Montana Promise
Copyright© 2026 by Komiko Yakamura
Chapter 4
The first month of marriage was harder than either of them expected.
Not because they fought—they didn’t, really. But because everything was work. Constant, grinding, dawn-to-dark work.
Elias plowed the bottomland and planted wheat while Ellie Mae learned to manage the house, the garden, the chickens. She’d never done physical labor like this—her hands blistered and bled despite the gloves. Her back ached from bending over the garden. The wood stove burned her twice before she learned to respect it.
But she never complained. Just wrapped her hands, straightened her back, and kept going.
They fell into a rhythm. Up before dawn. Elias to the fields and animals, Ellie Mae to the kitchen and garden. Breakfast together—usually quick, standing up. Then more work until dark. Supper. Ledgers—she insisted on updating them every night. Then bed.
Separate beds. Still. Elias in his alcove downstairs, Ellie Mae in the loft.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want her. God, he wanted her. Wanted to climb that ladder every night and show her exactly how much he appreciated her, how beautiful she was, how much she’d come to mean to him in just a few weeks.
But she’d been clear from the start: business partners first. And he wouldn’t push. Wouldn’t assume. Wouldn’t take what wasn’t freely offered.
So he lay in his bed at night, listening to her move around above him, and tried not to think about it.
Three weeks after the confrontation with Thornton, Ellie Mae came in from the garden with dirt on her face and a basket of early greens. She set the basket on the table and looked at him.
“We need to talk about the timber,” she said.
“What about it?”
“Those cottonwoods by the creek. They’re mature—twenty, thirty years old. Good straight trunks.” She washed her hands in the basin. “There’s a sawmill in Bozeman that’ll pay top dollar for quality timber.”
“Those trees provide shade for the cattle—”
“We have sixty head of cattle and twenty trees. We can spare five trees and still have plenty of shade.” She dried her hands. “Five trees will bring in maybe two hundred dollars. That’s four months of mortgage payments.”
He wanted to argue. Those trees had been there when he arrived, probably been there before Montana was even a territory. Cutting them felt like destruction.
But she was right. She was always right about these things.
“Which five?” he asked.
Relief flashed across her face. “The ones on the east side. They’re closest to the road, easiest to haul out. And there’s good regrowth saplings nearby.”
“All right. I’ll ride into town tomorrow, talk to the mill.”
“We’ll ride into town,” she corrected. “I negotiate better than you.”
He couldn’t argue with that either.
The next morning, they hitched up the wagon and headed for Bozeman. It was the first time they’d gone to town together since the bank. Ellie Mae wore her good dress again, and he’d shaved and worn his cleanest shirt.
The sawmill was on the north edge of town, the smell of fresh-cut lumber sharp in the air. The owner, a thick-shouldered Norwegian named Haugen, came out wiping his hands on his apron.
“Help you folks?”
“We have timber to sell,” Ellie Mae said. “Five mature cottonwoods, good straight trunks, minimal knots. Thirty to forty feet tall, eighteen to twenty-four inches diameter.”
Haugen’s eyebrows went up. “You measured them?”
“Of course I measured them. Would you like the measurements?”
“I ... yes, actually.”
She pulled out a paper with neat columns of numbers—height, diameter, estimated board feet, quality grade. Haugen studied it, looked at Elias, then back at Ellie Mae.
“You do this yourself?”
“I did. My father was a shipbuilder in Boston. I grew up around timber.”
That was the first Elias had heard about her father. About her past. She never talked about Boston, about why she’d left, about the family she’d left behind.
“Well.” Haugen folded the paper carefully. “If the timber’s as good as you say, I’ll pay three dollars per hundred board feet. You’re looking at maybe seven, eight hundred board feet total. Call it twenty-five dollars per tree, hundred twenty-five for the lot.”
“That’s insulting,” Ellie Mae said pleasantly. “Prime cottonwood is going for five dollars per hundred board feet in Helena. I’ll accept four dollars, not a penny less. That’s three hundred twenty dollars for the lot.”
“Helena prices aren’t Bozeman prices—”
“Then I’ll haul them to Helena.”
“That’ll cost you more in transport than you’ll gain—”
“Perhaps. But I’ll also let every rancher between here and there know that Haugen’s Mill is cheating them on timber prices.”
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