The sky remained gray, but the wind no longer struck the cabin walls with the same violence.
Gideon went outside to clear snow from the woodpile.
Lydia stayed near the stove, studying the map and her old pattern book.
She wanted to understand how the figures might connect.
But some entries were nearly three years old.
Names she once knew had faded from memory.
And Everett's business had been complicated even when she lived inside his house.
She turned to a page dated October 1884.
A familiar set of initials caught her eye.
S.R.
She stared at them.
Silas Rusk.
The name in the letter.
The name on Gideon's map.
She turned another page.
There it was again.
S.R.
Beside a group of numbers representing freight weights.
Then a third entry.
And a fourth.
Lydia's pulse quickened.
She had copied those figures before she ever heard of Wyoming Territory.
Everett had been conducting business with Rusk years earlier.
She looked toward the door.
Gideon was still outside.
The dogs had followed him.
Lydia returned to the book.
On the next page, she found something else.
A short phrase written in her own handwriting.
North Fork account, separate from ordinary freight.
She stared.
She remembered that evening.
Everett had returned home after dinner with two businessmen.
He had been drinking.
He dropped several papers on the dining table and ordered Lydia to copy them.
She sat for hours beside a smoking lamp.
When she misread a figure, he struck the table so hard that the inkwell overturned.
She remembered cleaning the ink from the floor.
She remembered his anger.
But most clearly, she remembered one of the businessmen saying:
"The water is the key. Without that, the whole route is worthless."
At the time, she assumed they were discussing freight transport.
Now she looked at the river drawn on Gideon's map.
The North Fork.
The disputed boundary.
The water.
Her hands began to tremble.
She turned another page.
And found an entry she had forgotten making.
A shipment marked as timber equipment.
Forty-two crates.
Delivered to Calder's Crossing.
But beside it, in her tiny shorthand, was a note Everett had ordered her to copy.
Payment contingent upon final survey correction.
Lydia stared at the words.
Then she heard Gideon's boots outside.
The door opened.
Cold air swept into the room.
He stepped inside carrying an armload of firewood.
Snow covered his shoulders.
Fern followed him, shaking her fur.
Lydia looked up.
"Gideon."
He saw her expression.
"What is it?"
She held out the pattern book.
"I found something."
He set down the wood.
She pointed to the entry.
He read it carefully.
Then looked toward the map.
The color changed in his face.
"Where did you get this?"
"Everett's accounts."
Gideon touched the page.
"These figures."
He swallowed.
"Elias wrote about a shipment like this."
Lydia's breath caught.
"Where?"
Gideon looked toward the window.
Then toward the northern mountains.