Chapter 1 - Nine DaysThe ranch was dying in silence.
At dawn, Caleb Ror stood in the frozen yard with his coat pulled tight around him, staring at the foreclosure notice nailed to the bunkhouse door.
Nine days.
That was all the bank had given him.
Nine days until the cattle, the barn, the house, the pasture, and every weathered fence post his father had driven into the ground would belong to somebody else.
Most likely Harlon Pike.
Christmas was five days away, though nothing about the ranch felt like Christmas.
The cattle were thin. Their ribs showed through winter coats that had lost their shine. The windmill complained with every turn, one blade cracked nearly in half. The pump beside the well groaned whenever Caleb forced the handle downward.
The drought had started two years earlier.
At first, he had told himself it would pass.
Then the grass browned.
Water holes shrank.
Feed prices rose.
He sold cattle to buy feed for the cattle he kept, then sold more cattle when that no longer worked.
The ranch hands left one by one when he could not afford their wages.
By autumn, Caleb was doing the work of five men and failing at all of it.
Still, every morning he got up.
Quitting early felt worse than losing slowly.
He tore his gaze from the notice and crossed the yard toward the barn.
Inside, the horses stirred.
“Morning,” he muttered.
They answered with soft snorts.
He measured out less grain than they deserved and pretended not to notice how little remained in the sack.
The ranch had once sounded alive before sunrise. Men calling to one another. Gates opening. Horses stamping. Cattle moving. The clang of tools from the old forge beside the barn.
Now there was mostly wind.
That afternoon, however, someone was coming.
A woman.
Three weeks earlier, in a moment Caleb still could not explain without feeling ashamed, he had placed an advertisement in a territorial newspaper.
Land. Roof. Future.
A rancher seeking a practical woman willing to build a life in Wyoming country.
Simple words.
Not exactly lies.
But not the truth.
He had not mentioned the foreclosure.
He had not mentioned that half the cattle were gone.
He had not mentioned that the forge had been cold for years or that part of the shed roof had collapsed.
And he certainly had not mentioned Harlon Pike.
Pike owned land north and east of Caleb’s property and had been buying failed ranches whenever drought broke their owners.
He had offered to buy Caleb’s ranch twice.
Caleb refused twice.
The third offer had not arrived yet.
It would.
Pike could afford patience.
Caleb could not.
Near noon, Caleb hitched the wagon and rode toward town.
Every mile made the shame worse.
The woman’s name was Mave Collins.
Her letters had been careful and direct.
She had asked whether the ranch could support two people.
Caleb had written yes.
Technically, it had supported one man who barely ate.
She had asked whether he wanted a servant or a wife.
A partner, he had answered.
That word bothered him most.
When the stage finally rolled into town, Caleb was waiting beside the freight platform.
The driver climbed down.
A traveling salesman followed.
Then a woman stepped from the coach.
She was not what Caleb had imagined.
Not delicate.
Not smiling.
Not hopeful.
Mave Collins looked tired.
Her dark coat was patched at one elbow. Her boots were worn white along the edges. Her hair was pulled back simply, with loose strands around a face that seemed younger when she first stepped down and older when she lifted her eyes.
She had one trunk.
She reached for it herself.
Caleb stepped forward.
“I’ve got it.”
Her hand stayed on the handle a second longer.
“You’re Caleb?”
“Yes.”
“Mave Collins.”
“I know.”
That sounded foolish.
She gave him a brief look but said nothing.
He lifted the trunk.
It was surprisingly heavy.
On the ride back, Mave watched the country.
Caleb watched the road.
The closer they got to the ranch, the less he wanted to arrive.
Eventually the buildings appeared against the winter sky.
The leaning fence.
The patched barn.
The broken windmill.
The empty corral.
And beside the barn, the old forge, rust-red and abandoned.
Mave did not ask what had happened.
That was somehow worse.
Caleb stopped the wagon outside the house.
She climbed down slowly.
Her eyes traveled over everything.
The roof.
The yard.
The cattle beyond the fence.
The forge.
Then she looked at Caleb.
He waited for anger.
Instead she said, “Where should I put my things?”
He carried her trunk inside.
The cabin was clean because Caleb had spent the previous night scrubbing years of neglect from it.
But clean could not make it prosperous.
There was one table.
Two chairs.
A stove.
A narrow spare room.
Nothing that matched the future described in his letters.
Mave stood near the doorway.
“Thank you,” she said.
Caleb nodded.
He walked outside before she could ask a question he was not ready to answer.
But there was no escaping it.
He looked across the yard at the foreclosure notice moving in the wind.
Nine days.
And now there were two people standing beneath the shadow of it.
May you like
That night, Caleb decided, he would tell her everything.
Even if the truth made her leave before morning.
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