Free The Gunman's Bride by Catherine Palmer

she wanted to become a teacher—and good teachers were always single!
    Perhaps if she truly wanted a husband, she could bat her eyelashes and secure one in no time flat. But what a price to pay for a teaching position. Not for anything in the world would Rosie trade away her freedom.
    As she headed for the Harvey House, she studied the townsmen delivering goods to the mercentiles, swabbing saloon floors, marching in and out of banks and driving cattle to the stock corrals by the depot. None of them had the broad-shouldered, rugged physique of the one man Rosie actually might have considered allowing on the fringes of her life.
    Bart Kingsley was gone. She had no doubt of it. The town felt empty to her, devoid of the presence she felt sure she would sense were he there.
    With a sigh she climbed onto the porch of the Harvey House and fixed her eyes on the distant blue mesas. She didn’t want Dr. Lowell for a husband. She didn’t want a cowboy or a railwayman either. Even if she wanted Bart, she couldn’t have him, and she might as well accept that she never would. Now she had lost her chance at the teaching job.
    As the first dinner train whistled through the distant pass, Rosie molded her lips into the Harvey smile and hurried to her station in the dining room.

Chapter Six
    A ny small hope Rosie might have held that Bart was in town faded as the days turned into weeks, and the month of April headed for May. Raton came to life with sweet wild grasses that greened the patchy yards around newly white-washed clapboard houses. Lilacs, roses and violets brought from the east blossomed among budding native piñon, aspen, juniper and cottonwood trees.
    True to Mr. Kilgore’s prediction, spring fever took its toll. One of the girls up and married a cowboy from the J. R. Jones ranch, and she moved out of the Harvey House to take up her new job raising hogs. Another fell in love with a brakeman from Chicago who wanted to marry her and take her back to the big city. But she was also crazy about a welder from C. A. Fox’s hardware and tin shop, who aimed to make her his wife and settle her in a quaint little house in town. Etta and Stefan Braun failed to keep their romance a secret, and Mrs. Jensen was in favor of firing them both. It was only Tom Gable—who knew he couldn’t find a better chef than the young German—who kept them employed at the house.
    Rosie dragged herself to town picnics, horse races and egg hunts with the rest of the Harvey Girls, but it was all she could do to keep her chin up. One afternoon, the sheriff dropped by with some news for the coffee drinkers in the Harvey House lunchroom. The Pinkerton agency had sent word that Bart Kingsley had been rounded up in Albuquerque and carted back to Missouri to face the judge. He’d be hanged, Sheriff Bowman assured anyone who asked him. A man with a record as black as that outlaw’s would be left gargling on a rope for sure.
    So that was the end of that. Rosie had to accept it. Bart Kingsley really was no good after all. He had come into her life twice, toyed with her twice and left her twice. Not only that, but she had also been fool enough to believe everything he had told her—twice. All his sweet words and gentle ways had been a sham. His tender touch had served his own selfish aims. How she had managed to fall for such a man twice, Rosie would never understand. She certainly wouldn’t let herself act so harebrained ever again.
    In fact, as April wound to a close, Rosie decided she would pursue her goal of teaching just as she had planned. She had heard rumors that Mr. Kilgore had not yet filled his vacant position. If the resolution to extend the school year passed during the coming election, he would be in need of a teacher.
    And if not Mr. Kilgore, one of the other school owners in town might be looking for a determined young spinster, though her inquiries at the other schools had come to nothing.
    Still hopeful, Rosie scheduled an appointment withthe