Chapter 32
His eyes moved slowly across it.
She watched the moment he understood.
His face became utterly still.
Silas spoke from beside the door. “The deputy will return to execute possession according to the schedule indicated. Personal belongings may be removed beforehand, provided no secured ranch property is disturbed.”
Calvin looked up. “You said the delinquency could be cured.”
“I said many things while attempting to accommodate you.”
“You took the money.”
“Which reduced the balance.”
“You took five thousand dollars and filed this anyway.”
“The note permits acceleration.”
Henrietta said, “A decision you made before he paid.”
Silas’s eyes shifted to her.
She touched the place beneath her blouse where the older foreclosure notice had been tucked before she stored it safely in the desk.
Silas’s gaze followed the movement.
There.
Another flicker.
He knew.
Henrietta felt certainty settle into her bones.
Calvin’s voice trembled with controlled rage. “How long?”
Silas appeared almost bored. “I beg your pardon?”
“How long before you try to put us off our land?”
Silas looked toward the snowy yard, then back at him. “The property is scheduled for public auction in three days.”
Henrietta stared.
Mercer swore.
Calvin went white.
Silas put on his hat.
“Broken Spur will be sold to the highest bidder in three days.”
Part 4 - The Price of a Marriage
“Again.”
Henrietta’s finger rested on the third line of Silas Vane’s loan statement while wind worried the windowpanes behind her. The kitchen table had disappeared beneath ledgers, loose receipts, promissory notes, tax notices, and the brittle folded papers Calvin kept in an old flour sack because, as he had admitted with visible discomfort, his mother had once called a desk drawer “an invitation to thieves.” The room smelled of lamp oil, coffee gone bitter in the pot, and the medicinal sharpness Dr. Elias Mercer had rubbed into Calvin’s splinted leg.
Calvin lay on the narrow bed near the stove with his jaw clenched against another pulse of pain. “I told you. November twelfth. I rode into town, paid Vane one hundred and eighty dollars, and watched him write it in his book.”
Henrietta did not look up. “Cash?”
“Yes.”
“Receipt?”
“He gave me one.”
“Where?”
Calvin’s silence made the stove seem suddenly louder.
Henrietta raised her eyes. “Calvin.”
“I put it somewhere safe.”
Dr. Mercer, who sat near the fire warming his hands around a tin cup, snorted. “A sentence responsible for half the missing objects in Wyoming Territory.”