She dressed quickly in the dark, pulling on a thick flannel petticoat, a dark homespun wool dress, and her sturdy work boots. She tied her apron around her waist, wrapped a knitted woolen shawl over her shoulders, and opened the bedroom door.
The kitchen was already alive with the crackle of pine kindling and the rich, roasted aroma of boiling coffee.
Elias was sitting at the edge of the trestle table, pulling on his heavy leather work mittens. He looked up, his expression registering faint surprise as she entered.
“You’re up early,” he said.
“Dawn doesn't wait for visitors,” Clara replied, walking to the cast-iron stove. “Is that coffee ready?”
“Boiled five minutes ago. Tin cups are in the cupboard beside the flour bin.”
She poured two cups, carried one to the table, and set it in front of him. Elias looked at the steaming tin, then up at her face. For four years, he had made his own coffee, drunk it alone in the cold, and walked out the door without a word spoken. The simple presence of another human being across the pine table felt strange, almost jarring, yet curiously stabilizing.
“I have to check the south fence,” Elias said, swallowing a mouthful of scalding coffee. “Two cedar posts rotted out near the creek gap. If the steers get through, they’ll wander onto Crowe’s lease land, and his hands will brand them as strays before noon.”
“I’m coming with you,” Clara said.
Elias frowned, setting his cup down. “It’s ten below out there, Miss Reyes. The snow is knee-deep in the coulee.”
“My name is Clara,” she said firmly, taking a sip from her mug. “And I didn't come to Wyoming to sit by a stove and drink tea while you lose your steers. My father was a carpenter. I know how to sink a post, and I know how to brace an iron wire.”
Elias studied her for three seconds, realized the futility of arguing with a woman whose jaw was set like a vice, and nodded once. “Coat’s on the peg. Grab the spare mittens from the bench.”
In the barn, the cold was dry and still. The breath of the horses rose in thick, silver plumes toward the rafters. Elias hitched Banner and an old bay mare to a low wooden stone-boat loaded with cedar posts, a spool of four-point barbed wire, iron crowbars, and a heavy sledgehammer.
They worked for three hours in the frozen coulee.
The work was brutal, unforgiving labor. The ground was frozen six inches deep, requiring Elias to drive an iron chisel with the sledgehammer to break the top crust before they could dig into the gravel beneath. Clara did not complain. When Elias lifted a heavy cedar post into the hole, she hauled the bracing stones, dropped them into the gap, and tamped the dirt down with the blunt end of an iron bar, throwing her entire weight behind every stroke.
When they reached the corner post by the frozen creek, Elias began notching the crossbeam with a hand-axe.
Clara watched him for a minute, her breath coming in rapid puffs of white steam.
“You’re cutting the notch on the wrong side,” she said.
Elias stopped mid-swing, the axe blade poised above the cedar. He turned slowly, wiping frost from his eyelashes. “I’ve been building fences on this creek since I was twelve years old, Clara.”
“Then you’ve been doing it wrong since you were twelve,” she said calmly, stepping forward and pointing with her gloved finger. “The pull from the main line comes from the northeast. If you notch the brace on the downhill side, the first heavy snow load will buckle the joint inward. You need to lap the brace over the top shoulder and pin it with a trenail or an iron spike. That way, the tension tightens the joint instead of splitting it.”
Elias looked at the post. He looked at the direction of the wire. He calculated the tension in his head.
He lowered the axe.
“Where did you learn that?”
“My father built barns before he built chairs,” she said, meeting his eyes without a hint of smugness. “Wood obeys physics, Mr. Ward, not tradition.”
Elias stood silent for a long moment. Then, the corner of his mouth twitched upward in what was unmistakably a grin. He handed her the heavy wood auger.
“Show me how to bore the pin, then.”
She took the tool without hesitation. Twenty minutes later, the corner post stood rock-solid, anchored against the winter wind with a double-braced crossbeam that didn't yield a fraction of an inch when Elias threw his full weight against it.
He tapped the cedar post with his knuckle. “I’ll be damned.”
“I told you,” she said, brushing wood shavings from her woolen sleeve. “I’m usually right about these things.”
“Don't let it go to your head,” he muttered, but his eyes were bright with a respect that had nothing to do with territorial statutes or legal maneuvers.