His eyes moved from her bag to her coat to her face, then back to her bag. "You come in on the afternoon stage?" "Yes, sir." "From where?"
"Kansas City, Missouri." Briggs nodded. "Long way." He didn't say it like it was impressive; he said it like it was suspicious.
"You got people here?" Clara thought briefly about lying. "I thought I did. It didn't work out." Briggs set down the jar he'd been holding.
"You're the mail-order woman. The one coming for Tom Harding." The words landed the way a slap lands, not just painful but humiliating, because someone had been watching and talking and the whole town already knew. "I was," she said carefully. "Mr. Harding's situation changed. I'm simply looking for a room while I arrange alternative travel."
"The Widow Pearson takes in boarders," Briggs said slowly. "But she told me this morning she's full up on account of the storm. Got three travelers from the blocked coach stuck there already." He paused. "And I don't reckon she'd take a stranger in over her regulars anyway."
"Is there anywhere else?" "Not in Coldwater Creek." Clara held his gaze. "Then I'll sleep in the station."
"Station's locked after six," Briggs said. He said it without apology, without any visible concern for what that information meant for the woman standing in front of him. "Stationmaster goes home to his family. Doesn't come back until morning." "I see."
Clara's voice was very steady. She had learned a long time ago that showing desperation to people who already held the advantage was like handing them a weapon. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Briggs." She turned toward the door.
"Miss." Briggs's voice had a new note in it, not kindness exactly, but something adjacent to it. Discomfort, maybe. "Storm's picking up bad tonight. You shouldn't be outside."
"I appreciate the concern." She put her hand on the door. "I'll manage." She walked back out into the cold.
She had been standing on the covered porch of the general store for approximately seven minutes. Long enough for the feeling to leave her fingers, but not long enough to admit she had no plan, when she heard the sound of horses. Not one horse. Several.
They were moving fast despite the snow and the dark. A wagon came up the main road with two draft horses leaning hard into the wind, their breath coming in great white clouds. The man on the bench seat was big, big enough that Clara noticed it even from a distance. He was driving like a man who knew exactly where he was going and did not intend to stop for anything.
He stopped for the general store. He pulled the horses up short, set the brake, jumped down from the bench, and strode through the snow toward the porch steps without looking up. He was nearly at the door before he saw Clara standing there. He stopped.
He was maybe 35, wearing a dark coat over broad shoulders and a hat with snow piled on the brim. His face was the kind that had spent years outdoors, weathered and sharp along the jaw, with eyes that were a very steady shade of gray. There was a scar running from his left temple to his cheekbone, old and faded. It didn't make him look dangerous; it made him look like a man who had survived something and kept moving.