PART 2 — THE MOUNTAIN MAN DISCOVERED WHY TOBY HAD BEEN BEATEN… AND WHAT HE FOUND IN THE BOY’S POCKET CHANGED EVERYTHING

For several seconds, nobody moved.

Toby sat hunched over the kitchen table, one hand pressed against his nose. Blood stained the collar of his shirt, and his eyes kept darting toward the back door as though he expected someone to come through it again.

I reached for a clean cloth.

“Let me see, sweetheart.”

“I’m all right, Miss Loretta.”

“You’re bleeding on my table. That’s not what I’d call all right.”

He tried to smile, but his lip trembled.

Boon stood behind him, his enormous hands resting on the back of the empty chair. He hadn’t said a word since Toby arrived.

I cleaned the boy’s face as gently as I could.

“Tell me what happened.”

Toby looked at Boon, then back at me.

“Clay was waiting behind the livery.”

“What did he want?”

“He said I embarrᴀssed him in front of everybody. He wanted the six dollars back.”

I frowned.

“But you told me he borrowed that money from you.”

“He did.”

“Then why would you give it back?”

Toby swallowed.

“Because he said he’d tell Mr. Harlan I stole money from the Copper Pot.”

My stomach тιԍнтened.

Mr. Harlan was the owner of the building. He collected rent every month and had threatened to raise it twice that year.

“Did Clay threaten to lie about you?”

Toby nodded.

“He said nobody would believe a boy like me over a man like him.”

Boon finally spoke.

“Where is the money now?”

Toby reached inside his torn coat and pulled out a small leather pouch.

“Here.”

He placed it on the table.

There were six silver dollars inside.

“I didn’t give it to him.”

I looked at the boy.

“You did the right thing.”

But Toby wasn’t finished.

He reached into his pocket again and produced a folded piece of paper.

“I found this in Clay’s coat when he grabbed me.”

Boon stepped closer.

“What is it?”

Toby unfolded the paper.

It was a receipt bearing the name of the Copper Pot.

My receipt.

Except I had never written it.

Someone had copied my handwriting and listed a payment of forty dollars for provisions I supposedly purchased from Clay Mercer.

At the bottom was a signature that looked remarkably like mine.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“Where did you get this?”

“He dropped it when we were fighting.”

Boon examined the paper.

Then he turned it over.

There were two more names written on the back.

Harlan and Mercer.

I sat down.

Mr. Harlan owned the building.

Clay had been coming to my cookhouse for years.

And suddenly, I wondered whether his insults had been the least of my problems.

Boon placed the receipt carefully on the table.

“Someone is trying to make you look indebted.”

I stared at him.

“Why?”

He looked toward the dining room.

“Because a woman who owes money is easier to push out of business.”

I had opened the Copper Pot six years earlier, after my husband Thomas died in a mining accident.

He had left me the cookhouse, a little money, and a mortgage that seemed to grow every month.

I had worked through fevers, broken equipment, freezing winters, and summers when the kitchen became H๏τter than a blacksmith’s furnace.

Every plate I served represented another day I had managed to keep the doors open.

I wasn’t going to let anyone take it from me.

“Tomorrow morning,” I said, “I’m going to see Harlan.”

Boon shook his head.

“Not alone.”

“I’ve handled my business for six years.”

“I know.”

“Then you know I don’t need someone standing behind me.”

He looked at me steadily.

“I didn’t say you did. I said someone should know what happens when you walk through that door.”

I wanted to argue.

Instead, I looked at Toby.

The boy was exhausted, and his nose had begun bleeding again.

“First, we’re getting you checked by Doc Miller.”

Boon nodded.

“I’ll take him.”

“You don’t even know where the doctor’s office is.”

“I can find it.”

He reached for his coat.

Before leaving, he stopped beside me.

“Lock the back door tonight, Loretta.”

“Why?”

He glanced at the forged receipt.

“Because men who steal money usually come back for the papers that prove it.”

The next morning, Boon returned before sunrise.

He carried a small wooden box and two cups of coffee.

Toby was resting upstairs, and I was kneading biscuit dough when Boon placed the box on the counter.

“What is that?”

“Something I found behind the livery.”

He opened it.

Inside were several folded receipts, a ledger, and a bundle of letters tied with twine.

I recognized one name immediately.

Harlan.

Another appeared repeatedly.

Mercer.

And beside them were dates, payments, and property descriptions.

I picked up the ledger.

My hands began trembling.

There were entries for nearly every business on the main street.

The blacksmith.

The general store.

The livery.

And the Copper Pot.

Every month, Harlan had charged certain merchants additional fees that never appeared in their official rent records.

Some had paid.

Others had been threatened with eviction.

One entry was marked in red ink.

LORETTA BELL — PROPERTY TRANSFER PENDING.

I looked up.

“What does this mean?”

Boon closed the box.

“It means your trouble didn’t begin last night.”

I turned another page.

There was a payment dated three weeks earlier.

Forty dollars.

The same amount written on the forged receipt.

But the name beside it wasn’t Clay’s.

It was a woman’s.

Margaret Harlan.

I stared at the name.

“Who is she?”

Boon’s expression became unreadable.

“The man’s wife.”

Then he said something that made me put the ledger down.

“She’s the reason I came to Red Dog.”

I looked at him.

“What?”

Boon hesitated.

“I wasn’t looking for a bed when I walked into your cookhouse.”

“Then what were you looking for?”

He glanced toward the window.

“A man named Samuel Harlan.”

My heart began beating faster.

“Why?”

Boon opened his coat and removed a small pH๏τograph.

It showed three men standing beside a mining office.

One was clearly Harlan.

The second was Clay Mercer.

The third was younger, with a familiar scar across his chin.

I looked at Boon.

“Who is that?”

He turned the pH๏τograph over.

On the back was a name.

THOMAS BELL.

My husband’s name.

I felt the kitchen disappear around me.

Thomas had been ᴅᴇᴀᴅ for six years.

Yet there he stood in a pH๏τograph taken less than a year before his accident.

And beside him were the two men who now seemed determined to destroy my business.

Boon watched my face carefully.

“Loretta, I think your husband’s death wasn’t the accident everyone told you it was.”