Every handful of beans.
Food was how many more mornings you could keep children warm.
How many more nights an old person could sleep without pain in an empty stomach.
How long a widow could avoid selling her milk cow.
How many days a hunter had before desperation made him take a bad shot.
Clara looked at the twelve thin chickens and did not see meat.
She saw possibility.
At the edge of the market, Caleb Morgan stood beside a fur trader’s wagon and watched her.
He had watched most of the exchange.
Clara noticed him only after she had tied the grain sack behind her small cart.
He was difficult not to notice.
At thirty-seven, Caleb looked less like a farmer than a man the mountains had decided to grow for their own purposes.
Tall.
Wide shoulders.
Dark-brown hair that never seemed completely combed.
A heavy beard and mustache.
Hands scarred from traps, knives, ropes, and weather.
He wore a sleeveless fur vest over his bare chest despite the October cold, rough brown trousers, high leather boots, and a belt carrying a sheath knife and a small hatchet.
The town children loved stories about him.
Their mothers did not.
Caleb lived above Cedar Ridge in a cabin so far into the forest that some people claimed the sun reached it only by invitation.
He hunted.
Trapped.
Cut timber.
Guided travelers through the pass during difficult weather.
He appeared in Laurel Ridge whenever he needed salt, powder, metal, or human conversation.
Then vanished again.
Clara had known him for years without ever knowing him well.
He came to her cabin sometimes with meat.
She traded bread.
He repaired her roof one spring after a storm tore shingles loose.
She mended two shirts for him.
He once spent three days helping her build a smokehouse and refused payment except for supper.
People noticed.
Of course they did.
Small settlements noticed when a dog changed sleeping positions.
Two unmarried adults repeatedly helping each other became public entertainment.
Clara disliked gossip.
Caleb appeared immune.
He walked toward her.
“You bought them.”
Clara looked at the crate.
“That seems obvious.”
“I thought Coyle would have to kill half by sundown.”
“So did he.”
Caleb crouched beside the chickens.
One pecked weakly at his finger.
He smiled.
“Mean enough.”
“Means it wants to live.”
“Or hates you.”
“Those are not opposites.”
Caleb laughed.
Behind them, Silas Broome called:
“Careful, Morgan. She’ll have you sleeping with chickens next.”
Caleb stood.
His expression changed.
Clara touched his arm.
“Don’t.”
He looked down at her hand.
Then toward Silas.
“Wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“Only a little.”
Clara removed her hand.
Caleb stared at where it had been for a second longer than necessary.
Then looked at the birds.
“What are you doing with them?”
“Saving whichever can be saved.”
“And the rest?”
“Soup.”
Caleb nodded.
“Reasonable.”
Clara raised an eyebrow.
“No lecture?”
“About what?”
“Everybody else thinks I threw away money.”
Caleb glanced toward the laughing farmers.
“Everybody else spent theirs on whiskey and ribbon.”
“That includes you?”
“I bought salt.”
“And?”
He looked away.
Clara saw the neck of a whiskey bottle protruding from his pack.
She smiled.
“And salt.”
He laughed.
They loaded the chickens into Clara’s cart.
Then Caleb lifted the broken grain sack.
“What’s this?”