“I made a cake,” Ada said, pulling her crowning achievement out from its hidden place in the sideboard.  “And it’s not even a bad one.”

“We tasted it already,” Jeremy said.

They sat around the table in the candlelight.

“Grandfather came and talked to us,” Brewster said.  “He told us he would have come to the party, but there were some very important things he had to do.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“I wish I’d gotten to see the desert.  He said he’d write and tell us all about it.”

“He did?”

“And he’s going to send us more books,” Ada said.

“More books?  We might have a hundred too many already.”

“He said we’re missing some that are necessary.”

“Wonderful.”

“One of them’s going to be a book on cows,” Jeremy said.

“I didn’t even know there was a book on cows.”

“Some day he’ll be able to take the train over the mountains to come and see us in Oregon Territory,” Brewster said.

“And likely you and Ada will both have families of your own by then.”

“I won’t,” Brewster said.

“I will,” Ada said, and Miller choked on his roast.

“We’ve eaten so much,” Jeremy said.

“And it was so good, all of it,” Charlotte said.

“But could we have cake?”

44

44

All was quiet.  Charlotte lit a candle and closed the door.  Her glance took in the small room.

“Do officers always have servants?”

“They’re supposed to,” Chace said.

“What does a servant do?”

“Cook, wash, clean, chop firewood, take care of the horses.”

“What does the officer do?”

“Sometimes you wonder.”

“Did Ellis have a servant?”

“For a while he did.”

“What was his name?”

“Isaac.”

Charlotte studied him for a moment.  “The things I don’t know.”

“Mostly what’s not worth knowing anyway.”  He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots.

“There are things you don’t know.  Or haven’t seen yet, at any rate.  This’ll be one of them.”  She picked up her voluminous nightgown and lowered the soft material over her head, allowing it to billow to the floor.  Then she spent several minutes removing one layer after another from underneath it.  He watched, and she knew he was thinking about how there weren’t nearly enough hooks for everything she’d just left on the floor.

“Nightclothes,” she said.

“Then there’s something you haven’t seen either.”  He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged it off, then undid the buckskin pants.

“Long johns?  You?  What happened to the icy streams?”

“They’re only useful if you’re already sleeping in the snow and eating tree bark.”

Charlotte let her gaze rest on him.  “That’s why you’re the way you are.”

“What way is that?”

“Hard sometimes, but all to the good.”

“To you, not to everyone.”

“To me then.  Who gets in first?  My feet are cold.”