Clive Kensington counted coins behind the teller window until his fingers went numb, then he counted them again. Three years he had worked at the bank in Gritstown, and three years he had walked the same short path at noon to buy sugar he did not need from Dorothea Callahan. He wanted to marry her before anyone else in town thought to ask. He had a plan for that, the way he had plans for every column in his ledger, but plans did not account for the red-bearded stranger who had been loitering outside her shop for two days now. At noon Clive stepped out of the bank and saw the man still there, planted by her door like a fence post. Josiah "Dust" Mercer wore a brown coat gone pale at the shoulders and stared through folks as they passed. Yesterday Clive had turned back at the corner. Today he did not. He crossed the packed dirt with his hands loose at his sides and stopped an arm's length away. "Move along, friend," Clive said. His voice came out thinner than he wanted. "You've been standing at this lady's door two days. She's got customers to see." Josiah's yellow eyes settled on him. "The teller boy walks up to the wolf," he said, low. "Count your fingers before you count your coin, banker. She ain't the one needs guarding." He touched two fingers to his hat and stepped past Clive, close enough that Clive smelled sage and horse. Then he was gone down the street, unhurried, whistling something flat and tuneless. Clive stood a moment with his heart knocking. He pushed open the shop door. Dorothea stood behind the counter with a rag in her hand and green eyes already on him, calm as still water. "That was brave of you, Mr. Kensington," she said. "And foolish. Do you know who that was?" Clive shook his head. She set the rag down and came around the counter, closer than she had ever stood to him. "Josiah Mercer doesn't linger without a reason. He was watching me, not the shop." She studied his face for a long second, weighing something. "Come back after sundown. Use the back door. There are things about me you ought to know before you keep walking up to men like that on my account." Clive opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded. He walked out into the noon light with the sugar he had not bought still on the counter and a meeting that felt nothing like courtship waiting for him at dusk.

Clive locked the bank at six and walked home the long way, thinking. Dorothea had told him to come after sundown through her back door. The problem was plain. Gritstown watched. If any tongue caught him slipping behind the sundries shop at dusk, her name would be dirt by breakfast and his suit for her hand would be finished before it began. He needed to arrive unseen, and he needed to leave the same way. He took stock of what he owned. A gray banker's coat everyone knew on sight. A pale hat. Boots that clacked on plank walks. None of it would serve. He remembered a trunk his uncle had left him three winters back, still shoved under his bed. Clive dragged it out and lifted the lid. Inside lay a long dark riding cloak, black wool heavy in his hands, and a wide-brimmed hat worn soft at the crown, the band sweat-marked from miles Clive had never ridden. He tried them on before the small mirror. In the low lamp, he did not look like the teller from the bank. He looked like any drifter passing through. He waited until full dark. The moon was thin. He kept off the main street and cut behind the livery, then along the wash where the ground muffled his boots. Two men stood smoking outside the saloon and did not turn their heads as he passed the mouth of the alley. He pulled the brim lower and kept walking, slow, the way a stranger walks who has nowhere to be. At the rear of the shop he stopped and listened. Nothing but wind and a dog somewhere three streets over. He tapped the back door twice, waited, tapped once more. The door opened a hand's width. Green eyes found him under the hat, then the hand pulled him inside. Dorothea shut the door and slid the bolt. She looked him over, the cloak, the hat, the mud he had not thought to knock off his heels. "You learn quick, Mr. Kensington," she said, quiet. "Half the town would trade a week's wages to know you stood here tonight. You didn't give them the chance." She took the hat from his head and hung it on a peg by the door, as if it belonged there. A single lamp burned on the table behind her. Two cups. A folded paper weighted with a stone. She turned the lamp lower and sat. "Sit down," she said. "There are things I will only say once, and I need you to hear them before you decide whether you still want to walk up to my door in daylight." Clive pulled out the chair across from her. He had made it in unseen. Whatever she said next, he could not unhear.