“I’m Eleanor Hart. I came from Springfield, Illinois, if that’s what you mean.”
Something flickered across his face. Not surprise. Recognition mixed with discomfort.
He wrapped the nails in brown paper, slow and careful. “You planning to stay out there?”
“That depends. Is there a law against stubbornness in this county?”
The corner of his mouth twitched, though he tried not to let it. “Not yet.”
As he totaled her purchases, the door opened behind her and two women entered. Eleanor did not turn, but she heard the whisper anyway.
“That’s her.”
“The one he wrote to.”
“Lord help her.”
The words were soft. The pity was not.
Eleanor laid coins on the counter one by one. She had fifty-two dollars when she left Illinois. After the train, the stage, the meals, and this purchase, she was down to forty-one.
“Do you carry canvas?” she asked.
“For what?”
“For a door that wants to die.”
The shopkeeper coughed, then nodded. “Out back.”
She made three trips before dark. On the second trip she bought beans, flour, and a sack of coffee she could not really afford. On the third, she hauled back two rolls of canvas and a box of matches, then walked the property line in the fading light and took inventory like her father had taught her years ago on his farm outside Springfield.
What could be salvaged. What had to be replaced. Where water might be. Which fence posts had given up. Where the roof would fail next.
Her hands were bleeding before she finished.
She wrapped one palm in a strip torn from the hem of an underskirt and set a beam against the standing wall, using her shoulder and all her weight to lever it into place.
That was when she heard the horse.
“You keep pushing that way,” a male voice called, “and that beam’s going to crush you.”
Eleanor gritted her teeth and leaned harder. “Then don’t stand there preaching. Come hold the other end.”
There was a brief silence.
Then boots hit the ground.
A man came around the side of the house, taller than most, lean at the waist and broad through the chest, sun-browned and steady-eyed. He took hold of the beam without another word. Together they raised it just enough for Eleanor to drive in the nail.
