“Only men who can read and write,” she called out.
“How will you verify the skill?” asked Hooperman, the trim, neat banker in his early forties. He was a widower, with two children. He would have been the obvious choice, if it hadn’t been for Miranda’s experience with the boisterous Summerton girls in Boston. In two hours, the little monsters had driven her to the brink of insanity.
“Easy to check,” Lucille declared. She tore off pages from the receipt pad and handed them out to the lottery participants. “Read something aloud,” she told Miranda. “These gentlemen will write it down.”
Miranda leafed through her Bible, picked the trickiest passage she could find. After the men had found pencils, she dictated a sentence and the candidates scratched down the words. Lucille collected the pages and inspected them. Once those with too many spelling mistakes had been disqualified, only three candidates remained.
Hooperman the banker.
The dark bounty hunter.
And, horror of horrors, Slater, who was grinning with victory. Blood beaded on his upper lip where he’d sliced too deep while shaving off his moustache. His tongue kept poking out to lick away the droplets.
Miranda could feel her legs shaking. A knot tightened in her belly. She sank on the rocking chair. It would have to be the banker. An educated, well-bred man. Maybe his children would be nice, and there were only two of them.
“The next question is to test a man’s education,” she announced. Her brain went blank as she tried to come up with the right task to eliminate Slater. She could remember the Lord’s Prayer, but Slater might have been brought up in a devout home, or in a church orphanage, and there was a possibility he might know the words.
In a flash of inspiration, Miranda recalled her father’s favorite poem. She took a deep breath and called out, “‘Yet all things must die.’” Blank stares met her. Good. That’s exactly what she wanted. “It’s from a poem, by Alfred Tennyson,” she added. “What is the next verse?”
The banker put up his hand. “What happens if no one knows?”
The marshal considered. “The lady can make her choice.”
The banker broke into a smile of triumph. “I have to confess I don’t recall the words, even though I greatly admire the romantic poets. Tennyson. Keats. Shelley.”
Slater did not give up so easily. His narrow features puckered into a frown. “‘Because we were all born to die?’” he ventured.
Miranda exhaled a sigh of relief. “No.”
Slater got to his feet, as big as a mountain in his grimy duster. He scowled at her. “How do I know it’s not right? You could say that about anything.”
“Because it goes, ‘The stream will cease to flow, the wind will cease to blow, the clouds will cease to fleet.’”
The verses came in a deep, husky voice. It was the first time Miranda had heard the bounty hunter speak more than one word at a time. A shiver rippled along her skin as his eyes swept over her, cool and indifferent, unlike the hot, hungry glare of Slater, or the admiring glances of Hooperman.
Miranda swallowed. Honesty remained her only choice. “Yes,” she said. “That’s how it goes.”
The bounty hunter got to his feet. He raked a glance over the girls, nodded at Nellie and headed toward the staircase. Appearing confused, Nellie hovered on her toes, then trotted after the man. A paying customer was a paying customer.
At the top of the stairs, the bounty hunter paused to let Nellie pass. He turned back to survey the crowded room below. His eyes settled on Miranda. “Be ready to ride out in the morning.” He spoke in a deep, emotionless tone that made even everyday words sound threatening. “We’ll leave right after breakfast.”
Miranda tossed and turned on the narrow cot in the storeroom where she slept at night. She could hear the music booming downstairs, could feel the walls vibrating with the merriment. The stairs creaked with footsteps as the girls brought their clients upstairs. A few doors down the hall, her bridegroom was busy enjoying the favors of Nellie.
Did the man have no shame? It was the eve of their wedding. Miranda groaned into the darkness at her misplaced indignation. Surely, for all she cared, the bounty hunter could line up every one of Lucille’s girls and take his turn with each of them.
How had she let it happen?
How had she ended up as a lottery prize?
For a week, she had sat on display, spinning her empty dreams of an escape. She had done nothing to help her situation. She could have tried to send a telegram to Charlotte in Gold Crossing. She could have asked the marshal to track down Cousin Gareth. Anything would be better than an unknown future with an icy-eyed bounty hunter.
But no, she’d been like one of those big birds Papa had seen on his travels. Ostriches, he’d called them. When some danger threatened, they dipped down their long necks and dug their heads into the sand, pretending the enemy didn’t exist. That’s what she had done.
Pretended her problem didn’t exist.
Hoping it would go away.
But it had not.
It was down the hall with Nellie.
* * *
When morning came, Miranda awoke bleary-eyed. The storeroom had no windows, but she could hear the wind howling outside, could feel the gusts that buffeted the timber building. Summer weather in Wyoming seemed as unpredictable as the ocean storms that crashed and roared at Merlin’s Leap.
She got up and considered her dress choices. Surely, the bounty hunter would respect a widow’s grief? No, Miranda decided. The black mourning gown would remind him she was supposed to be experienced with men. She’d wear the pale blue.
Hastily, Miranda washed, dressed and packed her things into a canvas pouch she’d sewn while sitting on display. She surveyed the shelves of the storeroom, added candles, matches, canned meats, dried vegetables to her bag. After starving on the train, she wouldn’t risk having to flee without supplies again.
Even as her mind dwelled on an escape, Miranda knew it would be the last resort. She had no money, no means of transport. The frontier region offered few opportunities for a woman to earn her living. Unless the bounty hunter turned out cruel, a position as his wife had to be better than entertaining an endless stream of strangers in a saloon.
On the landing, Miranda peeked down over the balustrade. Lucille and the girls sat around one of the gambling tables, dressed in their most conservative gowns. It surprised Miranda to see them up so early, for they rarely rose before midday.
When they spotted her, Shanna started belting out the notes of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” Miranda walked down the stairs. The bounty hunter pushed away from the counter where he’d been hunched over a cup of coffee. He was wearing his tall boots and a long duster. His hat lay by his elbow and his saddlebags by his feet, ready for riding.
“Stop that noise,” he ordered.
Shanna ceased her singing. Silence settled over the room, as heavy and sudden as the fall of an ax. The bounty hunter strode up to meet Miranda at the bottom of the stairs. He curled one hand around her elbow and ushered her across the floor to a compact, brown-haired man who sat at a table, eating porridge from a china bowl.
By the look of him, he was the circuit preacher—black suit, pious expression and a prayer book open on the table in front of him.
“I want no ceremony,” the