“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.
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
