“Stand ’em against that log. Fire’ll dry ’em.”
Noah watched her arrange the skillet and plates with great care before settling on the other bedroll and removing her shoes. She unfolded her blanket and lay down, pulling up the wool covering.
Noah settled his hips into a dip on the hard ground and closed his eyes. Tomorrow he would have to see Estelle and deal with her.
“Did you ever see anything equal to all those stars in the sky?” Katherine asked. “It makes me feel so small lying here. Just think, somewhere in a foreign land, maybe in Spain or Egypt, people like us are looking up and seeing the same heavens at the same time. And they’re wondering about us.”
“Could be it’s daytime there,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“Well, somewhere far away it’s night,” she said, unflustered by his lack of imagination. “Do you know what the constellations are called?”
“Some of ’em.”
“What’s that one?”
“North Star, part of Big Bear, and over there’s Little Bear.”
“Imagine,” she said on a sigh. “Explorers have been finding their way across oceans guided by the same stars for all of time. All the people who ever lived, people in the Bible even, have seen the same stars.”
“Some have probably burned out.”
“Maybe.”
Didn’t she ever wear down? What had he gotten himself into?
“Thank you for coming to tell me about Levi today,” she said, her soft voice carrying across the flickering fire. “And thank you for knowing I’d need your help. I wouldn’t have wanted my baby to grow up like I did. I want better for him. Levi was going to move us somewhere nice, somewhere so that our baby could go to school and grow up with friends and neighbors around.”
Noah suspected that Katherine would never have seen Levi again, even if he hadn’t been killed.
“If you hadn’t come, I’d have been stuck in that place,” she said. “So…well, thanks.”
“Get some sleep. We move on early.”
A few minutes later her voice once again carried across the fire. “Are there any wild animals out here?”
“Maybe.”
“Are we safe?”
“The fire and our scent will hold ’em off.”
“Oh.”
Finally silence.
He spent a restless night, thinking of his brother’s body in the wagon bed, the woman across the fire and what he was going to do with her and a baby. He’d slept hard for a couple of hours, then woke with a start to check his pocket watch.
After rolling his blankets, he made a trip to the stream, watered the horses and harnessed the team. He rekindled the fire, stirred dough and baked a pan of biscuits.
Katherine woke to the smell and sat, immediately pressing a hand to the small of her back.
He regretted making her spend a night on the ground and two days on a wagon seat, but he would have her safely to his house later today.
She was strangely quiet that morning as she got herself ready. When she sat near the fire, he handed her a plate of biscuits and a cup of coffee. “You all right?”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
Without another word, she ate and drained her cup. She then took the skillet, plates and cups to the water and returned with them clean.
“Seat’s hard,” he said finally. “I can spread blankets in the back.”
She seemed to consider, and he imagined she thought of riding beside Levi’s coffin before she declined.
Instead he used the blankets to pad the seat before he helped her up.
As the morning wore on, her silence burned off like the dew, and by the time the sun was high and warm, she was chattering beside him as though she’d never stopped. She commented on the shapes of the clouds, the spring green of the leaves and plants, the snow on the peaks in the distance and the degree of warmth from the sun.
Noah was plum tuckered from the effort of keeping up with her constant stream of dialogue. But she didn’t seem to care that he rarely replied, and most of her questions were rhetorical, and so it was with supreme relief as they reached Rock Ridge that he decided she wouldn’t be difficult to have living under his roof.
His only experience with women in his adult life had been with his stepmother and the wives of nearby ranchers, none of whom had ever inspired him to take one of his own. No woman would ever want him, anyway.
“Are those your cows?” Katherine asked as they passed a herd grazing along a grassy slope.
He nodded.
“I can hardly wait to see my new home.” Excitement laced her voice and Noah tried to imagine the Rockin’ C through a stranger’s eyes. To him it had always been home.
From the top of a grassy ridge, the entire valley where the ranch buildings sprawled came into view. Trees dotted the landscape, a pond glistened in the sunlight and a long, shallow riverbed snaked along low ground.
Nestled between windbreaks of cottonwood and aspen, the house, meal kitchen and other outbuildings were the only flecks of white on the landscape.
“Oh,” she breathed in awe, and was silent for several moments.
He couldn’t help wondering what she was thinking, but as usual he didn’t have to wait long for her thoughts to tumble out. “It’s beautiful. The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The best I could have imagined. The house is so big. How many people live in it?”
“Two now.”
“What about your hands?”
“Bunkhouse.”
“Don’t you have other helpers?”
“Marjorie Benson, wife of one o’ the hands, comes twice a week to clean and do wash. They have a cabin a mile yonder.”
“Who cooks for the hands?”
“Fergie. Bunks with the others.”
“So you’ve been living in that big place all by yourself?”
He nodded.
“What about your stepmother? Levi’s mother, where does she live?”
“Fancy house in town.”
“Fancier than this place?”
Noah led the team closer to the house, and the closer they got, the bigger Katherine’s eyes grew.
“Inside needs some fixin’ up,” he told her. “I reckon you could do that.”
Noah stopped the team between the house and the barn. Two men came forward to unhitch the horses. A couple others stood outside the barn, watching with obvious curiosity.
Noah climbed down, then assisted Katherine. He glanced at the men, straightened and said brusquely, “Levi took a wife. This is Katherine.”
The men immediately doffed their hats and nodded politely. “Ma’am.”
Uncomfortable with being a spectacle, she merely nodded a greeting.
“Grab a couple sawhorses and bring the coffin in,” Noah ordered the men. “To the dining room. Bring somethin’ to use to pry open the lid.”
One man ducked into the barn. The one closest to the wagon held his hat against his chest. “How do, ma’am? I’m Tipper