Just practical care.
Martha watched him.
“Your hand is shaking.”
“Cold.”
“Liar.”
“Yes.”
He stood.
“What do we do?”
Martha glanced toward the incriminating paper.
“We do not tell Montgomery we have this.”
Josiah frowned.
“He just tried killing my cattle.”
“And if you ride into town tomorrow shouting about it, what happens?”
“I have evidence.”
“You have a paper found in a saddlebag dropped by an unidentified masked man during a storm.”
“It has Montgomery’s mark.”
“His lawyers will say a thief stole company stationery.”
Josiah’s jaw tightened.
“He’ll lie.”
“Obviously.”
She tapped the ledger on the desk.
“We need something he cannot explain away.”
“Like what?”
Martha looked toward the receipts.
“Weight.”
Josiah stared.
She continued.
“Montgomery’s entire scheme depends on numbers nobody checks.”
“You sign for four tons.”
“Three arrive.”
“He charges interest on four.”
“No one weighs again because his freight company controls the scale.”
Josiah understood.
“We need another scale.”
“Yes.”
“And witnesses.”
“Yes.”
“And one shipment he cannot alter after the fact.”
Martha nodded.
Josiah looked at her.
“You already have a plan.”
“I have the beginning of one.”
He smiled despite everything.
“That usually means everyone else should worry.”
This time Martha smiled too.
By morning the storm had buried every road into Silver City.
They had time.
Martha used it.
Over the next nine days, the Broken Spur became something between a ranch, a smokehouse, and an accounting office.
Martha finished preserving the pork first.
Whatever war they were now fighting against Montgomery, eight ranch hands still needed to survive winter.
She refused to let urgency create stupidity.
Thirty hogs became hundreds of pounds of cured ham, bacon, sausage, lard, pickled cuts, and smoked shoulders.
The ranch hands stopped making jokes about her size entirely.
Not because Martha had frightened them with the Winchester.
Mostly.
They had watched her work.
Martha did not move quickly across a yard. At nearly three hundred fifty kilograms, she could not.
But she organized labor so efficiently that speed stopped mattering.
She placed worktables at useful heights.
Moved supplies before beginning.
Assigned each man one repeating task instead of allowing six men to trip over each other.
Had pulleys installed above the butchering beams so carcasses were lifted mechanically rather than through pride.
Measured salt.
Recorded weights.
Rotated smokehouse racks.
She knew exactly how many hours of labor were being wasted.
Within two weeks, Gideon stopped saying, “We’ve always done it this way.”
The first time he caught himself before saying it, Martha noticed.
She said nothing.
That was worse.
He muttered:
“I hate that face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you know.”