He propelled her to her feet and frog-marched her to the door.

“I was just trying to-”

“Come back anytime,” he said, closing the door in her face.

“That’s nice of you, Kate,” Ruthe Bauman said, looking askance at the cord of wood stacked next to the back door of her cabin. “It’ll go real well with the five cords I already ordered from Darryl Totemoff.”

“You can never have too much firewood,” Kate said.

Ruthe looked down into Kate’s earnest face. “No,” she said, “I suppose you can’t.”

“Give her to me,” Kate said, stretching out her arms.

Bobby glared. “I can diaper my own damn daughter!” he bellowed. “What the hell’s got into you, Shugak, the Red Cross? Jesus!”

Hurt, Kate said, “I just wanted to help.”

“Well, stop it!” Bobby said. He rolled his chair over to Katya’s changing table. Katya stared at Kate over his shoulder, blue eyes blinking at Kate from beneath a corkscrew assortment of black curls.

Kate went to stand next to Dinah. “I could dry those dishes for you,” she said in a small voice.

“You can wash them, dry them, and put them away if you want,” Dinah said amiably.

Brightening, Kate took the sponge and waded in.

“What in hell is going on with that broad?” Bobby demanded of his wife, soul mate, and chosen partner in life when the sound of Kate’s truck had faded across the Squaw Candy Creek bridge. “I can’t lift a hand in my own goddamn house! For crissake, Dinah, I’m not some cripple!”

“I know,” Dinah said soothingly. In fact, he was missing both his legs below the knee, souvenir of a land mine in Vietnam, but it wasn’t as if it slowed him down much. Or at all.

Bobby settled Katya into her crib for her afternoon nap. Katya, infuriatingly, stuck her thumb in her mouth and her butt up in the air, gave a deep, satisfied burp, and promptly fell asleep. “She never does that for me,” Dinah said enviously.