She stood.
“What?”
Silence outside.
Then:
“What are you doing in my room?”
Hattie took a breath.
She opened the door.
Clem stood there wearing trousers, boots, and an unbuttoned wool shirt.
His hair was uncombed.
His expression was not.
Those eyes were awake.
Too awake.
Hattie held his stare.
“I was looking for something.”
Clem’s gaze moved past her.
“What?”
“My good sense.”
His expression hardened.
“You lose it in my quarters?”
“Apparently not.”
She stepped past him.
Clem caught her arm.
Not violently.
Enough.
Hattie looked down at his hand.
Then back at him.
“Take that off me.”
Clem hesitated.
Hattie lowered her voice.
“Now.”
He released her.
She walked toward the cookhouse.
Clem remained outside his cabin watching.
Hattie did not turn around.
Not until she reached the corner of the barn.
Then she looked back.
Clem had gone inside.
She immediately changed direction.
Jeb Callahan needed to see the ledger before Clem realized it was missing.
Three weeks earlier, Jeb had not believed Henrietta Coulter would last a day.
He would later admit that.
Not proudly.
But honestly.
The first time he saw Hattie, she was standing beside a stagecoach in Oak Haven arguing with the driver about a flour trunk.
She was thirty-nine.
Widowed.
Nearly two hundred eighty pounds.
Broad through the shoulders.
Full through the hips.
Strong arms.
Dark brown hair pinned beneath a traveling bonnet.
There was nothing delicate about her.
Nothing apologetic either.
Jeb stood across the street holding the advertisement letter.
H. Coulter. Experienced cook and household manager. Familiar with large crews, bookkeeping, food preservation, and frontier conditions.
He had assumed H. Coulter was a man.
That embarrassment alone made him hesitate.
Then Hattie looked directly at him.
“You Callahan?”
Jeb removed his hat.
“Yes.”
“You look disappointed.”
“I’m surprised.”
“That is a more polite word.”
Jeb almost smiled.
He stopped himself.
“My advertisement said thirty ranch hands.”
“I can read.”
“Winter preparations.”
“Yes.”
“Long days.”
“Yes.”
“Hard kitchen.”
“So I was told.”
Jeb glanced toward her trunk.
Then back.
Hattie folded her arms.
“Say whatever you’re trying not to say.”
Jeb cleared his throat.
“I don’t know whether this ranch is what you expect.”
She looked toward the open plains beyond Oak Haven.
“What do you think I expect?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then we’re both guessing.”
That was the first moment Jeb realized he might have made a mistake underestimating her.
The second came fifteen minutes later.
A sack of flour split while a store clerk attempted to load it onto Jeb’s wagon.
The clerk cursed.
Jeb bent to lift it.
Hattie got there first.
She grabbed the intact end of the seventy-pound sack.
“Other side.”
Jeb stared.
“You sure?”
“Unless you plan to leave it in the street.”
Together they loaded it.
Hattie brushed flour from her skirt.
Jeb said:
“You’ve done that before.”
“Have you?”
He laughed.
That was how she reached Iron Ridge.
The situation there was worse than he had described.
Thirty ranch hands.
Three days without a cook.