text: 7
  
  The weather was kind that December of 1873, but snow finally came, and it covered the land. As the temperature dropped, the snow iced over and the animals could no longer forage for themselves. The Knudsen family was as ready as Grit and Paulie could make them. They'd bought all the supplies the little family needed, and Grit and Paulie had more to share with them when the new year came.
  
  The Saturday before Christmas, Grit said, "Paulie, I'm going to ride to Fort Sully tomorrow early in the morning."
  
  "Ah, you're going to see that little Irish lady, Colleen, aren't you?" Paulie teased.
  
  "Well, there's always the possibility I could run into her," Grit said with a smirk, "but I'm figuring on getting a few things so that we can celebrate Christmas."
  
  "Oh, well, that'll be nice," Paulie said. "If you see any books you think I might like, you might buy me one. It would be nice to have a checkerboard too. And if you can figure a way to bring back some beer, that would be even better. You takin' the wagon?"
  
  "No, I'll ride the dun horse, but I'll stay over Sunday night too and come back Monday," Grit said. "You're welcome to come if you want."
  
  "No, I think I'll stay here and keep warm," Paulie said. "I'll be fine."
  
  The ride in the frigid morning air was cold for both the dun and for Grit, but he made it to Fort Sully shortly after noon. He asked one of the sergeants if there was a place where he could spend the night, and the sergeant showed him a private little room at the end of one of the barracks.
  
  "We let visitors stay here occasionally," the sergeant said. "So consider this room yours for the night. You can leave your saddlebags here. Anybody bothers 'em will answer to me."
  
  Grit walked down to the sutler's store and found it was closing in a half hour.
  
  "Yeah, we close early on Sundays," the sutler said with a chuckle. "Gives everybody a little rest. That's mainly me."
  
  "Where's the housing for the laundresses?" Grit asked.
  
  The sutler eyed him. "You got some business down there?"
  
  "I know one of them... Colleen Byrne."
  
  "That's okay then," the sutler said. He gave Grit directions before saying, "Kinda cold out to be walkin' with a lady friend."
  
  Grit walked down and knocked on the door. A woman opened the door and asked, "Who you lookin' for, mister?"
  
  "Colleen... Colleen Byrne."
  
  "I was hopin' you were lookin' for me," the woman said with a cackle. "I'll get Colleen for ya."
  
  Inside the apartments, he heard the woman yell, "Colleen, there's a man waitin' for you."
  
  A few moments later, Colleen rushed out and smiled broadly. "Grit, you remembered!"
  
  "Yes, I did," Grit said. "This is your day off, but it's too cold to even walk outside."
  
  "Oh, come in," she said. "We have a sitting room where we can receive visitors."
  
  "Let me take your coat and hat." Grit shrugged out of his coat and handed his hat and coat to Colleen who hung them on a coat rack.
  
  "Sit down, sit down," Colleen said. "So what brings you to Fort Sully?"
  
  "Well, I was going to pick up a few things for Christmas and thought I'd come a little early and visit with you for a few minutes."
  
  "Well, I'm glad you did," she said.
  
  "So... how's it goin'?" Grit asked.
  
  "You want the truth?" she asked.
  
  "Well... uh... I don't know, do I?"
  
  "There's a sergeant here named Casper Atlock who thinks I'm a loose woman, and he's after me at all hours of the night and day. I'll be washin', look up and there he is starin' at me. The other day I was coming out of the outhouse, and there he was waiting. He's the biggest nuisance around. And you should be careful. If he knew you were here talkin' to me, I don't know what he'd do."
  
  Grit laughed. "Don't worry about me. I can take care of myself."
  
  "The problem is, I don't care for him at all," Colleen said. "I wish he'd just leave me alone."
  
  "What are you doing for Christmas?"
  
  "Nothin' special, that's for sure," she replied.
  
  "I wonder if you could get a few days off and come visit Paulie and me."
  
  "I wish I could, but then someone else would have to do my work."
  
  "Surely they can spare you three or four days," Grit said.
  
  "What would we do?"
  
  "We could play some games, read some stories, sit around the fire and get acquainted. We have a well-stocked pantry. Maybe you could show Paulie how to cook a few new things. Our diet is pretty limited."
  
  "Where would I sleep?"
  
  "Well... we have a guest room with a nice bed."
  
  "Does it have a lock on the door?"
  
  He laughed. "Now you're teasin' me!"
  
  "Yes, I am," she said. "I could ask Lettie, I suppose... tell her I've met an old friend, and we'd like to spend Christmas together."
  
  "Well, see what she says, but only if you want to," Grit said. "I don't want to put any burden on you."
  
  "No, no, I'll go ask right now," she said.
  
  As Grit waited, he looked out the window and saw a soldier with sergeant's stripes staring through the window. Grit chuckled and waved at the man, who turned and walked away.
  
  Colleen came back and said, "She said I could have a whole five days. I guess I'm not very important around here."
  
  Grit smiled at her. "Can you leave in the morning?"
  
  "Yes, I'll get my things ready," she said. "Do you think Paulie will be okay with it?"
  
  "He'll be overjoyed to have somebody to talk to 'sides me," Grit said. "By the way, I think I saw your Sergeant Atlock watching outside the window. I waved and he walked away."
  
  "Be careful," she said. "He might come after you."
  
  Grit laughed. "Don't worry about that."
  
  "But I do worry," she said. "He can be mean. I've seen him deal with some of the troopers."
  
  They chatted away and late in the afternoon, a woman came in and said, "Will your friend be joining us for supper, Colleen?"
  
  "Yes, he will," Colleen said, "and thank you Izzy."
  
  When suppertime came, Colleen introduced Grit to the other laundresses, and they all had a very pleasant supper, chatting away about things happening at the fort, the weather and each other.
  
  At one point, Izzy said, "So tell us, Grit, what are you doing in this part of the country?"
  
  "I'm a woodcutter and sell firewood to the riverboats," Grit said. "I have a partner who helps me fell the trees and cut the wood."
  
  "Is it profitable?" Brenda asked.
  
  "It can be if you work hard, but it's pure labor," Grit said. "In the summer, we work at it from dawn to dusk. In the winter, we put in about six or eight hours each day."
  
  "So you have a house or cabin?" she asked.
  
  "We have a house, had it built this fall after the last riverboat came down from Fort Benton."
  
  When supper was over, Grit asked Colleen, "Do you suppose the army would loan me a horse for you?"
  
  "I'm sure they would," she said. "Just ask Corporal Tompkins. He's in charge of the livery."
  
  "I'll see about it in the morning," Grit said.
  
  When he left Colleen, Grit headed over to the barracks in the darkness. His feet crunched in the snow, and the whole base was well lit from the moonlight reflecting off the snow, which covered the ground.
  
  Suddenly he heard a rush of crunching steps behind him, and he turned with his right fist raised, and he connected with a trooper's face. His left got another face before the other three overwhelmed him. He went down in the snow on his back, but his right fist lashed out and landed in the middle of one trooper's face.
  
  He saw another face, and he crushed it with a left hook. The men tried to grab his arms, but he was too strong. He felt a boot crash into the side of his head, and he was dazed, but he shook it off, and when the next boot came, he grabbed it and twisted it off the man's foot. Holding the top of the boot in his right hand, he started swinging the heel and sole at faces.
  
  The troopers were cursing and swearing, frustrated at their inability to subdue Grit, who saw another boot coming for his head and jerked one of the trooper's down, and the trooper took the boot toe right in his face. Grit twisted away and got to his feet. Now, his fists were flying, and he was in his glory, lashing out and battering heads.
  
  And then it was over as the men picked themselves up and fled across the snow. Grit stood there wondering what had just happened. Obviously someone had sicced those troopers on him, and the most likely candidate was Sergeant Casper Atlock. The only evidence of the fight was the one boot that lay in the snow and a few drops of blood from smashed noses.
  
  When Grit walked into the barracks, some of the troopers glanced at him as he passed through into the room he'd been assigned. He looked at himself in the wash stand mirror and saw that his head was bruised and chafed where the boot had caught him upside his head, but otherwise he seemed to be okay except his knuckles were banged up. He'd caught one of the men in the teeth with his right fist. He took the ladderback chair and propped it under the door handle, undressed and pulled out Around the World in 80 Days and read until he'd finished. It was his second time through, and he loved the ending when Phileas discovers he's actually made the trip in a little over 78 days and won the bet. He put the book away, blew out the lamp and went to sleep.
  
  Grit got in the chow line the next morning and ate breakfast with the troopers. He saw a few troopers across the dining hall who looked like they'd been in a fight, but he ignored them. When he was done, he walked over the livery stable and found Corporal Tompkins.
  
  "You bet we'll get you a horse," Tompkins said. "We'd do anything for our laundry women and especially Colleen."
  
  "Why do you say that?" Grit asked.
  
  "Well, they got a thankless job, and all the troopers benefit from their work. And they're mostly friendly and easy-going, Colleen most of all. How do you know Colleen?"
  
  "We went to school together back in Chicago," Grit said.
  
  Tompkins saddled a fine-looking chestnut gelding and said, "This one's real gentle. He'll carry Colleen there and back."
  
  Grit led the horses down to the laundresses' quarters and Colleen was waiting for him. She opened the door and said, "I'm ready to go. Just help me get up on the horse, please."
  
  When they were mounted, Grit said, "I was hoping we could stop at the sutler's store and you'd help me buy some things to make Christmas a little special."
  
  "Oh yeah, good idea," Colleen said.
  
  "I was thinkin' you might wanna cook some Christmas dish, and we'd need to buy whatever you needed."
  
  "I hadn't thought about what I could cook," Colleen said. "But being in the store might give me some ideas."
  
  Once in the store, Colleen said, "My mother always made cinnamon rolls for Christmas, so maybe we could get all the ingredients you don't already have."
  
  "Sounds great," Grit said. "We have plenty of flour and sugar."
  
  "Do you have brown sugar?"
  
  "No, just loaves of white sugar."
  
  Colleen gathered brown sugar, cinnamon and a few other spices. Grit found the checkerboard that Paulie wanted and some poker chips in red and black for the checkers. He also found a couple of books he thought might interest Paulie, and he bought two decks of cards thinking that maybe Colleen or Paulie might know some games. He himself had never had time for card games.