Chapter 16 - One Year LaterThe following December arrived colder than the last.
Five days before Christmas, Caleb stood in the same yard where the foreclosure notice had once hung.
Snow covered the ground.
The windmill turned smoothly.
The cattle were healthy.
The barn still looked old, because it was old, but the roof no longer leaked.
The forge was already awake.
Hammer blows carried through the morning air.
Caleb walked toward it.
Inside, Eli worked at one anvil.
Mave stood at the other.
Two workbenches held orders waiting for shipment.
“You’re late,” Mave said.
“It’s six in the morning.”
“Exactly.”
Caleb placed two cups of coffee on the bench.
Eli reached for one.
Caleb slapped his hand away.
“Yours is outside.”
Eli groaned.
Mave took her cup.
“Good coffee?”
“Christmas supply.”
She looked suspicious.
“You hiding things again?”
“Only coffee.”
“Dangerous habit.”
Caleb smiled.
Later that morning, Dietrich arrived.
His plow blade needed sharpening.
The same blade that had been Mave’s first paid job on the ranch.
He placed it on the bench.
“Held up well.”
Mave examined the edge.
“You abuse your tools.”
“I use them.”
“You abuse them while using them.”
Dietrich looked at Caleb.
“She always this pleasant?”
“Worse after marriage.”
Mave pointed toward the door.
“Both of you.”
That afternoon, Caleb opened the old ledger.
He had kept the original pages.
There was Dietrich’s first payment.
The Christmas market.
The Red Bluff deposits.
The figures that once looked impossibly small against the bank debt.
He turned to the current year.
The difference was not wealth.
It was stability.
Feed reserve.
Repair fund.
Forge inventory.
Loan payment made early.
Caleb sat back.
Mave entered the house.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking at numbers.”
“You used to do that with a much less pleasant expression.”
“These are nicer numbers.”
She removed her gloves.
“Christmas market invitation came.”
Caleb looked up.
“We going?”
“I thought we should.”
“To sell?”
“Some.”
She placed a paper on the table.
“The Red Bluff merchant offered us a larger stall.”
Caleb smiled.
“One year.”
“One year.”
Mave sat.
For a moment they remembered.
The fifty-mile journey.
The empty stall.
The first sale.
Pike watching from across the crowd.
The cash box.
The bank.
Caleb stood.
“I have something.”
“That usually worries me.”
He went to the cupboard.
From the back he removed a wrapped object.
Mave frowned.
“You bought a gift?”
“Yes.”
“We said no unnecessary spending.”
“It cost almost nothing.”
“That is exactly what people say before revealing unnecessary spending.”
Caleb placed it in front of her.
Mave unwrapped the cloth.
Inside lay the old horseshoe.
The one Pike had thrown into the dirt.
But it had changed.
Caleb had cleaned the rust.
Mounted it on a piece of wood.
Beneath it was a small metal plate.
Mave read the engraving.
STILL STANDING.
She stared at it.
Caleb suddenly felt foolish.
“I thought maybe for the forge.”
Mave touched the horseshoe.
“Who engraved this?”
“Eli.”
“That explains the crooked S.”
“I told him.”
“He clearly ignored you.”
Caleb waited.
Mave looked up.
Her eyes were bright.
“I like it.”
He released a breath.
“Good.”
She stood.
“Come with me.”
They crossed the yard to the bunkhouse.
Mave stopped at the exact place where the foreclosure notice had once been nailed.
Two tiny holes remained in the weathered wood.
Caleb had never repaired them.
Mave touched one.
“You kept these?”
“I forgot.”
“Liar.”
He smiled.
“Fine. I kept them.”
“Why?”
“So I’d remember.”
“Remember what?”
Caleb looked toward the ranch.
“How close we came.”
Mave shook her head.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“So you remember we came back.”
She took the horseshoe plaque from his hands.
Together they mounted it over the old nail holes.
STILL STANDING.
Caleb stepped back.
A year earlier, the wall had carried a notice telling him everything would be taken.
Now it carried proof that something dismissed as junk had become part of the reason they survived.
Mave stood beside him.
“Pike would hate that.”
“That makes it better.”
They laughed.
The forge hammer started again.
Eli, apparently tired of waiting for them.
Mave headed toward the shop.
Caleb watched her.
“Mave.”
She turned.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
He considered a dozen answers.
Coming.
Staying.
The forge.
The market.
The ranch.
The marriage.
Instead he said, “For not believing my advertisement.”
Mave smiled.
May you like
“I believed enough of it.”
Then she returned to work.
