Reduced portions slightly on the bean. Bought extra directly from Dela Marwick, a freight merchant 2 mi east, whose reliability had held steady through three rough seasons. The first time the wagon was late, she told herself it was the roads. The second time she told herself the summer was hard on everyone's schedule. Then Dela drove herself up on a Wednesday with the face of a woman who'd been awake all night building up to something.
She sat down at the counter. I can't sell to you anymore, she said. Nia set the ladle down carefully since Monday. Low almost private. The railroads freight office told two of my drivers that if they haul to merchants selling to vendors operating near the construction zone without railroad approval, they lose their contracts.
Nia, she pressed her hands on the counter. Those contracts are more than half of what I bring in. I've got a business. I've got people who work for me. I understand.
I'm sorry, Dela. She waited until the woman looked at her straight. I understand. This isn't your doing. Don't carry it.
After Dela left, Nia stood at the counter for exactly one breath. Then she opened her ledger and started calculating what she had, what she needed, and how far the math stretched before it broke. Gideon came in while she was writing. He read her face before she said a word. Supply problem, he said.
He got to the merchants. A silence. How long do you have? 11 days at current volume. 16. If I cut portions, she kept writing. I need another source I can ride to Benson.
There's a grain distributor there who doesn't run his business through railroad freight agreements. I know him. The work will hold up as a legitimate hall. Documented. No connection to Voss's arrangements.
She looked at him. I can't pay freight rates right now. We'll treat it as deferred payment against future arrangement once this is resolved. That's not a freight arrangement, she said. That's a loan with extra paperwork.
Call it what suits you. He held her eyes. Do you want me to go or not? She looked at her numbers. Write up the terms, she said.
Specific amounts, specific repayment, I can actually meet if it's a business arrangement. It gets treated like one, not a gesture, a documented agreement with both our names on it. All right. and Gideon. She waited until he had his coat. If that distributor gets pressured, too, I need to know before you ride back.
Not after. Yes, ma'am. He was out the door before noon. She watched him go and told herself the relief she felt was purely practical. She was a practical woman.
She believed that right up until she set aside a bowl of supper before she knew how long he'd be gone or when he was coming back. He returned in two days with grain. dried beans, flour, and a receipt for every item before he set down a single sack. She checked the numbers. The beef wasn't in the original arrangement, she said. Rancher owed me a favor.
I called it in, Gideon. It's in the freight total. Everything's You adjusted the grain price, she said. About 8%, I can see it. He was quiet.
Don't adjust the price and dress it up as arithmetic, she said. If you want to help me, help me at what it actually costs. I don't need charity wrapped in receipts. He held her look for a moment. You're right, he said.
I'm sorry. She held out the receipt. Give me the real number, he told her. She wrote it in the ledger. That was the moment she started trusting him.
Not when he brought the supplies. Not when he volunteered to go, but when he said, "You're right." and left it there without making her feel anything about it. The payroll failed on a Tuesday. The financial dispute between the construction company and the railroads main contractor had been building for weeks. She'd heard pieces of it from Merritt, from workers who caught conversations they weren't supposed to.
When it finally broke, it broke fast and ugly. The payroll wagon came to the work camp and left with full coffers. The company issued vouchers. The workers, most of whom had been eating on credit at the commissary for 10 days already, couldn't buy food, couldn't send money home, couldn't do a thing with a piece of paper that promised them something eventually. By Wednesday afternoon, Merritt was at her counter.
He was a man used to carrying weight without showing it. And watching him be careful with his words, told her exactly what this conversation cost him. I've got 63 men who haven't eaten a real meal since Monday, he said. I'm not asking you to give it away. I know you can't.
I just need to know if there's a way. Sit down, she said. She put a bowl of stew in front of him because he looked like he hadn't eaten either. And then she opened her ledger to the supply calculations she'd run that morning. "Here's what I have," she said.
"Here's how long it runs at full portions. Here's what it runs reduced. She turned the ledger so he could see. I can feed your men, but I need a structure that lets me do it without running myself into the ground. Merritt studied the numbers the way a foreman studies a load calculation.
Seriously, without rushing. What do you need? He said, men who have money need to be able to prepay for men who don't. She said, not as charity, as a shared arrangement. I track every transaction when the payroll comes through.
The men who ate on the fund pay back in and it resets. She pulled a small wooden box from under the counter. She'd been building this in her head since Monday. I make tokens. Each one is worth one meal.
A man who can pay buys tokens and hangs them on a hook by the door. Any man who needs a meal takes one without explaining why. She pointed to the nail she'd already put up beside the entrance. empty waiting. No names on the tokens, she said. No record of who took them.
Hunger isn't something a man should have to document to get fed. Merritt looked at the hook for a long moment. You're taking the risk of not getting paid. He said, "I'm already not getting paid by Vos's supply arrangement." She said, "At least this way the men eat." He nodded. "I'll spread the word," he said.