She Got the Bunkhouse Kitchen as Punishment—Then Four Trail Bosses Fought to Hire Her

Chapter 2

By the third day she had the table level.

The replacement leg came from a length of hardwood she found in the weeds behind the building — part of a fence post, by the look of it, dried out and dense. She shaped it with the hand axe, taking thin passes until the dimensions were close enough, then seated it in the bracket and shimmed the gap with a folded piece of tin she pried off the broken hinge plate on the door. She tested it with her full weight, both hands flat on the surface. It didn’t move.

She cleaned the floor with a branch broom she made herself, working from the corners in. The dirt was packed enough to sweep without raising clouds. When it was done the floor looked intentional — dark and clean and level, the kind of floor you could set a pot on without it tipping.

The canvas over the window was her most persistent problem. What she had wasn’t sufficient to block the wind and also admit any light, and she needed both. She cut the remaining canvas into two pieces — one to cover the lower two-thirds of the opening at night, one to prop up as a partial screen against the prevailing wind during the day. It was not elegant, but it meant she could work by window light in the mornings and still keep the temperature in the room livable after dark.