It was a woman named Dorothea Hatch who decided to make things difficult. Dorothea was the widow of Gerald Hatch, who had owned the largest cattle operation north of the Boise River. Since Gerald's death three years prior, Dorothea had run the ranch herself with an iron precision that most men in the territory grudgingly admired and privately feared. She had also, for the past two years, made several offers to buy Callum's land, a wedge of property that abutted her northern pasture and controlled the only reliable creek access for miles. He had refused each time. She had not forgotten.
Dorothea appeared at the cabin on a gray December morning, arriving in a black lacquered buggy that looked absurdly out of place on the canyon road. She was perhaps 50, dressed in dark wool and silver jewelry, with the kind of composed expression that comes from years of winning arguments. Clara opened the door. Dorothea looked her over with a slow, deliberate appraisal, from her plain dress to her worn boots, and then said, in the sweetest possible voice, "You must be the new arrangement."
Clara said nothing. She opened the door wider. Callum came in from outside. When he saw Dorothea on his porch, he stopped, and his expression did not change, which was a kind of change in itself. "Mrs. Hatch."
"Mr. Hargrove, I heard you'd taken a wife under rather peculiar circumstances."
"Circumstances were straightforward enough."
Dorothea smiled. "I'm sure they were. A destitute girl and a lonely man. Very practical." She glanced at Clara.
"Tell me, dear, did he explain that this property sits under a disputed water claim? That the Boise River Cattle Association has the legal right to reroute the creek that feeds this land?"
It was a lie, and Callum knew it, and Dorothea knew he knew it. But it was the kind of lie that cost money and lawyers to disprove, and she was counting on him not having either. "I'll take that up with the association," Callum said flatly.
"Or," Dorothea said pleasantly, "you could simply sell to me. Fair market price. You and your bride could start somewhere without complications."
Clara stepped forward. Her voice was quiet and even. "Thank you for the visit, Mrs. Hatch. The road back to town is easier before dark."
Dorothea looked at her with new interest, then smiled, the kind that means the opposite of warmth, and stepped off the porch. She paused at the buggy. "That girl has a spine," she said, addressing Callum as if Clara weren't there. "Pity it won't be enough." Then she drove away.
The trouble came 3 weeks later in the dead of January. Callum woke to the smell of smoke before he heard anything, that particular chemical sharpness that was not wood smoke from a stove, but something larger, something being consumed that shouldn't be. He was outside in 30 seconds. The hay barn was burning. Flames had already taken the east wall and were climbing toward the roof with the lazy confidence of something that knows it will win.
He shouted once toward the cabin and ran for the water pump. Clara came out behind him with a blanket and a bucket before he had time to call again. They worked for an hour in the freezing dark, him at the pump, her hauling buckets, both of them coughing in the smoke-thick air. They barely saved the structure. The east wall was gone, and the hay inside was mostly ash.