A RING, A KISS AND A CHRISTMAS WISH

THREE DELICIOUS SEASONAL STORIES

CHRISTMAS DANCE WITH THE RANCHER by Carla Kelly

Stranded, Katie becomes chore girl on Ned Avery’s ranch. He shows her unexpected kindness...and in exchange, she teaches him how to dance!

CHRISTMAS IN SALVATION FALLS by Kelly Boyce

Willa Stanford moved to Salvation Falls to start afresh, but then the past—in the shape of her former sweetheart—arrives at her door.

THE SHERIFF’S CHRISTMAS PROPOSAL by Carol Arens

When widower Roy Garner falls for lovely Belle Key, he’s hoping for a very happy Christmas. Until he discovers Belle’s dark secret...

Praise for the authors of

Western Christmas Proposals

CARLA KELLY

“Kelly is a master at emotional, uplifting romances.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Wedding Ring Quest

KELLY BOYCE

“Boyce captures the spirit of the American West.”

—RT Book Reviews on Salvation in the Sheriff’s Kiss

CAROL ARENS

“Sensational… Western fans will enjoy Arens’ sense of humour, fast pace and continuous action.”

—RT Book Reviews on Wed to the Texas Outlaw

CARLA KELLY started writing Regency romances because of her interest in the Napoleonic Wars. She enjoys writing about warfare at sea and the ordinary people of the British Isles rather than lords and ladies. In her spare time she reads British crime fiction and history—particularly books about the US Indian Wars. Carla lives in Utah and is a former park ranger and double RITA® Award and Spur Award winner. She has five children and four grandchildren.

A life-long Nova Scotian, KELLY BOYCE lives near the Atlantic Ocean with her husband—who is likely wondering what he got himself into by marrying a writer—and a golden retriever who is convinced he is the king of the castle. A long-time history buff, Kelly loves writing in a variety of time periods, creating damaged characters and giving them a second chance at life and love.

CAROL ARENS delights in tossing fictional characters into hot water, watching them steam, and then giving them a happily-ever-after. When she’s not writing she enjoys spending time with her family, beach camping or lounging about a mountain cabin. At home, she enjoys playing with her grandchildren and gardening. During rare spare moments you will find her snuggled up with a good book. Carol enjoys hearing from readers at carolarens@yahoo.com or on Facebook.

Western Christmas Proposals

Carla Kelly

Kelly Boyce

Carol Arens

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

About the Authors

Title Page

CHRISTMAS DANCE WITH THE RANCHER by Carla Kelly

CHRISTMAS IN SALVATION FALLS by Kelly Boyce

THE SHERIFF’S CHRISTMAS PROPOSAL by Carol Arens

Extract

Copyright

Christmas Dance with the Rancher

Carla Kelly

To my Trask cousins, scattered around the US now, but who grew up in the ranching life near Worden, Montana. I recall some early Christmases in both Montana, and in Cody, Wyoming, where my father was raised. My cousins figured largely in those memories and remain important to me.

Dear Reader,

My years as a writer of Regency-era historical fiction were preceded by earlier times as a writer of Westerns. My first successes came writing about Native Americans, soldiers, stockmen, miners and mountain men and were somehow hardwired into my writer’s brain. They remain there even now, except for occasional excursions into writerly territory.

I sometimes have to plead for a chance to write about the American West, but it’s always worth it. I’ve known cowboys and Indians and miners, and I know them to be a fairly taciturn lot, not fans of flowery conversation or anything smacking of insincerity.

Nineteenth-century ranching was a hard life, and Christmas sometimes got short shrift. Ranchers and sheepherders probably understand better than most the kind of desperation that will force a young father and mother to gladly take whatever humble space was offered in a barn. They knew a lot about mangers and hay, and necessity.

I can almost guarantee other Christmas stories you read will be far more flowery and romantic than this one. What you’ll find in Christmas Dance with the Rancher is courage, doing what the day requires and deep emotion welling up from hearts that, although hardy, are tender.

The best of the holiday season from my part of the West, Idaho.

Carla Kelly

Contents

Dedication

Dear Reader

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

Chastened, subdued and unhappy, Ned Avery woke up to “Cheyenne! Cheyenne! Fifteen minutes” from the porter walking through the rail car and clanking his three chimes.

I’m not going home without a chore girl, Ned thought for the umpteenth time.

Why had he left Pete alone with Pa for his recent trip to Cheyenne? Ned had gone over with Pete his plain and simple orders of taking care of Pa for ten days while Ned and his hands pushed the herd through to Cheyenne and onto the railcars for Chicago. Over and over and each time Pete nodded in his kindly way. Bread and tinned meat and fruit were each carefully numbered and arranged on the kitchen table, and still Pete nodded.

I was a fool to think he’d follow through, Ned berated himself silently, as the Union Pacific slowed and steamed to a stop at the depot on Fifteenth Street.

Even now, just a day after his return to the ranch from Cheyenne, he could still see the kitchen table with eight days’ worth of food gone, but two still as Ned had left them. Sitting in the rail car now, the crisis over, his heart started beating faster at the memory of food uneaten. He had run down the hall through the connecting rooms, calling for Pa, who was still alive for some reason.

Pa’s mild indictment, as he deflected any blame from Peter and Ned, had hurt worse than the mess Pa lay in. “Son, I tried to get up and help myself,” Pa had told him, his voice softer than a whisper.

The porter opened the door of the car, which pulled Ned out of his personal condemnation. Silent, he took his carpetbag from under the seat and waited behind an army officer for his turn to get off the train.

Who’s going to run this ranch if I can’t trust Pete when I have to be away? ran through Ned’s mind again. In the end, there was only one solution: they needed a chore girl. Pa railed against being so dependent, but they still needed a chore girl. So he left to go straight back to Cheyenne.

“I don’t know where to look,” he had whined to Mrs. Higgins, the wife of his nearest neighbor who had agreed to watch Pa and Pete while he made a rapid return to Cheyenne.

“The Lord will provide,” Mrs. Higgins had assured him.

He found this platitude not even slightly comforting. After sweet little Pete, as bright a brother as anyone could want, was kicked in the head by an irritated cow, and never grew up much in his mind, Ned hadn’t seen any reason to bother Deity.

He knew better than to return a sharp comment to Mrs. Higgins, since she was kind enough to watch Pa and Pete, so he strove for diplomacy. “Mrs. Higgins, if the Lord is busy and not inclined to help, can you think of how He might provide a chore girl?” he asked. “I need a hint.”

She gave him a pitying look, as if wondering why a grown man should ask such a question, but at least she didn’t turn away. She was going to get her licks in, though.

“Ned Avery, when did you last go to church?”

He thought a moment, hoping for an easy answer, but nothing came to mind beyond Ma’s funeral now well over ten years ago when he was twenty.

“My mother’s funeral,” he said quietly, which at least seemed to deflect the scold he thought he saw in Mrs. Higgins’s eyes.

“She was a good woman,” Mrs. Higgins said. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

This was no time for a theological argument about the Lord’s weird choice of people who should quit the earth, so Ned bit back his own comment. “Where can I find a chore girl?” he repeated.

“Where does the Lord provide the most?” Mrs. Higgins asked, then thankfully answered her own question, because Ned was still coming up short. “Try a church in Cheyenne.”

“Just wander up and ask the preacher if he knows of a chore girl?” Ned asked, his patience lurking just this side of exasperation.

“No! Sometimes churches take in unfortunate women who have fallen on hard times.”

“So I’ll need to count the silverware every night and hope no one tries to take advantage of my chastity?” he teased.

“Try it, Ned,” Mrs. Higgins had said, and she did not sound amused. “You are trying my Christian patience.”

* * *

He tried it, asking the depot master where there might be a church in Cheyenne. Ned just barely remembered Cheyenne before the railroad came through, with Irishmen jabbering and swearing, and Mama trying to cover his ears and Pete’s at the same time. Cheyenne’s boomtown growth had brought gamblers and fancy ladies and Chinese laundries and cafes, but no church then. The matter hadn’t troubled him since, but now, if Mrs. Higgins was right, he needed to find a church.

The depot master knew him. Hell, everyone knew the Averys of Medicine Bow. Dan Avery had been a Mississippi rebel among the earliest of former Confederates who followed the construction of the Union Pacific and stayed. From 1868 up to 1890, they had endured, and now times were better.

“Ned, you might try Third Street. There’s a First Methodist Church on the corner.” He chuckled. “And you might try the Second Methodist Church on the opposite corner! There was a theological argument, I believe, and some chairs were thrown around.”

Uncertain, Ned lingered at the depot. For some reason, he turned his attention to that corner of the lobby where only two nights ago, he had noticed a woman sitting on a trunk, chin in hand. He thought it odd that she wasn’t sitting on the bench, which made him suspect she trusted people as little as he did.

She was long gone now, but he remembered her pale skin and her brown eyes, probably nothing special in themselves, except that her eyes were large and the brown so deep.

He also remembered the worried look in them, and how he had just resisted the urge to go over there and ask her if something was wrong, and if he could help. He had even checked back later that evening, but she was gone by then. Whoever was supposed to meet her in Cheyenne must have finally arrived. Ned couldn’t help hoping she gave the man—husband, fiancé, whatever—a piece of her mind. Ladies had no business sitting alone in train depots.

Never mind that. “Chore girl, chore girl,” he muttered out loud as he went first to the Plainsman to get a room for the night, ate lunch, and then went in search of the First or Second or maybe Third Methodist Church in town. Or maybe it was the Second Methodist Church on Fourth Street?

The First Methodist Church promised some help, if only because a man stood by a signboard, putting up letters to spell next Sunday’s sermon. Ned watched for a moment as The Wag turned into The Wages of Sin.

Ned thought about his most recent sin, a pleasant one, really, committed four days ago in Nettie Lewis’s parlor house on Third Street. Hopefully the man putting up the sign wouldn’t be able to read Ned’s misdemeanors on his face.

“Sir, I’m looking for a chore girl,” he said, with no preamble. “The stationmaster said you might know some poor unfortunate lady a bit down on her luck and...”

The man pointed across the street to the Second Methodist Church. “He takes in strays.”

That was one way to put it. Ned couldn’t help conjuring up the image of a bedraggled pup that had wandered onto the Eight Bar many years ago. Mama had let him keep the ragged morsel until it became obvious they were harboring a wolf.

Ned crossed the street to the building with raw, unpainted wood proclaiming itself the Second Methodist Church. He heard someone singing “Rock of Ages” in a vigorous baritone, and followed the sound.

The singer was a man almost as short as he was round, slapping on paint in rhythm to his hymn. Ned watched in real appreciation until the man noticed him and stopped.

“Did you come to help, sonny?” the man asked.

Ned came closer and saw that the painter was at least a decade older than his own father, but brimming with health and energy that Dan Avery no longer possessed.

“Not quite, sir,” Ned told him. “I’m from the Eight Bar near Medicine Bow and I need to hire a chore girl in the worst way. A neighbor lady told me the Lord would provide, so I’m here.”

“Reverend Lucius Peabody,” the man said. “Racine, Wisconsin, come West to rescue the damned. In the worst way, you say? That’s an odd way to phrase your needs in front of a minister of the gospel.”

“Oh, no!” Ned began. “I mean I need to find such a person right now to help care for my father, who has heart disease, and look after the house. I’ll pay thirty dollars a month, but she has to be respect...”

The minister held up his hand, brush and all, appearing not to notice the paint dripping down his arm. “I don’t run an employment agency,” he said, “but I might be able to help you. Come closer.”

Ned did as he was bid, holding out his own handkerchief when the little man appeared not to possess such a thing. Reverend Peabody took it with a nod and wiped his arms after setting the brush in the tin can.

“Two nights ago, the sheriff brought a little miss here. She’d been waiting for her fiancé from Lusk to pick her up at the depot.” The minister had dropped his voice to barely above a whisper.

I know, I saw her, Ned thought, filled with chagrin that he had done nothing about his charitable impulse.

“He hasn’t showed up yet?” Ned asked.

“Worse than that,” Peabody said with a shake of his head. “She said her fiancé was a man from Maine, name of Saul Coffin. Sheriff Miller got a garbled telegram from Lusk’s sheriff, something about a shooting that left one man dead or nearly so, and the other in jail.” The minister looked skyward, as though expecting a vision. His hand went up to trace imaginary letters, courtesy of Western Union. “Bar fight. Stop. Coffin. Stop. Deader than Abe Lincoln. Stop.” He put his hand down. “Miss Peck said her fiancé had a foul temper, but who’s to say the coffin was just a coffin, with anybody in it, or the sheriff meant Saul Coffin?”

“If Mr. Coffin never showed up, that’s a pretty good indication,” Ned began. “What’s the law like in Lusk?”

“’Bout like this letter, sketchy, garbled and confused,” Peabody replied. “And the sheriff fought for the South. Writing coherent messages has never been his specialty.”

He stood there for a long moment, sizing up Ned, who gazed back. “You don’t seem like a bad customer,” he said finally. “Follow me.”

Not sure whether to be offended or amused, Ned followed him around the church to a side already painted, which featured a young woman standing on a wooden box, scrubbing the window.

She was humming to herself and hadn’t seen them yet, so Ned hung back just to look at her, the same young woman he had noticed two days ago in the depot.

Her hair was covered in a bandanna, but he already knew it was smooth and dark brown. He couldn’t see her entire face yet, but he recognized her trim figure.

“Miss Peck?” the Reverend Peabody called.

Even before she turned around, Ned knew he would see brown eyes of considerable depth. Now he saw interest and even recognition.

“You were in the depot a few nights ago,” she said to Ned.

At least, he thought that’s what she said. Her accent was charming, but nearly incomprehensible and made him shake his head.

She must have seen that reaction several times since she had left wherever it was she came from. She repeated herself more slowly, and the words came out stilted and exaggerated, but understandable.

“I was,” he replied. “Beg pardon, ma’am, but where are you from?”

“The US, same’s you,” she said. “Maine.” She spoke slowly and distinctly. “Maybe you would introduce yourself?”

Of course. Lord, he was a ninny. “Um, Edward Avery, ma’am, and you are?”

“Katherine Peck,” she said. Still standing on the box, she set the wet rag in the bucket, swiped her hand across an apron many sizes too large for her, and held it out to him.

He shook her hand, enjoying the firmness of her damp handshake.

Ned had always been a man of swift decision. Perhaps Wyoming, with its vagaries and harsh living had pounded that into him. Maybe he even prided himself on his ability to size up someone. He took another look at Miss Katherine Peck, she of the impenetrable accent and no prospects, if she was washing windows for a preacher, and wasted not a minute.

“Miss Peck, I’ll pay you thirty dollars a month to be my chore girl.”

Chapter Two

“What makes you think I need a job?” she asked, her eyes going from the rancher wearing a canvas duster, to the round little minister who had so kindly taken her in a few nights ago.

“Well, Mr. uh, Reverend, uh. He said...” Mr. Avery stopped. “Maybe I was wrong.” He turned to go.

Katie could tell she had embarrassed him, and she wondered again why she carried around so much resentment. Things weren’t good and she did need a job. She needed something. A man had offered her employment and she had snarled at him like a homeless pup with nothing going in its favor.

“I do need a job, because I am not going back to Massachusetts,” she said.

He stopped and turned around, but his eyes looked wary now. “You said Maine.”

“I work in Massachusetts,” she said in a rush, unwilling to apologize for her sharpness, but equally unwilling to embarrass him further. “I’m a mill girl. I regulate four looms in Lowell at the Chase Millworks. I came West to get married, but I don’t think that’s happening.”

The rancher nodded. “The preacher told me a little.”

Katie could tell he was unwilling to ask any more, which touched her heart. Maybe people didn’t pry out here. Maybe others came West on a shoestring like she had, with their own histories to leave behind.

She could tell he was a patient man—something in his eyes—but she could also see that he had no time to waste, the way he slapped his gloves from one hand to the other. And she needed a job.

Katie stepped down off the box and seated herself on it. “Mr. Avery, you tell me what you need, and I’ll answer your questions.” She indicated the other corner of the box, as if they sat in the parlor at the dormitory at the millworks, and not the back wall of a half-painted church.

He sat down, hat in hand, which he set on the ground beside him, and didn’t dillydally. “My father is, well, he’s dying of heart disease. He can’t do much except lie in bed and chafe about the hand dealt him. He won’t want you there, even though he knows he needs you.”

“Just the two of you?” Katie asked. “You don’t have a wife?”

“I have a little brother,” Mr. Avery said. He made a wry face. “He’s not altogether. I mean, he’s polite and kind and generally follows orders, but...”

He looked away, and she saw the muscles work in his face. She knew she sat with a private man, one not accustomed to telling anyone much of anything, and here she was, a stranger.

“You can’t quite trust him to take care of your father while you do the outside work,” Katie filled in.

His expression changed and his shoulders relaxed. She could tell he was relieved that he didn’t have to say more.

“I’ll pay you thirty dollars a month, in addition to your room and board,” he said, not looking at her. She saw the red rise in his face, and she knew there was more.

“Will I have a room?”

“No, ma’am,” he said finally. “Pa built the place a room at a time, as we needed it. It all connects and there’s nothing for a chore girl.”

She couldn’t take his offer, even as she knew she wanted to. As it was now, she shared a tiny room with two other women of questionable virtue who were, as Reverend Peabody whispered in a low voice, “Trying to get out of the life.” The collection plate on Sunday yielded very little revenue in a railroad town like Cheyenne that was just starting to think about respectability, but not too hard. The meals were almost as sparse as they had been at home in Maine, and the minister had a wife and two hopeful children.

“It doesn’t have to be a large room,” she surprised herself by saying. “A corner of the kitchen?” Try a little harder, Mr. Avery, she thought, encouraging him silently to think of something, because she couldn’t burden the Peabodys any longer.

Silence, then, “I could partition off the sitting room. No one sits there.”

He was quiet again. Kate could tell he had no intention of begging or pleading. He wasn’t that kind of man.

She knew it was going to be a poor, hard job, but she was used to those. She put out her hand. “I’ll do it.”

He shook her hand for the second time in barely ten minutes. She felt relief cover her like a blanket and made no effort to release his hand. He chuckled and hung on to her hand, too. “I get the feeling that we’re both really relieved by this turn of events,” he said.

“Ayuh.”

“What?” he asked.

“Yes,” she translated. “I’ll try to remember that you don’t speak Maine.”

She let go of his hand and stood up. “I... I’d better finish this window,” she said, shy now. “I promised the preacher.”

He stood up, and put on his hat, which made him loom over her. She stepped back instinctively, teetered on the edge of the box and felt his firm hand in the small of her back to steady her.

“Be careful!” he admonished, but kindly. “Train leaves at seven tomorrow morning. Can you meet me at the depot?”

Katie nodded and applied herself to the window. He tipped his hat to her, and left as quietly as he had come. In another minute she was singing again, something a little livelier than the reverend’s “Rock of Ages.”

Satchel in hand, Ned was waiting at the depot by six thirty the next morning, wondering if Katherine Peck would come, or if she had changed her mind. He had already bought her ticket to Medicine Bow, but he knew he could exchange it if she changed her mind. I need you, he thought, looking through the depot doors toward Fifteenth Street. He hoped she would see him as an ally, and not just a boss. Pop needed to be handled delicately.

And there she was, coat too light for this climate slung over her arm, tugging a battered tin trunk after her. She shook her head when one of the other passengers offered to help her. Maybe she thought she would have to tip them, and she had no money.

He took it from her, surprised how light it was. He thought of Mrs. Higgins’s own daughter, and her two trunks full of clothing and household goods, when she married a rancher near Sheridan, plus furniture. Katherine Peck had next to nothing. Maybe she saw Wyoming as a step up from the mills.

He gave her her ticket and tipped a young boy a quarter to wrestle her trunk aboard the westbound train, which steamed and waited—just barely—acting like a horse ready to race and held in check with some effort.

She followed him down the aisle and sat where he pointed. He sat next to her, after removing his duster and stowing it overhead, along with her coat. That coat would never do, but he didn’t feel bold enough to tell her.

They had some time to wait, and he did want to know more about her.

“I was wondering if you might have second thoughts about accepting my offer,” he said, more as small talk than serious conversation.

“No second thoughts,” she said. “Nay, not one.”

Nay? He asked himself. That’s quaint, but I can understand her better. “Will you go back to Massachusetts or Maine when you accumulate some savings?” he asked her, even though it pained him. He was not a man to pry.

“Not either place,” she said firmly. “I don’t aim to backtrack.”

There was so much he wanted to ask her, and it must have shown on his face. She stifled a little sigh, then folded her hands on her lap with an air of resolution. “I am, or was, a mill girl, from Lowell, Massachusetts,” she said. “I went to the mill at twelve years.”

“You have a fellow out here?” he asked.

“One of the mill’s floor managers has a cousin who farms near Lusk.”

“Ranches,” he corrected. “No one farms anything in Lusk.”

“Saul Coffin went there four months ago. He and I had an understanding.”

“Going to marry you?”

“Ayuh. A month ago he sent me part of the train fare. He was supposed to meet me here.” She looked at the back of the seat in front of them. “The Reverend Peabody said he told you what we think happened to Saul, uh, Mr. Coffin.”

“Lots of reasons a man can miss a train,” he said, suddenly not wishing to crush her with the likelihood of her fiancé’s death, even though she had already heard the worst. “Something delayed him, that’s all.”

“The reverend told me the same thing,” she said, looking at him now. “After you left, he and I walked to the sheriff’s office and told him where I would be, if someone came to inquire.”

“Wise of you. You may hear from him yet,” Ned said.

He could tell that she didn’t believe him, which made him wonder if she’d ever had a nice thing happen to her. He didn’t think there were many.

“Boooard! Boooard!” the conductor called.

Ned thought Miss Peck might look back at Cheyenne as they pulled out, but she kept her gaze directly in front of her. The town obviously held nothing for her except disappointment, something that she seemed to possess a lot of.

“Nothing here for you,” he commented, mostly just to fill an empty space.

“No, sir,” she agreed promptly.

“Christmas is coming,” Ned told her, then felt like a complete idiot. Of course it was coming! So was the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. New Year’s, too.

His chore girl saw right through his lame attempt at conversation. “That’ll do, Mr. Avery,” she said so kindly in the accent he was finding more charming, by the minute. “I don’t require idle chat. I’ll be your chore girl. You don’t need to worry any more.”

Maybe it was the saying of it, her quiet sort of confidence that intrigued him almost as much as her accent. He sat back, inclined to think she was right.

Chapter Three

Katherine Peck was not a talkative woman. He pulled out a copy of Roughing It he had bought in Cheyenne, but she had nothing to read. He stopped the candy butcher who came swaying down the aisle as the train picked up steam, and asked about his magazines.

“What would you like to read?” Ned asked.

Miss Peck shook her head. “No money.”

“I have some. What would you like?” He leaned closer. “You can read.”

“Ayuh,” she said, a little starch in her voice.

Ned picked out a copy of Ladies’ Home Journal, paid for it and handed it to her. “This do? May I call you Katherine? Most people call me Ned. A whole winter of you calling me Mr. Avery just might give me a case of the fantods.”

“Fantods?” she asked as she carefully placed the magazine on her lap, almost as though it were valuable beyond comprehension.

“What? No fantods in Maine?”

“Not that I know of.”

“The creeps. The heebie-jeebies. The fantods,” he explained. “When people call me Mr. Avery, I just naturally look around for my father. Call me Ned.”

“I will, if you’ll call me Katie,” she told him.

Her hand caressed the magazine. He could tell she was eager to start reading, but she was also polite, and he was her boss. “Katie? I thought you preferred...”

“I want a different name. Am I allowed?”

“Certainly. Many shady people come West and change their names.”

“I am not shady,” she told him. He thought he saw amusement in her eyes for the first time.

“Didn’t think you were, Katie.”

She turned her attention immediately to the treasure in her lap. He couldn’t help watching her from the corner of his eye, how she caressed the magazine, then turned the pages so slowly. Her satisfied sigh touched his heart.

He couldn’t help smiling through the first few chapters of Roughing It. He gave himself over to the story and had just finished the fifth chapter when the conductor shouted, “Laramie!”

He put down the book and stood up. “I’ll be right back,” he told Katie. To his amusement, she barely glanced up from the magazine.

He dashed into a hardware store on the block next to the depot and bought a doorknob with a key and two hinges. A quick lunge for a bag of lemon drops completed his stampede through Laramie. He made it back to the train just as the conductor was calling, “This train is ready to depart!”

He handed her the parcel. Without a word, she untied the twine that bound it and spread out the hardware.

“I can knock together a wall and a door,” he said. “Until your room is done, my brother and I will sleep in the barn. Shouldn’t be more than a day.”

Katie ducked her head, staring hard at the parcel in her lap. “When I was ten, my stepfather started to beat me,” she whispered. “When he thought to do other things more grievous, I ran away. I was twelve.”

God forgive me when I whine, Ned thought, appalled. “Won’t happen here,” he told her. “Have a lemon drop. Things are going to get better.”

Eyes still lowered, she took a lemon drop from the proffered bag. “You still want me to work for you?”

“Yes. Girls of ten or twelve don’t have much say in things, do they?”

She shook her head. “I walked to Massachusetts, sleeping in barns and doing odd jobs, and became a mill girl. I’ll be a good chore girl and I won’t run away.”

Kate put aside the magazine, and looked out the soot-grimed window, as if searching for scenery.

“You’re looking in the wrong direction, if you’re after scenery,” Ned told her, impressed with her bravery. He pointed across the aisle. “That seat’s empty. Take a look.”

Intrigued, she did, and was rewarded with an eye-filling view of a mountain rising out of all that empty space.

“Elk Mountain,” he said, coming across the aisle to sit beside her. “It’s the northernmost mountain in the Snowy Range. My ranch is by that river over there. We’re seven miles from Medicine Bow.”

“Practically next door to a town,” she added.

He liked her smile and her handsome high cheekbones. He liked even more that she thought to tease him. “Out West, that’s the truth,” he replied. “Pa was here early, so we have river acreage. He came with a railroad crew, laying this track that we’re riding on. He liked what he saw, and stayed.”

“How many acres?” she asked.

“Better question is, how many cattle do we run?”

“Well, then...”

“One thousand, all behind bob wire, because we learned our lesson sooner’n three years ago, when we had a bitch of a winter and the cattle all drifted and died. Pardon my language.”

She made a little gesture with her hand, and he continued. It still wasn’t a good memory. “Some of the ranchers twitted us earlier about fencing our property. Sure we lost cattle in ’87, but not as many as the stockmen whose beeves drifted.”

“What happened?”

“They’re mostly gone.”

“The tough survived?”

Just like you, he thought, impressed. “Guess so. You should do fine, Katie Peck.”

Chapter Four

To Katie’s eyes, Medicine Bow looked no better and no worse than Laramie, only smaller. She let Ned Avery take her tin trunk and followed him from the train. She waited on a bench by the stable while he and the liveryman hitched one horse to a small wagon, such as she had never seen back East.

“It’s a buckboard,” he said, as he helped her in. “One stop and we’ll head home.”

He pulled up in front of Bradley’s Mercantile. He must have ordered everything before he left Medicine Bow, because he came out in a few minutes with more wrapped packages, plus a paper bag, which he set in her lap.

“Pirozhki,” he said. “Some Roosians moved here from Nebraska and we can’t get enough of them. Two for each of us. Hand me one, once I get us over the tracks.”

She did as he said, enjoying her pork roll while he coaxed the horse across the railroad track. She handed him one, which he downed quickly, then the other, which disappeared about as fast. He protested when she offered him her second one, but not for long.

“Apples in the barrel behind you,” he said, and she produced two. “Barrel at home is nearly empty.” One satisfied her, but Ned needed two more apples.

“Just seven miles, so we’re practically in town,” he told her as they bumped along. She tried to brace herself so she wouldn’t nudge his shoulder, but the seat was so narrow. “I wanted to take my pa to Medicine Bow, where he could stay with the doctor and get better care, but he won’t have it.”

“Yours must be a nice place, if he won’t leave it.”

He shrugged. “Pa fought for the Confederacy, and came out here with nothing.”

“Your mother, too?”

“A little later. I was born in Mississippi. As soon as he had a holding out here, he sent for us.”

“Mr. Ave...”

“Ned.”

“No, it’s a Mr. Avery subject,” she insisted, which made him chuckle. “Mr. Avery, I can probably manage without a room of my own. I’m asking too much.”

He stopped the team. “Have you ever asked for anything before, Miss Peck?”

Embarrassed, she thought a moment. “I never dared.”

“I think maybe you’re overdue. It won’t kill Pete and me to spend a night in the barn.”

She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it, because she wanted that room. “Very well.”

“Is the matter closed?”

“Yes.”

“Good thing, because I don’t like to argue about stuff that needs to happen.” Ned pointed to a spot where the road turned toward the river they had been paralleling. “We’ll be on Avery land soon.”

She hung on to the seat and pushed hard against the footboard as Ned guided his team into the river. She looked around, pleased with the bright yellow leaves that seemed to shiver as they passed. She thought of winter to come, and suppressed an involuntary shiver of her own.

“You need a warmer coat. Didn’t anyone ever look after you?”

“No.” She winced inside at how bleak and bald the word sounded, and she wondered just when she had gotten used to mostly nothing.

They topped a small rise, then Ned coaxed his horse down into a lovely valley. October winds may have been blowing cold, but she liked what she saw, except for what had to be Ned Avery’s home. She pointed.

“Yep. It’s a real sow’s ear. I guess we just got used to it,” he said, and she heard all the apology in his voice.

A body gets used to a lot of things, she thought, and wondered just when she had given up. Another thought struck her. For the first time since she couldn’t remember, someone was looking after her. It was a pleasant thought. She doubted Mr. Avery saw it that way, since he had made a business deal with her, but she felt herself relax, somewhere inside her body, or maybe it was her mind. She waited for the feeling to leave, but it seemed to settle in, like a cat on a hearth.

In a short time, she stood in the middle of a little kitchen, being introduced to a woman who looked as capable as Ned. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Higgins,” she said as they shook hands after Ned’s introduction.

A few whispered words to Ned, and Mrs. Higgins waved a cheery goodbye. In a few minutes, Kate heard hoofbeats.

“She watched Pa for me. This is Peter,” Ned said, and pulled a younger man closer, one with the same blond hair and build, but vacant blue eyes, with the same dark rim around lighter blue, but none of the intensity. “He does the best he can, most days.”

“Hi, Pete,” Katie said, and got a vague smile in return.

The rancher indicated the next room. “This is the sitting room.” He held his hands out, as if measuring the space. “I can build you a room right here. There won’t be a window—that would make it too cold.”

She followed him through the next connecting room. This room had a bed, and crates stacked on top of each other for clothing. “Pete and I sleep here. Wait. I’ll see how Pa is.”

She stood there, Peter beside her. He cleared his throat.

“Ned was looking for a chore girl.”

“He found one.”

“You can cook?”

“Pretty much anything you want to eat, Peter,” she told him. “You do like to eat, don’t you?”

Pete nodded, and then looked away, as if that was too much conversation.

She looked through the connecting arch to the next room, where Ned stood looking down. She went closer and saw Daniel Avery.

He was so thin, and probably not as old as he looked. She had already observed that the men out here had lots of wrinkles on their faces, sort of like sea captains from back home.

“Pa, this is our chore girl, Katie Peck,” Ned was saying. “She’ll be looking after you, after all of us, I guess.”

The older man looked at her, then carefully turned himself toward the wall. Kate sighed, wondering what it must feel like to be strong one day, then brought low by a heart ailment another day.

“Never mind, Mr. Avery,” she said. She touched his arm, then pulled the blanket a little higher. “I am here to help and that is all.”

“Don’t need...” the old man began, then stopped. His shoulders started to shake. “...help.”

Kate quietly left the room. Ned followed her, his expression more troubled than she wanted to see.

“I was afraid he might do that,” he said in apology. “He knows we need you, but his dignity...”

“Doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “You hired a chore girl and I will do my job.”

She said it quietly, as she said most things, as she had lived her own hard life that bore no signs of getting easier. She looked down at her hands, surprised to see that she still carried the doorknob and hinges. She knew other people must have epiphanies now and then—the minister said so—but she never expected one of her own. Here it came, filling her with peace. She handed the hardware to Ned Avery.

“I can do this,” she told him. “Just watch me.”

Chapter Five

Kate began her work in the morning, after a surprisingly comfortable night in the bed usually belonging to Pete and Ned Avery. Ned had insisted on changing the sheets the night before and she was glad of it, considering how dingy they seemed.

His eyes wide with surprise, Pete watched his brother make the bed. “He never tucked in anything before,” he told Katie.

Ned had turned around with a smile. “I can’t even trust a brother to watch my back,” he said. “Pete, you’re toast.”

Pete laughed out loud. Something in Ned’s eyes told Kate that no one had laughed in the Avery household in recent memory.

“No respect whatsoever,” Ned said with a shake of his head. He gathered up the nearly gray sheets, put his hand on Pete’s neck and pulled him from the room, but gently.

There wasn’t any privacy, not with the rooms connecting the way they did. As Ned tended to his father’s needs, she winced to hear Mr. Avery insisting that no chore girl would ever touch him.

“I don’t know how long it will take, but he’ll come around,” Ned had told her as he put on his coat. Katie heard the doubt in his voice. “Come on, Pete.”

I have many things to prove to Mr. Avery, Kate thought. She began in the kitchen, laying a fire in the range, a black monstrosity that, like everything in the house, needed a woman’s touch. She knew there would be Arbuckle’s and a grinder; soon the aroma of coffee spread through the house. She made a pot of oatmeal. By the time the brothers opened the door, ushering in frigid air with them, toast was out of the oven and buttered, and the oatmeal in bowls.

She stood by the table, her hands behind her back, pleased with herself, even though the meal was many degrees below ordinary.

“Don’t stand on ceremony,” Ned said as he sat down. He dumped the milk from a bucket into a deep pan and covered it, after taking out a cup of milk. “Join us.”

“I can wait until you are done,” she said.

“Maybe you could if you were the czar of Russia’s chore girl. I mean it. Get a bowl and join us.”

She did as he said. He pushed out the empty chair with his foot.

“Barn’s getting cold and Pete isn’t much fun to cuddle,” he said, as he took a sip of the coffee, nodded and raised the cup to her in salute. “Damn fine, Katie Peck. I’m going to build you a room today.”

And he did, after instructing her to move what little furniture the sitting room possessed to the other side of the doorway arch that cut the room into roughly two-thirds and a third. She did as he directed, coughing from the dust she raised.

“The only problem I have noticed with housework is that five or six months later, you have to do it all over again,” he commented, gesturing for Pete to pick up the other end of a settee.

Once the furniture was moved and the floor swept, Ned worked quickly, measuring and marking boards he had dragged from the barn with Pete’s help. When he gave her no assignment, Katie decided to tackle the stove, which hadn’t seen a good cleaning in years.

She found a metal pancake turner in the depths of a drawer of junk and scraped away on the range top until her shoulders hurt. All the time, Ned and Pete walked back and forth, bringing in more boards. After the fifth or so trip, Ned stopped to watch.

“Funny how this stuff built up and I continued to ignore it,” he told her, sounding more matter-of-fact than penitent, which scarcely surprised her. She was coming to know Ned Avery.

“A little attention every day—not much, really—keeps the carbon away,” she said, and surprised herself by thinking, Kind of like people.

“Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll surprise you. No peeking, now.”

She stopped long enough at noon to fix everyone jelly sandwiches and canned peaches, then continued into the afternoon until the stove was clean. The hammering continued, punctuated with laughter, which soothed her heart in strange ways.

With his own shy smile, Pete borrowed the kitchen broom.

“How does my new room in there look?” she asked, pretty certain that Pete would spill the beans, because his mind was too simple to keep a secret all the way from breakfast to supper.

Pete surprised her. “Not gonna tell. You have to wait.”

Impressed, Kate built a fire in the stove, determined to cook something better than sandwiches. Ned had already pointed out the smokehouse next door. She sliced off several steaks as her mouth watered. Even in her more enlightened place of employment in Massachusetts, meat was a rare treat administered only on holidays. Soon steaks and sliced potatoes sizzled. She opened another can of peaches and poured them into a bowl this time. She had found some pretty dishes that only needed a rinse.

She was about to call the brothers to the table when they came into the kitchen. Ned held out a key to her, just an ordinary skeleton key for a simple lock that anyone could pick, but which meant more to her than Ned Avery would ever know.

“Take a look.” He gestured her into the sitting room, or what remained of it.

She stared in surprise. “I... I thought you were going to carve a tiny space out of this side of the doorway,” she said, delighted. “Where will you sit in the evenings?”

“I already told you we use the kitchen for everything,” he reminded her, his eyes on her face.

Ned had turned the larger side of the sitting room into her bedroom, leaving only a small area on the other side of the open archway for a chair, settee and a table, the kind for books or magazines. She stared at the new wall and door, then opened the door and sighed with the pleasure of it all.

The bed was just a cot, perhaps an army cot scavenged from somewhere. Because her boss had given her the lion’s share of the former sitting room, it included the potbellied stove. He and Pete had dragged in one of the stuffed chairs and a footstool.

“I have another washbasin somewhere, and I can put up some pegs for your clothes. Sorry I don’t have a bureau.”

What could she say to such kindness? She barely knew this man, and he had given her something priceless—a room of her own, a safe one.

“Thank ye,” she managed, hoping tears wouldn’t well in her eyes. No employer wanted to hire a crybaby.

“Try it out,” her boss said.

She walked inside her room, her own room. She sat down in the chair and put her feet upon the footstool. I can sit here and reread my Ladies’ Home Journal, she thought. This might be the best winter of my life.

Chapter Six

Kate spent a peaceful night in her room, sitting for a while in the chair and reading, as she suspected wealthy people did. Her new bed was narrow and the mattress thin, but she had no complaint.

She debated whether to lock the door. Key in hand, she had the power, but the urgency was gone. She closed the door, and that was enough.

In the morning, she woke to angry voices in the back bedroom. Kate opened her door slightly and listened as Ned and his father argued about leaving him alone to the mercies of “a dratted female I can barely understand” while his sons rode fence today.

“Try a little harder, Dad,” Ned said.

“What for?” his father shot back. “You know I’m dying, I know I’m dying, and that...female with the damn fool accent knows I’m dying!”

“I guess because it’s the civilized thing to do,” Ned replied, and he sounded so weary.

“You don’t need me,” Daniel Avery argued. “You can run this ranch.”

“Did it ever occur to you that we love you?” Ned asked, sounding more exasperated than weary now, and driven to a final admission, maybe one hard for a man not used to frills, if love was a frill.

Katie dressed quickly, pleased to see that Ned or Pete—likely Ned—had laid a fire in the cookstove. While the argument about her merits and demerits continued in the back room at a lower decibel, she deftly shredded potatoes and put them in a cast-iron skillet to fry.

She silently ordered the argument down the hall to roll off her back. She was the chore girl and she was getting through a winter doing something she hadn’t planned on, because Saul Coffin, drat his hide, had a temper. Sticks and stones, she thought. That’s all it is.

Breakfast on the table brought a smile to Ned Avery’s set expression. He asked for the ketchup, then ate silently before finally setting down his fork.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he told her.

“I’ll set his food on that little table by his bed and just leave him alone with it,” she said, getting out another plate.

“I can take it to him. Maybe I had better,” Ned said, starting to rise.

“Eat your breakfast,” she said, as she started down the hall with Daniel Avery’s steak and hash browns on a tray.

Mr. Avery was staring at the ceiling, which she noticed for the first time was covered with newspapers. Just standing there, she stared up, too.

“‘Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling.’ Oh, my,” she said, then sat the tray of food on the table where he could reach it and left the room. She thought she heard him laugh.

She sat down in the kitchen to oatmeal, which she preferred to steak in the morning, and was just spooning on the sugar when she heard, “Ned!” from the back of the house.

“You should have let Ned take Dad his breakfast,” Pete told her.

“That’s enough, Pete,” Ned snapped, as he got up from the table. “Maybe I appreciate a little initiative.”

From the vacant look on the younger brother’s face, Kate could see he did not know the word, and felt surprisingly sorry for him.

Ned came back and took the ketchup off the table. “He wants this.”

“Stubborn man,” Kate said.

“I’m just pleased not to see the whole thing on the floor,” her boss said, and he sounded more cheerful. “He wants some of your coffee, too.”

“I’ll take him both,” Kate said. “Sit down and finish your breakfast.”

He did as she said. “Are you as stubborn as he is?”

“Ayuh,” she said, which made him laugh.

She took ketchup and coffee down the hall, pausing inside the last bedroom to read something else from the ceiling that looked a little newer than Crown Prince Rudolf’s misfortune. “Mr. Avery, it appears that Christine Hardt has patented the first brassiere. If you need anything else, just ask. I intend to earn my thirty dollars a month.”

She returned to the kitchen and finished her breakfast as Ned poured himself another cup of coffee, gave her an inquiring look, and poured her one, as well.

As she ate, he filled her in on the day’s task, which included the mysterious “riding fence” he had mentioned earlier. She had spent a lifetime cultivating an expressionless face, the kind that mostly encouraged people like her stepfather to forget she was even in the room. Ned Avery seemed to see right through it.

“I can tell you have no idea what I’m talking about,” he said, elbows on the table.

“I am curious,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone rides fence in Maine.”

“Probably not. I’ve seen Maine on a map and it looks pretty squished together. We’ll just be riding down the fence line to make sure the bob wire is tight and all the strands are in place.”

“If not?”

“We’ll fix them. I’ll have a roll of wire and staples with me, and the straightener. Up you get, Pete.”

Pete shook his head. “Don’t like to ride.”

“I need your help.”

Ned gave his brother a push out the door. Ned looked back. “Can you fix us some sandwiches from the leftover steak, and stick some apples in that bag?”

Kate wiped her hands on her apron, ready to begin.

“I’d do it myself,” Ned said, sounding apologetic, “but I’ve noticed something about sandwiches.”

“Which is...”

“They always taste a little better when someone else makes them. Back in a minute,” he said.

Pleased with her boss, Kate made sandwiches, adding pickles from an earthenware crock to the thick slabs of beef between bread. She found waxed paper in a drawer and made two sandwiches apiece. Four apples went in the bag on the bottom. She put the rest of the coffee in a canteen she noticed by the canvas bag and handed the whole thing to Ned when he returned to the kitchen, bringing in more cold weather with him.

“Pete’s pouting in the barn,” he announced.

“He really doesn’t like to ride?” she asked.

“Afraid of horses.” Ned leaned against the table. He shrugged. “I still need his help.”

“Maybe I could help,” she offered.

“Can you ride?”

“I can learn,” she replied.

“I believe you would try,” he told her. “Just keep an eye on my father. I set his, well, his, well you know, close to his bed.”

She nodded. “I’ll remove his breakfast dishes later. Maybe I’ll read to him.”

“I doubt he’ll let you.”

“I can try.”

He gave her an appraising look, one part speculation, two parts evaluation, and another part she didn’t recognize. He slung the bag over his shoulder and startled whistling before he shut the door.

Poor Pete, she thought, wondering what the slow brother would really rather do, given the opportunity.

She thought about the Averys as she set a sponge for bread. She glanced down the length of the cabin through the arches, wondering if she dared risk the wrath. Why not? she asked herself.

Mr. Avery pretended to sleep as she gathered up the empty dishes, and tucked the ketchup bottle under her arm. Back in the kitchen she busied herself with the bread dough, then cleaned through layers of debris and ranch clutter while the loaves rose to impressive height. What was the use of ropes she could not have guessed, but there were enough partly used liniment bottles stuck here and there to make her wonder just how troublesome the cow business could be.

The fragrance of baked bread filled the little ranch house. When it came from the oven still hot and not entirely set, she cut off a generous slice, lathered it with butter, put it on a plate and carried it down to the last bedroom, where Mr. Avery immediately pretended he slept. She left the bread on the table and washed her hands of that much stubbornness.

She slathered her own slice and propped her feet up on another of the kitchen chairs to enjoy it. The wind blew and beat against the one small kitchen window. She eyed the window, and wondered where she could find material for curtains.

Sitting there in the kitchen, wind roaring outside, she felt herself relax. The whine and clank of the industrial looms that had been her salvation from mistreatment, but the author of headaches, had never seemed farther away. No matter what she decided in the spring, she never had to go back.

If only Daniel Avery, rail-thin and suffering, would agree to a truce. She glanced at the calendar, the one with a naked woman peeking around a for sale sign—where did Ned get these calendars?—and resolved to find better calendars, and while she was at it, a better job for Pete and comfort for Mr. Avery. What she would do for Ned escaped her, but she had time.

Chapter Seven

Not in years had Ned Avery come home to a house fragrant with the twin odors of fresh bread and cinnamon. Ma had been dead so long he could not remember much about her, except her lovely eyes. Katie had eyes like that—brown and appealing.

Pete decided to sulk in the barn, so Ned shut the kitchen door and breathed in the pleasant fragrance, aware that this might mean something delicious to eat, but just savoring an unexpected, simple pleasure.

He watched Kate Peck come down the hall from her father’s room, carrying an empty plate. She smiled her greeting—another unexpected pleasure—and put the plate in the sink. Without a word, she cut off a slab of bread, slathered it with butter and handed it to him.

“Your father pretends to be asleep, but he ate a lot of bread and butter,” she said. “Your turn.”

He ate the bread, embarrassed to be uttering little cries of pleasure, but nearly overcome with something as simple as warm bread and butter. “Best thing I ever ate,” he said, and meant it.

“You’re an easy mark,” she teased, which made him smile. “I have something even better.”

What he couldn’t imagine, unless it was to strip and stand there naked in the kitchen. That thought earned him a mental slap. “Hard to imagine anything better,” he told her, grateful people couldn’t read each other’s thoughts.

In answer, she opened the warming oven and took out a cinnamon roll the size of a dinner plate. “Sit down.”

He sat. Without a word, he plunged in, wondering how lucky a man could be, to find out that he had inadvertently hired a cook, along with a chore girl.

“Words fail me,” he said finally. “I didn’t know we had any cinnamon.”

“It’s a little weak. I found it stuffed in the back of that cupboard, along with a stack of napkins, a hacksaw and a rope with dried blood.”

“That’s where it went!” Ned said. “I use that rope for pulling calves.”

He could tell she had no idea what he was talking about. “When Mama Cow has trouble, a little noose slipped around her calf, plus a mighty tug, finishes the job.”

Kate pointed to the rope, hanging from a nail near the door. “Keep it in the barn, the hacksaw, too.”

“You’re a bit of a martinet,” Ned replied.

She gave him a startled look that settled into a thoughtful expression. “Two days ago, I wouldn’t have imagined such a thing.”

He started for the barn, when she surprised him by walking along beside him. She stopped and he stopped, too, waiting for her to speak.

“Your father may have a bad heart, but he needs something to do,” she said. “I didn’t want him to hear me talking about him.”

Eyes troubled, she looked back at the house, which suddenly looked too small and shabby to him. Couldn’t they afford something better now?

“He’s lying there waiting to die,” Katie said. “How is that better than death?”

It felt like one accusation too many. “Do you have some bit of wisdom to change things? You think you’re telling me something I don’t know?” He didn’t mean to shout. He regretted the look in her eyes. “Sorry. That was unkind.”

“He still needs something to do,” she repeated softly, and left him there.

Ned Avery watched the sway of her skirt, wishing—not for the first time—that someone else was in charge of his life.

He stayed in the barn until the cold started to seep through his coat, watching his horse eat. Pete, still unhappy with his day spent riding fence, pointedly turned away from him, much as a cat with a gripe would.

I am satisfying nobody, Ned thought. “Pete, what would you really like to do?” he asked.

“Work someplace warm,” Pete said with no hesitation, as though he had been considering the question for years. Perhaps he had been.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ned told his brother. He patted Pete’s shoulder. “Come inside. Katie has made cinnamon rolls.”

“Will I like them?” Pete asked, as they walked toward the ranch house.

“Yeah, you will. If you don’t, I’ll eat yours, too.” He stopped. “Ride with me tomorrow to check the fence in the other direction, and then I really will see what I can do.”

Dinner was another unimaginable feast, nothing more than beef stew, but much more because of spices or whatever sort of alchemy seemed to be coming from a kitchen he knew too well.

“Tucked beside the cinnamon, I found some thyme. And do you know, there is bush after bush of sagebrush right outside your door,” Katie said.

He could tell she was teasing him, and it felt good, reminding him how long it had been since he had laughed about something, anything.

There was no humor in the last bedroom, where his father lay, staring at the ceiling. Ned helped him sit up to eat, but Pa said nothing about the wonderful stew. Pa seemed determined not to have anything good to say about Katie.

Stubborn old man, Ned thought. He imagined himself condemned to lie in bed until death finally nosed around and found him. He had to admit Kate was right—this was not living.

After helping his father through slow and painful bedtime rituals, Ned said good-night and wandered back through the house. In the next room, Pete was already asleep. He kept going, passing through the small sitting room now, and by the room he had built for Kate, who just wanted to feel safe.

She was drying the last of the dishes. He eyed the remaining cinnamon roll, which she pushed toward him, along with a just-dry fork. “I can make more tomorrow.”

She sat down, and he found himself enjoying the novelty of someone sitting with him. Before Pa got so weak, they sat at this table together and he missed that.

“I have to find something for Peter to do,” he said, halfway through the roll.

“You’ll think of something,” she said.

“I wish there was someone else around here who could think,” he said, ashamed to whine.

“The whole burden is yours, isn’t it?” she said, her voice soft. “That’s hard.”

She surprised him then. “Tomorrow, I’m going to start reading to your father.” She chuckled. “He’ll just pretend to sleep and ignore me.”

“Sorry about that,” Ned murmured, embarrassed at such stubbornness.

“No need. I’ll sit by the arch into his room, and read just loud enough to hear, but not easily. Maybe he’ll invite me into his room to read.”

“Could be a while,” Ned said. “He’s damned stubborn.”

“So am I.”

Chapter Eight

Katie began her campaign after a breakfast of baked oatmeal, helped out with a tin of peaches. If she fed the fire in the range carefully, the roast Ned had sliced off from the steer hanging in the smokehouse would be done in late afternoon, when he and Pete rode in again.

She had taken Mr. Avery’s breakfast to him instead of Ned, tightening her lips when the old man pretended to sleep. She said a cheerful “Good morning,” before she retreated to the kitchen.

An hour later, she went to Ned and Pete’s room and picked up Ned’s copy of Roughing It he had been reading on the train. He had left it on the bed, as she had asked him to, when she explained her campaign.

“Good luck,” he had said, and she heard all his doubt.

She positioned the chair right by the archway that led into Mr. Avery’s room. She made herself comfortable and started to read aloud.

“‘Chapter One. My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory—an office of such majesty...’”

The chapters were short, which obviously suited Mark Twain, and suited Katie, too. She found herself laughing out loud after a very few pages, even when her captive audience began to snore, or pretend to. Stubborn man, she thought, but with sympathy. He was in a bad situation and they both knew it. She kept reading, and found her enjoyment growing at Twain’s depiction of the West in which she now lived.

The snoring stopped by Chapter Five and Twain’s description of a coyote as “‘...always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless.’” Katie took that as a good sign and kept reading.

She hardly knew how long she read, but her stomach growled around noon. She turned down a tiny corner of the page and said, “‘The city lies in the edge of a level plain.’ Remember that, Mr. Avery, for it is where I shall begin again. I’m hungry. Are you?”

Silence. At least he wasn’t pretending to snore. She fixed herself a beef sandwich, ate it and made one for Mr. Avery. She set it on the little table close to his bed, and watched him for a moment as he pretended to sleep.

The book lay on her chair. She picked it up and turned a few pages. “Let’s see...did we finish? I’m certain we did. Must be here on Chapter Six,” Kate said. She ran her finger down the page. “Chapter Six it is. ‘Our new conductor (just shipped) had been without sleep for twenty hours...’”

“No! Start with, ‘The city lies in the edge of a level plain,’” Mr. Avery said from his bedroom. “And for the Lord’s sake, come a little closer.”

Kate smiled so huge that she felt her dry lips crack. She tugged the chair into Mr. Avery’s bedroom, pulling it close enough to the stove for warmth, since the day had turned cold.

“Very well,” she said. “‘...the edge of a level plain.’ Here we are.”

She read until the shadows of late fall stretched across the page she was reading and at the same time the aromatic roast in the kitchen made itself known. She stood up and put the book in the chair.

“Thank you for letting me read to you,” she told the quiet man, who lay on his back now, deeply veined hands clasped together. “You know, Mr. Avery, if you have trouble understanding my accent, I can read slower.”

“I understand you,” he growled. “Silly of you to think I wouldn’t.”

“I have to prepare supper.” She was tying on her apron when the brothers came indoors, bringing with them October and geese calling to each other, and a rush of sage before the door closed.

“One more day will finish up the near fences,” Ned told her.

“Pete’s more agreeable?” she asked.

Ned shrugged. “Well enough. I promised him I would think of something else for him to do.” He started toward the back of the house, but stopped. “You think, too,” he said and gave her a little salute with his finger to his forehead.

Kate couldn’t help feeling pleased to be included in likely what was a hopeless task. She sliced potatoes for frying on the stovetop, and found enough good apples in the nearly empty barrel to make applesauce. She looked into the window and gave her reflection a little salute, too.

She already knew the evening routine. Ned kept a pile of old newspapers by the stove. Once his father was taken care of, he retreated to his room with a newspaper and read the articles, no matter how old they were.

Pete sometimes stayed in the kitchen with a bucket of blocks. He created towering buildings carefully, losing himself in the simple task. After a few days of wondering what to do, Kate took an old newspaper, too, and read it in her room. Sometimes Ned took a deck of cards to the kitchen and played solitaire.

And then in the morning another day began and became much like the one before, a day of riding fence for the Avery brothers, and her reading to Mr. Avery, who at least didn’t pretend to sleep anymore, even if he never spoke.

Ned surprised her two days later by inviting her to come to town with him. “Didn’t I hear you say something about material for kitchen curtains? I’ll leave Pete here with Dad. We won’t be gone much more than half a day.”

She had her doubts, but agreed. While he hitched the horse to the wagon, Katie peered into Ned’s shaving mirror. There wasn’t much she could do for her straight hair, but she was pleased to see that the bloom wasn’t entirely gone from her reflection.

“May I get you anything in town?” she asked Mr. Avery, who lay on his bed, turned to the side facing the wall. He ignored her and her heart dropped, wondering if he was back to his silent hostility.

“I’ll read twice as long tomorrow to make up,” she cajoled. Nothing. It was as if she had never read to him, as if they had never started even the simplest of conversations.

“You are a stubborn man,” she said finally, when she heard Ned calling her name from the kitchen.

“I want to go, too,” he said, softly.

Katie heard his disappointment. “I wish you could. I truly do.”

Silence. Ned called for her again, but she moved closer to his father instead. She sat on his bed. “Is there something else I can do for you, besides what you really want?”

She looked over her shoulder to see Ned approaching. She put her finger to her lips and he said nothing.

“I want a window,” Mr. Avery told her finally. “If I have to lie here, may I look out at...at...something?” He opened his eyes, and Kate saw all the torment. “Can you do that? Can you?”

Kate glanced back at Ned and saw a serious face with no anger in it. He nodded. His look changed to a thoughtful one, as though he was already planning how he would do it. He turned quietly and went back through the house.

“I believe we can,” she told Mr. Avery.

She heard his enormous sigh. “Make it a big window and make it low enough for me to see out of, just as I am now.”

“Done,” Kate said as she stood up. “Call Pete if you need anything.”

“I can’t imagine he wants to stay here,” Mr. Avery said, a touch of humor in his voice.

“No,” Kate said, “but it’s my turn to go to town.”

She hurried toward the kitchen. Ned stood there, something in his hand. He held it out to her. “I found this in the box of oddments you wanted me to go through. Mama used to stick it in her hair. You take it.”

“I shouldn’t,” she said, coming closer to look at the tortoiseshell comb.

“I think you should. Mama was never one to waste things. Here. I’ll do it.”

He stepped into her private space, and she felt no automatic need to step back. “Where should I put it?” he asked.

She touched the side of her head where strays seemed to come from. “Right here.”

With no hesitation, he slid the comb right above her ear, slanting it up a little and then more, until he was satisfied. She held her breath at his nearness, thinking of times when her stepfather had yanked her around, or even when Saul Coffin leaned in for a kiss. She felt no urge to step back or dodge Ned Avery.

I trust you, she thought, and the feeling was warmer than late autumn.

“That’ll do, Katie,” he said, nodding his approval. “I didn’t know you had freckles on your nose.”

“And I didn’t know you did, too,” she told him.

“I’m not exactly full of surprises,” he said as he opened the door.

I’m surprising myself, Katie thought, pleased in a way she had never been pleased before.

Chapter Nine

Both of them were silent on the ride to Medicine Bow, but it was a comforting silence to Katie, the kind of quiet when you share space with a friend, or so she thought.

Ned stopped the wagon in front of Bradley’s Mercantile and helped her out onto the board sidewalk. “Go inside and look around,” he said. “They may or may not have anything resembling what you think we might need, but that’s Medicine Bow.” He straightened his Stetson. “I’m going to the Watering Hole for a drink.”

“Don’t you get likkered,” she teased.

“My mother used to say that,” he replied, and she saw good humor in his eyes. “Haven’t heard it in years.” He tipped his hat to her. “Thanks for the reminder.”

She nodded and went into the mercantile. The odor of dried fish, leather and coffee, with a hint of molasses drifting in from some dark corner made her wrinkle her nose.

“Can I help you, miss?” the man behind the counter said.

“Ayuh,” she said, which made him smile. “I mean, yes.” She handed him the list Ned had given her.

He scanned it. “Hmm. More sugar. Cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg? Ned’s never given me a list like this.”

“Christmas is coming,” she reminded him. “I intend to do something about it.”

That announcement brought another smile, accompanied by more thorough appraisal. “Tell me now—did Ned Avery find himself a wife?”

Katie felt her face heat up. “He needs a chore girl to help with his father,” she explained, lowering her voice. “I fell on hard times, and he ended up hiring me.”

“I did hear he had a mission to accomplish in Cheyenne,” the man—probably Mr. Bradley—told her. “How is Daniel?”

“Bored, mainly. He thinks I am unnecessary, but he lets me read to him,” she replied.

“I can’t imagine this state of affairs sits well with him,” Mr. Bradley said. “He used to be so strong and capable. Well, like Ned. Let’s see that list.”

Kate went through her own list quickly, adding each item to a growing pile on the counter. She stood by the cash register while Mr. Bradley toted up her purchases, and noticed the help-wanted sign for the first time.

“What sort of work do you need help with, Mr. Bradley?” she asked, when he came to the end of the list.

“Simple stuff—stocking the shelves, sweeping out, keeping things tidy,” he said. He rang up the total. “Fifteen dollars. I’ll box these and get them out to the buckboard.”

“Are you thinking of bailing out?” he asked as they carried the boxes to the buckboard. “Need a job?”

They walked back to the store together. “No, sir, I promised I would help out and I don’t go back on my word.”

“Why are you interested?”

“I’m asking for Pete Avery,” she said. “Mr. Bradley, Pete doesn’t like ranch work, and he can do all those things you listed.” She clasped her hands together and gave the merchant her kindest smile. “He would feel so useful, and he would be dependable.”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Bradley said, and she heard all the doubt in his voice.

“Could you think about it?” she asked.

“Think about what?”

Startled, she turned around to see Ned standing in the doorway. As she looked at him, her confidence dribbled away. It was probably a stupid idea anyway.

“Your chore girl here is wondering if your brother might be a good store clerk,” Mr. Bradley said, pointing to the help-wanted sign.

Ned stared at the sign, then glared at Kate. “There’s no need to joke about Pete.”

“I’m not joking,” she replied, stung by the disbelief in his voice. “Pete can put cans on shelves. He can sweep and tidy up. He’s polite, and I’ll wager he knows a lot of people here in Medicine Bow.”

“He doesn’t need to work here.” Ned turned away to count out the money he owed. “Unlike you, the Averys aren’t charity cases.”

That stung. Kate felt the familiar prickle of tears behind her eyes. Some imp made her keep talking. “He can do this work, and you know how he feels about riding fence.” She turned to Mr. Bradley, who was watching the two of them with real interest. “If you hire Pete, is there a place he could stay?”

“Right here. There’s a little room off the storeroom,” he said, for some reason taking her side. “I can tell you I wouldn’t mind having someone down here at night. He could eat upstairs with us.”

“It’s out of the question,” Ned replied, but he sounded neither determined nor irritated now.

“Why?” Kate asked softly. “Pete can work and earn money, same as you and me.”

“I’m liking this idea more and more,” Mr. Bradley said. “Why not try? If it doesn’t work after a week or so, we’ll know.” The merchant turned the force of his enthusiasm on Ned. “Your ma used to tell my wife that all she wanted was for Pete to have a chance at something. What could be better than this? He knows Millie and me. Hell, Pete knows everyone in town! What do you say?”

“Just don’t say no so fast, Ned,” Kate urged. “Can we think about it?”

“We?” Ned asked, exasperated again.

You’re not going to make me angry, she thought. She took a deep breath. “Yes, we. If Pete goes to work here, we’ll have to work a little harder to take care of your father.”

“You don’t mind?” Ned asked, and she knew she had him.

“Of course not. Nothing changes for me. You’re the one who won’t have any extra help outside.”

Ned sighed. “As it is, with Pete I’m dragging around a boat anchor. He’d rather do anything than get on a horse and ride all day.”

“There you are,” Mr. Bradley said cheerfully.

Silence for a moment, as Ned looked from her to the merchant and back. “All right. I’ll bring him to town tomorrow and we’ll try it for a week.”

“Shake on it?” Mr. Bradley asked, holding out his hand.

They shook hands, and Kate wanted to do a two-step around the pickle barrel.

Mr. Bradley beamed at them both. “Your chore girl and I loaded the food in the buckboard. Millie and I will tidy that little room tonight. Bring Pete by anytime before noon, will you?”

“You got me,” Ned told Katie after he helped her into the buckboard and went around to his side.

“I saw the sign and thought of Pete,” she said simply, determined not to apologize for a good idea acted upon.

He didn’t say anything for half the journey home, and then he started to chuckle. Kate felt the tension leave her shoulders.

“We’ll try it out,” he told her. “Pete used to milk the cow morning and night. You up for that?”

“If you’ll remind me how. It’s been years.”

“My pleasure.” He started on his tuneless whistle that she was already familiar with. She relaxed some more when Pete met them at the front door—the only door—of the worst place she had ever lived. Funny that she was already thinking of it as home.

Chapter Ten

Katie gave Ned credit for impressive self-control that night when Pete kept asking every few minutes if he was really going to work in town for Mr. Bradley. He asked it from the stew to the muffins, and only stopped when Ned told him to put a lid on it or he would take it all back.

Reasoning that he hadn’t made any promises to Katie, Pete then asked her over and over, when he was supposed to be teaching her to milk the cow, a rangy little number that didn’t appear to suffer fools gladly, if all those looks she gave Kate were any indication.

“Pack your clothes in that old carpetbag of Pa’s,” Ned said finally. “And don’t drive Pa nuts!” he called after his brother.

“I should have just stuck him in the buckboard tomorrow and told him on the way to town,” Ned grumbled to Kate. He sat down beside her on the stool and nudged her over. He told her to watch him milk and she did, aware of how close he sat and that he smelled of hair oil.

“You got your hair cut,” she said. “I was hoping you didn’t spend all that time in the Watering Hole,” she teased.

He gave her another nudge, which sent her off the stool and frightened the patient mama cat waiting for her turn.

“Beg your pardon,” he said in mock contrition, but he moved over a little and she sat again. “Put your hands beside mine.”

She wondered if she should tell him she had milked cows when she was a little girl. Her step pa had hit her when she didn’t do a good job, but Ned Avery didn’t need to know that.

“You try it now,” he directed.

She did as he said and he watched her. For one small moment, that same irrational fear came over her, but the ending was different this time.

“You’ll do,” he said, and touched her shoulder. He returned to the other side of the barn and finished his chores. He carried the bucket of milk into the house when she finished and told her that his father wanted to see her.

“Don’t look so worried,” he exclaimed.

“My step pa used to beat me when I didn’t do chores the way he wanted,” she told him, embarrassed to admit it, but wanted him to understand her own fear.

“That will never happen here,” he said quietly, then stopped so suddenly that the milk slopped over a little. “In fact, I know something about you that you probably don’t even realize.”

“What could that possibly be?” she asked, half amused, half wary.

“I’ve thought about this while I was riding fence,” he began, shaking his head. “Riding fence is so boring that my flights of fancy sometimes amaze me!” He turned serious then. “You’ve told me what you’ve been through at the hands of a very bad man.”

Even when he said no more, she understood what Ned wanted. “Are you wondering why I agreed to work for you?”

“I’m wondering more than a little. How did you know I wasn’t a bad man, too? You didn’t even know my name.”

They stood there in the empty space between the barn and the house, no one else in sight, the sky dark, snow threatening. She did not know how he would feel about her answer, but it was the only one she had. “Something about you told me I could trust you,” Kate said finally. She thought some more. “You didn’t crowd me. You just stood there so respectful, your hat in your hand.”

“Pa says I’m too serious. He says ladies want someone exciting.”

Katie shook her head. “Not me! Something told me I could trust you.”

He followed her into the kitchen, setting the milk into pans and covering it with a clean cloth. Tomorrow she would skim off the cream and add it to the cream of the day before. In another day she would churn it. She had found a small glass rose, stuck in that same cabinet with the calving rope, that she intended to press into the still soft butter to make a decoration.

“I should have asked you before I promised Pete to Mr. Bradley,” she said.

“Maybe, maybe not. Just thinking of that conversation embarrasses me,” he said. He sat down at the table and patted the chair beside him. “You notice how quick I was to say no, without even thinking?”

“I noticed,” she told him, “but you make the decisions.”

“No excuse for not considering something before I shut it down,” he said. He touched her hand lightly. “Thank you for not giving up on a good idea that I probably would have strangled at birth.”

She couldn’t help but feel flattered. “Everyone is taking a chance with this idea.”

“Glen Bradley will let me know if it’s not working,” he said. He gestured down the hall. “Pa wants to talk to you. Want me in there, too?”

Pride nearly made her say no, but as Katie looked into his eyes, she saw the kindness there. “I do,” she whispered.

Mr. Avery told her to take a seat and she did, pulling up the one chair in the room until it was closer to his bed. Ned stood behind her chair, his hands on the back of it.

“Ned, I’m not going to scold her,” Mr. Avery said. “You can leave.”

She was too embarrassed to look around, but heard Ned’s laugh as he backed out of the room. He didn’t go far, because she heard the rustle of his mattress in the next connecting room.

“You did a good thing for Pete,” Mr. Avery told her. “None of us knew what to do, but you did.”

“I got lucky,” she managed to say.

“It’s more than that,” he contradicted. “You’re looking out for Pete, same as we are, but you’re looking at him from a different angle. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said simply.

He motioned her to lean closer. She did.

“My other boy needs to find a wife,” he whispered. “He’s thirty-one. Got any good ideas for him?”

Kate felt her face grow hot. “Surely he can find a wife by himself,” she whispered back.

“He hasn’t so far,” Dan said. “Think about it and do what you can. I’m going to sleep now. Good night.”

Laughing inside, despite her embarrassment, Kate stood up and went to the door. Dan called her back. “I’m getting a window tomorrow. You mentioned that to him, didn’t you?”

“I did, Mr. Avery. When will he do it?”

“As soon as he gets back from dropping off Pete.” Mr. Avery smiled at her, and her heart turned over. “’Cept for finding a wife, he’s a prompt fellow. Good night, now.”

Chapter Eleven

Ned got Pete to town, gave him all sorts of admonition and advice that probably rolled right off his back, if the amused look Mrs. Bradley gave him was any indication.

“We’ll watch out for Peter,” she said as they stood on the sidewalk. “You’ve been a good brother, but he’s growing up and needs duties of his own.”

It always rolled around to duty, he thought, on the ride home, after purchasing a pane of glass at the lumberyard and anchoring it safely between two-by-fours. He’d had this conversation with himself before, especially during hard times. To his gratification, there wasn’t much sting to this duty. Pa wanted a window and he could install one. He’d have to ask Kate if he could borrow her room for Pa, because he doubted he had time to finish the window today, what with winter bringing darkness so much sooner.

He could put Kate in his room and he could bundle up and sleep in Pa’s bed for the one night it might take him to finish the little project and caulk the new window against the bitter winter headed their way soon. Ned knew the doctor had warned Pa not to exert himself at all, but the more he thought about that injunction, the more he wondered about it. Sure, Daniel Avery’s battered heart might last longer if he never did anything more strenuous than sitting up, but to what end?

He wanted to mull it all around with Katie Peck, and see what she thought about helping Pa walk down to the kitchen, or maybe even outside. One of the more pleasant byproducts of his impulsive hiring of her was the discovery that behind her solemn face was a sensible brain.

He glanced at the two-story Odd Fellows Hall as he crossed the tracks and rode south toward home, wondering if Katie knew a few dance steps. Mrs. Bradley had mentioned a dance there in mid-December and asked, “Who are you saving yourself for, Edward Avery?”

He was saving himself for no one and he thought Katie might help. She was a woman and she could probably dance. Would it hurt to ask for help?

As he passed through the gate onto Avery land, Ned’s thoughts took him in another direction, one that surprised him. For years, Pa had promised Ma a real house. Once she died, Pa had lost interest. Just thinking of a house instead of a log cabin made Ned stop at the top of the little rise and stare down at his home. The logs were stripped of bark now, the result of hungry deer and elk during many a bleak midwinter. He’d been meaning to paint the door, and even had the paint to do it, but hadn’t bothered.

It was time for a real house. He’d humor Pa by putting in a window so he could see a sampling of Avery land through it, but maybe in the spring he could draw up some plans. Kate would probably have good ideas.

With the buckboard driven into the open-sided wagon lean-to, and his horse rubbed, grained and watered, Ned went inside, sniffing appreciatively. Kate had a way with beans, beef and onions. He served himself a bowl of stew. Kate had found the ceramic bowls from somewhere and retired the tin cups.

He heard laughter as he walked down the hall, bowl in hand. He saw his copy of Roughing It in Kate’s lap, and wondered how it was that a quiet mill girl from Maine knew just how to handle his father. He sat on the edge of Pa’s bed and ate as she finished the chapter.

“One chapter left,” she said. “What will we do then?”

“I’ll find you another book,” he promised. “Got one somewhere.”

She held out her hand for his now empty bowl and he shook his head. “I can probably struggle all the way back to the kitchen with this.”

“I’m the chore girl,” she reminded him.

Suddenly, as if some cosmic hand had flicked his dense head with thumb and forefinger, he knew she was more than that; Katie Peck was a friend. He wondered if she felt his friendship. Never mind. He had all winter to figure it out.

When Ned returned to Pa’s bedroom, he outlined his ideas for the window.

Between the two of them, they helped Pa walk the short distance to Kate’s room. He was breathing heavy from the mere steps from one room to the other, and Ned felt his own heart sink.

Ned watched his father until his color returned and his breath became less labored. “I need Kate to help me with this window. Rest now.”

Pa nodded and closed his eyes. Ned stood looking down at his father, remembering earlier days and wishing for them like a child. Kate touched his shoulder, recalling him to the project at hand.

Kate moved things out of the way as he measured the window glass, the log wall, and his two by fours, which he took to the barn to finish. It took longer than he thought, because after a while he heard the sound of milk in a bucket. He looked over the partition to see Kate milking his cow, resting her head against the animal’s flank.

She looked so pretty, her dark hair pulled back in that jumbled, untidy way that he liked. He couldn’t help smiling when she began to hum. Ma used to do that. God knows he never hummed to a milk cow.

She finished before he did, and gratified him by coming to his impromptu workshop to perch on the grain bin and watch him groove the wood.

“I like your company,” he blurted out, then felt his face grow warm.

“I like yours, too,” she replied in her sensible way, and his embarrassment left. “You can do a little bit of anything, can’t you?”

“That’s part of running a place like this,” he said, as he blew sawdust from the frame he was building. He tossed her an extra cloth and she wiped down the wood, blowing off sawdust, too.

“There’s a dance at the Odd Fellows Hall in a couple of weeks,” he told her, after a few minutes of working up his courage. “I want to go, but I don’t know how to dance. Do you?”

“Ayuh,” she said. He grinned because she only said that now when she felt playful. “I can two-step and waltz and do something Mainers call a quadrille. I doubt you’ll need that.”

“Would you mind teaching me?”

“Not at all.” She cleared her throat. “Your father thinks you should find a wife, and it’ll never happen playing solitaire in the kitchen.”

“Not many ladies in Wyoming,” he said. Her pointed look wouldn’t allow excuses. “All right! Maybe I’ll find a wife at the dance. I’ll get married and next year you can go to the dance while we watch Pa, and find yourself a husband.” He laughed at her skeptical look. “Stranger things have happened, Katie.”

He picked up his work and she fetched the milk pail. They walked together to the house, neither in a hurry.

“Does my father talk a lot?” he asked.

“Mostly he listens as I read,” she said, and gave a satisfactory sound between a sigh and an exclamation. “We’ve come a considerable distance in the past few weeks.”

Ned helped her with the milk, even though she didn’t really need his help anymore. When he finished, he picked up the wood frame and she held up her hand to stop him.

“Ned, he wants to eat at the table and not in bed,” she said.

“The doctor said he shouldn’t exert himself,” he told her, wondering why he had to even mention the obvious.

“I know, but that’s no fun,” she replied.

“It’s not a matter of fun,” he said, maybe a little sharper than he meant to, because the subservient look came back into her eyes. He took her arm, but gently. “Katie, I want him to live longer.”

“Maybe it’s not living,” she said, her voice gentle. “He needs some say in what he wants.”

“I’m not convinced.” He released her arm. “Help me get this frame in the window?”

She nodded. He snuck another look at her, and didn’t see a woman convinced. Something told him the discussion wasn’t over, and that he might not win this one. The idea pained him less than he thought it would.

Pa insisted on watching, so they bundled him up and Ned carried him to his bedroom, over his protests that he was capable of walking. He glowered at them both, then resigned himself to sitting silent as Ned planed down the rough logs, then set in the frame for the window glass.

At his request, Kate brought in more kerosene lamps to counterbalance the full dark. The room was cold and she shivered until he went into his room, found an old sweater of his and draped it around her shoulders.

“I’ll fit in the glass now, and glaze and putty it tomorrow,” he said.

It took little time, which was good, since Pa had started to fade. He offered no objection to being carried back to Katie’s bedroom.

Ned went back to his father’s room, where Katie was wiping more sawdust off the new window ledge.

“Looks good,” she told him. “He’ll see the trees and that little rise with sagebrush.”

“Maine and Massachusetts are prettier, aren’t they?”

“Different, but maybe not prettier,” she said, and he admired her diplomacy.

“Tell me something, Katie. Would you marry a rancher around here?”

She gave it more thought than he believed the matter needed. But that was Katie. She thought things through.

“I guess not,” he said, which made her laugh, something she didn’t do too often, so it charmed him.

“I haven’t decided!” she said in humorous protest. “P’raps if I was raised here I might be tempted.”

“I mean, you were going to marry...uh...”

“Saul Coffin,” she supplied.

“And he came out here.” He stopped, noting her dismay. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have reminded you of Mr. Coffin.”

“That’s not it,” she said.

“What is it?” Good God, Ned thought. I am turning into a nosey person.

“I have to be honest. Some days I’m sorry he’s gone, and other days, I wonder if he is alive.”

“The sheriff in Cheyenne knows where I live, Katie. If he’s alive, we’ll hear.”

She shook out the sawdust onto the floor and started to sweep, then stopped, giving him the clear-eyed look of a realist. “I could live here in Wyoming.” She sighed. “Saul thought he could, too. You should have heard him talk about Wyoming.”

“Like it was the Garden of Eden?”

“Sort of,” she agreed. “It’s not, but I still like it.” She leaned the broom against the wall. “That’s it, Ned. You’ll meet a nice lady at the dance.”

He wondered just how much store to put into one holiday dance at the Odd Fellows Hall. “Better teach me to waltz, Katie. This could be a long ordeal.”

Chapter Twelve

Since Katie had forgotten all about purchasing material for curtains in the excitement of Pete’s job, the next day Ned had found a length of blue-and-white gingham, in a box of Ma’s old things in the barn. No one had sewn anything since Ma, so he had to help her look for the flatirons, once she had cut and hemmed and trimmed the curtains and declared they had to be ironed.

He had no trouble finding the time to help Katie search for the flatirons because she was starting to interest him. He wanted to ask her if she ever wasted a motion or even an hour, but he thought he already knew the answer.

“I vow everything is in this odd little room,” she said, as they both squeezed themselves into the storeroom off the stalls.

He heard her exclamation of delight when she found a copy of A Tale of Two Cities on a shelf with liniment bottles, a gallon or two of vinegar and unidentifiable bits and pieces of ranch life. “I wondered where that book went,” he said.

Katie’s search for flatirons stopped with the discovery of something new to read, now that she had finished Roughing It, and Pa was getting tired of her Ladies’ Home Journal stories. Hardly aware of Ned, she took the book into the kitchen and sat down at the table, where she carefully wiped away the dust. He sat down next to her with the flatirons and held them out. He clapped them together and made her laugh.

She set down the book with some reluctance, and nodded at the flatirons. In another minute, she had them warming on the stove. Back he went to the storeroom for the ironing board.

“When I iron these, we can string them on that dowel, and your Pa will have curtains,” she said. “Since I have this ironing board up, I can press a white shirt for the dance.”

“We have to go to that much trouble? I’ll be wearing a vest. Who’ll see my shirt?” he asked.

“Who will ever marry you if you don’t look presentable?” she asked. “And please tell me you have a collar and cravat somewhere.”

While she ironed, he found a pathetic collar and a cravat in even worse shape. She frowned at the collar, but she shook her head at the cravat. “I’ll make you one,” she told him.

“Out of what?”

“I have some fabric,” she said. He knew he heard something wistful in her voice, and thought perhaps he shouldn’t ask.

When she finished ironing, they each took a panel of fabric to Pa’s room and strung them on a dowel Ned had cut and sanded. Katie clapped her hands in approval and Pa smiled from his bed.

Katie had crocheted ties to hold back the fabric, giving the curtains a certain elegance he never thought to see in their jury-rigged, add-on-as-needed cabin. Ma, you would have liked this, he thought, then smiled at Katie who held her hands together in delight. You’d have liked Katie, too.

“After you find me a shirt, sit with your father,” she said.

He did as she asked, then perched on the edge of his father’s bed.

“You have a view,” he said. “Look there.”

He had seen cows all his life, but there was something nice about looking at them through a window. Here they were now, just nosing in what little snow there was, searching for nourishing grass that made this hard land cow country.

Pa patted the spot beside him on the bed. He pulled out the extra pillow behind his head, doubled over his own, and left a place for Ned beside him.

Ned tugged off his boots and did as his father asked, wondering when he had become too busy to do this. Never mind. He sprawled out beside his father, savoring the moment.

“You built a good ranch, Pa,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Tears came into Pa’s eyes.

Ned started to apologize, but changed his mind when Pa took his hand and kissed the back of it. He felt the years slip away, and some of the cares. All that he lacked now was to see Ma come into the room, put her hands on her hips and in her soft drawl, declare them useless layabouts, which was acres away from the truth.

He heard footsteps coming closer and looked up in anticipation, thinking of Ma, but it was just Katie. She had folded his ironed shirt so carefully. He watched her put the shirt on the top apple crate in his room, smoothing out what by now had to be imaginary wrinkles.

“We’ll have steak and potatoes in a few minutes,” she told them. “Ned, help your father to the kitchen.”

“I don’t think...”

“Mr. Avery, would you like to eat with us?” she asked, ignoring Ned.

“More’n anything.”

“Give yourself plenty of time,” she admonished, but kindly. He knew she was right. An old rancher with a new window and a view of the valley ought to have some say in where he ate supper.

It took Pa three pauses to get to the kitchen. To Ned, his look of triumph when he finally sat in the kitchen was close kin to his expression when he won a cow penning at the local rodeo a few years back. Maybe it was more than a few years. Time had crept up on them all. Ned couldn’t remember the last time Pa had sat at the table with him, and he wondered why it had taken the gentle insistence of a chore girl to give him enough courage to let Pa do what he wanted.

“Pa, I’ve been treating you like a China doll,” he said finally, pushing away his plate. He nodded to Katie, who took the plates to the sink. “I owe you a debt, Miss Peck,” he said.

She sat down again. The way Pa looked at her suggested that they had planned it this way. He knew better than to question whatever it was that had turned them into confederates. What is it about you, Katie Peck, Ned wanted to ask.

After the dishes, Katie told Pa to settle in. “Ned, we’re going to waltz,” she told him. “One two three, one two three. It’s simple.”

She came close and put her hand on his shoulder with no hesitation. “Put that hand on my waist, and I’ll take the other one,” she directed. “I’ll lead, until you figure it out. Mr. Avery, you may do the one two three.”

Pa did, waving his hand, as Katie Peck directed Ned around the kitchen. She told him not to look at his feet and he tried to do as she said. Her waist was small. His hands were large, and he felt like he was encroaching a bit on the pleasant swell that began her bosom. She made no objection, which relieved him, because she felt so good.

They banged knees a couple of times, and he stepped on her feet, but at least he had taken off his boots and wore only his stockings.

When Katie said, “You’re supposed to carry on pleasant conversation,” he stopped dancing.

“Like what?” he asked.

“The weather, the price of two-year heifers,” Pa teased.

Katie sighed, but there was no overlooking the fun in her eyes, and the soft way she looked at Dan Avery. “Mr. Avery! Instead of that, Ned, ask your partner what book she’s read lately, or maybe inquire about her family.”

“I’m supposed to do that and dance at the same time?” Ned protested.

She nodded, and put her hand on his shoulder again. “That’s why we’re going to practice the waltz every day until the dance. When is it, by the way?” she asked, standing there poised and ready to push off.

“A week from Friday.” He whispered in her ear. “Pa’s getting tired.”

“I know,” she whispered back. “Mr. Avery, Ned’s going to lead now. He can think one two three.”

He towed her around the floor to his silent one two three. They narrowly avoided the cooking range, but he kept one hand firmly on her waist, and the other clasped in hers. Around again, without stepping on her, and once more.

“I’m ending this dance,” he said. “How do I stop?”

“When the music stops, you give a little bow, and thank her,” Katie said. She turned to his father. “What do you think, Mr. Avery?”

“I think he might find a wife yet,” Pa said. “Do the two-step now.”

“It had better be simpler,” Ned told her.

“It is. And it’s fast. Hand on my waist again—oh, you never took it off—and take my hand again. It’s just one and two and.”

Off they went. It was simpler, Katie nimble and smiling the whole time. Third time around the room, he picked her up and she laughed.

“I hope...you’re not...expecting...conversation,” he managed to gasp.

“Only...if the building...catches on fire,” she said, which made him give a shout of laughter and grab her up.

He held her that way, so they were on equal eye level, breathing hard. She put both hands on his shoulders, not to ward him off, but to remind him. He let her down, and she stepped away, her face red from exertion, but her eyes bright.

They both looked at Pa, who nodded. “That’ll for sure find him a wife, unless he’s dancing with another man’s missus.” He laughed. “Then we’ll have a shoot-out and a hanging!”

“We’ll practice every night,” Katie assured Ned. She started sticking hairpins back in place, but gave it up for a bad business and shook the rest of her hair down.

Ned hadn’t realized how long it was, almost to her waist, and the prettiest shade of just ordinary brown, with little bits of red glimmering in the light of the lamp.

He looked at Pa, whose eyes were closing. “No objections from you, Pa,” he said, as he carried his father back to his room. Katie trailed along behind, watchful, and Ned began to realize the strength of her attachment to his father.

“I’ll help him from here,” he told her. She went into her room and closed the door. He listened for her to lock it, then realized with a start that she had never locked her door, not even the first night when he handed her the key.

We’re doing something right, he thought.

Chapter Thirteen

They danced every night, and soon Katie had no fears for her toes. Ned’s conversation still suffered, but she knew him as a reticent man. A dancing partner would have to appreciate taciturnity, Katie decided. She knew she didn’t mind his silences. He had a lot on his mind.

“Did you mill girls have dances?” he asked one night.

“Ned, you’re wonderful!” she exclaimed. “You asked me that and didn’t look down at your feet.”

“Did Saul Coffin dance with you?”

“Now and then, but he was mostly all business around the looms.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t bring him up,” he said after another turn.

“Doesn’t matter,” she replied. “We may never know what happened.”

She didn’t mind the silence that followed, because she had a moment to reflect on how seldom she thought about Saul Coffin, the man who had partly paid her way to Wyoming Territory. She knew the truth, though: hard life had taught her not to expect anything. When Saul Coffin had been notable by his absence in Cheyenne, she quietly set about forgetting him.

She looked up at Ned, struck by the knowledge that she would miss him, when he didn’t need her any longer. Ned made another turn, and she glanced at Mr. Avery, sitting at the table and looking healthier. She decided that lying alone all day in a back bedroom wasn’t designed to cure any ailment, even if a bad heart is a fragile thing.

It struck her that a good heart was a fragile thing, too, and she hoped that Ned Avery found someone to share his life with. Maybe a wife, the right one, would ease his way in this hard land.

The day of the dance, she took the piece of forest-green brocade from her traveling case to make Ned a cravat. The matter gave her less of a pang than she thought, considering that the fabric was the only item remaining from her real father, a sailor lost at sea during the China run. Besides a pittance so small that Mama was forced to remarry, the skipper had given her a length of green brocade. She had no use for it, except to parcel it among her four children as their only legacy from their father.

After morning chores, Katie picked apart his old cravat, ironed the pieces and angled them here and there on the brocade to be her pattern. She hesitated only a moment before cutting.

“That’s mighty elegant,” Ned said, as he came into the kitchen, prepared for a day in the saddle. “You didn’t find that in Wyoming.”

Without thinking, she told where it came from and noted the dismay on his face. “You needed a new cravat, and I have the material,” she pointed out.

“It’s a treasure,” he protested. She had already cut into the fabric, so a man as practical as Ned knew the argument was over.

She continued cutting. The long strip remaining to her could easily be hemmed and turned into a bookmark for her Bible. That would do. As it was, she barely remembered her father.

That day, Kate skimped on reading from A Tale of Two Cities, which raised a protest from Mr. Avery. “Bad as he is, we cannot leave St. Evrémonde with a knife through his heart,” he reminded her.

“I fear we must,” she said. “If I am to finish the cravat, we’ll have to leave the marquis weltering in his gore.”

“You sound remarkably like Dickens,” he told her, but gave her no more argument.

She sat with Mr. Avery and sewed, determined to have the pretty thing finished by the time Ned carried in the milk bucket late in the afternoon. He had insisted on doing her chores so she could finish the cravat, even though she knew it was seven miles to Medicine Bow and the dance started at nine o’clock. She handed the cravat to him after the last stitch.

“No one will have a cravat this fine,” he said, and held it up to his neck. “I have an ironed shirt, too.”

Her heart nearly stopped when he took her hand and kissed it. Impulsively she put her free hand on his head for no reason, except that she wanted to touch the man who had been so kind to her. He had helped her when he had no idea if she would steal the spoons in his house and vanish the next day, and he had built her a room. Her heart was full.

Kate wiped her eyes. “Go find someone nice,” she whispered. “I’d better read to your father while you take a bath in the kitchen.”

“You won’t scrub my back?” he teased.

“Not for thirty dollars a month,” she said, and he laughed.

* * *

A fellow could hope, Ned told himself, after he filled the galvanized tub in the kitchen and eased himself in for a quick soak, which turned into a longer one, because he had not enjoyed such luxury since his visit to Cheyenne. Ordinarily, a fast wash at the bowl and pitcher in his room sufficed. He sat so long in the cooling tub that he could have used one more bucket of hot water from the cooking stove’s reservoir. He doubted Kate would pour him one, but he could ask.

She surprised him by coming to the doorway of the kitchen, her head averted. “Another bucket?” she asked, and he heard the timidity in her voice.

“Yes, please. I’ll cover up. Just pour it behind my back,” he said, and hunched over his middle, his washcloth in place.

She did as he said. His hair was already damp so he lathered in soft soap. “If you could dip out half a bucket of hot water, and add an equal amount of cold from the kitchen pump, I can rinse this.”

“I’ll help,” she said, sounding businesslike. “A body can’t rinse his own head.”

Kate rinsed his hair without a complaint, even though it took two buckets to meet her apparently exacting standards.

“There. If you can’t manage the rest of this bath, you’re too young to go to a dance,” she scolded.

He sat a little longer in the water, wishing he could stay at home and listen to more of Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, too, as read by his chore girl to his dying father who had taken on a new lease on life. Ned had enjoyed the book years earlier, but there was something almost royally sinful about having enough time to listen to another read it. Ned almost resented losing an evening at a dance, when he could be home, lying beside his father, listening to Katie read.

Or maybe he just didn’t want to dress up and ride through the dark to a dance where there might not be anyone young and even remotely eligible, Wyoming being what it was. I’m getting set in my ways, he thought. Kate is kind to rescue me.

Katie had managed to repair his one pathetic collar, stiffening it, and sewing it together to fit on his shirt. He called to her to button his new cravat in the back. He sat down on the corner of his bed so she could reach him. When she finished, she told him to stand up and turn around so she could adjust the handsome bit of brocade to suit herself. She stood back for a better look, and finally nodded her approval.

“You’ll do,” she told him as he put on his vest. She helped him into his black coat, smoothing the back of it near his shoulders. He liked her touch, but what man wouldn’t?

“You’ll do? That doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement,” he teased.

“It is in Maine,” she assured him. “I mean what I say.”

Ned stood in the doorway of his father’s room, hesitant to leave. He understood his reluctance as Katie looked back at him. He saw the pride in her eyes that looked a little like ownership, which bothered him not at all. He owed this whole evening to her.

As he mounted his horse and started for town, he had another idea, one that bore some thought: he really didn’t want to go dancing without Katie.

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