Chapter Eighteen
Sam hauled crates onto the buckboard before first light while Evelyn arranged them with the particular precision of a woman who'd spent the last week turning fabric and thread into a small arsenal of commerce.
Fourteen scarves with blue ribbon trim, six pairs of wool gloves, four hats, and a stack of handkerchiefs she'd stitched at three in the morning because apparently sleep ranked below productivity on Evelyn Granger's list of priorities.
They picked up Mrs. Montgomery on the way.
The old woman waited on her porch in her Sunday dress with a crate of twenty-seven jam jars at her feet.
She'd tied a ribbon around each jar lid, red for chokecherry, purple for huckleberry, yellow for wild plum.
Sam loaded the crate beside the others while Mrs. Montgomery climbed onto the buckboard bench with a spryness that suggested her hip had decided to cooperate for the occasion, probably because God Himself understood that today mattered and had issued the relevant instructions to Mrs. Montgomery's joints.
The ride to town took the better part of an hour. Mrs. Montgomery talked the whole way, about the fair, about her jam, about the dress she'd pressed that morning, and about the time she and Mr. Montgomery had won a ribbon at the county fair for their preserved peaches back in sixty-two.
Sam drove the mule and let the conversation happen around him because his mind had moved ahead to the fairgrounds, running through the layout he'd memorized yesterday, cataloging sight lines and entry points. Foster had promised deputies. Sam intended to verify that promise before the gates opened.
They reached the fairgrounds as the sky turned from gray to pale gold. Sam pulled the buckboard up beside their assigned stall and set the brake.
The stall frame leaned to the left.
He climbed down from the bench and walked around the perimeter.
The front counter had cracked down the middle where somebody had put a boot or a pry bar to it.
Two support boards on the left side had split at the nail points, tilting the whole structure about ten degrees from plumb.
The shelf he'd built last night and nailed in place lay on the ground in two pieces, the nails pulled clean.
Sam crouched beside the broken shelf and studied the nail holes.
Pulled clean, not broken. Somebody had used a claw hammer or a flat bar, working the nails out deliberately, then snapping the shelf across the grain.
The counter crack ran straight across the center—the kind of break you got from focused force applied to a single point.
This was vandalism—not weather damage or an animal bumping the frame in the night.
He had a theory about who might have done this.
The theory had a name on a bounty poster and a habit of leaving messages for Sam to find.
The opened gate. The tracks along the fence line.
Now the stall. Wilkes was picking at the edges of Sam's life—testing, prodding, and making sure Sam understood that nothing in his orbit sat beyond reach.
The calculated pettiness of it—breaking a shelf a woman had built to save an old lady's home—made Sam's hands want to close around a throat instead of a hammer. He kept the theory behind his teeth.
Evelyn had climbed down from the buckboard and stood behind him, looking at the damage. Mrs. Montgomery stayed on the bench and pressed one hand against her mouth.
"What happened to it?"
"Somebody got at it durin' the night." Sam set the shelf pieces on the ground and tested the frame, pushing against the tilted post to gauge how much hold remained. Enough to work with, if he reinforced the base. "I can put her to rights. Gonna take me a spell, but I'll get her standin' straight."
"Who'd do such a wicked thing?"
"Could've been anybody. No-accounts, drunks. Don't signify none. We'll get her fixed up right."
He sent Evelyn to borrow tools from the vendor two stalls down, a leather worker named Pruett who had a hammer and a box of nails and the good sense to lend them without asking questions.
Sam stripped the damaged counter off the frame, flipped the plank, found a sound section near the end, and cut it down to fit with a hand saw.
He reset the frame posts, packing rocks under the footings to level them, then re-nailed the cross boards with twice the nails the original had used.
The shelf took longer because the halves had cracked along the grain and refused to join cleanly, so he overlapped them and nailed a brace across the back. It held well enough to bear weight but looked rough.
Evelyn worked beside him, holding boards steady while he hammered, handing up nails from the box, and clearing broken wood from the stall floor.
She moved through the repair work with quiet efficiency, asking no more questions about who'd done the damage.
Either she'd drawn her own conclusions, or she'd decided the answers could wait until after the fair saved Mrs. Montgomery's house.
Either way, Sam appreciated the silence.
The repair took the better part of an hour. When he finished, the stall stood plumb, and the counter held firm, but the scars showed. Cracked wood, mismatched boards, and nail heads punched too deep where he'd swung too hard.
Evelyn surveyed the damage for about ten seconds, then disappeared behind the buckboard.
She came back with an armload of wildflowers she must have picked along the road that morning, because Sam hadn't seen her gather them and the woman had apparently developed the ability to produce botanical arrangements from thin air.
She tucked flower sprigs into the joints where cracked boards met, draped scarves across the rough sections of counter to hide the worst of the splitting, then arranged Mrs. Montgomery's jam jars along the shelf in a line that drew the eye straight past the ugly brace to the glowing reds and purples of the preserves.
She spread the remaining goods across the counter with the spacing and precision of a woman who understood display the way Sam understood tracking, down to the inch.
By the time she finished, the stall looked better than most of the ones around it.
Sam stood back and looked at it and had the brief, disorienting thought that if Evelyn Granger ever turned her particular talents toward running a campaign or commanding an army, the opposing side ought to surrender immediately and save themselves the trouble.
"That'll do right fine, I'd say." Mrs. Montgomery had come down from the buckboard and stood beside Sam, clasping her hands together. "That'll do real fine."
***
The fair opened at nine. By nine-fifteen, their stall had drawn its first customers.
A rancher's wife picked up a scarf, turned it over, ran her thumb along the ribbon trim, and asked if Evelyn had more in blue.
Two miners' wives came after, wanting gloves, holding them up against their hands and discussing the stitching between themselves with the particular intensity women brought to evaluating handiwork.
A young mother with a baby on her hip bought a hat, paid sixty-five cents, and told Evelyn it looked finer than anything she'd ever clapped eyes on in any catalog.
Sam positioned himself at the end of the counter handling the money, because Evelyn had the good sense to recognize that a man who tracked criminals for a living could count change faster than a woman whose fingers were busy pulling scarves from a dwindling supply.
He kept a tin box under the counter, making change from the small float Evelyn had provided, which amounted to about two dollars in mixed coin.
The tin box got heavy fast. By ten o'clock they'd sold six scarves, three pairs of gloves, and two hats.
By eleven the scarf supply had dropped to five, and a woman from a ranch north of town had ordered four more for her daughters, asking if Evelyn could have them ready by week's end.
Evelyn promised because Evelyn promised everything and then found a way to deliver, which constituted either her greatest strength or her most dangerous habit depending on the day.
Mrs. Montgomery's jam sold steadily from the first hour.
The chokecherry went first, jar after jar, because Evelyn had positioned it at the front of the shelf where the red caught the light and pulled people in from the aisle.
By noon, the wild plum remained the only variety with more than two jars left.
Mrs. Montgomery sat behind the counter on a stool Sam had borrowed from Pruett, wrapping jars in cloth, and telling every customer about her late husband's trick with the frost and the chokecherries as though each person deserved the full story.
Sam handled the flow. He directed traffic when the crowd backed up into the aisle, moving people along so the next customer could reach the counter.
He restocked the display when gaps appeared, pulling goods from the reserve crate.
He carried purchases to wagons for customers whose hands were full, because it gave him a reason to move through the crowd and scan faces.
Every face got a once-over. Every dark coat, every low hat, every man who moved through the fair without stopping at stalls or greeting neighbors.
Sam catalogued them all while making change, wrapping gloves, and hauling crates because a bounty hunter worked a crowd the same way whether he wore a badge or an apron. Today, Sam Cooper wore both.
Foster's deputies stood at the north and south entrances, visible if you looked for them, dressed in plain clothes but armed.
Foster himself had passed the stall about an hour ago, tipped his hat to Evelyn, bought a jar of Mrs. Montgomery's huckleberry jam, and exchanged a look with Sam that communicated a full conversation in about two seconds. No sign. Keep watching.
Sam kept watching.