The Gunman's Bride Read Free

and far beneath her social rank. She would never be allowed to stand in a classroom, he informed her, with chalky fingers and eyes tired from reading late by candlelight. No, she was to marry—marry someone well situated—and forget her schoolmarm notions.
    Then Bart Kingsley came along.
    “Laurie, please tell me,” Etta begged.
    “It’s not romantic like you think. It was all a mistake.”
    “Was he cruel? Did you know he was going to become a killer?”
    “Of course not. In fact…I couldn’t have known the Bart Kingsley they’re hunting. At least…I don’t think it could be the same man.”
    “But it might be,” Etta stressed. “Remember how scared you were when you first heard his name—same as yours.”
    With a sigh Rosie smoothed down her black cotton skirt. Right now she wanted nothing more than to untie her soiled white apron, slip off her stockings and soak her sore feet in a basin of water. She didn’t want to think about the past. She didn’t want to remember Bart Kingsley.
    “He was handsome,” she murmured, unable to look at Etta. “My Bart Kingsley had green eyes…strange green eyes with threads of gold. And straight hair, black as midnight. He was skinny—rail thin—but strong. Oh, my Bart was so strong. He was kind, too. Always soft-spoken and polite to everyone. He loved animals. Stray dogs and cats followed him around the farm. When he sat down to rest, there’d be one cat on his shoulder and another on his lap.”
    “He worked on your father’s farm?”
    “In the stables. He was wonderful with horses. He broke and trained them with such gentleness. It was like magic the way they obeyed him. And you should have seen my Bart ride.”
    “What do you suppose turned him into a cattle rustler and a murderer?”
    “It couldn’t be the same man,” Laura Rose retorted. “The Bart Kingsley I married never hurt anybody. He wouldn’t even say a harsh word if someone was cruel to him.”
    “If he was so kind, why would anyone be cruel to him?”
    “The other farmhands taunted him because…well, because he was part Indian. His father was an Apache.”
    “Apache!” Etta cried. “The sheriff just told us that outlaw they’re hunting for goes by the name of Injun Jack. I’ll bet it’s him, Laurie. How many men could fit that description?”
    “A lot,” she shot back with more defiance than she felt.
    “So you married him when you were fifteen. Did you actually keep house together?”
    “No, of course not. We weren’t even…we didn’t sleep together like married people. We were just children really—children with such beautiful hopes and dreams.”
    “I don’t see how you could bring yourself to marry a savage even if he was nice to you,” Etta rattled on.
    “Did you get a…a divorce? Harvey Girls aren’t supposed to be married—it’s against regulations. You could be fired.”
    “We were married two weeks before my father found out,” Rosie explained. “He was furious. The two of them had a long talk, and Bart left the farm that afternoon.”
    “He left you? Just like that?”
    “There was a note.” Her voice grew thin and wistfulas she thought of the special place in the woods where they had first kissed each other. The place where she had found the note. “Bart wrote that he realized the marriage had been a mistake. He said we were too young to know what we were doing, and he’d begun to realize it right away after we got married. He said…he said he didn’t really love me after all, and I should forget about him. I was to consider that nothing had ever happened between us.”
    “Nothing?”
    Rosie focused on her friend. “ Nothing. So there…I wasn’t really married to him at all. Not in the Bible way. Our marriage didn’t count. And that’s the end of the story, so if you’d please just leave me alone now, Etta, I want to go to bed. I have the early shift tomorrow.”
    “You’ve got that blister, too,” Etta added, her voice sympathetic as she