Western Christmas Proposals. Carla Kelly

Chastened, subdued and unhappy, Ned Avery woke up to “Cheyenne! Cheyenne! Fifteen minutes” from the porter walking through the rail car and clanking his three chimes.

I’m not going home without a chore girl, Ned thought for the umpteenth time.

Why had he left Pete alone with Pa for his recent trip to Cheyenne? Ned had gone over with Pete his plain and simple orders of taking care of Pa for ten days while Ned and his hands pushed the herd through to Cheyenne and onto the railcars for Chicago. Over and over and each time Pete nodded in his kindly way. Bread and tinned meat and fruit were each carefully numbered and arranged on the kitchen table, and still Pete nodded.

I was a fool to think he’d follow through, Ned berated himself silently, as the Union Pacific slowed and steamed to a stop at the depot on Fifteenth Street.

Even now, just a day after his return to the ranch from Cheyenne, he could still see the kitchen table with eight days’ worth of food gone, but two still as Ned had left them. Sitting in the rail car now, the crisis over, his heart started beating faster at the memory of food uneaten. He had run down the hall through the connecting rooms, calling for Pa, who was still alive for some reason.

Pa’s mild indictment, as he deflected any blame from Peter and Ned, had hurt worse than the mess Pa lay in. “Son, I tried to get up and help myself,” Pa had told him, his voice softer than a whisper.

The porter opened the door of the car, which pulled Ned out of his personal condemnation. Silent, he took his carpetbag from under the seat and waited behind an army officer for his turn to get off the train.

Who’s going to run this ranch if I can’t trust Pete when I have to be away? ran through Ned’s mind again. In the end, there was only one solution: they needed a chore girl. Pa railed against being so dependent, but they still needed a chore girl. So he left to go straight back to Cheyenne.

“I don’t know where to look,” he had whined to Mrs. Higgins, the wife of his nearest neighbor who had agreed to watch Pa and Pete while he made a rapid return to Cheyenne.

“The Lord will provide,” Mrs. Higgins had assured him.

He found this platitude not even slightly comforting. After sweet little Pete, as bright a brother as anyone could want, was kicked in the head by an irritated cow, and never grew up much in his mind, Ned hadn’t seen any reason to bother Deity.

He knew better than to return a sharp comment to Mrs. Higgins, since she was kind enough to watch Pa and Pete, so he strove for diplomacy. “Mrs. Higgins, if the Lord is busy and not inclined to help, can you think of how He might provide a chore girl?” he asked. “I need a hint.”

She gave him a pitying look, as if wondering why a grown man should ask such a question, but at least she didn’t turn away. She was going to get her licks in, though.

“Ned Avery, when did you last go to church?”

He thought a moment, hoping for an easy answer, but nothing came to mind beyond Ma’s funeral now well over ten years ago when he was twenty.

“My mother’s funeral,” he said quietly, which at least seemed to deflect the scold he thought he saw in Mrs. Higgins’s eyes.

“She was a good woman,” Mrs. Higgins said. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

This was no time for a theological argument about the Lord’s weird choice of people who should quit the earth, so Ned bit back his own comment. “Where can I find a chore girl?” he repeated.

“Where does the Lord provide the most?” Mrs. Higgins asked, then thankfully answered her own question, because Ned was still coming up short. “Try a church in Cheyenne.”

“Just wander up and ask the preacher if he knows of a chore girl?” Ned asked, his patience lurking just this side of exasperation.

“No! Sometimes churches take in unfortunate women who have fallen on hard times.”

“So I’ll need to count the silverware every night and hope no one tries to take advantage of my chastity?” he teased.

“Try it, Ned,” Mrs. Higgins had said, and she did not sound amused. “You are trying my Christian patience.”

* * *

He tried it, asking the depot master where there might be a church in Cheyenne. Ned just barely remembered Cheyenne before the railroad came through, with Irishmen jabbering and swearing, and Mama trying to cover his ears and Pete’s at the same time. Cheyenne’s boomtown growth had brought gamblers and fancy ladies and Chinese laundries and cafes, but no church then. The matter hadn’t troubled him since, but now, if Mrs. Higgins was right, he needed to find a church.

The depot master knew him. Hell, everyone knew the Averys of Medicine Bow. Dan Avery had been a Mississippi rebel among the earliest of former Confederates who followed the construction of the Union Pacific and stayed. From 1868 up to 1890, they had endured, and now times were better.

“Ned, you might try Third Street. There’s a First Methodist Church on the corner.” He chuckled. “And you might try the Second Methodist Church on the opposite corner! There was a theological argument, I believe, and some chairs were thrown around.”

Uncertain, Ned lingered at the depot. For some reason, he turned his attention to that corner of the lobby where only two nights ago, he had noticed a woman sitting on a trunk, chin in hand. He thought it odd that she wasn’t sitting on the bench, which made him suspect she trusted people as little as he did.

She was long gone now, but he remembered her pale skin and her brown eyes, probably nothing special in themselves, except that her eyes were large

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