“True.” Crockett eyed him, trying to sort out the implications. “If you find that Boyd was in on the robbery and word gets out about it, feelings will run even stronger against the Haymakers.”
“I’m afraid there’s no turning back, now that you’ve showed this to me. It’s my duty to find out who put it in that cave.” Chisholm folded the bill.
Crockett wanted the truth to be found, but it made him uneasy to see Chisholm put the banknote into a pocket inside his vest. Would he have to decide whether he would turn against Jane and her family?
No, not Jane. He would have to separate the money from Jane in his mind. She had nothing to do with it. Even if her father stole it, he would not desert her. And if the whole town turned on Boyd, he wouldn’t let any of them badmouth Jane and Ben because of their father’s deeds.
Jane carried the sack into the barn and pulled out the dress. She brushed her hand across the smooth green material. The tucks on the bodice and the dark green buttons down the front were too pretty for words. She would have to try it on later and see if it needed altering, but the size looked about right.
The dress might be old and rejected by all of the Hart daughters-in-law, but it was far finer than anything she had ever owned. She had long since made over and worn out the three dresses her mother had left behind, and those much-mended garments had burned up along with the house. True, Annie had brought her a skirt, but it was plain and drab. She hadn’t even worn it yet, because trousers were better for the work she’d been doing this week.
Someone had added a petticoat to the sack. It looked fresh and crisp, and she didn’t think it had been in a trunk for eleven years, since Victoria died. One of the wives over at 7 Heart had sent it out of her own wardrobe. For some reason, just knowing that brought tears to Jane’s eyes. She hadn’t cried when she saw the smoke rising or when she galloped into view and saw their house hopelessly engulfed in flames. She hadn’t cried when she and Ben found Ma’s china platter, blackened and cracked, in the rubble. But this—knowing someone truly cared about her loss. This touched a place deep inside her.
From outside, she heard Pa yell something. Noontime would be here in an hour or so. He probably wanted his dinner. She slipped the Bible inside the sack with the other things and hung it on a nail near the bridles. When she came out, her father appeared to be sleeping in the grass near the fence. She walked over and watched his chest rise and fall for a few seconds, just to be sure.
“What you lookin’ at?” he asked.
Jane snorted and turned away.
“Mealtime comin’,” her father said.
Ben had not returned to the logs, but was once more poking about in the ash pile where the house had been. They had hauled away a lot of the charred timber and sifted through the ashes over and over. Jane went to the makeshift cooking area she had set up and stoked the fire. When the blaze settled down to coals, she would cook something for lunch. She walked closer to Ben and stopped on the blackened grass.
“I think we’ve found everything useful that we’re going to.”
Ben leaned on the end of his hoe and gazed at her. “Probably. I’m just tired of peeling bark.”
“Me, too.” Jane looked toward the pasture. “I guess the stock is all right.”
He nodded. “Not much we can do for the cattle. I’m just glad they were all out when the fire started.” He swiveled his head and gazed at the debris. “Are you sure you don’t want the house in the same spot?”
“It would smell all the time if we built over the ash, don’t you think?”
“I suppose, if we didn’t dig it all out.”
“Well, we can’t do all that before tomorrow, and if we have the neighbors do it, it will take all day and we won’t get a house built. I don’t want to ask them to come back another day. One day is pushing it.”
“Maybe we should mark out the corners of where we want it, then. Where do you want your front door?”
She had already considered this and chosen a flat area beyond where the old house had stood. She walked to it and stood facing the lane that came in from the road. “Here, I guess.”
Ben came to her with a stick and a sledgehammer. He drove the stick into the ground right in front of her. “All right, you go start your beans or whatever you’re cooking. I’ll get some string and measure off where we think the corners ought to go. The Hart boys can help me make sure it’s straight when they get here.”
After Jane had dumped beans into the kettle, chopped up a turnip, and added some dried meat, she straightened.
“Make sure you put salt in,” her father called.
Her lips tightened. She rooted through her tin box of foodstuffs and took a pinch of salt from the small sack. When she had added it to the stew and stirred, she set the wooden spoon on a rock and walked to where Ben was working, out of earshot of their father, she hoped.
“Hey.”
Ben glanced up. “Can you hold the end of this string?”
She took it and said, “Pa sure is complaining a lot.”