Chapter Twenty-Five

Mateo arrived late in the afternoon with the rest of their purchases from earlier in the day. Robert was heating a can of soup, so he asked Sophie to let the boy in. She hopped down from her chair at the kitchen table where she had been drawing a horse in her school tablet, and answered the door. Standing just a few feet in front of her was a boy only slightly older than she was, with the blackest eyes she had ever seen. She was tongue-tied for a moment, then the boy said, “You must be Sophie, right? Mama Norma sent me with your groceries.”

Unsure of the protocol for this type of situation, she opened the door wider, so that he could come in. This seemed to be the correct thing, because Mateo grabbed a box out of his wagon and came inside.

“Where would you like this?”

By now Robert had quit stirring the soup and turned around. “You can put everything on the kitchen table. There should be enough room.”

Mateo hurried to do as he was told, while Robert came to check that everything was accounted for. Then he asked Sophie to stir the soup while he went upstairs to get his wallet so he could give the boy a tip.

While they waited, Mateo looked around. “I used to sometimes bring things for your uncle. I was sorry to hear he died.”

“Thanks,” Sophie said. “I never got to meet him because we lived so far away, but Dad was pretty upset.”

The boy nodded. “Will you be coming to our school?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Why not? We’re all friends, and we have a lot of fun. Well, we have fun at recess and when we put on plays and concerts.”

“I don’t need to do those things. When I grow up, I’m going back to Kentucky so I can work on a horse farm.”

Mateo considered this information. “Sounds nice,” he said. “I don’t have much choice except to go to school. My family doesn’t have any money. But my cousin Al is rich. He lives in Santa Fe and works in an office. He says if I finish school he’ll help me get a job.”

Sophie wrinkled her nose. “In the city? Why would you want to live there?”

“Because that’s where all the money is. And if you’ve got money, you can have all the food and new clothes that you want. If there’s a hole in your roof, you can buy what you need to fix it. If your horse goes lame—”

At Robert’s footsteps on the stairs, both children fell silent.

“Here you go,” Robert said, handing the boy a crisp bank note for five southwesterns.

Mateo’s eyes widened. “Uh…you’re my first delivery today and I don’t have any change yet…”

“It’s all for you.”

“Really?” he smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Dubeck. I’m going to be your very best employee!” He headed toward the door with a little wave to Sophie. “Nice to meet you. And I like your drawing.”

Sophie blushed, but by now Mateo was gone and there was only her father to see her red cheeks. “I forgot I left that sketch on the table,” she muttered. “It’s not any good. It’s not even finished yet.”

Robert stole a glance before she flipped the tablet upside down. “Looks pretty good to me.”

Sophie rolled her eyes in answer.

“What were you two kids talking about while I was upstairs?”

“Nothing.” Sophie went back to stirring the soup so it wouldn’t burn. “He was just talking about how he wants to live in a city when he grows up. He’s not very smart.”

“What’s so dumb about living in a city? You always seem pretty interested when we pass through one.”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t want to live in one. They’re crowded and dirty and…too many people.”

“And not enough horses?”

Sophie nodded.

“Well, I suppose you don’t have to worry about anything like that any time soon.” Robert came over to the stove and looked at the steam rising off the soup. He turned off the burner. “I think it’s about ready,” he said. “There’s a box of crackers in one of those packages on the table. Set that out, bring me some bowls, and we’ll have lunch.”


#


That evening after Sophie had gone to bed, Robert sat at the kitchen table poring over the account book for the store. He found no obvious mathematical errors, but it did seem odd that the place didn’t turn much of a profit, given that it was the only food store within a day’s ride. This particular ledger only went back eighteen months, so it was impossible to tell if this was a recent development, or if things had always been this way.

If he wanted to trim expenses, where would he start? Letting Norma go and running the place himself would be a simple and cost-effective solution, since she was his highest-paid employee. But the other employees obviously loved her, and with her good connections in town, it might be unwise to let her go. Not to mention that without a reliable manager, he would have to spend sunup to sundown of every day but Sunday at the store. That just wouldn’t do.

In addition to the manager’s salary, another expense was the cost of bringing in goods. But unless he could convince Castaño’s leaders to reopen the roads and maybe build a spur to the rail line, there wasn’t much chance of seeing his shipping costs go down.

He could raise prices, of course. It wasn’t as if the townspeople had anywhere else they could go. They would have to pay whatever he asked. But the prices were already high compared to other parts of the USS, and seemed reasonable compared to his cost.

Well, if cost and pricing weren’t the problem, and firing the manager was unwise, his next step would have to be trimming waste and watching for theft. He didn’t like to think that any of his employees would steal from him, but sometimes it was the least likely people you had to watch out for.

Robert closed the account book and rubbed his eyes. Tomorrow he would take a complete inventory, and he would also start checking in all deliveries personally. If anything he had paid for was going missing, he would soon get to the bottom of it. And he would also find out what Norma Watson had put into Emily’s bag.