Nora answered.
“Between us?”
“Yes.”
“More than six hundred dollars.”
Caleb looked up.
Six hundred dollars.
In Montana Territory, that was not pocket money.
It represented years.
“Do you have receipts?”
Eliza's mouth tightened.
“Some.”
“Some?”
“Vale kept most of the books.”
Of course he did.
Caleb read the final page.
The language became stranger there.
References to household unity.
Domestic responsibilities.
Conjugal expectations to be negotiated upon the arrival of a permanent male partner.
Caleb folded the contract.
“I need a drink.”
Nora pointed toward the house.
“Coffee.”
“Something stronger?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“We sold the whiskey.”
Caleb stared.
“To pay the land tax.”
He looked at the farmhouse again.
The sagging roof.
Broken fence.
Thin cow.
Laundry.
Bread.
Three women waiting for a stranger who had unknowingly bought their home.
“How long ago did Vale leave?”
“Three nights before the bank arrived,” Eliza said.
“What bank?”
“Red Hollow Territorial Bank.”
Caleb's stomach tightened.
The same bank that had recorded his deed.
“What did they want?”
“Payment.”
“On what?”
“Everything.”
Nora gestured toward the property.
“Farm loan. Seed loan. Equipment loan. A note against the livestock.”
Caleb looked toward the empty pasture.
“How many cattle?”
“Thirty-two.”
“And now?”
“One.”
“The cow?”
“Matilda.”
Caleb looked at Matilda.
She appeared unimpressed by insolvency.
“Vale sold the others?”
“Yes.”
“Horses?”
“Gone.”
“Equipment?”
“Most of it.”
“And then he sold the farm to me.”
Eliza nodded.
Caleb laughed.
It was the only alternative to shouting.
“That's impressive.”
Claire frowned.
“What is?”
“The thoroughness.”
He looked at them.
“Vale stole from everybody.”
That afternoon Caleb did not unload his wagon.
He sat at the kitchen table with every paper laid out before him.
Eliza sat opposite.
Nora made coffee.
Claire stood near the window, occasionally correcting details when the others misremembered dates.
The more Caleb learned, the worse it became.
Silas Vale had arrived in Red Hollow nearly three years earlier claiming to be a widowed farmer from Wyoming.
He was charming.
Educated.
Unusually polished for a man buying neglected land.
He had purchased the property from an elderly couple moving east.
Then he began recruiting what he called “partners.”
Eliza came first.
She had worked as a bookkeeper in Helena.
A merchant for whom she kept accounts died, and his sons dismissed her because they considered a woman unnecessary once the business became theirs.
Vale offered ownership rather than wages.
Eliza invested two hundred and forty dollars.
Nora came six months later.
Her husband had died in a logging accident.
He left debt and a four-year-old daughter who survived only six weeks after him because of fever.
Nora sold everything she had remaining and invested one hundred eighty dollars.
Claire inherited one hundred seventy-five dollars from an aunt.
At twenty-four, she had been working as domestic help for a family that treated her inheritance like an invitation to marry one of their sons.
She fled.
Vale found her at church.
He offered land.
Independence.
Partnership.
The same promises.
By the end of the second year, the farm had become profitable.
Nora's dairy operation produced butter and cheese.
Claire expanded the north field.
Eliza negotiated better prices for wheat and poultry.
Then Vale changed.
He borrowed heavily.
Claimed they needed expansion.
Purchased machinery nobody remembered seeing.
Took trips.
Returned with fewer explanations.
Three months before Caleb arrived, Eliza discovered missing deposits.
When confronted, Vale claimed accounting errors.
She demanded an audit.
He became angry.
That was the first time he mentioned bringing in another man.
“He said the household needed discipline,” Eliza told Caleb.
The sentence chilled him.
“What happened?”
“I told him he was welcome to discipline himself somewhere else.”
Caleb almost smiled.
Nora did.
Claire looked at Eliza with admiration she had probably worn many times before.
Vale disappeared shortly afterward.
The bank arrived.
Then the deed arrived.
Caleb sat back.
“So he used my money to run.”
“That is our assumption.”
“And the bank recorded the sale despite liens?”
Eliza nodded toward his leather case.
“That is what we need to know.”
Caleb looked at her.
“You expected me.”
“We received notice from the recorder.”
“And you planned to do what?”
Eliza met his eyes.
“Find out what kind of man bought our home.”
“And if I had been the kind Vale hoped for?”
Nora answered quietly.
“We had packed.”
Three trunks stood upstairs.
Caleb discovered them later.
That detail stayed with him.
They had been prepared to leave the land they had built because a piece of paper might give a stranger power he should never possess.
Caleb rubbed both hands over his face.
“I need to go back to Red Hollow tomorrow.”
Eliza nodded.
“We're coming.”
“No.”
Her eyes sharpened.
Caleb sighed.
“I knew that was the wrong answer before I finished saying it.”
“Yes.”
Nora sat down.
“What happens tonight?”
Caleb looked toward the narrow staircase.
“How many rooms?”
“Three upstairs,” Claire said.
“And you?”
“We share.”
“All three?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Nora answered.
“Vale occupied the larger room.”
Caleb's jaw tightened.
“Not anymore.”
Eliza studied him.
“You're taking it?”
“No.”
He stood.
“You are.”
“What?”
“All three of you.”
“There are only two beds.”
“I have blankets.”
Caleb walked toward the front door.
“Where are you going?”
“Barn.”
Eliza stared.
“The roof leaks.”
“Then I'll learn where.”
“You paid twelve hundred dollars to sleep in a leaking barn?”
Caleb glanced over his shoulder.
“At the moment, I am not convinced I paid twelve hundred dollars for anything.”
That earned the first genuine laugh from Eliza.
Caleb heard it after he stepped outside.
He liked it more than he wanted to admit.
The barn leaked in four places.
Caleb slept beneath the fifth.
At dawn, he woke stiff, cold, and angry.
The smell of coffee brought him to the house.
Nora placed a plate of eggs and bread before him without asking.
Claire had already packed food for the road.
Eliza wore the green dress again.
Caleb realized it was probably one of only two good dresses she owned.
“We leave in ten minutes,” she said.
Caleb chewed.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Ten minutes.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Her mouth almost moved.
Red Hollow lay eleven miles east.
They took Caleb's wagon.
Nora remained at the farm with Claire because someone needed to watch the property.
Eliza sat beside Caleb.
The first three miles passed in silence.
Finally Caleb said, “Were you always this pleasant?”
“Only before breakfast.”
“We ate breakfast.”
“Then perhaps it's you.”
“Comforting.”
Eliza looked toward the hills.
“Why did you buy the farm?”
Caleb's humor disappeared.