Then Ashford removed his hand.
“You know accounts?”
“I was married to a banker.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
Iris opened the ledger.
“No.
It doesn’t.”
She worked until nearly midnight.
Ashford’s problem was not mysterious.
He had lost revenue faster than he had reduced expenses.
He had planned for a hunting season that ended weeks early, then continued paying for feed, hired labor, deliveries, and repairs as if the lost parties might somehow reappear.
His debts were real.
There was no magical error that erased them.
But there was something else in the numbers.
The lodge did not need a full hunting season to survive the next several months.
It needed cash.
Small amounts, regularly.
“You have beds,” Iris said.
“Yes.”
“A working kitchen.”
“When someone carries food four miles through a storm.”
“And a road that people still use.”
“Occasionally.”
“Then stop calling this a hunting station for the winter.”
Ashford stared at her.
“Call it a lodge.
Meals.
Beds.
Hot coffee.
Pay before service.”
“There aren’t enough travelers.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve lived here six years.”
“And yet you apparently never considered charging freezing men for soup.”
His eyebrows lifted.
Iris waited.
Then Ashford laughed.
It was a rough sound, rusty from disuse.
“You walked into my bankrupt lodge two hours ago.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re explaining my business to me.”
“Would you prefer I wash dishes silently?”
The laughter vanished.
Ashford studied her for a long moment.
“No,” he said.
“I don’t think I would.”
A pounding at the door interrupted them.
Both turned.
Ashford reached instinctively toward the rifle propped beside the fireplace.
Iris stood.
The pounding came again.
“Ashford!”
Iris recognized the voice.
The storekeeper.
Ashford opened the door.
Wind burst inside with two snow-covered figures: the storekeeper and the wagon driver who had left Iris in town that afternoon.
