interest—twelve percent compounded quarterly—it just kept pilin' up.
Fourteen years of it. Forty dollars turned into a hundred and twenty-seven, and the bank wants every red cent by month's end. "
"A hundred and twenty-seven dollars." She repeated it the way you repeated a thing your mind refused to hold. "Sam, where on God's earth does an old woman come up with a hundred and twenty-seven dollars?"
"She don't. That's the plain hard truth of it. The bank knows right well she can't pay. They're after the property."
Evelyn pulled the chair out and sat down across from him, her face going through a series of changes he'd learned to read over the past week, the tightening around her mouth when a problem first landed, the narrowing of her eyes when her mind started working on it, the lift of her chin when she'd decided to fight.
"I could sell my things. I got a winter coat back in Springfield I paid right good money for. It'd fetch a fair price, I reckon. My mother's brooch, it ain't worth a fortune, but it's genuine silver, and I reckon a jeweler over in Helena might—"
"Evelyn."
"Don't you 'Evelyn' me. I'm workin' through this. I got a pearl button set Mrs. Krauss gave me when I left her employ, finest buttons I ever—"
"You ain't sellin' your dead mother's brooch to settle a stranger's debt. I'll not hear tell of it."
She shoved back from the table so fast, the chair legs barked against the plank floor. "She ain't no stranger to me! And it ain't your place to be tellin' me what I can and can't sell, Sam Cooper. That brooch belongs to me, them buttons belong to me, and if I've got a mind to—"
"It ain't your burden to carry! You been here two weeks, Evelyn. Two weeks! You can't go settin' yourself afire to keep somebody else warm. That ain't—"
"Then whose burden is it? Who else is gonna stand for her? The bank? The territory? The good Lord Almighty? Because from where I'm sittin', He ain't exactly rushin' to lend a hand!"
The kitchen went quiet. Sam's jaw had clenched so tight he could hear his own teeth grinding.
She stood across the table from him with her fists balled at her sides, breathing hard, color high in her cheeks, and he could see exactly where this was headed.
The same place every argument between them went, which amounted to her being right about the principle while he worried over the method.
Evelyn's gaze drifted sideways, snagging on his coat hanging by the door. On the folded paper poking out of the pocket.
"What's that there?"
"Nothin'. A poster some fool baker—"
She crossed the room in three strides and pulled the handbill from his coat pocket before he could finish. She unfolded it, her eyes scanning the print, her lips moving the way they did when she read.
"The annual town fair." She looked up. "End of the month. 'Vendors and stalls welcome. Inquire at the town hall for rates.' Sam, this here's it."
"That ain't nothin'. It's a fair."
"A fair with stalls, Sam. Stalls where a body can sell goods.
I can sew. Hats, gloves, scarves, whatever folks need before winter sets in proper.
Mrs. Montgomery's jam'd sell quicker'n lightning, you tasted it your own self, you know how fine it is.
If we set up a stall together, the two of us, her jam and my handiwork, we could raise real money. "
"You want to sew your way to a hundred and twenty-seven dollars."
"I want to try. I'd sooner try and come up short than sit in this kitchen and do nothin' whilst they take her home out from under her." She folded the handbill and held it against her chest. "Will you see to the stall? Ride to the town hall, put our name down, do whatever needs doin'?"
He should say no. He should tell her the math didn't work, that a fair stall selling knitted scarves and chokecherry jam wouldn't put a dent in a hundred-and-twenty-seven-dollar debt, that she'd break her own heart trying and break Mrs. Montgomery's along with it.
All of that sat on his tongue, ready to go.
He looked at her standing by the door with the handbill pressed against her chest, and that tilt to her chin that meant the decision had already been made inside her head and everything happening now amounted to ceremony.
She'd do this with or without him. She'd walk into town herself, rent the stall with money she didn't have, sew until her fingers bled, sell goods in a blizzard if it came to that.
"I'll ride to the town hall come mornin'." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'll put our name down for a stall."
"You mean it true?"
"I mean it. Lord help me, I mean it."