And Judson learned things too.
Winifred sang while she baked.
Badly.
She talked to the chickens as though they were elderly relatives.
She cried when a fox killed one and then served the fox stew three nights later without sentimentality.
She loved thunderstorms.
Hated coffee.
Read anything she could find.
And laughed with her whole body when something genuinely amused her.
Judson began inventing reasons to make her laugh.
Then pretending he hadn’t.
One night she caught him watching her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been staring for a full minute.”
He looked toward the stove.
“I was thinking.”
“Dangerous habit.”
He laughed.
It surprised both of them.
Winifred smiled.
For the first time, Judson saw how beautiful she was.
Not despite her softness.
Not because she had become useful.
Simply because she was Winifred.
Warm.
Sharp.
Steady.
Alive.
He looked away first.
Gar Dempsey arrived three weeks later.
Judson was checking traps six miles north when the cabin door slammed open.
Winifred spun from the stove.
A tall man stood in the doorway.
Blood stained one sleeve of his coat.
A Colt revolver hung in his hand.
His face was narrow and scarred.
Winifred recognized him immediately from Judson’s descriptions.
Gar Dempsey.
Claim jumper.
Thief.
Wanted in two territories.
And, according to rumor, responsible for three murders.
He looked Winifred up and down.
Then grinned.
“Well.”
Winifred’s heart began hammering.
Gar shut the door.
“Didn’t know McIntyre ordered by the pound.”
Months earlier, those words might have wounded her.
Now they only made her angry.
Especially when Gar’s muddy boots crossed the floor she had scrubbed that morning.
“My husband isn’t here.”
“I figured.”
“Then leave.”
Gar raised the revolver.
“Or what?”
The shotgun hung twelve feet away.
Too far.
The rifle was beside the bed.
Farther.
Gar stepped closer.
Winifred backed toward the stove.
“Where’s McIntyre keep the deed?”
“What deed?”
“To this claim.”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
He reached for her.
Winifred’s hand closed around the nearest object.
A cast-iron skillet.
Still filled with sizzling bacon grease.
She threw it.
Gar had time to widen his eyes.
Nothing more.
The skillet struck his cheek with a sound like an ax hitting wet wood.
Hot grease splashed across his face.
He screamed.
The Colt fell.
Winifred grabbed the fire poker.
Gar lunged blindly.
She swung low.
The iron caught him behind both knees.
He crashed forward.
Winifred jumped.
All one hundred and eighty-seven pounds of the woman Judson had mocked at the depot landed squarely between Gar Dempsey’s shoulder blades.
Air exploded from his lungs.
“You—”
She struck his wrist with the poker.
“Do not.”
Another strike.
“Bleed.”
Another.
“On.”
She twisted his arm behind him.
“My floor.”
Gar stopped fighting.
