and always smiling and joking, while Chris was tall, thin and far more serious, especially when it came to money, and that was what Steve couldn’t believe. That Chris would have made a contribution to the Oak Grove Betterment Committee that had been raising money the past year “to bring suitable women of marrying age to their fine community.” He’d seen so many fliers and newspapers articles about the far-fetched idea he knew the sales pitch word for word.
“For the betterment of the community of course,” Chris answered.
Steve gave him a glare that said he knew the man was lying.
“Fine,” Chris said. “If there’s anyone we can trust with the truth, it’s you. Danny and I aren’t looking for wives, and we don’t believe every woman on that train will make a suitable one, either.”
Danny’s laughter left a sly grin on his face. “But they just might want to work in a high-end establishment such as the Whistle.”
“You’re hoping to get a couple of saloon gals out of the deal?” That was as hard to believe as the idea of getting a wife through this scheme.
“Why not?” Danny asked. “Working here would be far better than marrying a few of those men offering up their hands. Can you imagine any woman wanting to take up residence with Wayne Stevens and that creature he calls a dog? It’s dang near as big as your horse and I hear tell it sleeps in his bed every night.”
Steve had heard the same, and Wayne’s dog was big enough to saddle. Still he shook his head. “I just didn’t expect you two to participate in this idea.”
Chris withdrew his watch and clicked open the cover to check the time. As he poked it back in his pocket, he asked, “If you aren’t here to meet the train, why are you in town in the middle of the day?”
“Rex buried an ax in his knee chopping kindling last night,” Steve answered. “Doc was out and stitched him up, but said he’d be laid up for at least three weeks. I came to see if I could hire Helen Oswoski to cook for my boys for a month or so. With it being roundup time, I don’t have a man to spare.”
Danny let out a whistle. “Rex already has a hunk of wood for one leg.”
Everyone knew Rex Walton had lost a leg in the war, and Steve was worried the man would end up without both legs if he didn’t follow the doctor’s orders. “Unfortunately, it was the other leg he buried the ax in.”
“Sorry to tell you, but Helen Oswoski got married last month,” Chris said. “To Ole Hanson. She’s helping him run his stage stop between here and Dodge.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Steve admitted. He’d made a mental list of people he could hire to cook for his hands, and Helen, being a widow, had been the only viable choice.
“I sure can’t think of anyone who might be able to help you out,” Danny said. “Maybe you can pick one of the brides off the train.”
Frustration made Steve’s neck muscles burn. “I don’t need a bride, I need a cook.”
“Suppose you could ride down to Dodge, might find some options there,” Chris suggested.
“I might have to,” Steve admitted. “Don’t have that kind of time, but might have to make it. Walter cooked breakfast for everyone and the entire lot said they’d quit if that happened again tonight.”
Chris slapped Steve’s shoulder as the train whistle sounded. “Maybe there’re some other newcomers getting off the train in need of work. Won’t hurt to check.”
The odds were slim, but men working their way west and looking to earn a few dollars had been known to get off the train now and again. For the time it would take, it sure as heck was a better choice than the hundred-mile ride to Dodge City, which could prove just as futile. This time of year, most everyone who wanted to be working had a job.
Steve followed the cousins out of the saloon and up the boardwalk to the train station, which was already packed with people. Of course Josiah Melbourne was in the middle of the crowd, up on a platform that had been decorated with ribbons for the occasion and acting like his pompous self. This entire bride idea had been his. Short and pudgy, he probably knew this might be his only hope of ever acquiring a wife.
As far as Steve was concerned, the mayor could have every bride the town had ordered. He’d seen what this county did to women, and men. There hadn’t been a town here fifteen years ago when his family had left Georgia shortly after the war. He hadn’t known what his father had promised his mother, but he remembered all the things he’d dreamed about while walking alongside the wagon for months on end. A house far bigger than the one that had been burned down by Union soldiers, a barn full of horses, rivers full of fish to catch and woods full of deer to hunt—things ten-year-old boys dream about.
Their arrival to what everyone now knew as the Circle P Ranch, his ranch, hadn’t been what any of them had expected.
Used to growing cotton and tobacco in the fertile soil of Georgia, his father had taken one look at the treeless, dried-up ground and concluded whatever might grow here would never feed a family. But, it would feed critters, so he’d invested the last bits of money they’d had in cattle. His father’s investment had paid off—selling cattle to the army posts and later the railroad as tracks were laid west proved lucrative—but it hadn’t happened fast enough for his mother.
She hadn’t lasted two years out here. Losing an infant son to pneumonia the first winter and a three-year-old daughter to rattlesnake bite the next summer had taken its toll on her. The morning after they’d buried his sister, his mother was gone. His 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