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strand of golden hair back in the crocheted snood she’d bundled her hair into that morning. While she’d planned to braid the mass later, she hadn’t found the time, not an unusual situation for the owner of Dove House, a three-story hotel located in Little Missouri and the inheritance the two sisters had received from their father, Per Torvald. Once known for its saloon and the girls who entertained there, Dove House now served meals and rented rooms for longer than a night. Within the last few months more hunters and cattlemen used the so-called town for a camp base, and Dove House had gone from a fingernail operation to having a full storeroom and bedrooms occupied more often than not.
    ‘‘Ruby.’’
    ‘‘I’ll bring you a towel.’’ Ruby opened the door. ‘‘And clean clothes.’’
    Opal blew a mound of bubbles off the palm of her hand. No matter how hard she fought against a bath and hair wash, as usual, she stayed in as long as possible.
    ‘‘Two.’’
    ‘‘Two?’’
    ‘‘Two towels.’’
    Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘‘We’ll see.’’ Since laundry had to be hung on the lines outside till frozen and then brought in board stiff to thaw and finish drying on the lines in the storeroom, keeping clean clothes and napkins on the tables took far more time and effort than in the warmer months. While Ruby was tempted to let up on her standards, so far she’d withstood, even though it required one of the girls to do laundry and ironing full time.
    Daisy Whitaker, another of the girls—once called soiled doves—who Ruby had promised her father to take care of, returned the cooling flatiron to the stove and attached the handle to the next one. ‘‘I’ll be glad when we find someone else to do this. Never thought I’d be saying I’d rather clean.’’
    ‘‘I know what you mean.’’ Ruby shook her head. ‘‘Estelle sure didn’t last long, did she?’’
    ‘‘She was a good worker, though, for the time she was here.’’ Daisy kneaded the small of her back and rotated her shoulders. ‘‘Did Charlie get back yet?’’
    ‘‘Haven’t seen him.’’
    Milly looked up from where she was scrubbing egg and flour from the painted floor. ‘‘He was out skinning that deer, last I saw him.’’
    I wish Charlie would recognize love when he saw it . Ruby had realized months ago that Daisy was sweet on Charlie, former bartender and now man-of-everything, but since his eye seemed to be on Cimarron, another of the doves, there was a stalemate all around. Sometimes she feared anarchy would break out.
    ‘‘You going to look for more help?’’ Daisy asked.
    ‘‘I have an ad in the Dickinson paper and a note posted in each of the rooms here. Do you have any other suggestions?’’
    Both Milly and Daisy shrugged and shook their heads before returning to their duties.
    Cat yowled again, more insistently, so Ruby crossed to open the door. ‘‘Serves you right, making a mess like that.’’ Cat, tail stick-straight in the air but for a crook at the end, stalked in with nary a glance in her direction.
    Daisy chuckled her way back to the ironing board in the storage room. Milly wrung her rag out in the bucket of water and went back to mopping up the mess.
    Ruby took the towels back to the pantry. ‘‘Here, one for your hair and one for the rest of you. Make sure you hang them up behind the stove to dry.’’
    ‘‘Put on my same undergarments?’’
    ‘‘No, I’ll go get you clean clothes.’’ Why didn’t I ask one of the others to do that? At this rate, I’ll never get the bookwork caught up . She mounted the stairs as quickly as she could and still remain ladylike, no leaping three at a time like Opal still did in spite of repeated admonitions. The higher she climbed, the colder the air became. Since they kept the door closed to the third floor stairway, the bedrooms of the help frequently had frost on the inside of the windows. While she gathered up clothing for her little sister,