The Measure of Katie Calloway,: A Novel (9 page)

“Where’s Ned?” Robert asked.

Katie wrapped a rag around the handle of the boiling liquid. “I left him asleep in the cabin.”

“I’m paying him a nickel a day to help you, not to sleep.”

She stopped in her tracks, registering his words, and her face looked as though he had slapped her. Too late, he realized that his morning voice had come out much gruffer than he had intended.

“He’s so little.” She lowered her eyes. “I didn’t realize you intended for him to get up in the middle of the night too. It won’t happen again.”

She went to the table and began to fill the men’s mugs while avoiding his gaze.

This morning was not going well. Now, he felt like a beast for having said anything at all. He would never expect one of his own children to get up before dawn to wait on a group of coarse men. Of course Ned was too little to get up in the middle of the night. Robert had simply been reacting out of his frustration over the weather and Jigger’s complaints.

Disgruntled, he sat down at the table where the men had already begun to eat. Katie poured his tea as he helped himself to the flapjacks.

His first bite lightened his mood considerably. It was as light as a feather, and had a rich, yeasty flavor that was delicious. Definitely an improvement over Jigger’s flapjacks, which the men had started calling “stove lids” last winter because of their heaviness. Somehow she had managed to do this with exactly the same supplies that Jigger had used.

When he sampled the stewed dried apples, he found they had been seasoned with cinnamon, and they made a nice complement to the flapjacks. He saw Skypilot pile them on top of his stack of flapjacks, drizzle sorghum over the whole, and dig in. The ham was good, but then Jigger had always been expert at cooking meat. The diced potatoes had been fried to a delicate crispness. A light dusting of salt and pepper, along with some flecks of onion, made a dish he would have been happy to have eaten as a meal all by itself.

Katie Smith, draggling petticoat or not, was most definitely a good cook—even if she did have trouble getting out of bed in the morning.

“Breakfast is delicious,” he said, hoping to bridge the gap he had caused by his comment about Ned.

She stopped pouring tea long enough to give him a long look. This time, it was he who looked away. He would, he told himself, have to be more careful about what he said to her in the future. Regardless of Jigger’s comments earlier, he was willing to keep this woman around just for her fried potatoes and flapjacks alone.

Katie fell, panting, into the rocking chair. It had been close, but she had managed to get those men fed. As they ate, she had put four dozen biscuits into the oven, with which she intended to make ham sandwiches for their noon meal. She had set a day’s worth of bread rising and a pot of beans simmering for supper before coming out here to catch her breath.

Ned had eaten and was now busily refilling all the firewood boxes and carrying more water into the kitchen from the river. The rain had stopped.

She drew a deep breath, her first since Jigger awakened her this morning. She thanked God that she had arrived when the number of men in camp was still small enough for her to get her bearings. This morning would have been a disaster had she been cooking for any more.

She did not consider herself a late riser. Most of her life, she had awakened at first light. But she had no idea how to go about getting herself up in the middle of the night. How did Jigger do it? A lifetime of cooking for lumber camps?

Relying on Jigger to awaken her each morning was not an option. Nor did she ever again want to hear him telling Robert he had trouble getting her up. Somehow, she would have to figure out a way to awaken without Jigger pounding on her door. There was a newfangled invention called an alarm clock that someone had patented—but she had never seen one. Now she wished she had paid closer attention.

Determined to get herself together before facing Robert and the men again, she decided to use this short reprieve to put away her clothes and have a quick wash. She was embarrassed by the way she must have looked this morning.

It wasn’t that she was the least bit interested in impressing Robert as a man, but she did need to impress him as a boss. As soon as her feet were rested, she intended to dig clean clothes out of her trunk, take a sponge bath, and properly brush and plait her hair. It would be two hours before the bread would rise enough to bake. Lord willing, when Robert saw her again, she would be a different person.

She had barely caught her breath when she heard pounding coming from outside. She jumped up to take a quick look. There, behind the cabin, was the man she had heard the others calling “Tinker.” He was building what looked to be a privy.

So, Robert was keeping his word in spite of his irritation with her this morning. Interesting.

Tinker had a young man’s build and agility, but his hair was snow white. She had noticed this morning at breakfast that he hadn’t eaten anything except flapjacks so saturated in sorghum that they were practically mush.

Tinker saw her and raised a hammer in a salute. Embarrassed to be caught watching, she nodded and then ducked away. A few moments later, there was a knock on the door and she opened it to find the man she had heard others referring to as “Blackie.”

“Edward Blackburn at your service, ma’am.” He bowed from the waist, a short mountain of a man with blue eyes that danced beneath brows so bushy they looked like giant black caterpillars. His teeth were a startling white against the swarthiness of his skin.

“How can I help you, Mr. Blackburn?”

The poor man had rivulets of sweat pouring down his face and neck. Unfortunately, he smelled as though he had been involved in something requiring great exertion for a very long time. It was all she could do not to cover her nose.

“Call me Blackie, ma’am.” He held up a fancy piece of ironwork. “Got that lock made that Foster said you needed.”

“Thank you, uh, Blackie.”

“Hey, Tinker!” Blackie yelled. “Come here and help me install this bolt and lock for the lady!”

Tinker came scurrying around the corner of the cabin, a mile-wide grin on his face. Close up, she could see the reason he had eaten only softened flapjacks this morning. The poor man appeared to have no teeth except a couple in the front. With his thick shock of white hair, he had the look of a rabbit—except for his eyes. There was a look there—she couldn’t put her finger on it—but she decided that this was not a man she would want to cross.

“Did you want me to hang this on the lady’s door?” Tinker inspected the ornate lock Blackie had created. “Or display it in the town square?”

Blackie frowned. “Just put it on.”

“You sure there’s enough iron in this thing?” Tinker stuck his finger through one of the many curlicues. “I had no idea the lady was in danger of getting et up by a bear.”

Blackie punched Tinker in the chest with a massive fist. Katie took a step backward and threw a hand over her mouth.

Tinker quickly recovered from the blow and rubbed his chest. “I deserved that,” he said.

Blackie wore a mulish expression. “I can make more than just horseshoes.”

“You are an artist, Blackie.” Tinker pulled a fistful of nails from a pocket. “Now, tell me where to hang this thing.”

Katie’s dream of a couple hours of respite evaporated. Tinker stopped teasing Blackie, and she tried to stay out of their way while the two men cheerfully installed the lock. There was, she decided, going to be even less privacy here than she’d expected. And these shanty boys were . . . well, interesting.

But at least Robert had kept his word.

The beans were steaming hot and seasoned with plenty of fatback, just like he liked it. Bowls of raw, chopped onions complemented the beans. Platters were piled high with wedges of crusty cornbread that had been baked in iron skillets coated with copious amounts of bacon grease. Baskets filled with spicy molasses cookies as big as dinner plates sat side-by-side with raisin pies—one of his all-time favorites.

He was beginning to suspect that everything Katie made was going to become his all-time favorite. After slathering a hot wedge of cornbread with brine-preserved butter, he sprinkled a spoonful of onion on top of the beans and dug in.

Robert was delighted both with the meal and with the woman who had prepared it. Unlike this morning, she was neat and tidy. Her dress was fresh, and she was as businesslike as any camp boss could hope for. He was proud of her and proud of hiring her.

In spite of the morning rain, things had cleared during the day, and the skeleton crew had gotten a lot accomplished. With Skypilot’s help, Ernie and Cletus had managed to smooth some of the worst spots on the tote road while Sam went back into town for more supplies.

Tinker had finished Katie’s outhouse and a sturdy new lock had been installed on the cabin door. Perhaps now she would relax and not be so skittish around him.

Horatio Barnes, a tall, thin man known to the camp as “Inkslinger,” had arrived this afternoon to set up the office and camp store. Real names weren’t important in a lumber camp. It was a rare man who didn’t get some sort of nickname before the winter was over. Inkslinger was a Michigan dirt farmer with a gift for numbers. He left a family of six daughters and a wife behind to run his farm each winter while he ciphered lumber camp numbers and kept track of the board feet the loggers cut each day.

Inkslinger was the kind of person who tended to see the dark side of things. Robert had never seen the man smile. He couldn’t help but wonder if the wife and daughters weren’t a little relieved when Inkslinger tramped off to the camps each fall.

Two skilled axe men, one from Canada, the other from Maine, had hired on today. They were happily slurping bean soup at their assigned places at the table. They had heard about the new cook, they said, and had decided to check things out at the Foster camp. They didn’t seem to be the least bit disappointed. He hoped Katie could continue to keep up when the rest of the crew arrived.

Katie didn’t know what she was going to do.

The kitchen was clean, the tin plates and cups washed and replaced, facedown on the table. The sourdough sponge Jigger had insisted she use for tomorrow’s flapjacks was setting up. She’d sliced the bacon and readied a kettle of oil for doughnuts to add to the men’s breakfast. She had swept out the entire cook shanty and rinsed out the dishcloths and hung them to dry. Ned was in bed, as were all the men. Everything was ready—except her.

She had no idea how she was going to go to sleep and wake up promptly at 2:00 a.m. On her father’s farm and at Fallen Oaks, she could at least depend on a rooster crowing to awaken her before dawn. But there were no roosters here, and even if there were, they wouldn’t be doing any crowing in the middle of the night.

After lighting a candle, she cupped her hand around it and made her way through the darkness to her cabin. It was a little eerie being alone in the dark in this wilderness. But it was a short walk to her cabin, and there was a light glowing in the window—the lamp she had lit when she had put Ned to bed.

When she stepped into the cabin, she entered a room filled with warmth and light. The lamp and her little brother’s sweet, sleeping presence made the cabin feel like an oasis. She stuck the candle into an empty candleholder on the bureau and hung up her cape.