The young minister blinked at her through his cold. "A printer? No. There was a newspaper, the Elkhorn Sentinel, but the editor went to Leadville in the spring of eighty-one and owed everybody. The press is still in the back of Gault's store, I believe. Fenna took it against his bill. The cattlemen's association has to send to Laramie or Cheyenne for their brand notices and the railroad sends to Omaha for its timetables and it takes weeks."
"What kind of press?"
"I have no idea. A large black one."
"A Washington hand press, most likely, if he went to Leadville and didn't take it," Linnet said. "They're too heavy to steal." She turned to Mrs. Dimmock. "Here is what I am going to do, Mrs. Dimmock, and you may tell anyone you like, because I would like it known. I am going to go into Elkhorn Siding tomorrow and ask Mrs. Gault what she'll take for that press and whatever type came with it, on terms. I have thirty-one dollars of my own that I did not spend on my fare because a girl of thirteen bought my ticket with a dead man's headstone. I'm going to put that down. I'm going to take a room, and I'm going to set brand notices and sale bills and timetables and church programs and anything else anybody in this county wants set, and I'm going to be good at it, because I'm the best compositor between Omaha and Salt Lake City and I expect that is not a crowded field."
Mrs. Dimmock opened her mouth. Linnet did not let her use it.
"And I am going to need help in the shop," she said. "Someone who can read and spell and has a clean hand and doesn't mind ink. I'll pay three dollars a month and board, to start, which is a dollar less than the druggist, but the hours will allow for school whenever there's a teacher. And she'll be living with an unmarried woman of twenty-six in a room over a print shop in town, which I believe is considered entirely fitting, since that is how I lived for eight years and nobody in Reading ever said a word against it." She looked at Keziah. "If she wants it. It's her decision. I won't have it decided for her. And I'll tell you now, Keziah, before you answer: a good part of what you earn is going to go into a tin, every month, until there's seventy-four dollars and some cents back in it. I'll match you. It'll take most of a year. That's the price. That stone is going to be paid for by the people who spent it, and the Odd Fellows are going to know that, and you're going to look every one of them in the eye in church."
Keziah's face was white. "Yes, ma'am," she said. "I want it. I'd want it even without the school."
"Don't say that. Take the school."