“The widow owes eleven hundred and forty dollars, plus interest.
I am within my rights to collect.”
“You are,” Calla said.
Her calmness unsettled him more than anger would have.
“Then pay it,” he snapped.
Calla nodded to the trail.
A wagon rolled slowly through the opening the mules had made.
Two men sat on the front bench.
One was the manager of the county grain cooperative.
The other owned the largest produce warehouse along the railroad line.
Behind them rode three farmers from the southern valley.
The grain manager climbed down first.
“Mrs.
Birch,” he said, “we have inspected the soil report and the access road.
Our board will purchase an advance contract for next year’s corn and alfalfa, provided you begin clearing immediately.”
He handed Ezra a bank draft.
The warehouse owner followed with another.
“My company will contract for potatoes from twenty acres and onions from ten.
Half the first season’s payment in advance.”
The three farmers had not come to buy crops.
They came to lease portions of the field until Calla could work all of it herself.
Each carried a signed agreement and a deposit.
Ezra arranged the drafts on the metal box.
Together, they exceeded the balance of Calla’s note.
Silas stared at the papers.
“Those contracts are reckless,” he said.
“She has no equipment.
No labor.
No proper road.”
Mercy stamped one hoof against the newly uncovered oak timbers.
Calla looked at the line of mules behind her.
“I have a road,” she said.
“I have twenty workers no one else wanted.
And I have six families ready to clear and plant for shares.”
Men and women stepped from the crowd.
They were tenants, small farmers, and laborers who had struggled through poor harvests of their own.
Calla had spoken to them privately after discovering the field.
Instead of hiring them for wages she could not afford, she had offered each family a portion of the first crop.
Their agreements were fair, written, and witnessed by Ezra.
Clyde’s smirk disappeared.
Silas picked up the grain cooperative’s draft.
“This would cover the principal, perhaps, but not the penalties.”
Ezra produced a final sheet from the box.
“About those penalties,” he said.
“Your loan contract allows a late charge after thirty days.
Mrs.
Birch’s payment was never thirty days late.
Each time she brought money to your office, you recorded it several days after receiving it.”
Calla opened Elias’s notebook and removed three narrow receipts.
Silas had signed them himself.
The dates on the receipts did not match the dates in his ledger.
A clerk named Samuel Pike stood near the back of the crowd.
He had worked at Silas’s bank until the previous winter, when Silas dismissed him for questioning the accounts.
Samuel stepped forward with a copy of the deposit register.
“Mrs.
