He says Crane told him to get rid of it. Bernardet his jaw was tight. He says he couldn't do it. Martha and Silas looked at each other. Shai got down from the wagon without assistance, which took a moment, and she crossed the yard to the cabin door and pushed it open.
The man sitting at her kitchen table was young, perhaps 25, with the look of someone who had not slept and had been arguing with himself for long enough that the argument had worn him down to the bone. He was holding a battered brown notebook in both hands the way you held something you weren't sure you had the right to hold. He looked up when she came in. Mrs. Whitaker, he said she looked at the notebook in his hands.
She knew that notebook. She knew the water stain on the lower right corner of the cover that had come from a crossing near Missoula in the fall of 1,882. She knew the way the spine was cracked from the middle from the years Henry had carried it in his back pocket on the job. My name is Daniel Marsh. The young man said, "I've been with Crane's company 2 years.
I was hired for freight management, but lately Mr. Crane has been using me for He stopped. He started again for things I didn't think I was agreeing to when I took the job. Such as entering a woman's employer's barn in the middle of the night, Martha said. His color rose.
Yes, ma'am. Among other things, you took this notebook on Crane's orders. Yes, ma'am. And he told you to burn it. The young man looked down at the notebook in his hands.
He said it was evidence in a dispute and that if it was gone, the dispute would go away. He looked back up. He didn't tell me what was in it. Did you read it? Martha said a pause some of it.
He said enough to understand what it was. And what did you understand? He set the notebook on the table very carefully. That this man kept honest records. He said that he documented what he was told to install and what he actually installed and where the difference was and why.
And that someone in my company used that difference to blame this man for accidents that weren't his fault. His voice was tight and young and trying to be steady. I have a father who's a mechanic. He kept records the same way. Martha looked at the notebook on the table.