Arthur Nelson Protected His Wyoming Mountain Cabin with a Trust
I counted the coins twice on the vinyl dashboard, lining them up in neat rows of one dollar each. The total came to sixteen dollars and forty-five cents.
Inside the station, the clerk did not look up from her phone as I laid the crumpled bills and the stack of coins on the counter.
Pump four, I said.
She swiped the coins into the drawer with a plastic ruler.
Sixteen forty-five, she said.
The fuel gauge needle barely moved past the red line when I turned the key.
Edwin’s workshop was located in a tin-roofed barn behind his house on the south side of Cody. The air inside smelled of kerosene, motor oil, and old iron.
Edwin Vance sat on a wooden stool near his workbench, scraping the underside of a lawnmower deck with a putty knife. A wooden toothpick rested in the corner of his mouth.
You look like you walked through a thorn bush, Edwin said.
I set the heavy oak tool chest on his worktable. The brass corners were tarnished, but the wood was still smooth.
