considered himself a gentleman and his newly hired
girls, ladies, and thought it best to maintain a certain
decorum around them, hence standing out of plain
sight to make water.
He heard Maggie say, “They’s men coming.”
He buttoned up quick and came around the wagon
where they stood pointing.
“Good, maybe I can hire them to fix this busted
wheel.”
But as soon as he got a closer look at the men, he
knew that they weren’t wheel-fixers, and if anything
they were as full of potential trouble as a lightning
storm.
He said out of the side of his mouth, “You ladies
get behind the wagon till I can equate these particular
gents.”
The brothers rode up and halted their mounts, and
for a full moment the three of them locked stares with
Ellis Kansas. He told himself that the situation was
bad, him against three, and him with naught but a
pair of two-shot derringers in his boots that were only
good for close-in work.
“How do, gents,” he said.
The eyes of the Stone brothers went from Ellis
Kansas to the women—what they could see of them—
on the far side of the wagon: five lovely faces. Then
they shifted their gaze to the wheel lying on the
ground.
Zeb rolled his eyes like some old bull looking for a
place to graze.
Zack scratched himself.
Zane sat grinning under his flop hat.
“Looks like your wheel fell off,” Zeb said.
“It surely did. I wonder if I might ask your help
getting it back on?”
“You might.”
Then nobody said anything. The girls stood breath-
less wondering how things were going to play out.
Maggie, the practical one of the bunch, sure hoped
there wouldn’t be any killing; that Ellis would not be
shot dead. For it would mean they’d be left without
their benefactor and the promised jobs, and faced with
starting over and left on their own in these far-flung
prairies, perhaps murdered themselves once murder be-
gan. Personally, at the age of thirty, she was feeling a bit
long in the tooth and was counting on winning Ellis’s
affections, and thereby possibly obtaining the position
of house madam. Such a position would mean she’d
not have to rely on her fading youth and beauty as
much as she would otherwise. She knew if she had to
compete for lonesome men’s attention with the other
younger women, she’d forever struggle to make a go of
it. She felt she had it in her to be a boss and earn regu-
lar wages.
“Well, then, I’m asking,” Ellis said, picking up the
conversation from where it had dropped off.
“We don’t work for free, mister.”
“No, I would expect to pay you for your time.”
“Might offer to pay in some of that,” Zeb said
nodding toward the girls.
“Mighty dear price just to fix a wheel.”
Zeb stretched forth an arm.
“I don’t see an army of wheelwrights passing this
way, do you? You could be sitting here a mighty long
time. I hear there are still ragtag bands of wild Indi-
ans about, and bears and wolves aplenty. And that
don’t even speak of road agents, rapists, and murder-
ers. How dear a price is it you think for us’ns to fix
that wheel and get you on your way?”
“What do you propose?”
“Us’ns with them, a turn apiece.”
Ellis did a quick tote in his head: three of them, go-
ing rate of ten dollars a toss, one turn each: thirty dol-
lars. Dear price indeed just to fix a wheel, but like the
fellow said, what choice had he? They’d been out on
the grasslands almost three hours already and these
were the first humans to come along in that time, if
you could call them humans.
“Wait a second,” he said and went to confer with
the girls.
“I need three of you to let those gents have a go
with you in order to get that wheel fixed and get us on
to our destination—any volunteers, or do you want
me to choose?”
“They look dirty as hogs,” Baby Doe, the youn-
gest, said.
“Best get used to it, out here on these prairies,” El-
lis said. “It ain’t exactly Denver or San Francisco
where baths are plentiful and men are sociable
enough to always know to take a bath even if a bath is
available, which it ain’t always. These most likely are
representative of what you’ll be working with once
we get to Sweet Sorrow.”
“But we thought you said there were lots of poten-
tial husbands,” the China Doll said.
Ellis looked at her, this tall oriental girl.
“Hell, these”—he turned once to look over his
shoulder at the scruffy men—“might be the cream of
the crop. But it don’t mean they wouldn’t be looking
