Two boys took it down. Nobody told them to. Anna paid $400 into the Kuster County Bank on the 31st of October, one day early. She had made every payment on that note early for 3 years, and she was not going to change now. Arthur counted it, wrote the receipt, and then came out from behind the counter to hand it to her instead of sliding it across, which is a small thing and was not a small thing.
She bought a wagon wheel and a 100 lb of chicken feed. She gave Martha Foley back her jar and $11. And Martha took the jar. And in the second week of November, she carried the sharps into the gunsmith's shop on Main Street, set it on the counter, and put her finger on the silver plate. "Can you cut into that without ruining it?" The gunsmith turned it to the light.
"What do you want taken off?" "Nothing," Anna said. "Nothing comes off." So he cut one more line into the bottom of the plate under the place and the date and the distance and her husband's name. It took him two days and cost her $3. And when he was done the plate read presented to Paul Lambert Wolf Crossing, June 1882, 900 yd A&D to Anna Lambert, who fired it. Carl came up the Tongue River Road in December with a spotting glass he claimed she had left on the flat, which she had not, and sat on her crooked front step and drank coffee.
They want you to hand the purse next fall. No, that's what I told them you'd say. He turned his cup around. They want the old sergeant to do it if you won't. Anna looked out at the river bottom where a man with big hands had spent one whole summer 11 years ago teaching a girl of 23 to be still.
"He'll do it," she said. "Tell him I said he ought to." The rifle hung on two pegs over the door of the frame room Paul had built and never got square. Anybody who came in that house could see it. Nobody ever asked whose it was because by then there was not a soul on the tongue or the powder or the Yellowstone who did not already know. And if they had asked, the answer was cut into the steel where a man could read it by touch in the dark.
Thank you for staying with Anna all the way to the last shot. I'd like to know where this story found you today. So, if you have a moment, leave your town and your country in the comments. I read every one of them. And tell me what stayed with you.
The $2 going down on that entry sheet or the old sergeant coming out of the crowd on a bad hip to say a thing he'd carried six years. If this one was worth your time, tap the like button. And if you're new here, subscribe so the next story finds you. There's another one waiting on your screen right now. Until next time, be good to somebody who looks like they don't need it.