Wesley Tate had come into the Willow Bend post office every Saturday for four years and never said more to the widow behind the window than the weather. Then, one snowy November morning, he laid a silver dollar on Esther Penrose's counter in front of his own cowhands and asked her to write him a proposal of marriage. When she asked who it was for, he would not say.

So he described the lady instead, and Esther wrote down every word in her fair, slanting hand. The lady hums when she thinks the room is empty. The cowhands went quiet, and his top hand Rufus walked out into the snow to look at the weather. Esther has written the valley's love letters for eleven years, and nobody ever wrote one to her. Now Mr. Aldrich has offered her a post at North Platte, and the letter is still not done. Who is the lady, and will the letter be finished before Esther leaves?

A gentle western romance about a postmistress who writes everyone else's love letters and a rancher who cannot write his own. This is original fiction: every person in it is invented and a grown adult. Subscribe to The Porch Ledger for more western romance stories.