Moon Over Manifest

When Abilene tries to find a pot in Miss Sadie’s gardening shed, the door is locked, and Miss Sadie shouts for her to get away without explaining why. Noticing that she is in pain, Abilene says she can lance Miss Sadie’s swollen leg, but Miss Sadie declines. As she works, Abilene believes Miss Sadie has as many secrets as anyone.

Miss Sadie, moving into the past, says that Widow Cane’s death makes people notice things they previously overlooked. For instance, Mr. Devlin becomes interested in land by the edge of the woods. He goes to the public land office to ask about buying the land once Cane is gone. Mrs. Larkins’s neighbor works there and tells everyone that Devlin wants to buy the land, and Hadley Gillen calls a meeting. Miss Sadie says she could have told them that there was ore beneath the land. Abilene remembers Miss Sadie saying that Jinx saw Mr. Devlin arguing with a geologist who claimed the vein of ore ran the wrong way.

Miss Sadie begins another story. She says the ore ran under the land that was between Devlin’s mine and Widow Cane’s land. No one had the obvious right to