Free Rugged and Relentless by Kelly Hake Page B

with the tines of his fork just to watch the limp, grayish thing slide back to the plate with a faint sucking sound. A glob of cold potatoes congealed beside them—slightly more appetizing than the yellowed meat loaf taking pride of place.
    He thought it was supposed to be meat loaf. At least they called it meat loaf. Never mind the fact he’d never seen yellow meat loaf in all his born days—never hatched any desire to do so, either. More off-putting yet, the offensive thing boasted a sort of springy texture when he pressed the fork into it.
    Fighting food
. By that, Jake meant it was the kind of meal a man fought to swallow, and the kind of meal that returned the favor by fighting for its freedom once he’d downed it, then stuck around to grumble about its defeat for days afterward. He pushed the plate away in favor of the biscuits.
    Bounty of biscuits
. The memory of fantastic food prepared by a plucky woman made his mouth water. Jake slathered butter atop the biscuit, hoping for something even vaguely reminiscent of that previous perfection. He bit into it, chewed, swallowed, and reached for his mug.
    He wasn’t one to judge cooking. Jake couldn’t make biscuits himself, so he could understand if they came out a bit burned or underdone or whatnot.
But how in thunder did anyone manage to make one hard as a rock on the outside, lumpy on the inside, and practically the batter itself in the middle?
    Strike one: No edible food. Strike two: No pretty cook—though, in Jake’s opinion, that counted as two strikes. If Miss Thompson served this mess to him, he’d have downed it just for the sake of the company. Strike three: The place overcharged.
    His hat wasn’t budging.
    The only thing this place had going for it was the quiet—which first tipped him off the food wouldn’t be worth ordering extra. Memories of meaty sandwiches wrapped in brown paper, with sugar cookies tucked atop like sweet greetings, made his stomach growl. He cast another assessing glance at the table before him and ignored his belly for its own good.
    Strong coffee and a place to read the papers he’d picked up earlier kept him in his chair—that, and the time he needed to kill before going to get answers from the squirrelly bartender. The man’s yellow belly probably matched Jake’s meat loaf.
    Cracking his first smile since he’d walked into the place, he unfolded the paper and started reading. Then stopped. Jake flipped back to the front page of
Durango Doings
, a two-bit town newsletter he suddenly suspected to be at least a week old.
    Today’s date stared back at him in smudged black on grayish paper of obvious poor quality. He turned the page to reread the advertisement that caught his eye, certain it couldn’t be the same one he’d chortled over from a week-old paper on the train.
    “‘Wanted: three men, ages twenty-four to thirty-five …’”He read the first line aloud before shaking his head. Same ad all right. Durango might be out of the way of civilization, for the most part, but with telegraphs transmitting words and the train carrying everything else, nothing could excuse being an entire week behind—even when it came to a joke.
    Jake snorted, tossed the rag aside, and reached for the more reliable publication.
    He scanned through it, waiting for something to catch his interest. When it did, he just about choked on the grit from his coffee. There, in a prestigious paper, the same cheeky ad stared up at him. No need to check the date this time—he already had.
    When an ad ran for several days, in numerous publications, across several state and territorial lines, it wasn’t a joke missing its retraction then reprinted in a Podunk town. No.
    Jake gaped at the words marching before him, considering them seriously for the first time. “
Object: Marriage …”
    “Unbelievable.” He didn’t realize he’d muttered it aloud until chair legs scraped over the floor.
    A fellow diner—who seemed only too glad for a reason to