1 Chapter 1

1

Martha met him in the cemetery early in the morning, armed with a bouquet of drying flowers and weeds she had gathered from the nearby hills, and a bucket of food. Paul wasn’t surprised to see her. He also wasn’t surprised that she was the only one who arrived for the funeral.

“I can help you dig the graves,” she offered.

Paul looked at the two covered corpses near the shallow graves, then back at Martha’s pretty face. There was already a single bead of sweat in the hollow of her throat, her skin glistening in the morning heat. “No.”

Martha perched on a boulder, setting the pail of food at her feet. She looked almost childlike in the gray light of pre-dawn. Paul shook his head, focusing on the narrow hole before him.

“Why don’t you have the deputies help?” Martha asked. “You’ll want to get these graves dug before the sun gets too high.”

After the final showdown between Mayor Reid, his wife, and the town, everybody had vanished, leaving Paul to put Dead Man’s Corner back together from the bottom up. He earned the responsibility by virtue of surviving the battle, not by virtue of ability. He didn’t mind…much. “Nobody offered.”

Martha shook her head. “Paul, you’re the boss now. You don’t wait for people to offerto help; you tell them that they’re digging graves before breakfast.”

Paul shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. What’s with the pail?”

“I thought I’d bring you some breakfast. So you wouldn’t have to eat at the hotel,” Martha said, smiling. Her crooked front teeth always distracted him. It was her only imperfection, but it didn’t mar her beauty.

“What’s wrong with eating at the hotel?” He pushed the nose of the shovel into the shifting sand. It would be easier to burn the bodies. It would be easier to burn the town.

“Because the mayorshouldn’t be eating at the hotel with everybody else. It’s unseemly,” Martha said primly.

Paul laughed, though it felt more forced than genuine. “Unseemly? Honey, those guys don’t care where I eat. They probably don’t even realize I’ve taken over the job.” He had officially been mayor for nearly a week now, and nobody had even commented on his new role.

“It’s just not right,” she huffed. “You should be better than that.”

“This isn’t San Francisco or New York,” Paul said, pausing to survey the single dusty road that ran through town. He could already hear dynamite in the hills. The miners always got to work early. And now they could work in peace, without the fear of Mayor Bernard Reid sneaking up behind them, taking them prisoner, murdering them, and stealing their claims.

“If you’re going to do right by this place, you need a wife,” Martha announced. She brushed the hair out of her face, a simple gesture that drew Paul’s eyes away from his task.

“Now, Martha, where am I going to find a wife here? No women in Dead Man’s Corner but whores, and I don’t have the inclination to travel on to Santa Fe,” Paul said, his shovel slicing through the dirt. The only woman he wanted to marry was out of his life anyway.

“I can be your wife.”

Paul stopped short, but he didn’t look at her. Did she just propose marriage? To him? Despite his lofty new title, he was nothing more than a boy. What’s more, a boy that was in love with a woman who had rolled out of town the morning before on the arm of another man. What would anywoman, especially a beautiful woman like Martha, want with marrying him?

“I’ll treat you real good,” she added. “I’ll cook your food and do your laundry and clean up the house, and well…o’ course I’ll stop working at the hotel.”

He answered without thinking, fear pushing the word past his lips. “No.”

She reared back. “No?”

Paul shook his head. “No.” How could he deal with being Martha’s husband and Dead Man’s Corner’s new mayor? One week ago, he hadn’t even been trusted with a real job.

“Is it because of Eliza?” Martha asked, tilting her head and pursing her fine lips. “She isn’t coming back.”

Paul knew that. Still, he didn’t know what to do with a wife. He decided to change the subject, trying to ignore the sudden pain in his heart. “What are you doing here anyway? I’m sure you didn’t have any tender feelings toward the mayor.”

“No, I didn’t, but Elsie was always kind to me. Besides, you pay your respect to the dead.”

“I’m sorry I shot her,” Paul muttered. He could still see the mayor’s wife, standing over Eliza’s body, a mean smile on her face, a gun in her hand. Eliza had been defenseless, trapped. That second in time had been frozen, endless, as he raised his gun and stared at Elsie’s eyes over the long barrel.