The visitor coughed sharply. “Forgive me, but this argument has a deadline. Three men followed me from the creek crossing. They'll reach the cabin before midnight.”
A moment later, the horses announced themselves. Their hooves sounded faintly through the snow before fading into the wind.
The mountain man reached for his rifle. His wife took the ledger from the table and opened it beneath the lamp. Columns of numbers marched down each page, beside land descriptions and dates. Something looked wrong at once.
She had balanced the accounts of an entire dressmaking workshop. Figures were familiar to her, even when legal language was not. An amount had been carried forward twice. A parcel number had been altered from one hundred and four to one hundred and forty. The correction used darker ink, and the false total had been copied into the next account as though it were original.
“Whoever forged this assumed nobody would check the additions,” she said.
The visitor blinked. “What?”
She pointed to two columns. “These sums disagree. Not by a little. The error creates the price of an entire tract of land. This isn't just a record of where the boundaries lie. It's a record of how they manufactured a debt.”
Her husband stared at her. She shut the ledger gently.
“I'll keep this safe,” she said. “You worry about the door.”
The first horse stopped outside. Another moved toward the rear of the cabin. A voice called the old surname again, not in warning this time but as a threat.
“Come out. We only want the book.”
Her husband did not answer.
A fist struck the door. “The woman at the relay station won't last until morning. Give us what she stole and we might forget this cabin.”
The woman in blue felt cold anger rise beneath her fear. She remembered wealthy customers who thought they could take anything if they spoke loudly enough. This voice was the same arrogance wrapped in greater danger.
She slipped the narrow ledger into the reinforced inner pocket of her gown, a pocket she'd sewn to carry household accounts without tearing delicate fabric. Then she placed an old inventory book on the table beneath the lamp.
Her husband noticed. She raised one finger to her lips.
The men outside tested the back shutters. Timber scraped, and a loose board rattled. Her husband moved toward the rear of the room, but the woman spoke first.