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

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      It felt like one accusation too many. “Do you have some bit of wisdom to change things? You think you’re telling me something I don’t know?” He didn’t mean to shout. He regretted the look in her eyes. “Sorry. That was unkind.”

      “He still needs something to do,” she repeated softly, and left him there.

      Ned Avery watched the sway of her skirt, wishing—not for the first time—that someone else was in charge of his life.

      He stayed in the barn until the cold started to seep through his coat, watching his horse eat. Pete, still unhappy with his day spent riding fence, pointedly turned away from him, much as a cat with a gripe would.

      I am satisfying nobody, Ned thought. “Pete, what would you really like to do?” he asked.

      “Work someplace warm,” Pete said with no hesitation, as though he had been considering the question for years. Perhaps he had been.

      “I’ll see what I can do,” Ned told his brother. He patted Pete’s shoulder. “Come inside. Katie has made cinnamon rolls.”

      “Will I like them?” Pete asked, as they walked toward the ranch house.

      “Yeah, you will. If you don’t, I’ll eat yours, too.” He stopped. “Ride with me tomorrow to check the fence in the other direction, and then I really will see what I can do.”

      Dinner was another unimaginable feast, nothing more than beef stew, but much more because of spices or whatever sort of alchemy seemed to be coming from a kitchen he knew too well.

      “Tucked beside the cinnamon, I found some thyme. And do you know, there is bush after bush of sagebrush right outside your door,” Katie said.

      He could tell she was teasing him, and it felt good, reminding him how long it had been since he had laughed about something, anything.

      There was no humor in the last bedroom, where his father lay, staring at the ceiling. Ned helped him sit up to eat, but Pa said nothing about the wonderful stew. Pa seemed determined not to have anything good to say about Katie.

      Stubborn old man, Ned thought. He imagined himself condemned to lie in bed until death finally nosed around and found him. He had to admit Kate was right—this was not living.

      After helping his father through slow and painful bedtime rituals, Ned said good-night and wandered back through the house. In the next room, Pete was already asleep. He kept going, passing through the small sitting room now, and by the room he had built for Kate, who just wanted to feel safe.

      She was drying the last of the dishes. He eyed the remaining cinnamon roll, which she pushed toward him, along with a just-dry fork. “I can make more tomorrow.”

      She sat down, and he found himself enjoying the novelty of someone sitting with him. Before Pa got so weak, they sat at this table together and he missed that.

      “I have to find something for Peter to do,” he said, halfway through the roll.

      “You’ll think of something,” she said.

      “I wish there was someone else around here who could think,” he said, ashamed to whine.

      “The whole burden is yours, isn’t it?” she said, her voice soft. “That’s hard.”

      She surprised him then. “Tomorrow, I’m going to start reading to your father.” She chuckled. “He’ll just pretend to sleep and ignore me.”

      “Sorry about that,” Ned murmured, embarrassed at such stubbornness.

      “No need. I’ll sit by the arch into his room, and read just loud enough to hear, but not easily. Maybe he’ll invite me into his room to read.”

      “Could be a while,” Ned said. “He’s damned stubborn.”

      “So am I.”

Chapter Eight

      Katie began her campaign after a breakfast of baked oatmeal, helped out with a tin of peaches. If she fed the fire in the range carefully, the roast Ned had sliced off from the steer hanging in the smokehouse would be done in late afternoon, when he and Pete rode in again.

      She had taken Mr. Avery’s breakfast to him instead of Ned, tightening her lips when the old man pretended to sleep. She said a cheerful “Good morning,” before she retreated to the kitchen.

      An hour later, she went to Ned and Pete’s room and picked up Ned’s copy of Roughing It he had been reading on the train. He had left it on the bed, as she had asked him to, when she explained her campaign.

      “Good luck,” he had said, and she heard all his doubt.

      She positioned the chair right by the archway that led into Mr. Avery’s room. She made herself comfortable and started to read aloud.

      “‘Chapter One. My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory—an office of such majesty...’”

      The chapters were short, which obviously suited Mark Twain, and suited Katie, too. She found herself laughing out loud after a very few pages, even when her captive audience began to snore, or pretend to. Stubborn man, she thought, but with sympathy. He was in a bad situation and they both knew it. She kept reading, and found her enjoyment growing at Twain’s depiction of the West in which she now lived.

      The snoring stopped by Chapter Five and Twain’s description of a coyote as “‘...always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless.’” Katie took that as a good sign and kept reading.

      She hardly knew how long she read, but her stomach growled around noon. She turned down a tiny corner of the page and said, “‘The city lies in the edge of a level plain.’ Remember that, Mr. Avery, for it is where I shall begin again. I’m hungry. Are you?”

      Silence. At least he wasn’t pretending to snore. She fixed herself a beef sandwich, ate it and made one for Mr. Avery. She set it on the little table close to his bed, and watched him for a moment as he pretended to sleep.

      The book lay on her chair. She picked it up and turned a few pages. “Let’s see...did we finish? I’m certain we did. Must be here on Chapter Six,” Kate said. She ran her finger down the page. “Chapter Six it is. ‘Our new conductor (just shipped) had been without sleep for twenty hours...’”

      “No! Start with, ‘The city lies in the edge of a level plain,’” Mr. Avery said from his bedroom. “And for the Lord’s sake, come a little closer.”

      Kate smiled so huge that she felt her dry lips crack. She tugged the chair into Mr. Avery’s bedroom, pulling it close enough to the stove for warmth, since the day had turned cold.

      “Very well,” she said. “‘...the edge of a level plain.’ Here we are.”

      She read until the shadows of late fall stretched across the page she was reading and at the same time the aromatic roast in the kitchen made itself known. She stood up and put the book in the chair.

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