Chapter 35
The words could have been an order. Once, they would have been. But he said them without command in his voice, and the difference was almost harder to bear.
Henrietta lowered her gaze to the notebook. “I intend to.”
By noon, the dining table had acquired a second geography: one column for payments Calvin remembered making, one for payments his ledger recorded, one for payments Silas admitted receiving, and one for every fee that seemed to materialize wherever Silas needed the balance to rise.
Henrietta found a penalty assessed on a Sunday when the bank was closed. She found interest calculated from a date three days before the note itself had been signed. She found two numbers altered so carefully that the second strokes were visible only when she held the page sideways to the window and let winter light slide across the ink.
Mercer stood behind her when she discovered those.
“See there?” she asked.
He bent close. “Looks like a seven.”
“It was a one.”
“You can tell?”
“The nib cut deeper on the original stroke.” Henrietta angled the page. “The seven lies over it. Different ink, too.”
Calvin watched from the bed, frustration gathering in every line of his body because he could not come to the table himself. “Which date?”
“March seventeenth, altered from March eleventh.”
His stare sharpened. “That matters.”
“Why?”
“Cattle draft cleared on the thirteenth.”
Henrietta looked from him to the entry.
Then she understood.
“If the payment arrived on the thirteenth, your account was current. But if Silas pretends the obligation was due on the eleventh—”
“He gets to call me late.”
“And charge the penalty.”
“And claim default,” Mercer finished.
Calvin threw back his head and shut his eyes. “Son of a bitch.”
Henrietta did not disagree.
She reached for another bank sheet just as hoofbeats sounded outside.
All three of them froze.
Not the loose rhythm of a ranch hand, because Broken Spur had none left in winter. Not the uncertain approach of a neighbor fighting drifts. These hoofbeats came steady and deliberate, stopping squarely in front of the cabin.
Mercer crossed to the window.
His shoulders hardened.
“Vane.”
Calvin swung one leg toward the floor.
Henrietta was beside him before his good foot touched the boards. “No.”
“Get out of my way.”
“No.”
“He comes onto my land the day before he steals it—”
“And if you reopen that fracture, Silas will auction the ranch while Mercer saws off your leg.”