Chapter 4 - The Cabin Above Bitter Creek
The man with Cyrus Vale's message did not look dangerous.
That was the first thing Harriet noticed.
He was small, neatly dressed, and wore polished spectacles that looked ridiculous beside the mud-coated miners crowding around Harlan's wagon.
“Miss Bell?”
Harriet handed a loaf to a bearded miner.
“Depends.”
The small man smiled.
“On what?”
“Who is asking.”
“Edwin Price.”
“That answers half the question.”
“Harlan warned me about you.”
Harriet glanced toward Harlan.
He was unloading sacks near the wagon's rear.
“You know Mr. Jessup?”
“I know of him.”
Price removed his hat.
“I represent Vale Consolidated.”
Harriet's hands went still.
Several miners nearby suddenly became fascinated with their bread.
News traveled faster than locomotives in small places.
Harlan appeared at Harriet's side.
“Price.”
“Jessup.”
No friendship there.
Price adjusted his glasses.
“I was hoping for a private conversation.”
“You found the wrong camp,” Harriet said. “Nothing is private here.”
One miner laughed.
Price's smile tightened.
“Very well. Mr. Vale asked me to extend his personal regards.”
“I've never met Mr. Vale.”
“He hopes to correct that.”
“I don't.”
“Miss Bell, businessmen appreciate efficiency.”
“So do cooks. That's why I don't boil an egg for an hour.”
A few miners snorted.
Harlan looked at the ground, hiding a smile.
Price's cheeks reddened.
“The current offer on your property is exceptionally generous.”
“My property isn't for sale.”
“Everything is.”
“No.”
“Everything has a price.”
Harriet looked at the last loaf in her hands.
She held it out to a miner who gave her twenty cents.
“There,” she said. “That had a price.”
Then she pointed south.
“My land does not.”
Price studied her.
“Your father was more practical.”
“My father refused twelve thousand dollars.”
“He also understood the consequences of refusing indefinitely.”
Harlan shifted closer.
Price noticed.
“Is that a threat?” Harriet asked.
“Certainly not.”
“It sounded like one.”
“It is economics.”
“Economics usually wears cleaner boots.”
Laughter spread through the camp.
Price's expression hardened.
“Ten days, Miss Bell.”
“Your letter said ten days yesterday.”
“Nine, then.”
He replaced his hat.
“I suggest you consider whether sentiment is worth losing everything.”
He walked away.
Harriet watched until he disappeared behind the assay shack.
Only then did she realize she had crushed one corner of her apron in her fist.
Harlan spoke quietly.
“You all right?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
“I hate men who speak like they're reading from contracts.”
“Price was a lawyer before Vale hired him.”
“That explains the condition.”
Harlan laughed.
They sold all thirty loaves in seventeen minutes.
Three miners asked whether she could bring forty next time.
The cook at the bunkhouse wanted six every delivery.
A storekeeper offered to take whatever remained.
On the ride home Harriet calculated numbers aloud.
“Forty-five loaves, three times weekly, eighteen cents average—”
“Twenty.”
“Some bought at fifteen.”
“Charge twenty.”
“That seems greedy.”
“It's twelve miles up a frozen mountain.”
“Eighteen.”
“Twenty.”
“Nineteen.”
Harlan looked at her.
“Are you bargaining with yourself?”
“With you.”
“They're your loaves.”
“Your wagon.”
“My horses eat whether we're hauling bread or not.”
“Nineteen.”
He shook his head.
“Stubborn.”
“You paid twenty dollars for one.”
“That wasn't bread.”
Harriet looked over.
“What was it?”
Harlan focused on the trail.
“Already had this conversation.”
“No, you escaped this conversation.”
Snow began falling.
Thin flakes at first.
Then heavier.
Harlan glanced toward the ridge.
“We're not making town before dark.”
“We left before noon.”
“Storm's moving faster.”
Harriet looked south.
Bitter Creek had vanished behind white.
“My father.”
“Mrs. Grady is with him.”
“You arranged that?”
“I asked her before we left.”
Harriet stared.
“You plan for everything?”
“Try to.”
“Except telling me.”
He grimaced.
“I earned that.”
Within an hour the road disappeared.
Harlan turned the wagon toward a narrow trail.
“Where are we going?”
“My cabin.”
Harriet stiffened.
“Harlan.”
“We'll freeze trying for town.”
“I can't stay overnight at your cabin.”
“You can if the alternative is dying politely beside the road.”
She hated that he was right.
They reached the cabin at dusk.
Snow fell so heavily Harriet could barely see the barn from the porch.
Harlan settled the horses while Harriet started supper.
She found potatoes, onions, dried beans, salt pork.
“You keep enough food for an army,” she said when he returned.
“Winters are long.”
“You could come to town.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He removed his wet coat.
“Too many people.”
Harriet smiled.
“I noticed your discomfort last night.”
“Terrifying.”
She cut potatoes.
“Pearl will have me married to you by morning.”
“Could be worse.”
The knife stopped.
Harlan seemed to realize what he had said.
Neither moved.
The storm rattled the windows.
Harriet looked down again.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose it could.”
Silence changed after that.
Not uncomfortable.
Just aware.
Harlan built the fire higher.
Harriet cooked.
They ate.
Afterward she washed the bowls despite his protest.
“You hauled me through a blizzard,” she said. “I can wash two plates.”
“Three.”
“What?”
“You forgot the pot.”
She splashed water at him.
It surprised them both.
Harlan stared at the droplets on his shirt.
Harriet covered her mouth.
“Oh, no.”
He slowly reached for the water bucket.
Her eyes widened.
“Harlan Jessup.”
He dipped two fingers.
“Don't.”
He flicked water.
Harriet gasped.
Then laughed so hard she had to grab the counter.
For five ridiculous minutes, two grown adults who had spent years carrying more responsibility than anyone should threw dishwater at each other like children.
It ended when Harriet slipped.
Harlan caught her.
His arm wrapped around her waist.
Her hands landed against his chest.
Everything stopped.
The fire cracked.
Snow pressed against the windows.
Harlan's face was inches from hers.
Harriet became painfully conscious of every part of herself she had been taught to dislike.
Her weight.
Her waist.
Her broad shoulders.
His arm around her.
He did not look disgusted.
He looked startled.
And something else.
Something that frightened her more than disgust would have.
Want.
Real, unmistakable want.
Harriet stepped back.
“I'm sorry.”
Harlan frowned.
“For falling?”
“For…”
She gestured helplessly toward herself.
His expression changed.
“Don't.”
“What?”
“Don't apologize for taking up space.”
The words struck somewhere deep.
Harriet turned toward the sink.
“You don't know what you're talking about.”
“I know exactly what I'm talking about.”
“No, you don't.”
He came closer but did not touch her.
“Who taught you that?”
She stared into the wash water.
“Nobody.”
“Liar.”
Harriet spun.
“Do not call me—”
“Then don't lie.”
Anger flashed.
“So now you're an expert on women?”
“No.”
“On me?”
“No.”
“Then leave it.”
Harlan's jaw tightened.
Harriet instantly regretted the sharpness.
But years of humiliation had opened inside her like an old wound.
“You think because you paid twenty dollars for bread and said two decent things, you understand what it is to walk into a room and know people have already decided what your body means?”
Harlan said nothing.
“They decide I'm lazy while I'm carrying their wash water. They decide I'm desperate because I'm unmarried. They decide any man who speaks kindly to me must be joking.”
Her voice cracked.
Harriet hated that.
She folded her arms.
“When you caught me just now, my first thought wasn't that I might have hurt myself.”
Harlan's eyes stayed on hers.
“What was it?”
“That I was too heavy.”
His face hardened.
Not at her.
At the idea.
Harriet laughed once, bitterly.
“See? Pathetic.”
“No.”
“Harlan—”
“No.”
The force of it silenced her.
He stepped closer.
“Harriet Bell, I split timber for a living. I drag elk downhill. I load hundred-pound feed sacks. If I couldn't hold you, that would be my problem.”
Her mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
He continued, quieter.
“And whoever taught you to apologize for being held was a fool.”
Something behind Harriet's ribs broke loose.
Not love.
Not yet.
Something more dangerous.
Hope.
She turned away before he could see it.
Later Harlan gave her his bed.
He slept near the fire.
Harriet lay awake under heavy quilts listening to the storm.
On the wall beside the bed hung a photograph.
Two younger men stood in front of the unfinished cabin.
One was Harlan.
The other resembled him strongly.
His brother.
On the photograph's lower edge, someone had written:
Harlan & Caleb Jessup, 1887. The beginning of something worth keeping.
Harriet touched the frame.
Then she noticed another object tucked behind it.
A newspaper clipping.
She pulled it free.
The headline was seven years old.
RAILROAD BLAST KILLS FOUR NEAR VALE PASS
Harriet's stomach tightened.
She read the names.
Caleb Jessup.
Samuel Ortega.
Thomas Reed.
Peter Collins.
The company overseeing construction?
Vale Consolidated Rail.
Harriet stared toward the main room.
Harlan had said Caleb was dead.
He had never said how.
Now she understood why he hated Cyrus Vale.
But beneath the clipping was something else.
A letter.
Harriet did not open it.
She didn't need to.
The handwriting on the envelope was enough.
She knew it.
Her father had written it.
And across the front were three words:
For Harlan only.
Harriet stood in the doorway holding the envelope.
Harlan woke immediately.
His eyes found the letter.
Then her face.
May you like
Neither spoke.
Finally Harriet asked, “What else has my father been hiding from me?”
