Chapter Twenty-Four
The Kitchen Garden
The afternoon had gone clear and cold.
Zoe took Sadie out to the south kitchen garden at two to pick the last of the squash off the spent vines before the hard frost the Bridgers had been promising since the dawn.
Sadie carried the small basket. Zoe carried the spade.
Patience came down off the porch and took her station at the corner of the bed in the low gold afternoon sun, her grey ears up.
They had picked the third squash off the vine when the dog came up off her haunches.
A rider was at the corner of the kitchen garden where the creek path came up.
He stopped the tall, narrow bay with the white forefoot at the corner of the cottonwoods and held his hat across the saddle horn. His pale grey eyes were set close at the bridge of his long nose. The cut of the coat was a year out of style.
He lifted the hat an inch at the corner of the garden.
“Miss Preston.”
Zoe set the spade down in the squash bed and put her free hand briefly on Sadie’s shoulder.
“Mr. Dawson.”
“I had heard there was trouble at the Collins fence in the night.” He held his pale grey eyes level on her.
“Two riders, by the talk at Bozeman this morning. A rifle ball in the fence. I have come to ask after the household, Miss Preston. It is a hard thing, a thing like that, with a child in the house.”
Patience stood at the front of Zoe’s skirt with her grey shoulders low and her ears flat, and the sound that came up out of her was a sound Zoe had no memory of hearing from the dog in the whole of five weeks — low and steady and pitched at the back of the throat.
“The household is well, Mr. Dawson,” Zoe answered, dry. “I will tell Mr. Collins you came to ask.”
“Do.” Jameson’s pale eyes went from Zoe to Sadie and back to Zoe.
“A child wants a steady house about her at a time like this. Yours has had little steadiness until now, Miss Preston. The valley has marked the change. I have marked it myself.” He set the hat back at his head.
“It would be a hard thing to see a house come right at last and then have the rightness of it troubled. A man would do a great deal, Miss Preston, to keep a house from being troubled. He has only to be asked the right way.”
The cold in Zoe’s chest had little to do with the October air.
“I have no idea what you mean, Mr. Dawson.”
“I mean little by it, Miss Preston. I mean only that I am a near neighbor, and a near neighbor is a useful thing at a hard hour.” The pale grey eyes held hers a count.
“Tell Mr. Collins I came to ask after the child. Tell him I said the southeast quarter has small profit in it for a man at his time of life, with a wife to come and a household to keep. Tell him a near neighbor said so. He will take my meaning.”
He touched the brim of the hat at her.
He turned the bay at the corner of the cottonwoods and went back down the creek path at an unhurried walk, the white off-forefoot bright in the cold sun until the bend took him.
“Auntie,” Sadie said at last, the small voice gone careful. “I didn’t like the man at the corner.”
“Small wonder, sweet girl.” Zoe set her hand at the small yellow head and kept her own eyes at the bend where the bay had gone. “Patience didn’t like him either. Patience is a fair judge. We will speak to your uncle. Take up the basket. We’ll go into the kitchen and bolt the door.”