Chapter 54
“Henrietta’s ranch rope.”
That silenced him.
Mercer turned to Henrietta. “And you.”
She sat at the table wrapped in a wool blanket, her hair smelling faintly of smoke. “I walked into the fire. I did not fracture anything.”
“You inhaled smoke, overtaxed joints already injured by cold, and dragged a cast-iron box through a burning office.”
“It is not cast iron.”
Mercer stared.
Henrietta lowered her eyes. “Forged iron.”
“I regret teaching either of you words.”
A pounding sounded at the door.
All three froze.
Mercer reached it first.
The deputy stood outside with snow crusted across his shoulders. Behind him, barely visible in the darkness, a second horse carried Silas Vane with his wrists bound in front of him.
Silas looked less like a banker now. His coat was torn at one shoulder, his hat gone, and blood darkened the corner of his mouth. Snow clung to his hair, but his eyes were alive with the same hard calculation Henrietta had seen across the loan papers.
The deputy pushed him inside.
Silas’s gaze found the cashbox on the table.
For the first time, real fear crossed his face.
It vanished almost at once.
“You stupid woman,” he said softly.
Calvin rose halfway from the pillows.
Mercer shoved him down by the shoulder.
Henrietta did not move.
Silas looked at her soot-blackened cuffs. “You went into the office.”
“Yes.”
“For that.”
“Yes.”
His smile returned, though it no longer reached his eyes. “Copies are not ledgers.”
“No.”
“Copies can be invented.”
“So can penalties.”
His jaw flexed.
Henrietta opened the cashbox and laid the first copied page on the table. “January seventh. You shifted Calvin’s payment from principal to interest.”
Silas said nothing.
She placed a second sheet beside it. “January nineteenth. You charged a late penalty before the grace period ended.”
The deputy stepped closer.
Henrietta laid down a third. “February second. You changed the date on the statement to make the previous penalty appear lawful.”
Silas’s eyes moved toward the door.
The deputy noticed.
Henrietta continued arranging the papers. Her hands shook from cold and exhaustion, but her voice did not. “Then you repeated the pattern. Different sums. Same method. Small enough each time that a man fighting to keep cattle alive might think he had remembered poorly.”
Silas looked at Calvin. “You signed the loan.”
Calvin’s mouth hardened. “I did.”
“And you failed to understand it.”
“I understood enough.”