"Charlie."
Matthew's voice was quiet. Charlie turned. His face went pale enough to be amusing.
Matthew removed his gloves one finger at a time. "You have something useful to do this morning?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do it."
Charlie disappeared toward the back door. Rachel did not look at Matthew. She finished cutting the biscuits.
"That was unnecessary."
"He was being foolish."
"He's 23."
"Same thing."
Rachel's mouth twitched. Matthew sat down. After a moment, he said, "You all right?"
She looked up. He did not look angry now. Only watchful. Rachel thought about every room she had ever entered where someone made a remark about her body, her widowhood, her age, or what sort of man might tolerate her.
Matthew had not allowed one harmless joke about a coffee cup to grow into something else. Not because she had asked him. Because he had heard where it might go.
"Yes," she said.
Then, after a pause, "Thank you."
He nodded once. That was enough. A few days later, Rachel rode into Cold Water with Eli to buy salt, lamp oil, coffee, yeast, and two coils of butcher's twine.
June saw her through the boarding house window. Rachel lifted a hand. June hesitated, then returned the gesture. Nothing more.
At Dawson's Mercantile, the clerk handed Rachel the invoice. She checked every line before paying. Coffee. Salt.
Lamp oil. Soap. Needles. Nothing strange.
Then she noticed the freight charges. "What's this?"
The clerk leaned over the counter. "Winter transport. Three dollars and forty cents."
"Roads bad."
"It was a dollar eighty last month."
The clerk shrugged. "Freight company raised it."
Rachel folded the invoice and slipped it into her coat pocket. On the ride home, she asked Eli how often Holloway Basin received freight.
"Depends. Twice a month sometimes. More if the supplies run thin."
"Has it always cost this much?"
"No."
"When did it change?"
Eli thought. "November, maybe."
Rachel looked toward the white ridge line. The wind was pushing snow off the peaks in long gray ribbons. She said nothing more. That evening, she began checking receipts.
Matthew kept ranch papers in a rolltop desk in the small office off the main house parlor. Rachel did not go through them without permission. Instead, she asked, "I need the food receipts from September onward."
Matthew looked up from sharpening a pocketknife. "For what?"
"Because I think you're paying more than you should."
He closed the knife. "How much more?"
"I don't know yet."
A pause. Then he went to the office and returned with a leather ledger and a bundle of folded receipts tied with string. Rachel took them to the cookhouse.
For two hours, she worked beneath the lamp. Numbers. Dates. Freight.