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One

Buck's Creek, Montana, 1887

Junebug drummed her fingers against the trading post counter. She was perched up on the stool, watching the store while her brothers were over in the meadow, building Kit and his new wife a house. Junebug had been banned from the building site, which was just plumb unfair. It wasn't her fault the doorframe got split. Beau should never have left her in charge of it in the first place. He was nothing but a lazy, no-good shirker. Still, Junebug didn't want to be out there in the soggy old meadow nohow, sweating up a stink while they all growled at each other. She was quite happy here, with her pot of coffee and her complaints book. She'd filled up two whole pages with complaints-It makes me sick the way Beau flops out of work like a boneless rabbit; they got no right keeping me prisoner up here and not letting me off down to Bitterroot on my own-why, some gals are married by now and spitting out kids of their own, and I cain't even go for a walk by my ownsome; if I have to do laundry when I don't want to, I don't see why Maddy gets out of it, just because Kit's all kicked-in-the-head over her . . .

Last year, Junebug had got the bright idea of ordering up a mail-order bride to help her with the chores. Hell, she had four enormous hungry men to look after up here-she needed help. And she had found a wife, after some trial and error . . .

Junebug remembered the first woman she'd hooked with her advertisement with no small measure of horror. Willabelle Lascalles had been the wrongest kind of woman possible for a McBride. Especially for Kit, Junebug's great big hulking blacksmith of a brother. Willabelle Lascalles had been like a china doll, all frilled and fancy, with pale pink kidskin boots not at all fit for the muddy mountain meadows of Buck's Creek. Worse, she was a mean china doll. The kind that wanted cosseting. Or else.

Thank goodness Junebug had been able to head that off. She didn't need a china doll. She needed a cook. And someone who could deal with the caterpillars who kept infesting the vegetable patch. And maybe someone to do the laundry too . . .

She'd thought she'd found her answer in Willabelle's maid. A maid was perfect. And Kit had been good enough to fall in love with her and everything. It should have solved all her problems. Junebug scowled at the ink-scratched pages of her complaints book. But, in actual fact, things were worse than ever. It turned out Maddy the Maid could only cook colcannon mash and pandy-and Junebug was sick to death of potatoes in all their mash, as were her brothers. Which meant Junebug was stuck back in the cookhouse, cooking for them all. And she hated cooking. Almost as much as she hated laundry. Which she still had to do, because Kit had declared that he and Maddy were setting up house and Maddy was only responsible for the two of them. Ugh. Which left three whole brothers Junebug had to launder for.

And then there was the problem of Morgan . . .

Damn Morgan. The blockiest, bullheadedest brother of all. No one beat Morgan for stubbornness, or bossiness, or flat-out infuriating contrariness. He acted like he owned the world. Or at least this patch of it. Junebug bet he even bossed her around in his dreams.

But as irritating as he was, she loved him. And he was making noises about leaving again, which gave Junebug an awful feeling in her stomach. A swampy feeling, like things were crawling away down there. Lately he'd been poring over catalogs again, dog-earing the pages that advertised new saddles and tack. She knew Morgan pined for his days as a cowhand, for the time before he got burdened with his orphaned siblings. When he told stories about being a cowboy, his voice got a dreamy tone that was so out of character that it sent chills down her spine. Since when did Morgan talk that way about an orange sunset, and the way it cut through trails of dust, glittering with gold? Or the way the mountains rose blue and violet on the horizon, like a dream of what was coming? This was Morgan. Who had as much poetry in him as a cook pot.

But now that Kit was hitched, and there was a woman on the scene to mother Junebug, Morgan was waxing all poetic. And he seemed to think he could saddle up and head back out running cattle, leaving Junebug behind to cook for everyone and to launder Beau's and Jonah's pestiferous underthings. Junebug didn't like it. Not one bit.

It didn't matter how many times Junebug hid or destroyed the catalogs; he always seemed to get his hands on more. It made Junebug sick how much he pined to leave her. They had a good life here in Buck's Creek. Look at the place! It was goddamn picturesque.

Through the open door of the trading post, Junebug could see the creek (which was really more of a river) tumbling by, silvery in the sunshine. The thick meadow grasses were spring green and feathered with larkspur and balsamroot, and the chokecherry was waving wands of white blossom. The blue-blue mountain sky was fluffed with cloud so white it looked like new snow and the air was pine fresh and carrying the smell of sap and bloom. What more goddamn poetry could he want?

And aside from all the bucolic waxing on about the mountains, wasn't she enough?

Morgan had been a parent to her-a bossy, griping, captious parent, to be sure, but he had been there. He was constant, as solid as the ancient gray rock of the mountains, predictable and sure. Morgan just was, and Junebug felt something very like raw panic at the thought of him leaving. Hell, she'd lost a mother, and a father, her brother Charlie and a bunch of sisters-did she have to lose Morgan too?

He seemed to think she didn't need him anymore. Which was just plain wrongheaded. But so much of Morgan was wrongheaded. It was in his nature.

Junebug was scrawling angrily in her complaints book about that exact topic-Why in hell won't Morgan let me take the train to Butte? Thunderhead Bill says they got a saloon with dancing girls, on a real stage and everything. Morgan says dancing girls ain't no sight for a kid like me, which is the dumbest thing I ever heard; surely the whole point of a dancing girl is to be looked at?-when Purdy Joe came by with the mail.

Purdy Joe was new to these parts. He was a broad-faced midwesterner from somewhere down on the plains; he had wheat-colored bangs and a big gap between his two front teeth. His name was Jensen or Hanson, or something along those lines, but all anyone ever called him was Purdy Joe. He was up in the Elkhorns prospecting for silver and he was bright with expectation, like a kid on the hunt for candy. Beau and Jonah were prone to buttonholing him to ask about the prospecting-those two idiots had a mind to go looking for silver themselves. Purdy Joe had got familiar enough with them that he volunteered to run the mail up from Bitterroot to Buck's Creek whenever he was passing through, to save the McBrides a trip.

Bitterroot was four hours down the mountain and was shaping up to be a proper town. It had the post office, the rail spur, a mercantile, a hotel, a saloon, a cathouse and now a butcher shop (well, it was a tent more than a shop), run by a man named Hicks, who had arrived on the train and decided that the miners would probably spend their coins on beefsteak. He wasn't wrong. As far as Junebug could see, miners liked spending their money on pretty much everything.

Up here in Buck's Creek, in the high mountain meadows, there wasn't any butcher, tented or otherwise; there was only the trading post and Kit's forge. Junebug didn't see that it was ever going to be much of a town-it certainly wasn't getting the railway, not up a mountain this steep. Junebug thought it would be fine to have a railway station on your doorstep. Why, just think. You could hop aboard and go just about anywhere. Butte, for starters. But there was also Billings, Miles City, Bismarck . . . and places she'd only read about in past-date newspapers. Places like Iron County, Missouri, or Wichita, Kansas. There was a whole world down that mountain.

But mostly Junebug would settle for heading down the hill to Bitterroot, the biggest town she'd yet seen. So Junebug was of two minds about Purdy Joe's kindness in bringing the mail up from Bitterroot. She liked going down to get the mail. It was a whole day away from the sound of pounding hammers and grumpy brothers. And she could go visiting, gathering up town gossip and letting people ply her with coffee and (if she was lucky) cake. Purdy Joe was depriving her of all that, keeping her stuck in the trading post or the cookhouse, where there wasn't any cake, unless she made it herself. And she hated baking with a passion. Especially since she'd blown up the last cookhouse.

She also wasn't keen on Purdy Joe handling their mail. It was too risky. What if he found out about her secret mail-order bride business? She'd gotten in enough trouble over it last time. And this time would be worse, because this time she was bride hunting for Morgan. Who, let's face it, was the front-runner in the grumpy-brother stakes.

Still. Even if she was conflicted about him bringing the mail, at least Purdy Joe was company. Might as well look on the bright side.

"Mail for you, Junebug!" Purdy Joe stuck his head in the door and held out the pitiful handful of mail. It was only a single letter and one of Morgan's cursed catalogs.

Junebug slid off her stool. Purdy Joe knew not to go in the trading post while Junebug was there alone, so he didn't take so much as a step beyond the porch. It was annoying. Junebug's brothers were big, and they could get mean if anyone got too close to her. Which was dumb as a bag of hammers, since they kept leaving her to mind the trading post. How in hell was anyone supposed to trade if they couldn't come inside when she was here? Spit, her brothers were blockheads.

Purdy Joe grinned as she took the catalog and the tattered splat of an envelope from him. "Who you been writing to, Junebug? You got a suitor?" He wasn't in the slightest bit serious. People always underestimated her that way. It was 'cause she looked like a mite of a thing in these old coveralls. But she could get a suitor if she wanted to, she was sure of it. She could do anything.

So long as her brothers kept out of the way.

"Ha. Sure." Junebug played along, glad of the conversation. "The only way I'm getting courted is from a great distance." Junebug liked the prospector. He was young and cheery, and he minded his own business. The suitor line was just a throwaway comment. He had no desire to stick his beak into her letter. Not like Thunderhead Bill or old Roy-if they'd brought the mail up, they would have pestered her mercilessly, until her brothers got wind of what she was up to. She was glad they were off with Sour Eagle on one of their long hunts, so she could get on with finding a wife without them meddling. Even if she did miss them a little . . .

"You want some coffee, Purd?" Junebug offered. She'd not spoken to anyone but her kin in days and Purdy Joe was a novelty. If she couldn't go visiting in Bitterroot, at the very least she could play host to Purdy. She bet he was full of good stories.

"Best not," Purdy Joe said, backing away from her once she'd taken the crumpled envelope from his hand. He gave her a rueful smile and jerked his chin in the direction of the din in the meadow. "I got no mind to tangle with Morgan." He just about tipped his hat as he said goodbye, straining to be as polite and proper as could be.

Spit. Her brothers ruined everything. Now she couldn't even talk to a damn prospector without him turning tail and running for the hills. She scowled as she watched Purdy Joe head across the meadow to the raw timber frame, which was starting to resemble a house. Seriously? He'd visit with them but not with her? It just wasn't fair.

She needed a new wife now. There were too many men up here by half. Once she'd watered them down with a couple more women, things were bound to improve . . . surely?

Junebug looked down at the catalog and the envelope.

And if she got Morgan the right kind of wife, one he could get all kicked-in-the-head over, the way Kit was over Maddy, then he would stop this talk of leaving, wouldn't he? And he'd stop ordering these stupid catalogs.

Junebug rolled up the catalog and tucked it under her arm. She'd burn the darn thing before she'd ever give it to him. She considered the letter. Lucky she'd been here when Purdy Joe came by; somehow, she'd managed to keep her bride hunting a secret the whole season long. She had an excuse prepared, should her brothers ever get suspicious about the mail she received (because who the hell ever wrote to Junebug): she was going to tell them it was all part of her letter-writing business. They'd ask questions, because they liked to inquisition her, but she had a handful of decent answers up her sleeve, so she wasn't too afeared. But she might also just tell them to get their beaks out of her business.

Sometimes she whiled away a good couple of hours having imaginary shouting matches with Morgan over these letters. She sighed. It was a crying shame to waste all that good material.

This letter wasn't making a great first impression, she mused as she turned the envelope over. Postmarked Nebraska, it was a travel-stained splat of a thing. She didn't have much hope as she opened it. She'd advertised for a mail-order bride for her brother Morgan months ago, and none of the responses had yielded the right kind of wife. It wasn't that there weren't takers; there were. There were passels of women looking for men, and in particular men with a patch of land to work. There were widows and spinsters, women of means and women of none, tall women, short women, stout women, thin women, women who wrote with charm and others who could barely write at all. They promised fidelity and loyalty, labor and love, honesty and hardiness. But they were all just too . . . well, girly.