The Wives of Bowie Stone

by Maggie Osborne

Genres: Historical Fiction; Westerns; Victorian Romance; Western Romance

Synopsis

Knowing that she can save the life of a condemned man by offering to marry him, Rosie Mulvehey opts for a marriage of convenience to ex-cavalry man Bowie Stone, who promises to save her rundown farm as his part of the agreement.

Release date: October 31, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 388

Sample

Sheriff Gaine squinted up at the gallows and thumbed back his hat. “Well boys, this is your lucky day.”


Four men stood on the trapdoors. Each had his hands tied behind his back and a thick noose looped around his neck. Though
it was early in the year and drifts of snow buried the Main Street boardwalk, the noonday sun was hot enough to suck trickles
of sweat from the condemned men and from a noisy throng of spectators.


“Seems we got an ordinance here in Gulliver County that states if any of these ladies”—the Sheriff jerked a thumb toward the
half-dozen women gathered behind him—“wants to marry one of you sons of bitches, then your worthless life is spared and your
sentence considered satisfied.”


The eyes of the four condemned men swung to stare at the women who were staring up at them.


Sheriff Gaine’s upper lip folded into an expression of disgust, implying he occasionally had to administer laws that ran counter
to a prudent man’s nature.


“If one of these fine Kansas flowers picks you for a husband,” he said, scowling up at the gallows, “you’ll be taken down
from there and marched directly into the court-house for a hitching ceremony. If you run off afterward, the deal’s canceled.
Me and my posse will hunt you down, and we’ll hang you where we find you. If you ain’t picked for a husband—you hang now.”


The residents of Gulliver County had heard this speech before. Nevertheless the sheriff continued, allowing the condemned
men time to chew over the possibility of reprieve while he explained why this particular loophole existed.


First the war had drawn off the county’s males, then cavalry recruiters had passed through and taken most of the remaining
men to fight Indians. So few men were left in Gulliver County that Passion’s Crossing, the county’s largest town, had only
one saloon still in operation and only one sorry brothel that offered two whores, both of whom were having trouble making
ends meet and were talking about moving on. There weren’t enough men left in Passion’s Crossing to raise a ruckus on a Saturday
night.


More important, there weren’t enough men to put in a crop or harvest one, not enough men to raise a barn or repair existing
structures. Passion’s Crossing had no male labor force.


Sheriff Gaine finished his speech, directed a stream of tobacco juice toward a patch of frozen mud, then addressed the women
who would participate in the choosing.


“Who drew first choice?”

“I did,” Rosie Mulvehey said, stepping forward. She overheard a few snickers among the spectators and stiffened her shoulders.
Let them laugh behind their hands. Nobody in
Passion’s Crossing could think it any funnier or any stranger for Rosie Mulvehey to be taking a husband than she did herself.


“Take your time, Rosie. Look ’em over. Ask ’em questions if you want.”

Rosie shoved back the brim of the man’s hat she wore and wiped a smear of grime and sweat from her forehead. Feeling a tad
nervous, she removed a thin, store-bought cigar from her poke, lit it, then exhaled with a small sigh of pleasure, ignoring
the respectable women in the crowd who sniffed down their noses and stared at her. She stared back at the respectable women
until they jerked their chins up and looked away.


Once upon a time their attitude had hurt and shamed her, but that had been a long time ago, back when she had wanted to be
like them. The memory of it embarrassed her and made her angry. She had worn skirts then, and dainty little boots with buttons
up the side. She had even curled her hair in clumsy papers special-ordered from Kansas City or Denver. Back then she hadn’t
smoked and no liquor had ever passed her lips.


A lot of good it had done her. The respectable ladies of Passion’s Crossing hadn’t accepted her any better then than they
did now that she was a hell-raiser. They had averted their eyes from the bruises on her face and body as if they blamed her
for her broken arm or ribs, for the cuts and black eyes. They seemed to think she beat the hell out of herself just to offend
their delicate sensibilities.


At least now she was legitimately to blame for the icy stares and sniffs of disdain. Every now and again it tickled her fancy
to ride into town, get roaring drunk, and shoot up the only remaining saloon. And sometimes, like now, she liked to light
up a cigar and blow smoke at the respectable ladies. The hell with them, anyway. Rosie Mulvehey would
never be respectable again, so she ran full tilt in the other direction. Now everyone, including herself, understood why she
was never going to be a pillar of society.


“Rosie? You changed your mind?”

“I’m just getting a smoke,” she said irritably. Hooking a thumb inside her gun belt, she stalked forward to have a better
look at the gallows and today’s offerings.


They were slim pickings. Not one of the condemned men looked cast-iron and double-bolted. They were a damned dismal-looking
lot. One was too old to put in a decent day’s work, and Rosie dismissed him at once. The next one had a belly hanging over
his belt, more lard than muscle. The third was halfway passable, but he wasn’t much more than a boy. He still had peach fuzz
on his upper lip.


Feeling her expectations dwindle, Rosie slowed her steps as she approached the last man and squinted up at him. He was tall
enough and not too old or too young. He sure wasn’t fat. He was skinny as a nail and wore a gray flannel shirt and loose denim
pants that looked as if they belonged to a stouter man. His hands were tied behind him, so she couldn’t see if he had callouses
to prove his worth. What she did see was a wedge of skin at his open collar that was as pale as new butter. He had winter
skin, jail skin. This one hadn’t seen the sun in a while. And he sure was no beauty.


Not that beauty mattered. Hell, Rosie was no prize herself if it came to that. Still—last night when she had decided to place
her name in the draw, she’d been drunk enough to entertain a secret hope that her new husband might be easy on the eyes. Not
that she expected to take a shine to him; romance was definitely not part of her plan.


Be that as it might, last night’s bender had left her in no condition to judge anyone’s capabilities. Rubbing her eyes, Rosie
blinked against the harsh winter sunlight, wishing she could see the condemned man better. Part of the difficulty
was the huge shiner that had swollen the entire right side of his face, distorting his appearance. The hank of dark matted
hair that hung almost to his nose, where it sort of flowed into a ragged mustache that in turn blossomed into a ratty-looking
beard, covered much of the rest of his features.


Rosie had never seen a hedgehog, but she imagined it had a face about like this man’s: a pointy nose and a hint of eyes poking
out of a sheet of hair. It was pretty nigh impossible to make an overall judgment of his looks.


To compound her difficulties in choosing, she was suffering a granddaddy of a hangover that interfered mightily with her concentration.
Even if the sun hadn’t bounced and shimmered around the hedgehog, she probably wouldn’t have been able to focus well enough
to obtain a clear view. Moreover, every time she tilted her head back for a hard look, she felt as if she had released a dozen
whirling blades inside her brain.


Wincing and wetting her lips, Rosie slid a look down Main toward the square false front of Passion’s Crossing’s only remaining
saloon. She would have given half her bushels of seed grain to nip into Harold’s for a quick shot of Brown Blazer.


“Rosie?” The sheriff’s voice boomed like a cannon through her hangover. “When I said take your time, I didn’t mean we had
all day.”


“I’m pondering on it,” she muttered, annoyed at being hurried along on so important a matter.

When she squinted up at the gallows, she discovered the hedgehog was studying her as intently as she had been studying him.
Because of the shiner he could only stare with one eye.


“You any good at farming?” she asked finally in a voice that sounded like two rocks grinding together. It shamed her that
she sounded so whiskey-voiced. But then, she’d spent her whole life feeling ashamed of one thing or another.



“I’ve never farmed.”


The hedgehog’s voice didn’t sound too healthy either; maybe he’d been struck in the throat, which wasn’t unlikely. Sheriff
Gaine didn’t coddle convicts.


The hedgehog’s answer astonished her. Rosie couldn’t recall ever hearing a condemned man answer a question unfavorably. If
it meant the difference between living over the grass or under it, a condemned man would swear he could sprout little pink
wings and fly if the woman who was asking sounded as if she wanted him to.


She examined the hedgehog with a glint of interest. “Did you kill the man they say you did?”

“Yes.”

His answer damn near blew her boots off. She couldn’t believe her ears. And she wasn’t the only one. A murmur of angry amazement
hummed through the crowd.


“Did you shoot him in the front or in the back?”

The hedgehog’s one good eye narrowed, and the lower part of his face moved as if he might be taking offense at the question.

“In the front.”

That seemed fair enough. Rosie wasn’t bothered that a potential husband had murdered a man; some men needed killing. No one
knew that better than she did.


Rosie gripped her gun belt, straightened her shoulders, and tried to look as if she were concentrating. Fuzzy dots speckled
her vision and the outline of the hedgehog wavered and blurred. For about the thousandth time she took a silent vow that she
would never drink again. At least not until tonight.


“You willing to learn farming?”

The hedgehog had more brass than an army band. He just looked at her out of his one good eye and didn’t say a word. Any man
with a grain of sense would have babbled promises and assurances. But the hedgehog stood there as if he didn’t
give a flying damn if he lived or died. He wasn’t promising anything.


“Rosie?” The sheriff sounded exasperated.

“I’ll take that one,” she decided, tipping her hat brim toward the hedgehog. He wasn’t much, but he seemed the best of the
lot.


With an indifferent shrug Rosie turned and left the gallows to stand in a patch of sun beside the court-house door and have
another smoke while the other women made their choices. She lit up and jutted her chin at the respectable ladies.


At the moment the respectable ladies weren’t paying Rosie much mind; they were heaving sighs of disappointment that Passion’s
Crossing wouldn’t have a hanging today. The collective wedding didn’t interest anyone except the participants.


Screwing up her eyes, Rosie watched Deputy Sands remove the nooses from around the condemned men’s necks and cut their hands
free. Apparently all of them had been chosen, although Rosie couldn’t see what any woman would want with the old geezer or
the lard belly. That they had been picked showed the level of desperation in Gulliver County. Any man was better than no man
seemed to be the prevailing wisdom. And who was to say it was wrong? How could a woman alone put in a crop? Or hope to harvest
it? How could she keep up a house and outbuildings and miles of fence?


Shaking her head—and instantly regretting it—Rosie ground the cigar stub beneath her boot heel, then fell into step beside
the hedgehog as the sheriff led the condemned men and their brides inside the court-house.


It was colder inside the building than outside in the sun, but at least they were out of the wind. The courtroom had that
dingy gray look that seemed to be required of all courtrooms.


Preacher Paulson waited near the judge’s bench. He glared at Rosie over the rim of his spectacles. “Take off your hat, Rosie.”
Showing his disapproval, he ran a frown over her
man’s work shirt, her gun belt and her soiled buckskin britches. He watched a tangle of dust-dark hair spill out of her hat
and fall down her spine before he sighed and set about doing what Gulliver County paid him to do.


“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together…”

Standing next to the hedgehog in the middle of the marrying couples, it occurred to Rosie that she ought to be feeling something.
But this was hardly the kind of wedding a young girl dreams about. Back in the days when Rosie had dreamed dreams, the days
before Him, she had imagined every detail of her wedding day, except for her intended. That part of the dream had always been
fuzzy, but the husband she would take wouldn’t be hard to look at and he would like her a lot. So much for stupid dreams.


“Hell fire, you stink,” she muttered in disgust, edging away from the hedgehog. She’d been inside the jail a few times herself
on drunk and disorderly charges, and she recognized the distinctive stench, except that she’d never smelled the odor this
bad or this strong before.


“I apologize, ma’am. If I’d known this was to be my wedding day, I’d have dabbed a bit of whiskey behind my ears,” the hedgehog
said, not looking at her.


“Stinking of whiskey is a lot better than stinking of jail,” Rosie hissed. What was the world coming to when a condemned murderer
could make sarcastic comments to his bride, the very woman who had just rescued his worthless hide?


Preacher Paulson leveled a silencing glare in their direction. “Do you, gentlemen, take these ladies for your lawfully wedded
wives?”


Everyone except the hedgehog erupted into a chorus of enthusiastic “I do’s.” The hedgehog appeared to be thinking it over
until Rosie dug her elbow into his ribs. He gazed down at her out of his one clear eye and let a goodly pause develop before
he muttered, “God forgive me. I do.”



It was an insult of the highest order that the hedgehog had to ponder before he decided that marrying her was preferable to
biting the noose.


“Do you, ladies, take these gentlemen as your lawfully wedded husbands?”

To pay him back and allow him a minute to recall the noose circling his skinny neck, Rosie didn’t answer.

Preacher Paulson raised an eyebrow and peered over the rim of his spectacles. “Rosie?”

Rocking back on her heels, she studied the tin ceiling as if she were entertaining second thoughts. She sucked in her cheeks
and shook her head slightly even though it battered her skull to do so. With everybody watching and waiting, she raised a
hand and pretended to study her nails in indecision.


“Rosie Mulvehey. Do you or don’t you take this man as your lawfully wedded husband?”

She let the silence draw out tight, waiting for the hedgehog to cast her an imploring look or indicate some nervousness over
her hesitation. He didn’t. Finally, annoyed as hell, she gave what she hoped was an indifferent wave and said, “I guess I
have to. I do.”


“I now pronounce you man and wife. Gentlemen, you may kiss your brides.”

Rosie watched with mild interest as the old geezer, the lard belly, and the boy grabbed on to their brides as if they were
ropes thrown to drowning victims.


Finally, placing a hand on one of her revolvers, she faced the hedgehog, jutted out her chin and gave him a slit-eyed look
that plainly said she’d rather shoot him than suffer a kiss from him.


Even through all the hair, she could see enough of his expression to tell that her new husband didn’t cotton to kissing her
either. They stood toe to toe, staring, each daring the other to risk a move.



Rosie had enjoyed her share of staring contests, but this match was oddly disconcerting. First, the hedgehog was taller than
she had guessed. To her great disadvantage, the top of her head only reached his nose. Staring up at him was causing hideous
repercussions inside her hungover head. The whirling blades shifted to the back of her skull and started shaving away at the
top of her spine. Luckily she was accustomed to this kind of pain and could almost ignore it. Grinding her teeth, she bit
down and glared into his one open eye.


That eye was also disconcerting. This close, Rosie could see that it was blue, as blue as ever she had seen on a man. Blue
as a pansy petal. Blue as a blueberry just before it ripened.


“You try to kiss me, and I’ll put a bullet in your private parts.” Her eyes were beginning to sting and burn.

“The last thing I want to do is kiss you.”

“Good. We’re of like mind.” They continued to confront each other while the other couples stepped around them and walked arm
in arm to the court-house door. Grudgingly, Rosie acknowledged the hedgehog was no slouch when it came to staring matches.
His one good eye was turning as red as she imagined her own eyes were, and starting to tear, but he didn’t blink or look away.
She didn’t either, not even when it began to feel like someone was scrubbing sand between her lids.


She spoke between her teeth. “I’m going to count to three then we’ll both turn toward the door.”

“Agreed.”

She wanted to win badly enough that she welched on the agreement by not looking away on the count of three. The hedgehog welched
too. This startled her so much that she disgraced herself with a shout of surprised laughter. But before she let herself laugh,
she hit him in the stomach with her fist hard enough that he blinked and made a sound as if the air were running out of him.
His blink gave Rosie the win.



Feeling better, she swaggered toward the court-house door and walked outside. The minute the glare off the snow struck her
eyes, she winced and groaned out loud. Pulling her hat brim down to where it almost covered her lashes, she strode toward
the buckboard she’d left hitched in front of the general store. The display was sheer bravado. Every step jarred her brain
and notched her headache to a higher intensity.


“Is this your horse?” The hedgehog approached Ivanhoe and ran his hands over the horse’s flanks, then moved forward to stroke
his neck and inspect him more closely. “This is a fine horse. Too fine to be pulling a wagon.”


“Ivanhoe is the only horse I have left. The army confiscated most of our stock a couple of summers ago.” Frowning, Rosie climbed
up and took the reins in her hands. “Get in.” She waited until they drove past the gallows the deputies were dismantling before
she said more. “I don’t have the money to buy a draft horse even if I could find one for sale.”


“It’s a shame to put a horse like this in traces.”

The knowledge came to her in a flash—the way the hedgehog stood, the way he had run his hands over Ivanhoe. She slid a look
at his profile, noted the faded army blue of his denims, finally noticed the brass belt plate featuring an eagle enclosed
by a silver wreath.


“Cavalry,” she said. “The belt buckle says an officer.”

He didn’t deny it.

“Well?” she asked, turning sharply toward him after they’d traveled half a mile without speaking. “If you’re military, how
come you’re not wearing full uniform? And how come you were tried in a civilian court?”


The hedgehog acted as though he hadn’t heard her. He folded his arms across his chest and looked off at the endless fields
of snow. Cold wind flapped his hair around the bruises discoloring his forehead. Now Rosie could see that he’d been
beaten so badly that pride was the only thing holding him upright. He would require some nursing before he’d be worth a damn
to her.


“You might as well tell your story,” she said in as reasonable a tone as an irritated person could manage. She snapped the
reins. “I guess we’re married now. I have a right to know who I’m hitched to.”


“You know why I agreed to marry. Why did you?”

His evading her question annoyed her further, but Rosie conceded his curiosity was fair. “I need a cheap roustabout,” she
said with a shrug. “There aren’t any men around to hire, cheap or otherwise. Marrying a convict seemed the best— the only—way
to get help on my farm.”


The hedgehog wasn’t much of a talker. He lapsed into silence again, staring out at the prairie as if there was something out
there to see. There wasn’t. Just a lone sparrow hawk wheeling above miles and miles of snow-covered grass that stretched as
far as the eye could see, interrupted here and there by a bare patch or a sage hillock. There wasn’t a tree in sight and wouldn’t
be until they reached Rosie’s farm and the cottonwoods lining Passion’s Creek.


“Who was the man you killed?” Rosie asked after another mile. She didn’t particularly care, but talking was a more interesting
way to pass the time than staring at the prairie. Conversing might even take her thoughts off her hangover. Every jounce and
jolt struck needles of pain into her brain.


“Have you heard of the Stone Toes Massacre?”

“The world hasn’t entirely bypassed Passion’s Crossing.” (A bald-faced lie if she had ever heard one.) “We had news of Stone
Toes.” Frowning, she tried to dredge up whatever she could remember. “It happened someplace outside of Denver, didn’t it?
A great battle, if I recall.” There was something else she had heard, but she couldn’t pull the memory through her headache.



“A great battle,” the hedgehog repeated. Bitterness roughened his voice. “The Indians didn’t fire a shot. Two companies rode
into Stone Toes Gulch and slaughtered a village of women and children. There wasn’t a warrior within six miles. The men were
hunting.”


Rosie shifted for a better look at him. “I might have heard something about Stone Toes being a scandal. Then I heard the rumors
of scandal were untrue, that it was a heroic battle after all. You were there?”


“Yes.”

“Well?”

He pulled a hand through the tangle of hair. “Some men won’t accept that the Indian wars are over, the glory days are gone.
They’re looking for excitement, and they’ll create a fight whether it’s legitimate or not.” His good eye blazed like a blue
sun. “The Indians at Stone Toes Gulch had permission to camp on that site.”


Interested in spite of herself, Rosie gave Ivanhoe his head and turned her full attention to the hedgehog. Ivanhoe could find
his way home with no help from her.


She wished the wind would shift. The hedgehog stank to high heaven, and he was more battered and bruised than she had guessed.
He kept swaying on the seat as if he might fall off.


“So. Did you ride down on a village of unarmed women and children?” The question was hard and rude, but she didn’t apologize
for it.


The hedgehog stiffened on the seat and gripped his knees so tightly that his knuckles turned pale. “I refused a direct order.
I led my company back to the post.”


Rosie released a long breath. She could guess the rest of his tale, at least the broad strokes of it. The military didn’t
look kindly on officers who disobeyed direct orders. “You were court-martialed. Cashiered out.”



He turned his face into the cold prairie wind.


“What’s all this have to do with the man you killed?”

“Do you always ask so many questions?”

“The truth is, mister, I don’t give a cuss about you or your story.” Color flared in her face. “But you can bet your sorry
hide that every soul in Gulliver County is going to know your history before sunset. So I need to know it too. Otherwise,
if some flap-tongue makes a remark in my hearing, how am I to know if I should knock his teeth out for the insult or swallow
it down and walk on by? I don’t care who you are or what you did. All I want to know is whatever is public knowledge so I’ll
know how much pride I have to swallow. Now that’s fair.”


She didn’t think he was going to answer, and she was working up a good mad about it. A minute before she was ready to explode,
the hedgehog finally spoke.


“I was a captain in the Eleventh Cavalry. I refused a direct order from a ranking officer, for which I received a dishonorable
discharge.” He laid his head back and gazed at the icy sky. “If my commanding officer had not preferred charges, the truth
about Stone Toes would never have emerged. Those men could have continued pretending to be heroes. As it was, the Rocky Mountain News reported the trial and revealed the truth. Public opinion turned. Men who had been lauded days before were spat at in the
streets.”


“They should have been spit on. They did wrong.”

The hedgehog looked at her for a full minute, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“If you want to exterminate a wolf pack, you don’t kill only the male. You also kill the she-wolf and the cubs. That’s how
the majority of soldiers assessed Stone Toes. Most of my regiment blamed me for the acrimony of those people who object to
the slaughter of women and children. A soldier from Company B swore revenge, took leave of absence, and
followed me east.” A shrug lifted his shoulders. “Luther Radison shot me in the leg; I shot him in the chest. He died.”


“So how come this wasn’t self-defense? If you’re telling the truth, how come you were convicted of murder?”

“You know Gulliver County better than I do.”

Rosie chewed it over, twisting the reins in her hands. “I read about this trial. The newspaper said a man who was cashiered
out of the military with a dishonorable discharge murdered a genuine military hero who had clippings in his pouch to prove
his heroism. That’s how the judge must have seen the situation.”


The hedgehog said nothing, but his fingers moved to his throat.

They rode in silence, ducking their heads against a sharp, moist-smelling wind. The seat on the buckboard was small and their
thighs pressed together but each ignored the fact. The warmth was welcome.


A half-mile passed before the hedgehog spoke again. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“So say it.” A chill teased Rosie’s bones, and she could count the revolutions of the wheels by the hammer blows in her head.
Her thoughts leapt ahead to the bottle of whiskey on the parlor shelf.


The hedgehog waited until the farm was in sight before he revealed what was on his mind. Then he spoke as if the words were
dragged out of him.


“I owe you a debt of gratitude for saving my life.”

“I reckon you do.”

He faced into the wind, looking at the farmhouse and shabby outbuildings as they came into view. At least there were trees
here. Groves of wind-bent cottonwoods clung to the banks of Passion’s Creek, a small tributary of the Arkansas. Those trees
could keep a person sane when the vast flatness of the prairie became overwhelming.



“You said earlier that you need help with your farm.”


“If I could plant and harvest by myself, I’d do it rather than take a husband. But I’ve tried and I can’t work enough ground
alone to make a profit.”


“I’ll help you put in the next crop, and I’ll help with the harvest. I owe you that much.” He shifted on the wooden seat to
make sure she was listening. “Then I have to leave.”


Rosie stiffened like a dried hide. “Leaving ain’t an option, bub.”

“Rose—that’s your name, isn’t it?—I have obligations back east.” Something like pain clouded the eye that wasn’t swollen shut.
“Eventually I’ll have to return.”


“We’re married.”

“This isn’t a real marriage. What we’ve entered into is a business arrangement more than anything else. You need a hired hand,
and I’m willing to be that hired hand in repayment for your saving my life. At least for a while.”


“Those