Chapter 1: A Man Down on His Luck

Sterling City.

Out past the Fifth Ward, at the produce market.

A cold wind howled over the stalls, and a few squealing hogs added their voices to it, so that the crowded market gate was louder and livelier than ever.

Caleb Walker was rolling a smoke of cheap Bull Durham, the kind that cost a penny a sack, and blowing rings of white smoke into the air. Before long a few smartly dressed matrons had gathered around his pushcart.

He’d paid three cents a pound wholesale for the California oranges that had come in on the rail, and he was asking three and a half. Even so, the women complained about the price and haggled him down a fraction of a penny.

Well… one sale was better than none.

“License inspectors coming! Run!”

“Damnation, weren’t they just here yesterday? What are they back for today?”

Caleb had just held out his palm for the coins when he slapped the mule and took off, cart and all.

If the marshal’s men caught him peddling without the right papers, half a month’s labor would be gone in a single fine.

He couldn’t say when it had happened, how the country boy who’d once been the cock of the walk at the schoolhouse had let his life turn into such a mess.

The one mercy was that he had married young, and his wife was five years his junior. They had no house and no carriage, but at least they had a small, warm home.

That was the only reason life as a drifter in the territorial capital wasn’t so lonely.

He tied up the mule and turned his key in the door. It opened with a long creak.

A little girl had been hiding behind it, and the instant he stepped inside she flung herself at him and hung off him like a locket on a chain.

Caleb scooped her up in one swoop and pinched her little nose. She was far too sweet. No matter how hard things were out in the world, coming home to her made it worth the trouble.

This was his five-year-old daughter, Annie Walker.

“Caleb Walker, you’ve come back just in time.”

On the settee in the cramped front room sat an elegant city beauty with wavy curls.

Her arms and legs were crossed and her face was cold. Whatever she’d come to say, it wasn’t good news.

“Sister-in-law, when did you get here?”

“Hmph.” Winnie Sutton gave a cold snort, ignoring his pleasantries, and came straight to the point. “I came to ask you to let my sister go.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t follow you.”

Caleb’s face changed, but Winnie had no intention of sparing his feelings. “Don’t play dumb with me. My sister has been with you six years, from the wedding till now. Is there a lick of her girlhood bloom left on her? Since the day she took up with you, has she had one single good day?”

“She was with child and still scrubbing dishes for pay, and not a month after Annie was born she was working two jobs.”

“Six years.”

Winnie grew more worked up. “Six years, and all that time my sister’s been shut up with you in this dark little rented hole. Caleb Walker, if she hadn’t picked you, would she be living like this?”

Caleb’s breath caught. His eyes kept shifting, and his feelings ran high.

In that moment he couldn’t say a single word back.

Folks might think it was his own laziness that had brought them here.

The truth was the opposite. He worked hard. He left before dawn and came home late at night.

When he’d first come to Sterling City he’d had no schooling to speak of and no trade.

He’d spent a whole year under the blazing sun hauling mortar and brick on building sites. Later, when he heard there was good money in freighting, he’d driven wagons all over the territory.

Now he pushed a cart and sold oranges when he could get them. It wasn’t respectable work, but he still cleared twenty to forty dollars a month.

But what good was that?

Just as his sister-in-law said, even with that income, ten years without eating or drinking wouldn’t buy him the down payment on a house inside the Third Ward of Sterling City.

When would days like these ever end?

Annie would need schooling soon, and there were old folks back home to look after. Whenever the night grew deep and still, he’d remember the promises he’d once made.

He had wanted to give his wife an easy life by the time he turned thirty, and he hadn’t had the means.

He had wanted to make his parents proud, and he had failed them completely.

Life had bent more than his back. It had bent the dreams he used to hold dear.

Winnie had cussed him out in plenty of ugly ways, but she’d never once called him lazy.

What she hated was that her sister had chosen, in the prettiest years of her life, a man with no schooling and no family name to speak of.

If only she’d listened to our folks and married a city man. He might not bring home as much as Caleb Walker, but her life would be a whole lot steadier.

There was no getting around it. With brick houses priced sky-high, a single house was enough to crush the plain lives of plain people.

Caleb said nothing more, and Winnie stamped out in a huff.

When his wife came home, she was carrying a bunch of flowers.

Once upon a time his wife had been the girl half the young men in town sighed over: beautiful, pretty, gentle and kind.

Having won a woman like that, he’d always figured he must have saved a whole wagon train in some past life.

Clara was only twenty-five. She’d borne a child, yet she still kept a fine figure, with a slim waist, a shapely backside, long legs and delicate features.

The pity was that since marrying him she’d never once bought a decent pot of rouge or a proper store-bought coat.

The girl who used to turn every head now worked the stove with bare hands and tied her hair back in a low tail, a few loose strands straying at her temples.

The door banged shut, and Clara changed into the white cotton slippers she’d been wearing for five years.

“Mama, Auntie came by.”

Annie ran and threw herself into her arms, and Clara, smiling faintly, lifted her up.

Caleb had cooked supper as usual: one dish with meat and one with greens. The family lived as frugally as it was possible to live.

All so they could set up a little home of their own in Sterling City that much sooner.

Clara set her bag on the table and opened it. Inside were half a roast duck and some peppered pigs’ feet.

“Ooh… we have extra dishes tonight!”

Little Annie clapped her small hands with glee. Clara patted her head and pulled over a little stool for her.

“Caleb,” she said, “today’s our sixth wedding anniversary.”

No wonder she’d spent money on these things. It was their anniversary. On any other day he’d have been delighted, but tonight he could hardly scrape up a smile.

Six years had gone by and he hadn’t reached a single goal. The happy life he’d meant to give his wife was nowhere in sight.

“Why so quiet? Did my little sister say something ugly again?”

Clara frowned slightly, laid down her fork and took his hand.

Caleb didn’t care to go into it, so he made an excuse. “No. It’s just the old-timers down at the livery say rain’s coming tomorrow. You know once it rains I can’t take the cart out to earn anything.”

“Then you can’t take it out,” she said softly.

“You’ve hardly had a day off all year. It’s a good chance to take Annie out to splash in the rain, and leave off hauling other folks’ furniture for a while.”

She was as gentle and kind as ever, and the more she was like that, the more ashamed Caleb felt.

But that was all he was good for.

Besides hard labor and selling oranges, the only thing he could do was lie awake at night dreaming of starting a business like the ambitious young men did.

Life wouldn’t allow it.

Getting on toward middle age and thinking this might be all his future held only made him more anxious.

“I can’t rest while we still don’t have a house,” Caleb said, shaking his head.

Clara pressed her lips together as if to say something, but in the end she kept quiet.

She had seen it that very day: the price of the little house she’d set her heart on had gone up again.

They’d nearly scraped together the down payment, and now they were short once more.

There was no use complaining about their lot. He was worn out enough already.

When it was time to turn in, Clara carried Little Annie to the small bed beside theirs, tucked her under a thick quilt, then slipped in quietly next to him.

Caleb felt her warmth and fought hard to keep the tears at the corners of his eyes from rolling down.

He’d thought about it. Maybe they ought to just go back to his little hometown out in the farm country, build a big house, and live simply.

Just live like that for the rest of their lives.

But deep down a voice kept telling him that a man, at the very least, ought to give his wife and children the life they wanted.

Running away, how long could that last?

A bell chimed.

In his drowsy head the sound echoed, and he couldn’t make out what it was. He’d have to look into it tomorrow.

Chapter 2: Double the Take

Him and his jinxing mouth.

He’d only griped about it last night, and sure enough, it rained.

His home was in North Hollow, a shantytown tucked inside the city limits, out beyond the Fifth Ward and close up against the Sixth Ward of Sterling City. He rented a small place there: one bedroom, one front room, and a cramped little kitchen.

The rent was three dollars a month.

A big courtyard with three gates like this one would cost a fortune inside the Third Ward, but out here in these shanty streets it was the sort of rental that went to newcomers like them.

More than ten households lived around that one courtyard, and he’d brought quite a few of them in himself.

The rain poured down without letup. Clara got up early to wash, then boiled a big pot of noodles and added two coddled eggs.

Annie was still in infant school, and now that it was holiday time she’d grown a little fond of sleeping late.

Her mother hoisted her up by her little bottom, and she hung there listless, eyes only half open, lids fluttering, ready to drop back to sleep the moment nobody was looking.

“Caleb, if you’re not busy later, take Annie out to play!”

Annie was still half asleep, but at the words “out to play with Papa” her big eyes lit right up.

Too bad. Rain or no rain, he still had to go out and earn.

“We’ll see. If I can’t scare up any work, I’ll take her out.”

After a plain breakfast, Caleb pulled on his slicker, saddled the mule, and first rode his wife to work.

By day she was a clerk at the telegraph office. After work she sold flowers on a street the young folks liked to stroll.

By the end of the month she brought home a fair wage. Anyone could see the two of them were both scrapping hard for their little home.

Even this early in the morning, Sterling City’s streets were full of people.

The ones hurrying through the rain were all working folks like them.

Clara waved at him, then turned and went in to work.

Caleb headed back home, remembering that sudden bell-chime in his head the night before.

By the lights of all those dime novels he’d read, this had to be some kind of magic, a lucky charm that could change his fortune.

What could it be?

As soon as he got home, Caleb couldn’t wait to reach for that ripple in his mind. A line of golden script appeared before his eyes.

It began with an introduction.

[Holder: Caleb Walker]

[Age: 30]

[Level: LV1]

[Today’s income: 0]

[Explanation: Each day, based on the holder’s income, one chance at a multiplier draw is granted. At level LV1, the reward multiplier ranges from 2 to 10 times.]

Could it really work like that?

By the Ledger’s own explanation, if he earned five dollars today he’d get a chance at the multiplier draw. And if he rolled ten times, wouldn’t that jump him straight to fifty dollars?

Whew… that was thrilling. There was no thrill like it.

This Golden Ledger was powerful beyond words. If it truly worked that way, he’d have a real shot at making his fortune.

Caleb rubbed his hands together and gave hopeful little Annie a big kiss.

The little one still remembered her mother saying they’d go out to play, and she was brimming with anticipation.

Caleb had no mind for that now, but he comforted her all the same.

“Annie, Papa needs to go out and earn money now. Once I’ve made some, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. All right?”

Annie was a little disappointed, but she nodded like a good girl.

Papa always said that, and he’d never once taken her.

All those places the other children had been, she wanted so badly to go too.

Caleb truly had no choice. Next year she’d start primary school, and if he didn’t settle the question of a house, no good school would take a child whose family wasn’t on the town rolls as property owners.

Schooling was tied tight to property.

If newcomers like them couldn’t buy a house, there was no hope of getting their child into a good school.

Annie was often home alone. She ate crackers when she got hungry, and now and then she even boiled noodles for herself.

It broke your heart how sensible she was.

Caleb locked the door and went next door to ask a neighbor to look in on her.

He knew every one of the ten or so households in the courtyard. It was pouring outside; there was no way he could sell oranges today.

He’d have to see if he could land a moving job.

Who’d say his luck was bad? He’d barely stepped out of the courtyard and reached the old cottonwood when he ran into a young woman holding a big black umbrella. She looked slight and delicate.

“Miss, have you just moved here?”

“Yes.”

She was a pretty girl, if a bit thin, with a sweet smile.

Lily Hayes spoke up first. “Do you live here too, mister? Would you know where I can find someone to move my things?”

“I do. I live over yonder.”

Caleb pointed out his door, then said, “Most days I sell oranges off a cart, but when it rains I help folks move. That cart and mule are mine.”

He’d bought the cart two years back. It had weathered sun and rain right alongside him, and it still stood out plain as day.

Lily was a little delighted to hear he was a mover.

She had just moved here from far out beyond the Sixth Ward.

After talking a while, Caleb learned the girl was actually an actress.

The kind whose name he’d never heard, which told him she wasn’t doing too well.

That made sense. If an actress were doing well, why would she move to a place like this?

Caleb wasn’t a man for fancy frills. He’d always dealt honestly with people.

And he spoke plainly.

“I’ll tell you, miss, I’d never have guessed you were an actress. You’ll have to sign your name for me later. If you ever become a big star, I’ll have something to brag about!”

Lily’s smile was sincerely sweet. Her dream since childhood had been to act on the stage.

Looking at her cheerful face, you’d never guess she’d spent four years as an extra in the back row of the chorus.

In other words, four years without any hope.

Where was her future? It all looked hazy.

The two of them talked and hit it off right away, both of them down-at-heel dreamers in the big city.

Still, business was business. Lily had lived too far out before; the trip there and back took better than four hours.

That was the least of it. The real trouble was that she lived on the sixth floor of a tenement with no lift, only stairs.

The furniture had all been gathered bit by bit over the years. It stood for the youth she’d spent in those four years of drifting in the capital.

And for her four years of struggle on the stage.

He had to move all of it. Caleb gave her a cut rate of two dollars.

It was a two-man job, but he could manage it alone.

So long as it meant more money, Caleb wasn’t afraid of hard work.

Not earning was the real hardship.

“Mr. Walker, why don’t you get someone to help?”

When they reached her place, Lily still worried he couldn’t handle it alone. Even with her help it would be tough.

There was a good deal of stuff, after all.

He’d finally landed a two-dollar job. How could Caleb call in somebody else? That would just be handing away money for nothing.

“No trouble. I can manage this much by myself.”

Caleb fetched his moving straps, lashed the little settee onto his back, and started down, one step at a time.

Whenever he met someone on the stairs, he had to stand aside.

Sweating clean through his shirt on a freezing day was a new experience.

Making money never came without weariness.

Lily pitched in too, but there was only so much a slip of a woman could do. She handled the lighter things.

After seven or eight trips up and down,

they finally had everything out of the room and down on the street.

It was still pouring. Caleb covered the furniture with a canvas tarp to protect it as best he could.

He tried to keep it all dry.

Then he pulled on his slicker, and Lily put on a black oilskin of her own. His cart was loaded higher than usual and rattled loud along the road,

but otherwise it was fine.

The two of them rode home together through all that clattering.

By the time they reached home it was three in the afternoon, and Annie was still shut in her room.

Hearing someone at the door, she ran over, overjoyed. For lunch she’d boiled herself a small bowl of noodles with barely a drop of lard in it, and cooked an egg besides.

Knowing her papa was home, she snapped shut the music box that had been playing her favorite tune.

Then she quickly laid out her slate and primer and waited eagerly behind the door.

“Lily, this here’s my home. We’re neighbors now.”

As luck would have it, Lily had rented the room right next door, which had stood empty nearly three months.

It was the same kind of one-room place.

Caleb brought her over to get acquainted, since back in the country neighbors weren’t as cold as they were in the city.

In the city you could live beside someone for decades and never learn their name.

That would be unthinkable back home.

With the furniture moved in, Caleb brought her over for a proper introduction.

“Mister, is this your little girl? She’s so cute.”

With her small ponytail and her baby fat, Annie had a round, chubby little face.

Who wouldn’t call her the cutest thing?

“How do you do, ma’am.”

Annie’s eyes curved into crescents as she smiled. She was good at greeting strangers and not a bit shy.

Of course, she’d never talk to a stranger without her folks nearby.

Lily took to the adorable little girl at once.

Supper wasn’t made yet, and Caleb was starving after a morning of hard labor.

He threw together two simple dishes in the kitchen and fried up the morning’s leftover rice with egg until it smelled wonderful.

Life was plain enough.

Since it was their first meeting, Lily naturally felt awkward staying to eat.

She said with a smile, “Mr. Walker, I truly can’t thank you enough for today. Here’s the two dollars.”

She counted two silver dollars into his hand.

Caleb closed his palm over them.

A bell chimed, and two dollars were his.

[Today’s income: two dollars]

[Would you like to open the random income multiplier now?]

A line of golden script appeared in his mind once more.

Caleb was worked up. He couldn’t wait to see what the Golden Ledger could do.

“Open it.”

Two golden dice appeared. Their faces bore only the numbers one through five. There was no six.

Caleb called out, “Stop.”

The left one showed a three, and the right one showed the smallest number, a one. Together they made four.

[Congratulations, holder. You have rolled a four-times multiplier.]

[Eight dollars has been credited to your purse. Balance: nine dollars.]

Whoo… Caleb was so excited he nearly jumped ten feet in the air.

With the Golden Ledger, whether it was buying a house or raising a child, what could stand in his way now?

Chapter 3: A Happy Day

All of a sudden, the fried rice at home didn’t smell so good anymore.

Caleb took Little Annie to eat at Mother Kelly’s Fried Chicken, the place she’d been longing for.

The little one was overjoyed. At the counter she ordered a big beef sandwich and a fried drumstick, and a heaping plate of fried potatoes on top of that.

“Papa, I want a sarsaparilla too,” she said.

“Order whatever you like. Today your papa’s going to fill every craving you’ve got.”

Caleb stroked her head. His little darling had always been so sensible, and he’d never managed to give her much before.

Now that he could earn real money, his daughter was going to be raised with plenty.

Starting with eating whatever she wanted at Mother Kelly’s.

Little Annie was easy to please. She hugged her very own family basket of chicken and beamed.

She was grinning so wide her teeth nearly went crooked.

Seeing that satisfied, innocent smile, Caleb couldn’t resist. A tintype man had set up his camera by the door, so he paid a few pennies to have her picture taken, meaning to pin it up on the Exchange Arcade picture board.

The shutter clicked a few times.

One picture showed Little Annie holding up a drumstick, another her sweet little face smeared with grease.

Caleb wrote his own little caption beneath: A happy day.

To him, watching his daughter grow up bit by bit and seeing her brimming over with smiles was a pleasure indeed.

It should be said that the Arcade picture board had only gone up in April of that year.

The moment it did, it became the rage all over town.

Stopping by to look at it whenever there was nothing else to do had soon become a little habit for most folks.

Caleb had only just pinned up his pictures when, to his surprise, the first person to scribble a note beneath them was his sister-in-law, Winnie.

“Little Annie is so well-behaved. You finally treated her to Mother Kelly’s,” she wrote.

Caleb couldn’t be bothered to answer her. His sister-in-law was studying at an arts academy in Sterling City, where every student was either rich or wellborn.

Over time she’d gotten into the habit of looking down on people.

Still, she was very good to Little Annie and often took her out to play.

Winnie had just happened by the Arcade and was idly browsing the board.

There were no moving pictures in 1872, and naturally no pretty girls dancing the latest steps in them.

That year was also called the dawn of the great railroad age.

The big titans of industry were all getting their start about then.

Stage lines were merging, express outfits were joining up with one another, and so on.

Of course, the hottest thing of all was still the railroad.

The express companies, the freight barons, the mining men, the Great Western Express Co. and a dozen others all announced that year that they were going into the railroad business.

Among them, the one who’d surged ahead of the pack and was hailed as a legend of enterprise was, naturally, the railroad tycoon Lyle Jennison.

All of that was still foreign to Caleb. He was a long way off from men of that stature.

All he longed for was to sell his oranges well and then let the Golden Ledger multiply the take at random.

That way his monthly income could double several times over.

“Papa, I’m full,” Little Annie announced, patting her tiny belly contentedly and letting out a dainty burp.

Caleb pinched her little cheek. “Since you’re full, let’s go fetch your mama from work.”

With the cold December weather and the pouring rain on top of it, it was truly freezing.

The mercury had dropped to twenty-five degrees or lower.

Caleb sat Little Annie in the saddle in front of him and tucked her snug under his big slicker.

Father and daughter rode the mule off to fetch Mama.

At half past four Caleb pulled up outside the brick building where Clara worked.

No matter how busy he was, he always made a point of fetching his wife home from work on time, every day.

It had been one of the few things he’d managed to do for her these past years that made other folks a little envious.

There weren’t many men who’d faithfully ferried their wives to work and back, year after year, the way he had.

At the beginning, there’d always been a faint touch of scorn in people’s eyes when they saw him on his mule.

Clara was so young and lovely, after all. But when they watched him keep it up for months, then one year, two years, three years,

little by little the snide remarks stopped.

Everyone has a heart of flesh, after all, and not every man is born with a silver spoon.

A newcomer like him might not have much money, but the honest way he looked after his wife earned him a measure of respect.

Especially since he had such a good nature. In the past a good many of her co-workers had been cold and sarcastic, and had belittled him to his face.

He’d always greeted everyone with a smile. So much so that Clara’s co-workers came to think that if they truly couldn’t land a rich man, settling for a down-to-earth fellow like him wouldn’t be so bad.

At least they’d never have to worry about him straying or treating them poorly.

On rainy days Caleb would wait outside with Little Annie.

It took a certain amount of schooling just to get a place in a fine building like that. Nearly everyone who worked there had been through a proper academy.

Clara was the exception. Her telegraph company had only just been starting up back then, so the hiring requirements hadn’t been strict.

“Oh, Clara, your husband really does come for you rain or shine,” said Daisy Jones, one of his wife’s co-workers, a young woman who’d been friendly with Clara since she’d finished school and started there.

Caleb didn’t even take off his slicker, and Clara shot him a reproachful look. “It’s so cold out here. Why didn’t you wait inside?”

“Forget it. I sweated plenty helping somebody move today. Everybody in there’s so well turned out, it’s better a fellow like me stays outside.”

Clara didn’t know what to say to him. He’d been so proud and so outstanding as a young man, and now he was careful about every step he took.

As if he were afraid of causing her trouble.

Through all these years Clara’s true heart had never wavered.

Whenever her co-workers asked what her husband did, she’d tell them without a moment’s hesitation: “My husband sells oranges off a cart. He helps folks move, too. If any of you are planning a move, you can ask him. He’s strong, he isn’t afraid of hard work, and he can do the work of three men.”

At first her co-workers would only laugh and say nothing. This was Sterling City, where appearances counted for a great deal.

Being so indifferent to her husband’s humble background and trade, Clara was a rare flower in her own right.

Clara gave Little Annie’s cheek a pinch too, then lifted the slicker and settled on the mule behind Caleb.

She wrapped her arms around him, trying to give him a little more warmth.

The moment Caleb rode off, her co-workers started talking.

Daisy spoke first again, a hint of envy in her voice. “Clara’s husband is so good to her.”

“What good does that do?”

A voice of dissent rose at once. It belonged to Dana Young, another academy girl, whose confidence far outstripped her looks.

“Coming to fetch his wife on a mule in this freezing weather. He’s got some nerve. If it were me, I’d rather sit crying in a Brewster brougham than laugh on the back of a mule.”

There was no use arguing with someone you didn’t see eye to eye with, and Daisy couldn’t be bothered with her anymore. Daisy was a true Sterling City native herself.

She didn’t look down on newcomers, and she couldn’t understand where Dana got the gall to talk that way.

Besides, everyone at the company knew what sort of person Dana was.

Marry a cattle baron’s son or don’t marry at all: that was the motto carved into Dana’s heart.

Chapter 4: Standing In

Back home.

Little Annie found herself shut out of the bedroom for no reason she could see.

She couldn’t figure out what her folks were up to, or why they had to lock her out.

She snuck a peek, but she couldn’t hide how eager she was to get back to her music box and her picture book.

Inside the room.

With a mysterious air, Caleb pulled Clara onto the big bed by the window with its pink curtain.

The room was small, but cozy.

“Caleb, what are you up to in broad daylight?”

Clara thought he wanted “that.” Ever since their daughter came along, such goings-on had grown rare.

Mostly because the room was small and the walls were thin as paper.

Put simply, conditions didn’t allow it.

“Clara, I want to hand over what I made today before anything else.”

As a true family man, it went without saying that his earnings were for his wife to manage.

Caleb never kept more than a dollar for himself, and barring anything unexpected, that could last him a whole month.

After all, he had no real expenses except the penny sack of Bull Durham he went through each day.

Everything else, clothes and shoes and such, his wife bought for him.

He counted eight silver dollars into her palm.

Clara’s brows rose in surprise. It was normal for her husband to hand over whatever he’d earned each day.

But eight dollars in a single day? That had never happened before!

The best they’d ever done was at this year’s harvest fair, when they cleared a little over six dollars in one day selling oranges.

“Caleb, you didn’t do anything crooked, did you?”

“Not a bit. I earned it helping folks move, and delivered a wagonload of oranges on the way.”

Caleb had already worked out his story. He cleared his throat. “That’s right, Clara. From now on I might be able to earn this much every day. You’d best get used to it and enjoy being a rich man’s wife.”

Enjoy what?

Still, Clara was very happy to hear it. For a family like theirs, nothing was more thrilling than making more and more money.

“Clara, I say we go out for one of those candlelit suppers your little sister’s always going on about.”

Clara gave him a look. “Why waste the money? Isn’t it just as nice to cook a couple of dishes at home and light a candle?”

Uh… that did sound nice, at that.

No sooner said than done. Caleb actually went down to the corner store and bought a pair of red candles.

By the time he got back, Clara was already going over the household accounts.

With the money he’d made today, their little family’s total savings now came to seven hundred seventy-two dollars.

It sounded like a lot, but mind you, it was what five years of marriage had scraped together, going without decent food or clothes.

“Caleb, we only need another two hundred forty and we’ll have enough for the down payment.”

Clara said it with longing. In Sterling City in 1872, a house inside the Third Ward went for about fifty dollars a square yard.

Their plan was to buy a small place of eighty square yards, just enough room for the family.

That came to about four thousand dollars all told, with a down payment of roughly a thousand.

“Let’s save the romance for after we buy the house.”

Clara was even more frugal than he was. She’d wear a single dress for years on end.

A candlelit supper that cost a dollar or two would make her heart bleed with every bite.

Enjoying herself was absolutely out of the question.

Caleb didn’t press it. He was just heading for the kitchen when a messenger boy brought a note from his sister-in-law, Winnie.

She was letting him know they’d be spending New Year’s at the Suttons’ place this year.

Truth be told, going to visit the in-laws when you were a man of modest means was pure torment.

Anyone who’d been through it would know.

When supper was ready, Clara really did go through the ceremony of lighting the candle, which left Little Annie puzzled.

She figured a birthday cake must be coming next, but no, there was nothing. Her folks just giggled at the red candle.

She was too young to understand what they were laughing at.

They were laughing at the hope in their lives, a glimmer of the future.

That evening Clara even made a point of sitting down with her over the picture book, winding the music box up loud. Once Little Annie was completely absorbed, the two of them slipped off into the bedroom.

They had to be quick about it.

You never knew when the little one would come knocking.

Quick or not, he was a strapping young man, and couldn’t finish in under half an hour.

Which left Clara very satisfied indeed, near to tears with it.

The next day, after Caleb had seen his wife to work, he went straight to the teamsters’ board at the saloon.

Now that he had a clear little goal for his earning, he was keener to make money than he’d ever been.

Among the men who hired out through that board, the one they called the Young Marshal was his boyhood friend.

It was Caleb who’d brought him to Sterling City to make his living. A bachelor in his thirties, he could make better than twenty dollars a month and lived without a care in the world.

He was on very familiar terms with the red-lantern houses under the railroad trestle.

The teamsters’ board.

Young Marshal had chalked up: “Just got a job. Haul a cast-iron cookstove up to the seventh floor for twenty cents. I ain’t doing it for his granny.”

It was bound to be a building with no lift, and nobody wanted jobs like that.

The rain was heavy again today. With no oranges to sell, they had to rely on odd jobs.

Some days there was work, and some days they just sat.

The General had written: “Got a job here if anybody wants in. Just moving furniture, sixty cents a day.”

Young Marshal had answered: “What’s the point? I could spend that time strolling the Promenade. Might even find me a wife to take home.”

Caleb paid no mind to their idle chatter. They were all country boys, but every one of them could make a little over twenty dollars a month.

They truly didn’t care much for penny-ante jobs.

Just then, though, a messenger boy ran up with a note from the girl he’d met only yesterday.

“Mr. Walker, are you busy?”

He scribbled back: “Not busy at all.”

The next note came quick. “Have you got time today? We need a special extra. It pays four dollars a day and your face won’t be seen. Want to give it a try?”

Of course he wanted to give it a try.

After all, as the saying went, the more friends you had, the more roads opened up.

Lily might be unknown in the theater world, but she’d been an extra for better than four years.

She was sure to have more connections than the greenhorns who’d only just joined the trade.

He wasn’t about to let a chance like this slip by, but he did ask whether the part called for any acting.

That was something he truly didn’t have.

Lily explained briefly that there was no acting to it at all, but it was very hard going, and she didn’t know if he could stand it.

Put plainly, an ordinary extra made sixty cents to a dollar a day at most, so a four-dollar job was bound to come with special conditions.

It was a big theatrical company. Along with its new play, it was having a whole series of photographic plates made, stereoview cards and magic-lantern slides to be sold across the country, and much of it was being staged out of doors.

When he reached the lakeshore where they were working, the assistant director didn’t even ask his name before telling him to strip.

Those four dollars didn’t come easy. In weather well below freezing, they wanted him in the lake stark naked, thrashing about like a madman.

The scene was supposed to be done by the handsome young leading man himself, but he’d tested the water with one toe and walked off without a word.

What a joke. He wasn’t about to put up with cold like that.

What if he caught a chill?

Wouldn’t his admirers be worried sick?

With no other choice, the assistant director had to use a stand-in and have the photographer take him only from a distance.

Several men from the company had tried it. The moment their clothes came off they couldn’t bear it, and in less than a minute they were shaking uncontrollably.

How could anybody take a picture like that?

That was when Lily thought of Caleb, a newcomer like herself who was desperate for money.

He’d done hard labor for years, kept himself in fine shape, and could take hardships other men couldn’t.

Still, after a quick touch of greasepaint, when Caleb walked down to the lake, the clear jade-green water was cold enough to chill him to the bone.

The instant his foot touched it, he shuddered hard.

“Can you do it or not? If you can’t, get lost,” the assistant director snapped, rude and impatient with these special extras.

The moment he saw Caleb flinch at the cold, he cussed at him.

Caleb gritted his teeth and plunged into the lake.

His part was as simple as could be: the young hero, betrayed, pours out his anguish in the lake. No lines, no expressions.

He could thrash about however he pleased.

Since it wasn’t the real actor, the assistant director couldn’t have him photographed up close.

Caleb was shaking with cold too, but he kept thinking about his little house.

Picturing his wife’s happy face when she moved into their new home, he could bear any hardship.

He figured that once this scene was done, he’d be finished.

But who knew the young leading man, drawing a salary of twenty thousand dollars, couldn’t stand a lick of hardship?

Every picture of him freezing in the winter cold had to be finished today.

Needing no acting was one thing, but the hardest part was a scene where the hero accidentally falls into a lake and comes out miraculously gifted with peerless skill as a gunfighter.

After that he goes after all the women who’d scorned him or betrayed him and settles accounts.

And then they’re sorry.

It was a classic dime-novel turn: the hero goes off a cliff and comes back the fastest gun in the West.

Normally the leading man would have to pose for that himself, but he couldn’t face the cold.

So a stand-in had to do it, and he’d come back later to pose for the close-up moments.

Caleb sighed to himself. These people sure had an easy time making money.

Twenty thousand dollars just for standing around.

And look at him, risking his life for four.

From ten in the morning till four in the afternoon, he did four scenes in the lake.

He was nearly frozen stiff, but luckily Lily brought him a bowl of hot ginger tea, freshly brewed.

Only working folks truly understood other working folks.

She was still an extra herself, playing the leading lady’s maid.

She’d lost count of how many times she’d played a maid, or how many people had told her she was born to be one.

“Mr. Walker, warm yourself by the fire and rest a spell,” Lily said, handing him a white towel as well.

Caleb felt a good deal better once he’d changed back into his own clothes.

“My wife’s getting off work. I need to go fetch her.”

Caleb motioned for her to collect his pay from the company. Who else would suffer through this hellish weather if not for four dollars?

Lily nodded and hurried back with his four dollars.

This was a big production with hundreds of thousands of dollars behind it.

Naturally, nobody was going to quibble over a sum that small.

But just as he was about to leave, the assistant director came over again.

“You did all right. Got a calling card? Give me one, and next time we need somebody for a hard part, I’ll send for you.”

He had no calling card. He was just a fellow who sold oranges off a cart.

But Caleb still told him where a message could reach him.

As long as there was money in it, he was truly willing to do anything.

Chapter 5: A Wife’s Worry

[A bell chimes. Your income today is four dollars.]

[Would you like to activate the random multiplier?]

“Activate.”

On his way to fetch his wife, the Golden Ledger did not disappoint. The moment the four dollars was in his hand, a row of golden letters appeared before his eyes.

There were those two shining golden dice again. Caleb was still daydreaming about rolling two fives at once.

That would be ten times over, a clean forty dollars.

The first die stopped, and it wasn’t a five. It was a four.

He smirked a little. Not bad luck at all.

The second die came to rest too, landing on the middle number, a three.

Not a small number either.

[Congratulations, holder. You have rolled a random sevenfold multiplier.]

[Twenty-eight dollars has been credited to your purse. Balance: twenty-nine dollars.]

Heh… he could have shrugged his shoulders three times over.

For no reason but pure joy.

At this rate it wouldn’t be long before he could buy a house.

Then he could get close with his wife whenever he pleased, and when there was nothing else to do he could stretch out on a little porch of his own. Life couldn’t get any more comfortable than that.

There wasn’t much big news from his wife’s side, except that her telegraph company had finished its fourth round of raising money from investors this year.

After this round, the company was reckoned to be worth one million six hundred thousand dollars.

In 1872 the wire business was still ruled by the three great telegraph combines, and these new wire companies were growing at a tremendous clip.

Take his wife’s company. It had only been founded a few years back and hadn’t turned a profit yet. In fact, it lost money every month.

Even so, what folks reckoned it was worth kept climbing.

Word was this round had even been led by a well-known big-money syndicate back East.

It seemed they were quite hopeful about her company’s prospects.

None of that had anything to do with him yet. He was only marveling at how fast these wire outfits were growing.

In an ordinary trade, it would take forever to make a few hundred thousand dollars.

With these outfits, the value just went soaring on its own.

Having finished this round of financing, his wife’s company had grown bigger, and they meant to move to the Westfield District after the New Year, the part of Sterling City where all the new wire and railroad outfits were setting up shop.

It was all in preparation for growing further and raising more money.

Around the New Year there’d be a big year-end banquet, and he was allowed to go too.

Just sitting quietly at the very back with his wife, Caleb figured it would be good to broaden his horizons.

He couldn’t spend the rest of his life thinking of nothing but selling oranges on the street.

Clara came out, still in her plain clothes, her hair tied casually back in a low tail.

She’d slipped on a thick black quilted coat.

Her holiday was about to begin as well, and this year both of them would be spending the holidays in Sterling City. Before she left, Daisy asked her to go shopping together once the holiday started.

To buy things for the holidays.

Clara was about to say no, but Caleb agreed on her behalf, mostly because he felt he could earn a fair bit now.

There was no need to pinch pennies like before.

Save where you ought to, spend where you need to.

“Then it’s settled. We’ll go shopping together on Tremont Row once the holiday starts.”

Daisy’s family was genuinely well off. The moment she started working they’d bought her a smart new buggy worth over two hundred dollars.

Born in Sterling City, she’d been set up for success from the starting line.

With her plans with Daisy settled, Clara went home.

When he got home, he found that their neighbor Lily, the girl who played extras, was back too, practicing her craft alone with a copy of The Art of the Player.

Clara had learned only yesterday that a young woman who was also an actress had moved in next door.

She was only meeting her today, so of course she wanted to say hello.

“You must be Lily. My husband told me about you yesterday. You truly are beautiful.”

Lily really was very beautiful, with delicate features, and most striking of all was her bright smile, like warm sunshine on a winter’s day.

It was comforting just to look at her.

“Mrs. Walker.”

Lily smiled brightly, as warm and friendly as could be.

The two of them hit it off from the first, and Clara even invited her over for supper.

Little Annie was often home by herself, so having one more person around would be a help when both her folks were out working.

Over the years Caleb’s cooking had come on a great deal. He’d had no proper training, but he could turn out a good meal.

With the women getting along so well, it was only natural for him to take over the cooking.

Ordinary folks often have a certain longing for the world of the stage, and Clara was no exception.

She was as curious as a child, asking all sorts of questions.

Lily patiently answered every one.

“Mrs. Walker, it’s true you can make big money on the stage, but only if you become famous. For somebody like me who can only be an extra, the pay is pretty ordinary.”

She paused, then added, “Mr. Walker, though, he’s really something. Today was his very first time as an extra, and our assistant director took notice of him. He even asked where to send for him before Mr. Walker left.”

As if afraid Clara wouldn’t grasp what that meant, Lily went on, “Mrs. Walker, don’t you think little of a director asking where to find you. Among us extras on Playhouse Row there must be tens of thousands.”

“For Mr. Walker to catch a director’s eye on his first day as an extra, that’s one in ten thousand, for certain.”

“He can act?”

Clara was astounded. She glanced sideways at the busy figure in the kitchen and asked curiously, “What did he play?”

“Mr. Walker didn’t tell you?”

Lily said, “This time he was the stand-in for the leading man. Mr. Walker is especially tough. Nobody in our company could stand how cold the water was, but when he said he’d jump in, he did it, and he lasted a whole day in the lake in that freezing weather.”

Clara’s face changed. She understood he hadn’t been there to act at all. He’d only been brought in because nobody else could take it.

In other words, a whole day in the lake in that cold, and if he caught a chill or came down with a fever,

the money wouldn’t even pay for one visit to the doctor.

With someone else there, Clara couldn’t say much, but her heart ached for him.

All these years, he’d taken on more than one or two dangerous jobs just to make money.

What had frightened her most was the time there’d been a terrible rain and nobody dared haul freight up to the mining camps in the mountains, for fear a mudslide would take their lives.

But he dared.

He hauled once, twice, three times, and then a mudslide really did come down.

Caleb had been lucky. His wagon only overturned, and it wasn’t too badly smashed.

After that, Clara refused to let him haul freight ever again, and later they bought a pushcart and a mule so he could sell oranges all over town.

She’d never expected him to take on such risky work again.

“Lily, my husband will take any job at all to make money. In the future, if there’s any extra work, try to point him toward something lighter. It’s all right if it pays less.”

Lily was a little taken aback, but she understood what Clara meant.

It was simply a wife worried about her husband.

“Supper’s ready! What have you two been talking about all this while, chattering away so merrily?”

Caleb had made three dishes and a soup, which in their household counted as a real feast.

Of course, they had no idea that the little extra sitting in front of them might one day become a pillar of the whole theater world.

A queen without equal.

Right now they only felt she had it especially hard.

It had been a long time since anyone had asked her to supper. Lily ate simply and laughed with honest joy.

The moment she left, Clara pulled Caleb straight into the bedroom.

Chapter 6: Making Big Money

In the little bedroom.

Her eyes brimming, Clara pulled Caleb aside. “Caleb, did you really go into a lake to act in weather this cold?”

“Yeah. Lily told you, huh?”

Caleb drew her over to the bed and chuckled. “Clara, let’s not talk about that right now. Take a look at how much I made today.”

He poured twenty-eight dollars into her hands.

Clara started, and her eyes went wide.

“How can this be? Caleb, where did you make so much money in a single day?”

Better than twenty dollars in a day was already beyond anything she could picture.

At this rate, wouldn’t her family be able to buy a house after New Year’s?

Caleb patted her shapely backside and said mysteriously,

“Now, I know you’re excited, but I have to warn you ahead of time: you’d best get used to your husband making big money.”

She’d have to get used to it, all right. A moment ago Clara had been aching for him, and now she was thinking about how to spend all that money.

Years of frugality had trained her to save wherever she could.

With their income jumping so suddenly, she wasn’t quite used to it.

“Caleb, Mother sent word. She wants us to spend New Year’s at her place.”

“Then let’s go. It’s no big deal.”

“But…”

Clara thought of how her husband ended up the butt of jokes every time they went there, and her first instinct was to refuse.

Caleb took her hand and comforted her. “There’s still better than ten days till then. Let’s work hard. By then we’ll have bought a house, and we’ll see who dares laugh at us.”

The daily life of an ordinary couple was just that simple. Every day they thought about how to make money and how to live a little better.

Clara bit her lip. Thinking of yesterday’s wild half hour, and with all of today’s excitement on top of it, she found she was craving that again something fierce.

She was still a young woman of twenty-five, after all.

Happy thoughts brought cravings with them, and Caleb was quick to start tugging at the buttons of her snug skirt.

Soon she was like a little white lamb.

Little Annie was still outside with her music box wound up loud, and she didn’t dare touch it.

Afterward Clara just snuggled in his arms, the two of them sharing a paper bag of peppermint candy.

The next day, at long last, the rain stopped.

His pushcart finally had a chance to shine. They lived near the Stonewell Iron Works, one of the biggest foundries in the whole country.

The foot traffic there was enormous.

He usually had plenty of good spots to sell from. Caleb called on his boyhood friend the Young Marshal, and the two of them took two carts and two mules to go fetch stock.

For street peddlers like them, California oranges fetched the highest price per crate, and naturally the highest profit.

But you could say there was a knack to it as well.

Fruit prices swung wildly. Oranges, for instance, had gone for a dollar twenty a crate a week ago, a crate running about thirty pounds.

That worked out to roughly two dozen oranges a crate.

These past few days they’d climbed to a dollar forty a crate, five or six dozen fruit in the bigger crates. The price had gone up twenty cents in just a few days.

Oranges sold well around Christmas and New Year’s, and fetched higher prices.

When they got to the fruit wholesale yard, it was jammed with wagons.

For a holiday fruit in such high demand, anybody who only wanted a crate or two got no attention at all.

Caleb looked around. He’d been knocking about this trade a few years, after all, and he knew quite a few people.

He spotted Old Gus’s wagons and hollered, “Old Gus, you still got stock?”

“Yep. How much you want?”

“What’s the price?”

Normally folks like them couldn’t buy direct this way. Street fruit sellers understood that.

Fruit only keeps so long, oranges included.

If a load started going soft past a certain point and couldn’t be sold, the wholesaler had to dump it cheap.

Otherwise, it could easily come back to bite him.

That kind of cheap fruit was where the real money was.

Of course, around the holidays there was no worry about oranges not selling, but he’d have to do like the fruit-shop owners did.

Pick and buy the ordinary way.

Old Gus usually looked like a sloppy old coot who spent all day perched on his wagon, but he was actually a big boss.

To say nothing of anybody else, a good many of the big wholesalers who bought from him settled their accounts with him once a quarter.

At the end of a quarter, what they owed him could run to tens of thousands of dollars.

How could he keep that going without real muscle behind him?

Old Gus had only a small storefront. Mostly he sold straight off a string of three big freight wagons, each thirty-odd feet of load.

There was only a small part of his load left now, probably two or three hundred crates.

“Boss Gus, business is booming for you!”

“All thanks to you boys looking after me.”

Old Gus was in his early forties. He’d knocked about all over when he was young, and it was only ten years ago that he’d put down roots in Sterling City and gone into fruit wholesaling.

He was worth tens of thousands of dollars at the least now, and his oranges were of fine quality.

Caleb offered him a hand-rolled smoke of Bull Durham. “What’s the price today?”

“For the last of the load, I can let you have ‘em at a dollar twenty-two a crate.”

That was a few cents a crate under the going price, but Caleb wasn’t quite satisfied. He smiled and said, “How about a dollar twenty flat if I take everything left in your wagons?”

“There’s still two or three hundred crates here. Can you handle all that?”

Every year around the holidays, the price of oranges was bound to go up.

This time Caleb meant to make a big bet. If it paid off, he’d have all the money he needed to buy a house.

“Just a few hundred crates. I’m sure I can manage if I push myself.”

“All right then. Let’s load up.”

To get the lowest price in the fruit yard, clearing out a man’s leftover stock was the surest way.

The four of them cleared the load together. There were three hundred twenty-one crates in all. At a dollar twenty apiece, that came to about three hundred eighty-five dollars.

Caleb sent a boy running to fetch Clara so she could settle the payment.

He’d laid in stock like this plenty of times before, just never this much at once.

This was the biggest gamble he’d ever made.

Clara came quick and paid out the money, and Old Gus helped haul the crates straight to a warehouse outside town.

That place let out space by the week, just for folks laying in stock.

Caleb had no plans to sell right away. He meant to sit on this lot for three or four days and wait for orange prices to jump again.

Even so, he chalked a notice up on the teamsters’ board at the saloon ahead of time.

The Young Marshal chalked beneath it: “Old Walker’s playing big. Bought four hundred dollars of oranges in one go. Boys, get ready to move stock!”

The General wrote: “Six-six-six, no trouble. In a few days we’ll all help Boss Walker move it.”

Village Belle’s Mine wrote: “I’ll take thirty crates first. Nobody fight me for ‘em.”

Strivin’ Till I Die wrote: “I reckon I can sell fifty.”

It was a fine thing to have brothers. There was no way he could have sold all that stock alone.

With everybody pitching in, it wouldn’t be a strain at all.

Two days later, the Young Marshal chalked up that the market price of oranges had climbed to a dollar fifty a crate.

Another couple of days passed, and just before Christmas Eve, a blizzard sent the price of oranges straight up to a dollar seventy.

Caleb was so excited he was jumping up and down. Just by sitting on the stock a few days, he stood to make a clean profit of sixty to eighty dollars at the very least.

And there was a good chance nobody else would even be able to get their hands on any stock.

The way orange prices swung was no secret in the market.

But even Caleb hadn’t expected the price to shoot up so far in just a few days.

On Christmas Eve he began moving his stock at once. Answering the notice on the teamsters’ board, six men turned up with six carts and mules, all to help him sell.

Chapter 7: A Brand-New Buggy

Three days had gone by since Christmas Eve.

Caleb wound the big music box at home up as far as it would go, and he and Little Annie started dancing a jig together.

Little Annie’s jig was a clumsy, homely thing. She was nothing like him; he was a born talent at the square dance.

In these few days he’d turned a hefty profit on the three hundred-odd crates of oranges he’d been sitting on.

If not for the Golden Ledger, he’d never have dared make such a gamble before.

But things were different now. The random multiplier gave a man a lot of nerve.

[A bell chimes. The holder has earned a combined income of one hundred eighty-four dollars over seven days. Would you like to open a random multiplier?]

He’d only lately discovered that the Golden Ledger could stack income too, counting it up as it went.

Small money didn’t satisfy him anymore. He’d decided to let a whole week’s earnings pile up before drawing once.

“Activate.”

The two golden dice appeared again. Even if he rolled the smallest multiplier, he’d have enough for the down payment on a house.

Still, Caleb daydreamed about hitting the top, ten times over. Then he could pay for the whole house in one go.

The first die came up low, a disappointing two.

The second die teetered next to a five, but in the end it settled on the smallest number, a one.

[Congratulations, holder. You have rolled a random threefold multiplier.]

[A bell chimes. Five hundred fifty-two dollars has been credited to your purse. Balance: five hundred fifty-two dollars and ten cents.]

Tsk… not great luck, but a windfall all the same.

He could have made even more on those oranges, but some of the fellows from the teamsters’ board had backed him without question when he first laid in the stock.

So he’d let them have it at a discount, twenty cents a crate under the market price.

All in all, everybody had made a good bit of money with him this stretch.

The least any of them made was better than forty dollars, enough for a decent holiday.

Caleb took Little Annie to fetch her mother from work, since today was her last day on the job.

Her holiday started tomorrow, about ten days off, and the year-end banquet was set for after Twelfth Night.

Clara and Daisy came out together. They were finally on holiday, and both their faces were shining with happy smiles.

“Clara, your husband’s right on time every day.”

Clara laughed softly. “I tell him not to come fetch me, but he never listens.”

“Oh, go on and show off.”

Daisy always liked keeping company with Clara, first because she was easygoing, and second because she was genuinely good-hearted and always thought of others.

“Speaking of which, you two have been married all these years and you both earn decent wages. Why not buy a buggy? Don’t let Annie catch cold riding that mule in weather like this.”

The little one was bundled up tight, but she was still sniffling with a runny nose.

They’d thought about buying a rig before, but Clara had always wanted to buy a house first.

No need for that today. His purse was fat. Buying a plain, sensible buggy wouldn’t pinch at all.

“I…” Clara didn’t finish before Caleb broke in. “We ought to buy one. We surely ought to. Got anything to recommend? I just want to buy Clara a new buggy.”

When Clara married him, she hadn’t asked for a buggy or a house. They hadn’t even asked for a bride price.

Her family had even sent her off with a dowry of nearly two hundred dollars. Now that he was in a position to do it, he had to treat his wife even better.

Daisy teased, “That depends on your budget. If you’re thinking of spoiling your wife, around four hundred dollars would surely get you a Studebaker surrey or a Brewster brougham.”

“If you want to treat her better still, a six-hundred-dollar open-top phaeton would turn every head when you drove it out. And if you’re thinking eight hundred, then a black Concord buggy is the first choice, no question.”

She was plainly joking. She knew perfectly well what shape their finances were in.

At best, they’d go for a family rig priced at two hundred dollars or a little more.

Caleb thought, since he was buying for his wife, why not get a good one in one go?

After all, Clara had been with him so many years and had hardly enjoyed a single luxury.

“All right, let’s have a look at the Concords.”

“You’re really thinking of spending eight hundred on a Concord buggy? I was only joking. Don’t take it seriously.”

“It’s fine. We’re just going to look. Doesn’t mean we’ll buy.”

That was what Caleb said, but he’d already made up his mind to close the deal.

He could put off buying the house a little. Now that he had the means to earn, he couldn’t settle for a house that was too small.

At the very least he’d have to buy a big one, no less than two hundred square yards.

The saying held true: money gives a man nerve. Things he’d never have dared even think about before, he could consider now.

Neither of them rode the mule this time. Instead they took Daisy’s buggy to the Concord carriage showroom on Wagon Row.

Clara truly thought he was only looking, but once they arrived, even Daisy fell for the Concord buggy.

Too bad she wasn’t in a position to buy one.

The salesman served them several cups of tea and explained in great detail all the holiday bargains on offer.

After all the discounts, the plainest model, with its matched pair of bays thrown in, could be had for about six hundred forty dollars.

Caleb asked his wife to try sitting in it, and Clara felt a bit shy.

But the salesman had already opened the little door, so Clara sat down gingerly.

Afraid she might damage something.

Only once she was seated did Caleb ask, “You got any ready to drive away today?”

“Of course we do. We’ve one ready right now, black lacquer with white trim.”

“Black with white trim, huh? That’ll do.”

Caleb haggled hard, squeezing out every discount he could. In the end, on top of the lowest price, he got three free shoeings for the team, two tins of axle grease, and a string of little extras like side curtains and carriage lamps.

By the time Clara realized he really meant to buy it, Caleb had already paid five hundred forty dollars.

The remaining hundred was up to her.

Clara still couldn’t work out how he came to have better than five hundred dollars saved. But this wasn’t the time to talk it over. The buggy was still a hundred dollars short, and it was up to her to pay it.

After buying the Concord buggy, they had about seven hundred twenty dollars left in savings.

Clara felt as if she were dreaming. Everything at home had changed too fast, all at once.

Even Daisy was stunned. She’d never have believed that Caleb, who always rode a mule to take his wife to work and back, could be so well off.

A man about thirty paying cash for a Concord buggy.

What they didn’t know was that a young couple like Caleb and Clara always had savings set by.

It was just that they had to rely on themselves for everything, and with no help from their folks they naturally couldn’t splurge.

Over time, that gave everybody a strong impression that they were poor.

Who’d have thought that once they finally made their move, everyone else would be the ones who looked like fools?

Of course, Daisy wasn’t like Dana. She had nothing to be envious about. She was just, for the moment, full of a great many thoughts.

“I’ll tell you, Mr. Walker, turns out you’re not broke at all. You just don’t like spending money.”

“My husband has always been a good earner. It’s just that you all have always looked down on his line of work.”

“Come on, not me. That’d be Dana.”

Daisy said with a smile, “Now that you’ve got a Concord, I’d like to see what she has to say when you drive it right up to her. I’ve always thought Mr. Walker was a fine man, especially how true he’s been to you.”

Clara smiled from the bottom of her heart. It felt truly wonderful.

Little by little, nobody would look down on her husband anymore, or mock him for being nothing but a street orange peddler.

“Say, now that you’ve bought the buggy, why not have a picture taken and pin it up on the Arcade board?”

Daisy pulled her in front of the buggy for the photographer from the tintype studio next door, and Little Annie stood in the middle. A family of three with their first rig, they certainly needed a family picture.

December 28, 1872.

Caleb Walker and his family joyfully took home their Concord buggy.

Chapter 8: Visiting the In-Laws

Truth be told, Caleb himself admitted he’d been a little rash.

But there was a reason for everything. These past few years, every time he visited his mother-in-law’s house, he and Clara were treated with scorn on account of his lowly trade.

With only a couple of days left before New Year’s, he’d wanted to buy his wife a fine rig to show those people.

Caleb Walker was, indeed, a man a woman could count on for life.

As for everything else, he’d deal with it later.

Clara had learned to drive a team long ago, but she seldom drove and wasn’t very handy at it. She crept along the road at a snail’s pace, slower than a walking mule.

Little Annie was even more excited than she was, wriggling nonstop on the back seat, her loose milk teeth flashing in one long smile.

She kept tugging on her papa’s arm, asking what’s this for, what does that do?

Could the big buggy play music or something?

That would certainly have to be arranged. He meant to buy her a little stereoscope and a box of picture cards for New Year’s.

“Caleb, how come you had hundreds of dollars again?”

After a while, once she’d settled in and felt less tense, Clara finally asked the question that had been on her mind all along.

“I earned it selling oranges, of course.”

Caleb said, “You wouldn’t believe it. The day after I spent three hundred eighty-five on stock, a blizzard hit. No oranges could come in by rail, so naturally prices shot sky-high. I just took the chance to earn a little more.”

Clara had no reason to doubt him. Naturally she was happy her husband could make money.

“If you spent all the money on the buggy, what about the house?”

“No need to rush that. Annie won’t start primary school till after next June.”

Caleb, holding Little Annie, said, “I was thinking, since we’re going to buy a house, let’s buy a bigger one. Next year, once my income’s steadier, maybe we could have another child.”

Thinking about another child?

Clara had no objection. If the household could afford it, one child really was too few.

Before, she’d never dared consider it, but now it could certainly be given some serious thought.

When they got home, his boyhood friend the Young Marshal had gone out special and bought a big string of firecrackers.

He even tied a red ribbon on the new buggy and set off a long, rattling barrage.

Of course, silver dollars wrapped in paper were a must as well.

Back in the farm country, paying cash for a Concord buggy would have been big news for sure.

But in Sterling City it was nothing special.

Caleb meant to settle the matter of the house within the next three months, since oranges wouldn’t sell so well once the holidays were over.

He also needed to think about other ways of making money.

…

The day before New Year’s Eve.

Winnie was still busy seeing her classmates.

She was only two years younger than Clara. Unlike her older sister, who’d been raised by their grandparents in the country, she’d had a different upbringing.

She’d been brought back to Sterling City when she was in grammar school.

Having lived with her parents in the city so long, she’d naturally grown a sense of superiority.

At most her family counted as middling folk in Sterling City.

Her mother was a true Sterling City native, but her father wasn’t.

Help from the older generation had let her parents settle and make a home in the great city.

Their flat wasn’t big: three bedrooms and a parlor, a hundred twenty square yards all told.

If you took out the shared stairs and hall, it was only about a hundred square yards.

Winnie’s scorn for her brother-in-law, an outsider, came mostly from the deep-rooted sense of superiority common to Sterling City people.

In their eyes, outsiders were born inferior.

On top of that, her brother-in-law’s trade was such an embarrassment. Just think, if she became a famous star and people found out her brother-in-law peddled oranges in the street, it would be a blot on her name.

That was why she’d kept pushing her sister to divorce him.

“Say… Winnie, you ought to go take a look at your sister’s picture on the Arcade board.”

“What’s there to see on the board? Either she’s showing off her husband or showing off Little Annie.”

Winnie thought her sister had become a hopeless bumpkin from living in the country too long. It had given her such homespun habits.

Nothing like her.

She showed off fine restaurants or afternoon tea.

“Your sister bought a buggy.”

Mr. Sutton was rather fond of Caleb, but sadly his opinion hardly counted for anything in their home.

The say-so in that family belonged entirely to Mrs. Sutton, the Sterling City native.

“What kind of buggy could she buy?”

Winnie didn’t care. When she went to look at the tintype, it turned out to be the very Concord buggy she’d had her eye on.

She sat bolt upright.

“That’s strange. Surely my sister didn’t borrow somebody else’s buggy to have her picture taken?”

“You think your sister’s like you?”

Mr. Sutton said irritably, “Caleb works so hard. He saved enough to buy a rig long ago. There’s nothing strange about him buying a Concord now.”

“Then he surely bought it on installments, a fifth or a third down.”

Winnie didn’t care. She had too many classmates who drove fancy rigs. A little Concord buggy was nothing for her to envy.

Once she became a big star, one season on the stage would earn her several little Concord buggies.

“Your sister will be here soon. Soften your manner and be polite to your brother-in-law. They don’t have it easy either.”

Mr. Sutton advised her kindly.

Winnie curled her lip and didn’t listen. A street peddler selling oranges hardly deserved her respect.

The main thing was that he was an embarrassment to mention. She could hardly bring herself to talk about him.

The family set out the dishes and the holiday food, ready to welcome in the New Year together the next day.

This time Caleb brought a great many gifts: two red boxes of fine Havana cigars and a pair of bottles of the best Kentucky bourbon.

Plus two big crates of oranges. He brought his family over at eight in the morning.

Mr. Sutton had already laid a full table for the New Year’s Eve family supper.

“Caleb, why’d you bring so many gifts again?”

The two families didn’t actually live far apart, but Caleb never came by except at New Year’s and holidays, because his sister-in-law and Mrs. Sutton had never looked at him straight.

Only Mr. Sutton truly treated him as a son-in-law.

“They’re just little things, not worth much.”

He wasn’t a man for social graces, nor one for a lot of polite chitchat.

Mr. Sutton motioned for him to sit beside him. Mrs. Sutton rolled her eyes at him the moment he walked in.

Then she went off to chat with her daughter.

“Sister, I heard you bought a buggy. How much did you put down?”

Growing up in the country, Winnie had been looked after by her sister, but she’d changed after moving to the city.

“What do you mean, put down? Your brother-in-law paid in full.”

No matter when or where, Clara always stood up for her husband.

Winnie frowned slightly. She didn’t believe a word of it. “He could pay in full for a Concord?”

“What’s so surprising about that? Your brother-in-law’s income isn’t low.”

If it weren’t the New Year, Winnie would surely have insisted he wasn’t really her brother-in-law at all.

Deep down, she’d never accepted him as one.

“Daughter, you’re not lying to your mother, are you? Did he really pay in full for it?”

Paying in full and buying on installments were two very different things, and Mrs. Sutton couldn’t help making sure.

“Mama’s not lying. Papa really paid for it all.”

Little Annie pouted her small mouth as she answered. Young as she was, she knew to stand up for her papa too.

Mrs. Sutton huffed. “All these years with him, and he’s finally done something worthwhile. But now you’ve spent all your money on the buggy, what about a house? You can’t go on renting in the city forever, can you?”

“Of course not.”

The very reason Clara disliked coming home was that her sister and Mrs. Sutton were so unkind to Caleb.

No matter what he did, they still looked down on him.

This time she simply laid it all out. “Mother, I know you’ve always looked down on Caleb. But you’ve watched him all these years since he came to the city. Has he ever once been lazy? Never, has he?”

“For a man his age, out on his own without leaning on his folks, supporting a family and buying a house and a buggy, that’s hard enough already.”

“Now he’s bought me a buggy, and you still look at him with prejudice. You’re only worried he can’t afford a house in the city. Even if we can only ever rent, our life won’t be that bad, will it? After all, your daughter still has hundreds of dollars in the bank.”

“And all of it is because Caleb works himself to the bone out there to earn it. What more do you want from him?”

As she spoke, the tears began to fall again.

It wasn’t anything else. She just felt wronged, and not understood by her own family.

“Don’t cry, Mama.”

Little Annie was very good. She handed her a handkerchief at once.

Chapter 9: The New Year Comes In

Tsk… after paying in full for the Concord buggy, there were still several hundred dollars in savings.

That truly took Mrs. Sutton by surprise, considering Caleb wasn’t even thirty yet.

Since the wedding, his family hadn’t put up a single cent.

It was he who’d paid out of his own pocket to build a big house for his folks back home, and after that came the wedding and the baby, each one a major expense.

To be honest, if he’d been a Sterling City man born and bred, he’d have been just about perfect.

He wasn’t very old, yet he was devoted to his family, with a steady income to boot.

A wife and child who followed him wouldn’t live in luxury, but at least they’d be spared any real hardship.

But life has no ifs.

Of all the old gossips she knew in Sterling City, not one had a son his age as steady or as good at making money as he was.

But what of it?

Those sons were Sterling City born, and girls from out of town still fought each other to climb aboard their boats.

Mrs. Sutton laid down her fork and said sternly,

“It’s New Year’s. What are you crying for? I’m worried about you, that’s all. House prices in Sterling City keep climbing. If you don’t buy early, who knows how high they’ll go, and then even if you want to buy, you won’t be able to afford it.”

Caleb said nothing for a while. Nursing a small glass of wine, he finally said,

“Before next July, I’ll buy a house inside the Third Ward. You have my word.”

“Anybody can talk big. You need real ability to back it up.”

Margaret trusted nothing less than spoken promises. Mr. Sutton had once been so promising himself, a clerk with a steady place in the territorial land office for years, and they’d still let him go the moment they felt like it.

Now his wages were just over twenty dollars a month.

Compared with those Sterling City natives who’d gotten rich selling their family lots to the railroad, they were worlds apart.

“That’s enough, both of you. Cut it out.”

Mr. Sutton felt helpless. It was New Year’s, after all. Why pick a time like this for all these needless words?

His son-in-law never showed up without bringing gifts worth several dollars.

He clinked glasses with Caleb, but the meal tasted of nothing to Mr. Sutton after that.

He barely had to say a word before Clara was ready to leave with Little Annie.

Mr. Sutton tried to keep them, but it was no use. After they’d gone, he sighed,

“A fine New Year’s, and you have to go saying such unpleasant things?”

“If he thinks it’s unpleasant, well, I think it’s unpleasant too.”

Margaret raised her brows, plainly put out. “My daughter’s so beautiful. If she stays with him and can’t even live in a proper city house, better to break it off sooner than later.”

“Exactly. I don’t want a brother-in-law with no schooling and no career, a street peddler. It’s embarrassing even to mention him.”

Winnie sneered in agreement.

Mr. Sutton sighed in resignation. He knew he couldn’t change his wife and daughter, so he went and washed the dishes himself.

…

The livery stable.

When he got to his own buggy, the stable boy handed Caleb a bundle of letters and a telegram that had come for him over the holiday.

It was all New Year’s greetings from his family.

Mama: “Son, Happy New Year. Take care of yourself out there.”

Tucked inside her letter was something more.

A postal money order from his mother for a dollar eighty-eight, marked “Happy New Year.” Mama always did favor the eights.

Mama: “Everything’s fine at home. We even had a family supper at your grandpa’s this morning, and everyone’s in good health, so don’t you worry. Is it cold in Sterling City? Remember to dress warm.”

“Be good to yourself. A body can’t earn all the money in the world in one lifetime.”

His little sister: “Brother, why didn’t you come home this year? Did you buy a new buggy? Grandpa and Grandma were so happy to hear you bought a Concord. They keep asking when you’ll come visit.”

Papa: “Take care out there.”

A mother’s worry travels a thousand miles with her child. If you asked who would stand by you all the while you grew up, it would be none other than your own mother.

Home was still the warmest place. So long as you were doing all right, they’d never fault you for this or that.

He wished he could go home right now for a true family reunion.

From the Third Ward out to North Hollow was near on twenty-five miles. Over the holidays there were fewer wagons on the road; lots of folks had gone back to their farms and hometowns.

The city wasn’t so crowded, and Clara drove smoothly all the way home.

In their courtyard, a good few people hadn’t gone home either.

Like their neighbor Lily, who worked terribly hard. She played bit parts with hardly a line to them, but she gave them her best all the same.

And then there was the Young Marshal, Tom Tate, who still hadn’t found himself a sweetheart.

He actually had some savings. He could lay his hands on forty dollars easy, and that wasn’t all.

With that kind of money, finding a match back in the country shouldn’t be too hard these days.

Too bad. After meeting several matches and spending a fair bit of money, none of them had worked out.

The first one thought he was too honest and no good at talking. The second felt he wasn’t presentable enough.

His work wasn’t steady either.

Tom didn’t even want to think about matchmaking back in the country anymore. As he put it, those matchmade girls were like somebody watching a show from the back of a mule.

They’d meet you in the morning and look over a few others in the afternoon.

Courting was the same. If they could see you today, they could see somebody else tomorrow.

Either way, they’d string it out till right before the wedding.

And when it came to spending another man’s money, they wouldn’t blush at spending every last penny.

“Old Walker, what’re you back so early for?”

“You don’t know what my mother-in-law’s family is like?”

“Ha!” Tom laughed out loud, then clapped him on the shoulder and grumbled, “She’s just an old witch who looks down on folks from out of town. What right’s she got to look down on us? She was just born in the right place, that’s all.”

“Let’s not talk about her. We can have ourselves a happy New Year’s right here with our own feast.”

Caleb invited him over. He meant to set a table at home and bring over their neighbor, Lily, from next door.

Just the few of them celebrating.

The whole household pitched in, and Lily put down her script to help too. In no time they had a big tableful of dishes ready.

Four meat dishes, four vegetable dishes, and two bottles of sarsaparilla.

There weren’t many of them, but the good feeling more than made up for it.

Holding up his cup, Caleb was the first to stand and speak.

“1872 is nearly over and 1873 is about to arrive. I wish our courtyard’s own Miss Lily great success next year. May she land the leading part and prosper in her career.”

Lily laughed till she nearly cried. She stood up too and downed her drink, then let out a small, embarrassed burp.

“And let’s wish our friend Tom Tate a smooth year ahead. May he find a wife soon and live a happy, full life.”

“Tsk… you had to bring that up.”

Tom stood and pulled Caleb up by the arm. “Brother, I wish you prosperity in the new year, and may you buy that big house soon.”

“That’s right. I wish Mr. Walker a year of great wealth, too. May he buy a big mansion.”

Lily drank another big cupful, but Caleb laughed and said, “You’re laying it on too thick. I wouldn’t dare dream of a big mansion in Sterling City. If I can buy one of two hundred square yards, I’ll feel my life wasn’t lived in vain.”

Tom said, “Old Walker, you’ve got no ambition. Mr. Mason was right. A man’s got to have dreams, or else what’s the difference between him