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      This book is dedicated to my husband, Ed, and our

      children Jill, Jon, Christie, Durk, Shawnna, and Kurt.

      And to our grandchildren, Livia, Blake,

      Kennedy, and Brooklynn. And to Kurt

      and Shawnna’s children whenever they may be.

      With much love.

       Chapter One

       El Reno, Oklahoma Territory April 1892

      Josephine Malloy sat on a rickety wooden bench in the tent city near the river. With practiced strokes, she replaced a button on a worn shirt that would have served better as a rag. Beside her, Muriel Wilson stitched a patch on a tattered jacket for one of their many male customers.

      “Brace yourself, Josie,” Muriel murmured confidentially when Orson Barnes approached.

      Josie inwardly groaned when the big, burly cowboy lumbered toward her. Orson claimed to be twenty-nine, but with a woolly brown beard and mustache covering his face, and a frizzy crop of dark hair surrounding his broad head, it was hard to tell his age. She took his word for it.

      Muriel nudged her discreetly. “Why don’t you put the poor man out of his misery before he spends all his money ripping buttons off his shirts so you can sew them back on?”

      “I’m hoping he’ll run out of extra spending money before he works up the nerve to pop the question,” she mumbled.

      Orson was one of the self-appointed leaders in the tent community—a former soldier who was well respected by the hopeful settlers. Yet he was exceptionally bashful around women. Josie had listened to Orson stammer and hint that a man needed a wife, and that he would be a protective provider and landowner after the run. Maybe today would be the day he proposed and she rejected him….

      Her thoughts trailed off when Orson halted in front of her, casting his broad shadow over her. “Mornin’, Miz Malloy. You, too, Miz Wilson.” His wide smile exposed the noticeable gap between his two front teeth.

      Orson chitchatted about the weather and the upcoming race to stake free land in the area that had once belonged to the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. Then he inhaled an enormous breath that made his barrel chest double in size. “Miz Malloy, as you’ve likely noticed, I’ve become quite fond of you while you’ve done mending for me.”

      Here it comes, Josie thought with an inward wince.

      “If you’ll do me the honor of being my wife after the run, we can stake our one-hundred-sixty-acre claims side by side and have twice as much land to start our new ranch.”

      Same proposal, one hundredth verse. No, she silently corrected, one hundred two. Muriel was at ninety-nine. With literally thousands of single men swarming the area to chase dreams of building ranches on free land, Josie and Muriel were constantly bombarded with marriage proposals.

      It was nothing new, however, Josie reminded herself. She had rejected several hundred proposals before participating in the race for land to help her brother and sister-in-law in the Run of ’89….

      She was jolted back to the present when Muriel elbowed her in the ribs. Josie raised her gaze to meet Orson’s expectant eyes.

      “You are too kind to offer for me, Orson. But I don’t consider myself good wife material and neither should you,” she replied, repeating the practiced

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