Ada Carrow came into Coyote Bend as if she were still a rumor — a smudge of smoke behind a lean horse, the clack of a cart wheel, a single boot print in the dust that refused to tell whether the owner would stay. She had the kind of gait a man could set his watch to: the purposeful, economical motion of someone whose life was measured in hours between forges and fences. Her cart bore a portable forge, coiled bellows, a hammer with dings like teeth marks, a tin of rasp files wrapped in oilcloth, and a quiet pride that sat as steady as a horseshoe in a pocket.
The town smelled of boiled beans, coal-streaked air, and a faint, sweet tang of juniper from a crate of preserves on Mabel Liddell’s inn porch. It was the sort of place that told you its weather with a bell instead of a proverb; a battered iron bell in front of Eben Shaw’s livery clanged three times at noon, twice for mail and once for gossip. Children ran under the porch rails carrying folded paper boats, and the baker’s display showed triangular pies skewered like little flags — the town’s weekly custom, Mabel called it, of setting out odd-shaped pastry to amuse travelers. It had nothing to do with the roads or the horses, and Ada liked that. Small towns, she thought, kept their secrets in the things they preserved for no reason.
She hitched her mare near the shade of the feed lot and set the forge down as if she were planting a flag. Her hands were quick and wary; she unlaced the bellows, fed coal into the bowl, struck a flint. Sparks argued with evening light until a steady blue-orange throat of flame took hold. Folks watched from the doorstep like it was a Sunday sermon and she the preacher in oil-smoke and leather.
Eben was the first to approach. He wore the kind of face that had settled into its lines over many winters and a number of disappointments. "You the farrier they been whispering about?" he asked, the suspicion always polite as a handshake between neighbors.
Ada wiped her hands on a rag and smiled without giving more than the bare shape of it. "Ada Carrow. I shoe horses." She tilted her chin at the livery. "And I mend things that try to make a living of falling apart."