Free Sixteen Brides by Stephanie Grace Whitson

come to mind,” Mavis Morris said, and nervous laughter circled the table.
    “What are you gonna do?” Sally asked Ruth.
    “I only know what I’m not going to do.”
    “Which is?”
    “My son and I are not getting back on that train. I am not going to allow Mr. Hamilton Drake to earn so much as one cent from my dance card.” She glanced at Caroline. “Mrs. Jamison and I will be staying here in Plum Grove.”
    “You going back east?” Sally asked.
    Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know.” There’s nothing back there for me.
    “What about you?” Sally nodded at Caroline.
    “I’ve got nothin’ to go back to ,” the southerner said.
    “Me neither,” Sally said. “But I got no interest in puttin’ myself under a roof owned by a man ever again.” She looked around the room. “You all probably got me figured for a whore ’cause I talk so rough. But I ain’t.” She cleared her throat. “I was married. It weren’t no fun. He beat on me one too many times. When he broke my arm I divorced the b—” She broke off. “Sorry.” She took a deep breath. “So. I’m divorced. But I ain’t no whore. Never was. Never will be. I’d die before I’d have to face my ma on Judgment Day with that on my account.” She smiled. “Guess a body’d think I’d be most worried ’bout facin’ Jesus with such as that on my account. But Jesus was way nicer to whores than my ma’d be if she was to catch me doin’ such.” She sniffed. “I’d-a never married old Ray Gosset if my ma’d stuck to this earth. But she just had to fly away when the angels took a notion to call her up.”
    For a while no one said anything. Then Ella Barton spoke up. “You know anything about chickens, Mrs. Grant?”
    Sally frowned. “What’s there to know? You get some hens and a rooster and keep the varmints out of the coop. Why?”
    “Well,” Ella said, “when I get a homestead I will be busy with plowing and cattle and crops. Mama will be busy with cooking and sewing. We could use someone for chickens—and maybe the garden.”
    A faint smile curled Sally’s mouth up at the corners. “Chickens, huh?” She nodded. “I could tend me some chickens.”

    Ella Barton would always remember the look on Hamilton Drake’s face when, after he’d taken a big bite of Martha Haywood’s succulent roast beef, he was confronted by the reading of the telegram he’d sent. Mama actually giggled as the man’s face flushed. He stopped chewing. Took a sip of water. Chewed some more. And then, when the ladies leaned forward and began to ask questions, he barely managed to get that roast beef down.
    “What’s this ‘bride business’ that rancher mentioned to Mrs. Dow?”
    “Did you really arrange for a circuit rider to come through Cayote on Sunday?”
    “You didn’t tell us about a dance. You sold the first dance?”
    “Is anything you said about Nebraska true?”
    “Can we even get free land?”
    God forgive her, Ella enjoyed watching the beads of sweat collect on Drake’s brow. When he finally jumped to his feet, Ella thought he might be bent on fleeing, but the burly man leaning against the doorframe sipping coffee precluded that. And when she realized that Mrs. Haywood was standing in the kitchen doorway, her arms crossed, a butcher knife poised in one hand, Ella decided once and for all that Martha Haywood was a woman whose friendship would be worth earning.
    “Ladies. Please , ladies.” Drake held his hands up, palms out. He cleared his throat. “No matter what you might have heard, there is free homestead land available in—”
    “No. There isn’t. Not near Cayote.” The scrape of Ella’s chair legs across the bare wood floor was the only sound as she stood up to speak. “I paid a visit to the newspaper office just now. They have a copy of a very interesting map. It shows all the land the government gave the railroad. Land they can now sell to recover their costs for laying all that track. Millions of acres. As it happens,