He Paid Two Dollars for the Bride No One Would Bid On—By Winter the Whole Town Owed Her Their Lives

Chapter 2

The road north of Hardpan ran between wire and dry grass, and the wagon wheels turned up the smell of dust and sage and something sweeter underneath, and Silas Bowman kept his eyes ahead because he did not trust himself to look at the woman beside him while she spoke.

“I’m a nurse,” she said. “Trained. I worked four years in a charity hospital in St. Louis, and two years before that under an army surgeon’s widow who taught me more than the hospital ever did. The burn on my face came from a ward fire I walked into to carry out two children who would have died otherwise.” She paused. “I carried them out. I have never once been sorry about the fire. Only about what it did to my prospects.”

Silas drove on, turning it over. The silence stretched until it was his turn, and when he finally spoke, what came out was the only honest thing he owned.

“Mrs. Bowman,” he said, “I think I got the better end of those two dollars than anybody in Hardpan is ever going to believe.”