“The cave. The temperature stays the same year round. Food doesn’t rot as fast in cool, steady air.”
He looked at the corridor, at the bluff, at the black mouth of the cave beyond. I could see the suspicion in his face, the same suspicion I saw in everyone’s face, but behind it was something else: desperation. The desperate hope that perhaps the crazy Ren girl had found something that actually worked.
“I’ve got more turnips than I can eat,” he said. “Lost half of them last year to rot. If you could store some through the winter—”
“Bring them by. We’ll split whatever survives.”
He came back 3 days later with a wagon full of turnips. By November, I had vegetables stored for half a dozen families, all of them paying me in shares or trade goods or the occasional coin. The cave was becoming a business. The worthless inheritance was becoming something else entirely.
But not everyone was happy about it.
Calvin Reick owned the woodyard in Mercy Crossing. He also owned part of the wagon works and held notes on half the farms in the valley. When people needed credit to get through a hard winter, they went to Calvin Reick. When they could not pay, Calvin Reick took their land.
He came to my cabin on a cold afternoon in November, riding a gray horse and wearing a coat that cost more than everything I owned combined.
“Miss Ren.”
He did not dismount. He just sat there on his horse, looking down at me, at the corridor, at the cave mouth beyond. “I’ve been hearing stories.”
“Stories?”
“People say you’ve got some kind of root cellar that keeps food fresh all winter. People say you’re burning half the wood everyone else burns and staying just as warm.” He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “People say your granddaddy wasn’t as crazy as everyone thought.”
“My grandfather was exactly as sane as everyone thought. They just thought wrong.”
His smile flickered. “I came to make you an offer. $12 for the tract. That’s $3 more than Silas paid for it and more than anyone else will give you.”
“It’s not for sale.”
