Today she was twenty-nine years old and had nothing to show for it except a dingy room behind a business that couldn’t make enough money to even pay the rent.Īdding to her melancholy was the memory that today would also have been her tenth wedding anniversary, if a drunken cowboy’s stray bullet had not made her a widow before she’d known what it was to be a wife. Ordinary they wouldn’t have had this much to eat, but she’d hoped a slight celebration might raise her spirits. I’m afraid we both will be, she added softly, getting to her feet. Picky, old girl? By next week, you will be grateful for salt pork, even if it is a bit rancid. Mattie knelt, extending the sliver of meat she’d saved, only to see Bridget sniff the tidbit and then stalk haughtily away. Reflecting on her desperately strained finances, she lifted the lid from a cast- iron kettle and added a small piece of salt pork to the pot of beans that simmered on the rear of the stove.

She sniffed the delicious aroma, and tried not to think of the weevils she’d had to pick from the flour before she’d made them.

Hungry, Bridget, old puss? Her own stomach growling, Mattie took two golden-crusted loaves of bread from the oven and set them on her kitchen table to cool.

When she entered the room, her calico cat jumped from the needlepoint cushion of the rocking chair and trotted ahead of her to the large, nickel-plated cook stove. She angrily tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, then whirled away from the window and strode past the curtain separating her shop from her small living quarters. They’d backed that brash, loudmouthed Texan. You’d think they would have sided with one of their own. You’d think the town would have shown her a little bit of loyalty since she’d lived in Sweetheart all her life. In spite of the early hour-if she could judge from the raucous noise and music-they seemed to be busier than ever.

They weren’t suffering from a lack of patrons. She peered through the rain-dotted panes and shot a look of intense dislike toward the saloon and brothel across the street. She hadn’t sold a hat in two months, and even if the sun were shining brightly it was unlikely that any patrons would arrive at her door. The widow McFearson placed the OPEN sign in the window of her millinery shop, then wondered why she had bothered. The wind moaned around the eaves of the weather-beaten building, and the rain from the blustery spring storm continued to turn Main Street into a smelly sea of knee-deep manure and mud.

Courting Kate by Mary Lou Rich