"A while," he said. "Long enough to see Meachem found or Crowe leave. Not long enough to pretend four days made us family."
Nora almost smiled. "Good. I do not need a husband cut from a rescue. I need neighbors who will stand when paper turns ugly again."
Drake tipped his hat—not gallant, just acknowledging. "Neighbors, then. For now."
The five days that followed the suspension were not quiet, only quieter than a crate in the street.
Pike's sister, a widow named June Pike with a dry wit and a shotgun she kept oiled, took Ada and Bess for two nights and made them teach her how to tell a forged loop from an honest X. Mrs. Colm took Nora when the cabin felt too empty. Drake rode the Bridger road with Yates's letter in his shirt and came back on the third evening with dust in his beard and news that Meachem had been seen boarding a coach toward the rail spur, then had not been seen again. Rumors said a man matching Meachem's description had sold a gold watch in a town called Willow Bench and spoken of starting over where clerks were not asked hard questions.
"Running looks like guilt," Yates said.
"Running looks like fear of Crowe, too," Nora said. "We still need him alive if we want the chain of the forgery named."
Crowe, for his part, shifted tactics. He stopped speaking of auctions. He began speaking of ordinary collection—seizure of the cabin's remaining tools, a claim on the small herd Jonah had left, a lien on the green dress itself if he could find a clerk willing to write one. Wynn's suspension blocked the people-sale. It did not erase every debt Jonah had truly owed. Nora sat with Pike and counted what could be sold without selling dignity: a plow, two chairs, a winter coat that no longer fit anyone living. They made a list. They did not put Ada or Bess on it. They did not put Nora on it. That was the whole point of the fight, and they wrote it down so no one could pretend later that they had forgotten.
Drake helped haul the plow to the mercantile. His hands knew work. When Nora tried to pay him a share of the sale for his time, he shook his head.
"I already spent my stake on a pause," he said. "Do not turn the pause into a wage I did not ask for."
"Then take supper," she said. "Wages and food are not the same argument."