Now that the wheel's safe. Martha put the plates in the basin and turned around. "I'm coming with you," she said. Silas looked at her. "Mrs.
Whitaker, those scratches on the fitting weren't the only thing I found," Martha said. She held his gaze steadily. "There's something else wrong with that wagon." "I didn't get to it before your rider showed up. I'll need to finish the inspection before either of us should feel good about taking it up a mountain grade." She untied her apron. And if anything else is wrong with it, you're going to want someone along who can tell the difference between a failure that waits and one that doesn't.
Silas sat back in his chair and looked at her for a long moment. I hired you to keep my house, he said. You hired me because your sister told you to, Martha said. And she told you to because she read my letter more carefully than you did. What you hired is a woman who can cook your meals and fix your machinery and keep your records and inspect your equipment and make sure the people depending on you get through the winter.
She held his gaze. So, let me do what you hired me for. The silence stretched between them. Then, Silas Boon pushed his chair back and stood up. We leave in an hour, he said.
45 minutes, Martha said. I need to finish the inspection first. He looked at her one more time with that expression. She still couldn't fully read. Then he went out to hitch the team and Martha went back to the tool chest and the morning moved around them like the mountains moved around everything up here large and indifferent and absolutely without mercy for anyone who came unprepared.
Martha Whitaker had been unprepared for a great many things in her 43 years. She had never once let that stop her. She got back down on her board and rolled herself underneath the wagon and went looking for what else was broken and more importantly for who had broken it and why. And whether the story she'd been telling herself for 4 months about Walter Crane was the beginning of something much worse than a bad firing. The axle was cold under her hands.
The mountains were quiet around her. And somewhere above the timber line, half a dozen families were waiting for flour and salt and lamp oil. And the simple blind faith that someone was still willing to come for them. Martha tightened her grip on the wrench. She had things to do.
She found it on the third pass. Martha had gone over every inch of that wagon twice before she found the leather strip worked in behind the left rear wheel, twisted twice around the spoke housing in a way that looked almost accidental if you didn't know what you were looking at. But Martha knew. She'd seen this particular trick once before. Years ago when a disgruntled freight hand had done the same thing to a competitor's wagon out of pure spite.