The Golden Ledger
Copyright© 2026 by BillMax
Chapter 10: Opportunity Knocks
Caleb got home at six in the evening.
Clara was busy getting the New Year’s Eve supper ready; the family would sit down to it shortly.
Little Annie wandered out clutching her new stereoscope, deaf to everyone around her.
With that viewer pressed to her eyes and a whole box of picture cards to flip through, calling her name was no use at all.
Meanwhile Caleb carried his new encyclopedia and almanac into the bedroom, along with a stack of newspapers, lit the lamp and settled in with them.
All the way home one pressing question had been on his mind.
At his present income, leaving out the Golden Ledger’s random multipliers, he’d make between five and six hundred dollars a year.
Selling oranges on the street and taking odd jobs, that was about the limit.
Counting the random multipliers, and averaging it out, he’d make roughly two thousand four hundred to three thousand dollars a year.
Even in Sterling City, packed as it was with men of talent, that was certainly no small income.
It put him squarely among the high earners.
But if he meant to buy a two-hundred-square-yard house within six months, Caleb felt it still wasn’t enough.
A house like that inside the Third Ward would cost about twelve thousand dollars outright, with a down payment of three thousand six hundred.
His savings were just over six hundred dollars, which meant he needed to put by another three thousand in the next half year.
That was a heavy load to carry, especially since oranges wouldn’t sell so easily once the holidays were over.
There was no chance of making a hundred sixty or a hundred eighty dollars in ten days the way he had over the holidays.
It looked like he needed to find more ways to make money.
Besides, if he bought a big house, he wanted to bring his little sister and his folks to live in Sterling City too.
Going through the newspapers, it seemed nearly every big man in the country was talking about the coming of the railroad age.
The best business of all would be one that got itself into every town along the line.
The reasoning wasn’t hard to follow, but he simply didn’t have the means.
The great combines of the day, the three big express and wire companies, were practically at each other’s throats to grab the new lines.
Every venture ran to tens of millions of dollars, easy.
Home-delivery wagons, hire-horse stations, any new craze that came along was a feast for the moneymen.
They cut prices to the bone, all to grab a bigger piece of the market.
All of that was beyond his reach for now. He’d just keep his eyes open and see where the chances lay as he went.
Having found out how useful the books and papers were, Caleb came out to help make dumplings.
Whatever came, they’d think about all this once the New Year was past.
After the New Year’s Eve supper, everyone went together to watch the church-hall New Year’s pageant.
In 1872, Mae Darling had risen to the very top of the stage with the play “The Queen’s Court.”
Sadie Lorne had also made her classic play, “A Crimson Heart,” a great success.
Close behind came Tess Tanner and others, so that three of the “Starlets of ‘55” had already made their names.
And the one with the most acting talent of all was still living alongside them in a cheap rented room, sharing the simplest, most heartwarming New Year’s Eve supper.
On New Year’s Day, Caleb didn’t go anywhere. He stayed home by the stove with his wife and child, playing parlor games.
On that day it was the custom not to go out of the house or sweep the dirt out the door, since folks believed it would sweep away the year’s luck with money.
The second day of the year brought warm winter sunshine, and he and Tom took the carts out to sell oranges.
When he got home after a full day of selling, his take had indeed fallen off a great deal. Business after the holidays was much worse.
Even so, his clear income was still nearly two dollars.
During the day Clara had taken Little Annie to see the Territorial Capitol and the Governor’s Mansion. The family had just bought a buggy, and the little one had never been there before, so it was the perfect time to go, while the holiday kept the crowds down.
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