She was not safe. She understood that clearly. She was in a stranger's house in the middle of Wyoming with a blizzard outside, no money, and no plan beyond waiting for the coach. She did not know Eli Callaway.
She did not know Ruth Callaway. She did not know if the hard thing in Ruth's eyes was honest caution or something less forgiving. But Jesse had asked if she could make cornbread, Cole had looked back at her in the doorway, and Eli Callaway had stood in the snow holding his hat and said, "I figure we're even on hard history," with the voice of a man who actually meant it. Clara unfolded her hands.
She reached into her bag and pulled out the Missouri Dispatch advertisement, the one she'd clipped and folded and carried across half the country. She looked at it for a moment. Thomas Harding's name in small print. Serious inquiries only.
She folded it in half. Then in half again. Then she crossed the room, lifted the lid on the small iron stove, and pushed the paper inside. The flame caught it immediately.
She watched it burn. Then she went to the washstand, cleaned her hands and face, and went back to the kitchen to find out if there was flour enough for biscuits in the morning. Clara was up before the sun. She didn't sleep well in strange beds.
She hadn't since her husband died and left her alone in the house they'd shared in Kansas City, listening to the sounds of a building that no longer felt like hers. She lay in the dark for an hour with the wind pressing against the frosted window and the unfamiliar sounds of the ranch settling around her. Then she got up. She got dressed and went to find the kitchen.
Ruth was already there. The older woman was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and the particular stillness of someone who had been awake for a while and wasn't surprised to have company. She looked at Clara when she came in but didn't say anything. She just watched.
Clara found the flour without asking. She found the lard, the salt, and the baking powder. She moved quietly around the kitchen, learning where things were by opening cabinets and looking. Ruth watched all of it without offering help or direction.
After about five minutes, Ruth said, "You hold the bowl different than most women." Clara looked down at her hands. "My mother was left-handed. She taught me."
Ruth was quiet again. Then she said, "My husband was left-handed. Drove me half to madness for 20 years." She said it without any softness, but there was something underneath it.
"He's been gone 11 years." "I'm sorry," Clara said. "Don't be. He had a good life, and he knew it."
Ruth wrapped both hands around her coffee cup. "Are you going to ask me about Eli's wife?" Clara kept working the dough. "No."
"Most women would." "I'm not here about Eli," Clara said plainly. "I'm here about the biscuits." Something shifted in Ruth's face.