Western Christmas Proposals: Christmas Dance with the Rancher / Christmas in Salvation Falls / The Sheriff's Christmas Proposal

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.