Higher than before.
That was too convenient.
Still, Magdalena cautioned patience.
“If he thinks you suspect him, he stops making mistakes.”
Ethan looked at her.
“So?”
“Let him think we’re weak.”
Something in his eyes changed.
“You said we.”
Magdalena froze.
He had noticed.
“So?”
She tried.
“So nothing.”
But both remembered.
The weeks after that became relentless.
Magdalena transformed the pantry first.
Castle Ridge had enough food, but no system.
Old sacks mixed with new.
Salt meat stored poorly.
Fruit jars without dates.
Rodents had reached grain.
She reorganized everything.
Jacob complained.
Until she proved spoiled stores had cost them nearly two months of provisions.
He stopped complaining.
She rendered fat.
Smoked meat.
Dried apples.
Turned overripe tomatoes into sauce.
Stored beans.
Made hard biscuits for ranch hands.
Salted lamb.
And kept enough records to know exactly what could feed how many people through winter.
Ethan began appearing in the kitchen more often.
At first with excuses.
Accounts.
Coffee.
Questions about feed.
Then without excuses.
He leaned against the doorframe while she worked.
Magdalena noticed.
Ignored it.
Mostly.
One evening she was lifting a flour sack from the floor.
Ethan entered.
“Wait.”
She stood upright with the fifty-pound sack already against her hip.
“For what?”
“I was going to lift it.”
“You arrived late.”
His eyes moved over her arms.
“Apparently.”
She carried it across the room.
Set it down.
Ethan said:
“You’re stronger than Jacob.”
Magdalena stared.
“Tell him.”
“I enjoy living.”
She laughed.
The sound surprised him.
He smiled.
Really smiled.
Magdalena looked away too late.
After that, everything became more difficult.
Ethan had a good smile.
That was inconvenient.
The evidence from the lamb complicated everything.
They hid the wire.
Magdalena burned that entire batch of meat rather than risk anyone eating it.
Jacob protested the waste.
She told him why.
Not about the tag.
Only possible contamination.
Ethan backed her immediately.
“No one eats it.”
Jacob looked from one to the other.
“You two keeping secrets?”
“Yes,” Magdalena said.
Ethan almost choked.
Jacob frowned.
She continued:
“Food-preservation secrets.”
“That sounded convincing,” Ethan murmured after Jacob left.
“You would have done better?”
“No.”
That evening they examined the tag in Ethan’s office.
Arthur Vale Supply sold fencing materials, veterinary compounds, oil, wire, tools, and freight equipment throughout the county.
Half the ranch probably contained items from his warehouses.
The tag did not prove much.
Then Magdalena remembered the oily smell.
They checked veterinary records.
Castle Ridge had purchased injectable cattle tonic once, eighteen months earlier.
Not from Vale.
Jacob knew a veterinarian in town.
Magdalena proposed sending a sample quietly.
Ethan did.
Three days later, the answer arrived.
Concentrated arsenic compound.
Enough injected into an animal could cause weakness, vomiting, collapse, death.
Magdalena sat with the letter.
Ethan stood by the window.
“Arthur.”
“Still not enough.”
His fist struck the frame.
“Damn it, Magdalena.”
She looked up.
“You want justice or somebody to hit?”