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.”
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