Chapter 41
Henrietta did not.
She kept looking at her husband.
“What debt?”
Calvin turned his face away.
The answer came in his silence.
Henrietta sat in the chair beside the bed because her knees had begun to hurt and because she suddenly did not trust them.
Silas seemed almost content to wait.
Calvin looked at the frosted window. His voice, when it came, had lost its anger.
“My brother.”
Henrietta had seen the name in the family Bible.
Samuel Brooks.
Died at twenty-six.
No details.
She waited.
Calvin swallowed. “He borrowed money.”
Silas’s faint smile vanished. Perhaps the truth was less entertaining once Calvin chose to speak it himself.
Calvin kept his eyes fixed on the window. “Not from the bank at first. From cattle buyers. Freight men. Cards in Laramie. Then from anybody who thought the Brooks name meant a promise was worth something.”
Mercer lowered his gaze.
Henrietta understood that he had known.
She looked at him.
He did not deny it.
Calvin continued. “Samuel always believed the next herd would fix the last mistake. The next season. The next hand of cards. The next price rise. He could lose twenty dollars by breakfast and convince himself he’d make forty before supper.”
His fingers tightened on the blanket.
“When he died, men came.”
Henrietta barely breathed.
“They had notes.”
“Were they yours?” she asked.
“No.”
“Were you legally responsible?”
“No.”
“Then why—”
“Because his name was Brooks.”
The answer came too fast, too harsh.
Calvin looked at her then.
His eyes were bloodshot from pain and lost sleep.
“He was my little brother.”
Henrietta said nothing.
“He died owing men who had trusted our father, trusted me, trusted the name on the gate. I could have said no. I could have told them Samuel was dead and they could bury the paper with him. I could have let every saloon in Cheyenne talk about what kind of man he was.”
His mouth twisted.
“So I paid.”
Mercer said quietly, “For nearly two years.”
Henrietta looked at him.
Calvin’s voice sharpened. “You stay out of it.”
“No,” Mercer said. “You’ve used silence like a fence long enough.”
Calvin turned back to Henrietta. “I sold cattle too early. Mortgaged equipment. Then I borrowed against Broken Spur.”
“From Silas.”
“Yes.”
“And you never told anyone why.”
“No.”
Henrietta’s eyes moved toward the ledgers on the table.
So many strange withdrawals.
So many unexplained transfers.