As promised, this story has now moved back into the movie's timeline. I think there's a lot of room for missing/extra scenes, so I'm hoping to make the next chapter something set during the movie, too.

The evening after the barn-raising, Dorcas practically danced home. Benjamin's face seemed to float in front of her eyes, and his voice kept ringing in her ears. Her ma and pa lectured as the family walked home through town – about how the Pontipees were all just a no-good bunch of troublemakers, always had been, and how Dorcas better stay away from Benjamin if she didn't want to get her heart broken – but their words floated in one ear and out the other. All Dorcas could think about was the feeling of Benjamin's hands holding hers when they'd danced together.

Dorcas's vanity table was nothing but a rough-hewn wooden table and a small mirror, but that evening, she sat at it and studied her reflection. She brushed her sleek black hair and tried out different styles for it, parting it first on one side, then on the other, wondering which way Benjamin might prefer it. Oh, she was glad that she had finished work on her new purple plaid dress in time for the barn-raising today. Liza and the other girls had all assured her that she looked very fetching in it.

Jenny had enjoyed herself at the barn raising too, for a different reason. She had won an egg race that was organized for the children, and first prize was a small bag of penny candy from the Bixbys' store. She was now sitting cross-legged on the rug the floor of their bedroom – Dorcas and Jenny shared a room, and despite the difference in their ages, they were quite close – with her candy spread out on her handkerchief, arranging and rearranging the pieces in the order that she wanted to eat them.

Jenny moved a peppermint in front of a piece of saltwater taffy, then looked up. When she saw Dorcas fawning over herself in the mirror, she made a disgusted face. "I never saw you get so goopy for a boy before."

Dorcas blushed a little at her reflection. She hadn't meant to make it so obvious, but between her flushed face, the twinkle in her eyes, and her smile, even her little sister could tell that she was in love – or goopy for a boy, as Jenny put it. "Well," she answered, grinning coyly, "I never saw Benjamin Pontipee before, neither."

Jenny frowned and put her chin in one hand, looking up at her sister. "But Ma wants you to marry Nate Perkins."

"What?" Dorcas whirled around her seat, alarmed. "How do you know that?"

"Silly, the whole town knows it. Ma never stops talkin' 'bout it."

"Hmm, I reckon you're right," Dorcas sighed. That was one of the things she hated about living in this town: it was so small that everybody knew everybody else's business. Why, there was hardly anything to do here except talk and gossip. Nate Perkins, the mayor's oldest son – as if a town this small even needed a mayor, Dorcas thought spitefully – was considered quite the catch, especially by their mother.

Dorcas turned back to her mirror, thinking about Nate Perkins and Stephen Bennett and the other boys who were courting her and her friends. There was nothing really wrong with those boys, she supposed. It was just that she had been going to school and church with them, seeing them at the Bixbys' store, and passing them on the street for as long as she could remember. She was so used to them that they had grown boring.

That was one reason why meeting Benjamin at the barn-raising today had excited her so much. Dorcas couldn't recall ever seeing him or his brothers in town before; they were new and strange and mysterious, seven handsome, red-haired brothers living alone up in the mountains. Their homestead was about an hour's ride away, Benjamin had told her – quite a nice distance from all the prying eyes and gossiping tongues here in town, Dorcas thought, but not too far for trips home to see Jenny and their folks.

"Dorcas Pontipee," she whispered to herself.

Jenny made a disgusted face again. "Dorcas, he's a boy. Boys are gross," she said firmly, as if this were the final word on the subject.

Dorcas laughed at her little sister's crinkled-up nose. Jenny liked catching frogs and grasshoppers, but boys disgusted her. "Oh, I can remember when I thought the same thing," she answered, "but you'll feel different someday, trust me."

"But Dorcas, it ain't like you can marry Benjamin Pontipee," Jenny argued, her voice on the edge of a whine now. "Ma and Pa don't even like him none."

Dorcas frowned. Her parents' disapproval of Benjamin and his brothers was going to be a problem, but she didn't want to think about that right now. "Jenny, ain't it 'bout time for you to go to bed?" she asked, changing the subject. "C'mere an' turn 'round."

Jenny obeyed; she got up from the floor, carefully put her candy away, and turned her back to her sister so Dorcas could undo the row of buttons down the back of her dress. Then she changed into her nightgown and undid her two braids. The girls shared a bed, like most sisters on the frontier. One bed for girls, one for boys, and an old blanket strung up between for privacy was the fanciest bedroom that any children out west had ever seen. Not that Jenny minded sharing a room with Dorcas. She liked it, which was why she'd decided that she didn't like Benjamin Pontipee. It was nothing to do with him personally, but she wasn't ready for her big sister to leave home and get married.

Jenny sat down on their bed now, and Dorcas picked up her hairbrush and began to brush her hair out for her. Jenny didn't care about her looks like her sister did, and just last week, Dorcas had overheard their mother complaining that Jenny hadn't turned out as pretty as Dorcas. "With Dorcas pretty as she is, I bet half the boys in town would please to marry her," Mrs. Gailen had boasted to their neighbor Mrs. Kine, "but Jenny... well, findin' a husband for her won't be so easy." Dorcas had bitten her tongue and said nothing, but she was tired of her mother bragging about her looks, tired of her plan to see her married to Nate Perkins.

"Jenny," Dorcas asked, trying to be gentle as she brushed out some tangles, "you know when Ma was your age, she lived in St. Louis, right?" Jenny nodded. "You know where that is?"

"Uh, some city back east, ain't it?"

"That's right," Dorcas nodded. Their mother had grown up in St. Louis, and she was always talking about how different life was there, how genteel and cultured the city-folk were. Then, she was about the age that Dorcas was now, Bess Gailen and her husband had made the long, hard journey across the prairie and over the mountains in a covered wagon caravan, to finally settle here in far-flung Oregon Territory, "west of the whole civilized world," Bess always said. She blamed it on the hard frontier lifestyle that her two sons – born in the long years between her daughters – had died as infants. Dorcas often suspected that her mother regretted ever leaving St. Louis.

"Jenny," Dorcas said suddenly, her voice urgent, "I made up my mind 'bout one thing, at least. I don't want to have no regrets in my life."

Jenny scrunched up her nose again. "What do you mean?"

"Well... I don't know. Nothin', I guess," Dorcas sighed. She turned down the oil-lamp, and Jenny climbed under the covers and soon fell asleep. But Dorcas stayed awake for a long time, thinking about the future. She did know what she meant, but she couldn't find a way to explain it. She had felt restless lately, as if she'd been waiting for her life to start. But today, she had put on her new purple plaid dress, gone to the neighbors' barn-raising, met Benjamin Pontipee, and just like that, her life had started. She hoped that her ma and pa would come around to liking him, but whether they did or not wouldn't matter in the long run, she decided. The two of them would find a way to be together, no matter what.