"It's yours," he said at last.
"Partly the bank's until I finish paying," Vera answered.
"It's yours to work."
She turned toward the west, where the Henderson place lay beyond the town and the dry fields. "That part," she said, "I know."
They drove back along the county road slowly, stopping at the new gate so Vera could look across the property in the late winter light. The old barn stood against the sky, its boards faded and the house behind it quiet and waiting. She had bought a roof to repair, fencing to mend, fields that required careful use, and a burden of payments she would have to earn one bird at a time. She knew how unreasonable it would sound to anyone who remembered her March balance. She also knew that the word unreasonable had been used about nearly every step that had brought her here.
Daniel climbed out and leaned against the truck while she stood by the gate. "What first?" he asked.
"The barn floor. Then the water. Then I want the nesting boxes moved from the smaller building before the next hatch is ready."
He shook his head, smiling. "You haven't owned it an hour, and you've already planned the whole spring."
"Not the whole spring. Only the first three weeks."
He took her hand briefly, without asking her to stop looking at the land. She allowed it, surprised by how little it interfered with the practical business occupying her thoughts. They stood for a while in the cold, two farmers studying repairs that would take more money and work than either could comfortably spare. For the first time, the landscape seemed to include a future they might choose together, though neither tried to name it yet.
By the time the first spring grass appeared along the creek in 1936, Vera had learned that owning more land could make a person feel both richer and poorer at the same time. The Henderson acreage gave her options the original farm had lacked, but every extra roof, gate, and water trough had become another place where money might escape. She spent the first weeks moving between the two farms with a ledger in one pocket and a hammer in the other. The only thing she bought without first checking a column of figures was a tin of good paint to mark the new breeding pens so that no bird's history would be confused with another's.
Daniel came most Saturdays and sometimes on Wednesday evenings when his own wheat fields allowed it. They repaired the barn floor together, replacing weak boards and laying dry material where the old earth had held damp. Vera insisted on raising the younger pens above the low places that collected water after a storm, because she had seen how quickly an unnoticed wet corner could become a health problem. Daniel made sure the braces could hold against the western wind and that the doors opened without catching in winter. They worked slowly enough to do the repairs well and fast enough to keep the growing chicks from outgrowing their temporary quarters.