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least Tessa had given him a chance of having a family that wanted him.
    Hadn’t Anne survived growing up without a mother? Her pa had seen that she had a roof over her head. He didn’t offer much by way of guidance or affection, but she’d learned to take care of herself. If she could, couldn’t a boy?
    She would find his pa. If Finn Cravens wanted to put his child in an orphanage, that was his business, but he deservedthe opportunity to do better by the boy. Who knew? He might change his ways when he realized that he was solely responsible for a baby. Stranger things had happened.
    Anne knew nothing about caring for babies, but surely she could keep him alive until his father could be tracked.

 4 
    The next morning Anne practically exploded out of the saloon with one arm tucked around Sammy’s chest, holding him against her, and the other bearing the weight of two knapsacks, a food parcel, and a baby blanket. Sammy flailed his arms upward and squirmed until his chin was hung in the elbow of her thick duster, his gown pulled up beneath his armpits.
    “Stop it, Sammy, or I’m going to drop you.”
    A woman gasped and stopped on the boardwalk to glare.
    Anne wished she didn’t feel the need to defend herself, but she did. “It’s a prediction, not a threat. I wouldn’t purposely drop him.”
    “What a relief,” the woman sneered. “It’ll be a comfort knowing when he hits the ground it was an accident. I only wonder how the poor babe survived this long under your care.”
    Anne wrinkled her nose at the snooty bat, and with a bounce of her hip repositioned Sammy into a more manageable hold. She’d stayed ahead of a stampeding buffalo herd. She’d survived a spring storm with hail the size of tomatoes,but nothing had exhausted her like getting Sammy ready for an outing.
    This baby required more gear than a whole troop of buffalo hunters.
    She hoped the new cook would relay her message to Anoli and that he’d waste no time finding Finn. Until then she had to locate a safe place where they could stay while she waited, preferably with someone who didn’t mind lending a hand with the boy. Surely there was a widow woman with a boardinghouse nearby.
    Papers waved from a notice board tacked up across the way. Anne looked up and down the street before trudging across. The writhing child against her bosom hampered her usually acute perception. A horse could barrel down the road right on top of them, and she’d never hear it coming. Not over the kid’s grunts.
    Her glance skittered over the various advertisements and legal proclamations until she spotted what she’d been looking for. She recognized the street as one she’d crossed when leaving the train depot. Not a far distance she hoped.
    Sammy fussed. He crammed his fist in his mouth. There’d be no place to get him food between the main street and the neighborhood, but once at the boardinghouse she could get him some milk or even figure out the strange powder Tessa had left behind with the glass bottles and rubber nipples. As long as he didn’t see the bottles again. When she’d pulled them out of his knapsack, he’d started fussing. When she put them back without feeding him, he’d gone berserk.
    By the time she knocked on the door of the tidy house, Sammy was throwing a royal tantrum. The peephole slid open, Anne was inspected, and then the door moved cautiously.
    “How might I help you?”
    Anne bounced Sammy on her hip, hoping he’d shush and she could be heard.
    “I’d like to let a room.”
    One eyebrow rose on a humorless face. “Excuse me . . . er, ma’am?”
    Anne shifted Sammy to her opposite side and let her knapsacks slide down to her boots. “It’d only be for a day or two while I find the kid’s father. I don’t plan to stay long—”
    The woman’s chin lifted. “My boardinghouse serves only the finest clientele. Women dressed in men’s clothing, toting around illegitimate children, are not welcome.”
    “He’s not