father had found her less than twenty miles away, but it had been too late. A band of Kansa Indians had gotten to her first.
His mother was buried next to his sister and baby brother, and to his father, who after losing his wife had slowly started to die, blaming her death on himself. He’d watched his father drink himself to death for five years. The day his father died, Steve had determined he’d never get married. He’d been seventeen, and in the past eight years he’d never once questioned that vow.
Partly because he hadn’t had time to. He’d been too busy building the Circle P Ranch to one of the largest in the state. He now had a house bigger than the one he’d been born in down in Georgia, a barn full of horses, and more cattle than he could count in a day. What he didn’t have was a cook for the men who worked for him. The men who made it possible for him to be the rancher he was today. The men who counted on him for three squares a day.
Ignoring how the mayor was welcoming the crowd and congratulating everyone on the “betterment of the community,” Steve worked his way to the front of the crowd, where he could watch the passengers depart and hopefully snag a man who knew the difference between salt and sugar to work for him for a few months.
The door of the passenger car had yet to open, and the windows were too full of soot to see through, but he kept his eyes peeled for a suitable candidate to step off the short metal stairs.
“You here to get wife, no?”
Without turning his head, Steve glanced to his right and then upwards. He was close to six feet tall, but Brett Blackwell, the local blacksmith and owner of the feed store, towered over him. With arms thicker than most men’s thighs and an equally thick Swedish accent with touches of the Midwest in it, the blacksmith looked down at him.
“You, Steve Putnam, you here for wife?”
“No,” Steve answered. “I’m here for a cook.”
“Ya, me, too,” Brett answered. “My ma was da best cook. She cooked for all da men.” The man inhaled through his nose so loudly it drowned out the mayor’s speech. “I still smell her bread. So good. I want a wife like that. Good cook.”
“Good luck with that, Brett,” Steve said. “I hope you find one. I’m not here for a wife. Just a cook. Rex got hurt. I need someone to fill in for him. I’m hoping they’re on this train.”
“Ya. Dr. Graham told me. Poor little man, Rex.” For a man who could throw hundred-pound feed sacks in a wagon one in each hand, the blacksmith was a sensitive man. “You tell Brett what I can do.”
“Haul a cook out to my place,” Steve muttered while taking note of how Brett had nodded toward Nelson Graham standing on his other side. Frowning, Steve gave his head a quick, clearing shake. He hadn’t expected the doctor to be looking for a wife, either. Had every man in town gone loco? If they all thought a woman was going to make their lives easier, they needed a new line of thinking. While peering around Brett, Steve caught sight of the man standing next to the doctor and clamped his jaw tight.
“Excuse me, Brett,” Steve said, while squeezing past the man. After nodding to Dr. Graham, Steve planted himself next to the cowboy who should be rounding up spring calves. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The look in Jess Rader’s eyes said he would have run but was squeezed in too tight to move. “I told you this morning I was coming to town, Boss.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I didn’t?”
“No.”
“Well, I meant to.” Jess glanced left then right, and then must have concluded he still didn’t have an escape route. “I ponied up five bucks, Boss. I gotta be here for one of the gals to pick me or I lose my money.”
“You lose your money either way,” Steve pointed out. “And if you want one of those gals to pick you, you should have taken a bath.”
“It ain’t the first of the month yet,” Jess said. “Besides, with Rex hurt, there’s no use taking a bath. Ain’t no one to wash my clothes while I’m washing my skin.”
Steve huffed out a breath. Besides being able to cook, his new hired hand would need to know how to wash clothes.
“What are you doing here?” Jess asked. “I thought you didn’t like this idea of brides.”
“I don’t,” Steve said. “I’m here to hire a cook.”
“Good,” Jess said. “Did you know Walter put salt instead of sugar in the flapjacks this morning? They were awful.”
“Yes, I know. I tasted one.” And had tasted the eggs Walter had sprinkled with sugar. The bacon had been burned black, and the coffee had been too full of grounds to swallow.
“Aw, what? Really?” Jess stomped a foot. “If that don’t beat all.”
Steve glanced around as moans and groans filled the air from the men standing around him. “What?” he asked Jess.
“Didn’t you just hear that?”
“What?” Steve repeated.
“Someone just said there are only five. Five women instead of twelve.” Jess pointed up and down the men standing on either side of them. “Look at all these fellers; that ain’t good odds.”
Steve glanced up and down the row. Besides the blacksmith, the doctor, Jess and the saloon-owning cousins, the banker, the gunsmith, a couple of farmers, a couple of ranchers, as well as the hotel owner and few others he didn’t know were lined up next to the platform.
“All these men paid up front?” he asked Jess.
“You had to in order to be in the group the gals have to choose from.”
Lester Higgums started pounding on his drum, a signal that the train door would soon open, and suddenly Steve didn’t want to be in the front row. He didn’t want it assumed in any way he was here for one of the girls to pick from. In fact, the idea of finding a cook amongst all this hullabaloo was as far-fetched as the whole bride project.
Other instruments joined Lester’s drums; an entire band was playing. The pomp and circumstance the town was putting on for this was laughable. Or disgusting. Either way, he wasn’t impressed, and shouldered his way through the crowd.
Shouts and cheers said the conductor must be opening the door, and without a backwards glance, he headed toward the Wet Your Whistle to collect his horse.
Once mounted, he muttered a curse at how the road heading west out of town was blocked by wagons and buggies. He urged his horse eastward in order to cross the tracks behind the train and then he’d head north, back to his ranch, empty-handed.
Mary had never been so frazzled. Her hair had never been so dirty or her clothes so dust-covered. And she’d never been so mad at her sister in her life. They were twins. They were supposed to think alike. They were supposed to have gotten off this stupid train miles ago. Days ago.
“We have to go,” Mary hissed. “Now.
