“No. Pa said not to have nuthin’ to do with them.” Will ducked his head and kept shoveling. His younger brother did the same.
“I see.” Jake shrugged. He’d only asked out of curiosity. Boys got into tussles all the time.
He pushed open the door to the mercantile, a tinkling bell announcing his presence. The sound reminded him of Livy. He scowled. Everything reminded him of Livy. He couldn’t seem to think of anything else.
He’d gone soft over a woman.
Sam McIver rested his palms on the counter and glared at him. People enjoyed shopping with Sam, who was usually easygoing and friendly. But not this morning. He looked like a tornado intent on destroying the town. Jake couldn’t blame him. He glanced around the tidy establishment. Canned goods lined the shelves; dry goods were stacked head-high in the back. Farm tools hung from hooks on the far wall. A place for everything and everything in its place. Nothing scattered about, turned over, broken, or destroyed. The thief seemed to know his way around the store pretty well from the looks of things.
Jake turned to McIver. “Did you discover anything else missing?”
“Besides the foodstuffs I mentioned earlier, they took a bone-handled skinning knife and a gold-plated pocket watch I ordered for Mac MacKinnion. Both cost a pretty penny. I didn’t realize they were gone before because I’d left them under the counter here.” Sam slapped his hands against the flat surface, his eyes flashing. “I tell you, Jake, we’ve got to round these boys up and ship them back to Chicago. If they’ve taken to stealing knives, there’s no telling what they might do next.”
“I don’t blame you for being upset, but until we have some proof, I can’t go off accusing just anybody.” He didn’t even know where the boys were. They were slippery as the sun perch in Chestnut Creek. “And besides, what about all the folks who’ve showed up looking for work in the mines? It could be any one of them.”
Sam huffed.
The shopkeeper’s mind was made up, but Jake needed more than a gut feeling. He shoved his hat back. “How’d they get in?”
“Through the back. Come on, I’ll show you.”
McIver led the way through a jumbled storage room, the clutter at odds with the neatly organized store out front. Faded bolts of cloth lay on top of each other on an old steamer trunk. Stacks of overstocked crates leaned haphazardly toward the narrow aisle leading to the rear door. A keg with PICKLED HERRING printed in large letters sat to Jake’s left.
Jake scowled. “Pickled herring?”
“Somebody accidentally shipped it here. I haven’t been able to sell it to anyone. Wish that riffraff would’ve taken that with them.”
The back door hung ajar, the bitter cold sucking the warmth right out of the room. Making his way toward it, Jake hoped he didn’t knock a stack of crates over. He didn’t have a hankering to be buried alive under a hundred pounds of pickled herring. His gaze swept over the doorframe, noticing the lack of splintered wood or any marks showing a forced entrance.
He hooked a thumb toward the door. “You keep this bolted, don’t you?”
“Yep.” McIver glanced around. “That’s funny. What happened to the lock?”
Jake viewed the snow-covered landscape, unmarred by footprints or any evidence that would shed light on who’d broken into the mercantile. “You got a shovel, Sam?”
“Of course.”
The shopkeeper disappeared and came back moments later, a spade in one hand and a curious glint in his eyes. “What’re you gonna do?”
Jake palmed the shovel and stepped outside. “Well, it’s not much to go on, but it’s all we’ve got right now. I figure we got about twelve inches of snow last night. If I can find that lock, I might be able to tell what time the thieves broke in.”
“Good idea. A big shipment came in yesterday, and Gus and the boys brought everything up from the train station. As many trips as we made, yesterday’s snow should be packed solid.” McIver leaned against the doorjamb and watched for a moment. “You need any help? I can call the boys.”
“Nah, too much tramping around would defeat the purpose.” Jake carefully peeled an inch-thick layer off the surface of the snow and tossed it to the side.
“Right. I didn’t think of that.”
The tinkling of the bell drew McIver away to attend to his first customer of the day.
Jake worked in silence, carefully shoveling a narrow strip in a semicircle about eight feet from the storeroom, working his