Chapter One
One
“Junebug!” Kit’s disembodied voice rolled through the mountain pass like thunder, echoing off the slopes. “Git back here!”
It was a gusty, blustery, downright temperamental October in Buck’s Creek.
Morgan was still off honeymooning with his bride Pip, his postcards tacked up in the trading post until they just about filled the wall next to the counter.
Jonah had absconded for the month, prospecting with his friend Purdy Joe deep in the mountains.
Even the old trappers had abandoned Junebug for the down-mountain town of Bitterroot, where they now sat around people’s porches all day, gossiping about the going-ons of the miners and passers-through.
Junebug, meanwhile, was still stranded up the hill in Buck’s Creek, with a bunch of burned pots and a list of chores as long as her arm.
And her arm was plenty long after her summer growth spurt.
“Junebug, you lazy cat, git your ass back down here this minute!”
Well, let Kit thunder. Junebug wasn’t going back to scrub those darn pots. She’d cooked the breakfast, she didn’t see why she had to clean up after it too, no matter what Kit said. Let him wash the dishes.
She tightened her grip on the old flour sack she was carrying and slid deeper into the fall woods.
It had been a sodden week; the ground was mulchy underfoot and everything had a mushroomy smell that made Junebug think of the root cellar.
Which she was also expected to reorganize, she thought grumpily.
Hell. Not for the first time, she wished her eldest brother Morgan was back with his bride.
Morgan was the one who cared about stocking the cellar, not Junebug.
So let him do it. Or Beau. She wasn’t their maid. Or their goddamn wife.
She was a lone wolf, she thought fiercely as she climbed higher, determined to get as far from her bossy brothers as she could. She wasn’t made for domesticity; she was made for greater things. Like getting to that circus Beau had promised her if she won their bet.
It was her keenest desire in life to see a circus, one with gals in spangles standing on the backs of fancy high-stepping horses, aerialists flipping about like bull trout pulled fresh from the stream, and tigers and elephants from places where it was hot and jungly.
Hell, she could imagine the circus so vivid she could just about smell the sawdust.
But to get to that circus she had to pick Beau that wife she’d promised him at the end of summer. A better wife than he could pick for himself. The contrary peacock.
It was a bet Junebug planned to win. Although…
Beau had been collecting an awful lot of mail down at the Bitterroot post office lately.
And he refused to share any of his correspondence with her.
Junebug scowled at the soggy ground underfoot, kicking at the mulchy fallen leaves.
How was she supposed to beat him if she didn’t know what she was up against?
Did he have a genuine contender yet? It was a wonder that he had any correspondence at all, given how terrible his advertisement was.
The gentleman would prefer copious and symmetrical attractions.
Junebug snorted. He made it sound like he was looking for a whore.
But it was entirely possible he had found a few symmetrical attractions, given how he kept sneaking off and returning with his fingers all stained black and blue with ink.
That rat was writing letters. And Junebug wanted to know who to.
At least Beau wasn’t a first-rate letter writer, not the way Junebug was.
His correspondence was bound to be lacking.
He didn’t have a knack for conversation either—Junebug thought sourly of the long winter nights in the cabin, when he abjectly refused to entertain her.
Spit, he could write all the substandard letters he wanted, it would do no good—Junebug would out-write him and out-wife him.
Not least of all because she didn’t fancy mucking out the stables while Beau lazed about fishing.
Probably with Junebug’s good hickory fishing rod.
She still hadn’t forgiven him for snapping her last one and she couldn’t stomach him using this one.
The fact that it hadn’t happened yet didn’t stop Junebug from getting riled about it.
She imagined all the ways she’d give Beau a piece of her mind when she discovered him with her hickory rod.
Envisioning the fury of the confrontation got Junebug’s blood up.
It was good for the constitution; at least so she told her trapper friend Sour Eagle whenever he scolded her for raging about things that had yet to happen.
She’d show Beau. That no-good, jumped-up fishing rod stealer.
Junebug had her own stash of letters, hidden in a flour sack.
They’d been arriving in flurries over the past weeks; she was bound to find a woman who could out-dazzle one of those damn fool symmetrical attractions her brother was writing to.
She struggled with the bulging sack of mail as she navigated her way through a tight stand of aspens.
It was flat-out astonishing to Junebug how many women were keen for a good-looking layabout; her ad in the Matrimonial News caused a flurry among the conjugally inclined, despite the fact Junebug had stressed that Beau’s good looks were balanced by vanity of outrageous proportions.
These women didn’t seem to care. In fact, she’d had more responses than she’d got for Kit and Morgan combined.
Maybe because pretty men didn’t usually resort to advertising for a mate?
Like the way an eight-pointed buck barely had to compete for a doe.
They just tossed their antlers about and the lady deer came running.
Most of the men in the Matrimonial News were too busy listing everything they wanted in a woman to bother talking about themselves.
And if they did talk about themselves, it was in terms of their jobs: Rancher looking for a pretty little lady; Ostler seeking brown-haired sweetheart; Widower with kids wanting firm-handed woman, not older than twenty-five.
Men seemed to put a lot of stock in what they did all day.
But the women didn’t seem to care particularly what Beau did.
They were plenty interested in his attractions, though.
Junebug supposed that if you had to live with a man and let him kiss you all over the place, you might want to pick one who didn’t turn your stomach.
It was a stroke of luck, in that case, that looks were Beau’s strongest selling point.
She reckoned most girls would want a kiss or two from Beau.
Her brother was too pretty by half. The women down in Bitterroot (what few there were) got downright stupid around him.
Even old Mrs. Langer at the post office got fluttery, and she wasn’t the fluttery type.
She was more the slap-your-hand-if-you-touched-anything-on-her-desk type.
And Mrs. Champion at the hotel gave Beau extra cookies when he visited, which burned Junebug up no end, as she was the one who loved cookies.
She was also the one who put in all the work listening to Mrs. Champion’s stories.
It was sickening the way Beau could just swan in and get cookies without suffering through so much as an aside.
Ellen, the hotel’s housemaid, giggled and blushed and generally embarrassed herself trying to get Beau’s attention while he ate those cookies too, and all the whores at the cathouse over the road (the ones that Junebug wasn’t supposed to know about) managed to find their way out onto the porch wearing not much at all when Beau was in town for the day.
They fanned at their half-exposed chests and batted their eyelashes, and made a bunch of remarks Junebug didn’t understand and couldn’t find in any book when she tried to look them up.
Sick of wrestling the overstuffed flour sack uphill, Junebug rested a spell.
She shook out the muscles in her arm. She was headed for her secret clearing at the top of the rise, where she could find some privacy to sort through her prospective brides.
Up here the quaking aspens were splashes of gold amid the dripping conifers and there was a constant rustle of critters gathering stocks for the winter.
October was settling in with its fogs and drizzle and darkening days, and Junebug was running out of time.
She didn’t fancy waiting until next February’s thaw to get a wife and win the bet.
As she leaned against the aspen, fuming about the injustice of it all, Junebug caught an odd scrap of sound on the wind. She frowned. It wasn’t the crackling of fall leaves, or the scurrying of squirrels. It was humming .
Junebug wasn’t alone up here, damn it. And after she’d slogged her flour sack of letters all this way for some privacy.
She scowled. Well, whoever it was could just get the hell out of her woods.
Junebug had things to do. Tucking her sack of letters out of sight under the droop of a serviceberry bush, she slipped through the woods towards the sound of humming.
Maybe it was a trapper? Only it wasn’t trapping season yet, since the animals hadn’t grown in their thick winter coats.
Junebug cocked her head and listened harder. It wasn’t just humming. It was tuneful humming. Not only tuneful, goddamn delightful.
Which meant only one thing.
Beau.
That wily rat! He was supposed to be pickling cucumbers for the root cellar.
Kit and Maddy had refused to let Junebug do it anymore after the lids had popped off the jars one by one, at velocity, shattering one of their new kitchen windows.
Maddy was mighty displeased about not having any glass in the window to keep out the fall chill.
Still, at least it meant no more pickling for Junebug.