The first thing she did in the morning was select the light-blue and yellow calico—the one for Victoria—and put the others out of sight.

Hers was a simple plan: she would make one dress at a time and not muddy up her sewing area with other calicos. When each dress was done, she would reward herself by choosing her next favorite color. She was Spider, spinning her web over and over, despite silly interruptions from Badger, also known as Victoria.

She yearned to see Sergeant Blade again, just see him. She contented herself with sewing in the lean-to and remembering his features. She had seen handsomer men, to be sure, many among her own people. What she had not noticed in those otherwise excellent men was anyone with so much capability. True, his nose was probably too long, and his lips almost but not quite chiseled enough to make any other girl take notice. His cheekbones weren’t as high as hers, but not everyone could look as fine as an Indian; she was willing to make allowances.

His eyes were distinctly blue, which amused Mary no end, considering that she was the one with the Blue Eye name. He had long legs and a pleasant walk, better seen from the rear, although she would never admit that to a soul.

Mostly he was kind, not a trait his men probably saw too often, considering that he had to be a firm leader. He was kind to her, and that was what mattered.

And so Mary passed a pleasant time. When the dress-to-be turned onerous—knife pleats, boning in the basque—she let her lively mind venture deeper, to whether Sergeant Blade liked children, and whether he had much experience with women. She worked in silence and no one knew her thoughts.

Between her other duties, the first dress took her two days. At this rate, Mary knew she would still be basting pieces together while the ladies danced in petticoats and shimmies. This would never do.

How was it that Sergeant Blade seemed to know precisely when her web had been trampled by too many badgers?

She had laid out the next fabric on the parlor floor over Victoria’s strenuous objections that it wasn’t proper and should be done somewhere else.

“Suppose one of the other wives comes to call?” Victoria wanted to know.

Mary asked herself what Shell would do, when faced with a ninny of startling proportions, and acted. She set down her shears. “Victoria Masterson, you want these dresses. If you will not let me do it my way, I will go into my room and close the door. I never agreed to any of this. There is a Thirteenth Amendment now, and I am not your slave.”

She wasn’t certain which of the recent amendments had abolished slavery, but she was equally positive Victoria Masterson had no idea. She narrowed her eyes and tried to look ferocious like His Pony.

“If you must,” Victoria said, after a long pause.

“I must. I have to spread out the material to cut it.”

“This will go in a letter to my mother, after this wretched business is finished and I have done my duty,” Victoria said with something of a flourish, as in, So there.

“I will take that letter to your mother when I leave here in January,” Mary said, equally firm.

Oh, the panic! Oh, the sudden consternation! Victoria Masterson turned pale. “You’re . . . you’re . . . leaving?” She suddenly sounded like a child who has thrown away her favorite old doll and realizes she misses it.

“I only promised you six months.”

Victoria’s lips quivered. “Very well,” she said, and reached for her coat. “Do what you want.”

Mary sighed. Now the dratted woman was off to terrorize the captain’s wife, who would carry the news of Mary’s impertinence to her husband, who would do who-knew-what to placate tearful females. If that was the price of getting to use the floor to do her work, so be it.

When there came a knock on the door a half hour later, Mary looked up from her position on her hands and knees on the floor, cutting fabric. “Come in,” she said, ready for the worst.

The door opened, and there stood Sergeant Blade. She sat up, her face red.

“Miss Blue Eye, you have fair terrified your employer. She’s sobbing all over my employer’s desk.”

“Good! Maybe she will leave me alone so I can cut out material on the floor.”

He shook his head. “I’m to escort you to the guardhouse.”

Mary gasped. He grinned at her. She threw the tape measure at him, which he caught, strung around his neck, and lolled there, as if hanged. She laughed until tears ran. He helped her to her feet and grabbed her in a bear hug.

“Resistance is futile! I know all the moves to subjugate nearly anyone except, well, probably you. There you go. Laugh some more, and then seriously, come with me to the guardhouse. I think I can solve your problem.”

“Seriously. I get on my coat and follow you to the guardhouse?”

“I never lie about duty, Miss Blue Eye.”

He helped her into her coat and waited while she debated a hat. “Too windy,” he said. He unwound his yellow muffler and draped it over her hair. “This is better.”

The force of the wind made her gasp. He pulled her arm through his so she couldn’t blow away, and they struggled across the parade ground to the small stone building on the banks of the Laramie River.

“No one is going to live in Wyoming Territory for long, and it will never become a state,” she announced, when she stood, shivering, inside the guardhouse, where the sergeant of the day grinned at her.

“Shall I bring up the prisoner, Sergeant Blade?” the man asked.

“Absolutely.”

She gave Rowan such a look that he backed away and held up his hands in a defensive posture. “Miss Blue Eye, whether you believe me or not—and I have never and will never lie to you—Private München is the answer to . . . to . . . Captain Hayes’s prayers.”

He was right. Enter one Private Heinrich München, a thin, furtive-looking fellow with worried eyes, probably as worried as hers.

“Make a bow to Miss Blue Eye, Private München,” Sergeant Blade said.

The little German obliged, clicking his heels together like a Prussian, and nearly toppled from the effort. While the duty sergeant leaned against his desk and tried not to laugh, Sergeant Blade introduced Mary to a drunkard, a scoundrel, and a tailor. “This is Private München. He drinks too much, and this guardhouse is his second home. He is also a tailor of some renown.”

“My goodness,” Mary said. “Really?”

“Jawohl, fräulein. You ask. I do.”

“Could you cut out pattern pieces for me?”

“Nothing simpler,” Private München said. “I do all button holes. My specialty.” He bunched his fingertips to his lips and kissed them.

“That will save me hours,” Mary said.

“He’ll be able to stay up here and work. With proper supervision, of course,” Rowan said.

“Of course,” she repeated, amazed at her sudden good fortune. She eyed the tailor. “We’ll need another pair of shears and dressmaker pins.”

“In my locker for foots in the infantry barrack,” he said promptly, which made Rowan grin.

Mary looked around the room, which, with four people in it, was hardly spacious enough for cutting out fabric. “Somehow we can make this work, but . . .”

Rowan indicated the closed door, which he opened. “Take a look, Miss Blue Eye, and tell me what you think.”

She followed him into the adjoining room, which contained a long, wooden shelf about knee high and wide, and a potbellied stove. “What in the world?”

“The perfect place to cut fabric, although Private München will have a backache from bending over. This sleeping platform can hold four soldiers on guard duty. It will become Private München’s cutting board tomorrow.”

No one else was in the room. Mary stood on tiptoe and kissed Sergeant Blade’s cheek.

He smiled at her. “No bumbling badgers to disturb that industrious little spider, eh?”

“Not one. She can make those dresses.” Mary looked out the little window to the parade ground, wishing she still had fabric for her own dress.

“A penny for your thoughts.”

“With Private München helping me now, I would have had time to make my own dress, if I still had the material. I would need a miracle.”

“Oh, you never know.”