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.”
“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,