“Tasin,” I say. “Tasin Cawley.”
“You’ve got land?” That’s the question of a businessman. I’m wondering now if maybe what he saw and recognized in me was nothing more than my situation as it stands.
“I’m looking at a block out past the New River,” I tell him. “Paid the deposit, have to work off the balance, same as everyone else.”
“Colony’s been selling those blocks like wild,” he says. “But there’s no guarantee they’ll stay fertile if the rain doesn’t stick around.”
“I’m willing to bank on it,” I say.
“Well, my daughter’s not going to be living out on a block of land with no house on it,” he says. “So if you’re going to ask for her hand, you’d better see Morris Bones from the lumber mill. He’llbe able to float everything you need down river with help from Tim Gut.”
I stare at him for a moment. “Your daughter?”
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To lay claim to her?”
“Well, I…”
I have never, in any of my lives or any realm, been this lost for words.
“How…”
“It’s an easy bet. Clean-shaven man in a clean shirt, no mud on his boots comes in here, tells me he has land. I know it’s land he hasn’t worked. And I know he doesn’t need anything from me yet. There’s only one thing I have that a man like you wants, and that’s my daughter.”
“Very observant of you, sir,” I say. I don’t want to seem condescending. I very much mean it.
He pushes a pencil and paper across the counter. “You’re going to want to make a note of the things I just told you,” he says. “Bones and Gut. Nothing happens in this colony without them, and I can promise you that you’re not the only young man putting a homestead together to attempt to win Mara’s heart. She’s of a particular age, and I know she’s ready to leave home.”
“I am not ready to leave home,” Mara says, bashing in through the shop door hard enough to make it bang. She cringes a little as she hears that noise. “Sorry,” she mutters.
“You’re going to have that door off its hinges one day,” he says. “This is Tasin Crawley. He’s setting up a homestead down the river.”
“Oh, yeah?” She cocks her head at me. “That’s nice. Are you going to get builders, or do it yourself?”
“I’ll be doing it myself,” I say.
She glances at her father, then back at me, the little smile on her lips turning into a full-blown smirk. “Be careful,” she says. “We had an off-worlder come in and try to build something himself and he ended up under a pile of logs, squished. You need to know what you’re doing.”
She walks past me and around behind the counter. She goes on tiptoe to kiss her father’s cheek. “I got the new hinges from the blacksmith,” she says. “He says they’re going to last even longer than the others.”
“Good,” he says. “Take them to the back, and make sure they’ve got their own carton label.”
She nods and picks the box up again, glancing over at me. “Hi,” she says, before disappearing into the back room.
“She likes you,” her father says to me.
“How can you tell?”
“She didn’t ignore you completely,” he says. “Most of the men in this colony cannot get so much as eye contact out of her. She treats them like they’re less than dust on her boots.”
“Is there a reason for that, sir?”
He presses his lips together, and I know there’s something he doesn’t want to say. “Her mother passed when she was born, and I’ve been making sure she’s safe ever since. Call it sheltered if you like. I don’t care. That’s my baby. Last time a guy came sniffing around and wanted to touch her, he ended up with everybone in his fingers broken. Had to wear a cast that kept them splayed like a frog for two months.”
“I see,” I say. “Well. Seems to me like I’d best build my house before anything goes any further.”
He nods gruffly.
I take some notes on the piece of paper with the short pencil. “Thank you, sir,” I say offering the pencil back to him. He waves it back to me. “They’re branded,” he says. “Tax write-off.”
