Chapter 1 - Six Brides Sent Home
By the time Ethan Callaway rejected his sixth prospective bride, Ridgewater had stopped treating the matter as romance and started treating it as entertainment.
People gathered outside Wilson’s General Store every time another stagecoach arrived.
They pretended to inspect sacks of flour or compare nails while they waited to see what sort of woman had come this time to tempt the impossible rancher from the mountains.
The first had been the daughter of a cattle broker from San Antonio.
She was beautiful enough to turn heads before her boots touched the ground.
She lasted eleven days.
The second came from Dallas and could play Chopin without looking at the keys.
She lasted five.
The third spoke French, Spanish, and enough German to impress half of Ridgewater.
Ethan sent her home after supper on the fourth evening.
Then came a widow from Fort Worth, followed by a schoolteacher with copper hair, and finally the blue-eyed daughter of a banker whose father had promised a dowry large enough to buy another hundred acres.
She lasted less than forty-eight hours.
Ridgewater could forgive a man for being particular.
It could not forgive him for being interesting.
“Maybe he’s waiting for the Queen of England,” someone joked.
“Queen wouldn’t survive Callaway winter.”
“Neither will Ethan if he keeps scaring women off.”
The laughter carried across the boardwalk.
Martha Boone heard every word.
She always did.
At twenty-eight, Martha spent most of her days in the steaming back room of Jensen’s Laundry with her sleeves rolled above strong forearms and soap whitening the cracks in her hands.
She was broad through the shoulders and hips, with a round face people rarely remembered once they looked away.
The crueler young men in town called her the buffalo girl.
Never directly.
Not anymore.
They had discovered years earlier that Martha Boone could look through a man until he felt six inches tall without saying a word.
So they whispered instead.
Martha preferred it that way.
Whispers contained information.
And information, her mother used to say, was often more valuable than gold.
That afternoon she folded three shirts belonging to Mayor Cullen and listened to two women near the front counter discuss Ethan Callaway.
“He doesn’t want a wife,” Mrs. Pritchard declared.
“He certainly keeps advertising for one.”
“That was Ruth’s idea.”
Martha’s hands slowed.
Ruth Callaway.
Now there was a name she had heard with increasing frequency.
Ruth had come to the mountains thirty-two years earlier as a young widow with a five-year-old boy and forty acres most men considered worthless.
She had enlarged the property piece by piece until Callaway Ranch stretched across nearly three hundred acres of mountain meadow and timber.
Old-timers spoke of Ruth with something close to reverence.
But lately the stories had changed.
Headaches.
Fainting spells.
Blurred vision.
Weakness.
Strange bouts of confusion.
Six months earlier she had stopped riding.
Three months later she had stopped coming into Ridgewater.
Now people said she rarely left her upstairs bedroom.
Seven physicians had examined her.
None had helped.
Most people assumed Ethan wanted a beautiful wife.
Martha suspected he wanted something quite different.
The truth arrived two days later wrapped in linen shirts and smelling of whiskey.
Dr. Harlan Price staggered through the laundry door shortly after three in the afternoon.
He had once been Ridgewater’s most respected physician.
He was still its richest.
Price was a polished man in his fifties, silver-haired and smooth-faced, with the habit of smiling even when his eyes remained cold.
Martha knew those eyes.
Her mother had never trusted them.
“Miss Boone,” Price said.
“Doctor.”
“My laundry?”
“Finished yesterday.”
She brought out the parcel.
Price dropped several coins on the counter, then turned when his assistant, young Walter Phelps, entered behind him.
They walked toward the door.
Martha returned to folding.
Neither man lowered his voice.
Why would they?
Martha Boone was furniture.
“The old woman worse?” Phelps asked.
Price chuckled.
“Much.”
“You think Callaway will bring somebody else in?”
“He can bring every doctor from here to Boston.”
Martha’s fingers stopped on a white collar.
Price’s voice softened.
But not enough.
“She won’t improve.”
There was something about the certainty in those words.
Not professional resignation.
Not sadness.
Certainty.
Phelps gave a nervous laugh.
“How can you know that?”
Price stopped.
For one long second, Martha thought he might look back.
Instead he said, “Because some illnesses don’t reverse themselves.”
The door opened.
Cold air rushed inside.
Then they were gone.
Martha stared at the shirt beneath her hands.
Her pulse had begun to beat faster.
That night she carried a lantern to the small room behind the laundry where she lived.
Rain tapped softly against the window.
From beneath her bed, she pulled out a wooden box.
Martha had not opened it in six months.
Inside lay a bundle of dried plants, three small cloth bags, a silver thimble, a faded photograph—and a leather-bound journal.
The cover had been worn smooth.
On the first page, written in a careful hand, were four words.
For Martha, when ready.
Her mother, Naomi Boone, had been Cherokee.
Ridgewater remembered Naomi as a quiet seamstress who occasionally helped women through difficult childbirths.
That was only part of who she had been.
Naomi understood plants.
Fevers.
Wounds.
Poisons.
She had learned from her mother, who had learned from hers.
Naomi never called herself a doctor.
She disliked people who required titles before believing what their eyes showed them.
Martha lit another lamp and began turning pages.
She searched headaches first.
Then blurred vision.
Dizziness.
Stomach pain.
Weakness.
Confusion.
She found combinations involving contaminated water.
Mold.
Lead.
Wild mushrooms.
Then she reached a page marked with a pressed yellow flower.
Martha stopped.
Her mother had written a warning beneath it.
Small amounts over time may imitate ordinary decline. Vision may blur. Head pain worsens. Weakness follows. Victim may appear naturally ill.
Martha read faster.
Nausea.
Irregular pulse.
Confusion.
Sensitivity to light.
She thought about every rumor she had heard regarding Ruth Callaway.
Then she remembered Dr. Price.
“She won’t improve.”
Martha sat back slowly.
Rain continued tapping at the glass.
It was possible she was wrong.
She prayed she was wrong.
But her mother had taught her something else.
When several pieces formed a pattern, refusing to see it did not make the pattern disappear.
At eleven that night, Martha packed food, blankets, the journal, and several carefully wrapped bundles from Naomi’s collection.
At midnight she borrowed a mare from Mr. Jensen.
At one, snow began falling in the high country.
At two, the trail turned to mud.
At three, Martha nearly turned back when lightning rolled behind the mountains.
Then she imagined an elderly woman lying helpless upstairs while everyone waited for nature to finish what someone else might have begun.
Martha kept riding.
Shortly before four in the morning, the black outline of Callaway Ranch appeared through the trees.
One lamp burned behind an upstairs window.
Martha dismounted.
Her dress was soaked below the knees.
Her boots were covered in mud.
Her hair had partly escaped its pins.
She had never felt less like the beautiful women Ridgewater believed Ethan Callaway deserved.
She climbed the porch steps anyway.
Before her hand touched the door, it opened.
Ethan Callaway stood there holding a rifle.
Martha had seen him twice from a distance.
Up close, he looked more exhausted than dangerous.
His dark hair curled slightly beneath his hat.
A short beard shadowed his jaw.
His gray eyes were alert despite the hour.
“What the hell are you doing on my porch?”
“Martha Boone.”
His expression did not change.
“I heard you.”
“I need five minutes.”
“At four in the morning?”
“Yes.”
He looked beyond her.
“You alone?”
“Yes.”
“That’s either brave or foolish.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
His gaze briefly moved over her mud-covered clothing.
Martha knew what he saw.
A laundress.
A large woman from town.
Someone not worth waking for.
She refused to care.
“Mr. Callaway, I need to see your mother.”
His rifle came up slightly.
“No.”
“Then listen.”
“You have thirty seconds.”
Martha reached slowly for her journal.
Ethan’s eyes sharpened.
“This belonged to my mother,” she said. “She recorded illnesses for thirty years.”
“Twenty seconds.”
“I know what symptoms your mother has.”
His jaw tightened.
“So does everybody in Ridgewater.”
“I also heard Dr. Harlan Price yesterday.”
That changed something.
Not much.
Enough.
“What did you hear?”
Martha held his gaze.
“He said she wouldn’t improve.”
“That’s hardly news.”
“He said it like a man discussing something he already knew.”
Ethan’s patience disappeared.
“Miss Boone—”
“Your mother isn’t dying naturally.”
Silence.
Wind pushed snow across the porch.
The rifle lowered an inch.
Ethan stared at Martha as though he had not understood her.
She stepped closer.
“Someone may be making her sick.”
For the first time since opening the door, Ethan Callaway looked afraid.
And high above them, inside the dark ranch house, something shattered.
Ethan spun toward the sound.
Martha heard a woman cry out.
The rifle dropped completely.
Ethan ran inside.
Martha followed.
Neither of them knew it yet, but before sunrise they would find the first proof that Ruth Callaway’s illness was no accident.
May you like
And once they found it, someone in Ridgewater would know Martha Boone had become dangerous.
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