Chapter 3 - The Stranger from Laramie
The horseman pulled his mount to a halt just outside the barn doors, sending a spray of powdery snow across the packed earth. He was a thick-set man with a neatly trimmed gray beard, silver spectacles perched precariously on a bulbous nose, and an expression of permanent disapproval. He wore city wool beneath his buffalo coat—expensive, dry-cleaned, and entirely out of place in the Wyoming backcountry.
"Boon!" the rider called out, swinging his heavy frame down from the saddle with a groan of protesting leather. "I'd heard you were snowed in, but I didn't realize you'd turned your ranch into a boarding house."
Silas stepped out into the open, planting his boots firmly in the snow. "What do you want, Mr. Vance? Laramie is twenty miles south. You didn't ride out here in January just to admire my fence lines."
Vance pulled a silver pocket watch from his vest, flicked it open, snapped it shut, and tucked it away. "Business, Silas. Always business. The bank board met last Tuesday. Your loan extension on the east pasture parcel? It's up for review. And word in town is that you're short on the cash-flow requirements."
Eda stepped out from the shadows of the barn doorway, the crosscut saw resting casually against her shoulder like a rifle. Vance’s eyes flicked toward her, then past her to where Mabel and Lena were peering out from the barn window. The banker's eyebrows arched high into his forehead.
"Well," Vance said, a slow, knowing smirk spreading across his face. "I see the rumors in town were understated. Seven of 'em. You bought seven girls at the winter auction, Boon? I didn't take you for a collector of strays."
"Watch your tongue, Vance," Silas said, his voice dropping an octave, carrying a warning weight that made the banker take half a step backward. "They're staying here as ranch hands. They're working off their keep."
"Working?" Vance laughed, a dry, papery sound. "On a homestead that's already three months behind on its interest payments? You can't work your way out of a forty-dollar tax lien with extra hands, Silas, unless those hands are carrying gold dust from California."
Eda stepped forward, her boots crunching in the snow. "Mr. Vance, is it?"
Vance blinked, turning his attention fully to her. "Miss...?"
"Eda," she supplied, her voice steady and clear. "You talk about mortgages and interest like this land is just numbers on a ledger. But Mr. Boon didn't buy us to start a boarding house. He bought us because men in town treat human beings like livestock, and he's the only one who had the spine to stop it."
Vance’s smirk faltered slightly, replaced by a calculating, professional coldness. "Spine doesn't pay the county tax collector, young lady. And it certainly doesn't satisfy the Laramie Territorial Bank. The fact is, Mr. Boon is overextended. If he can't produce forty dollars in cash—not labor, not timber, cash—by the end of the month, the bank will have to foreclose on the east pasture. And once the east pasture goes, the water rights go with it. Without water, this whole ranch reverts to scrubland by summer."
Silas jaw tightened so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. He took a step toward Vance, but Eda raised her hand slightly, stopping him. She looked at the banker, her mind racing.
"The east pasture," Eda said slowly. "How much timber is on that parcel?"
Vance stared at her, surprised by the question. "Cedar and pine. Good timber. But it's protected under the mortgage terms—you can't log it without bank permission."
"Unless," Eda said, her eyes narrowing as a daring plan began to form in her mind, "the timber is harvested under a contract that satisfies the back interest immediately. Silas has the tools. We have the labor. Seven pairs of hands can cut and haul twice as much cedar in two weeks as one man can do all winter."
Vance looked from Eda to Silas, then back again, a spark of genuine amusement in his eyes. "You think you and a half-dozen girls from the auction yard can pull winter logging out of the frozen hills before the bank foreclosure notice is finalized?"
"Try us," Eda said. "Give us ten days. If we stack fifty cords of seasoned cedar at the lower crossing by next Friday, you extend the mortgage through harvest."
Vance studied her for a long, quiet minute. He knew timber prices were high in Laramie. He also knew that if Silas failed, the bank got the water rights anyway at zero risk.
"Ten days," Vance said, pulling a leather-bound notebook from his pocket and scribbling a quick line with a stub of pencil. "Fifty cords stacked and ready for hauling at the crossing. If you fall even one log short, the foreclosure proceeds immediately, and Boon signs over the deed."
"Done," Eda said before Silas could speak.
May you like
Vance snapped his notebook shut, mounted his horse with surprising agility, and turned the animal back toward the southern trail. "Good luck, Miss Eda. You're going to need every hour of daylight you've got."
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