One Buck's Creek, Montana, 1886 Well, spit. How was Junebug to know flour was flammable? It was flour. You cooked the stuff, for Pete's sake. It wasn't gunpowder. Only somehow that great big sack of flour had blown the belly out of the cookhouse, she marveled as she watched her older brothers try to save the outbuilding. "You could have killed yourself!" Morgan raged as he threw buckets of creek water at the snapping flames. She was rather singed. And her rear end sure did hurt from where she'd landed in the woodpile. But she was fine. And what a thing to see. All that flour floating about in the air and then wham, no cookhouse. "You ought to be tarred and feathered for this," Beau grumped, sloshing water on Junebug's bare feet as he jogged up from the creek. "Well, spit," Junebug said, "it ain't like I set fire to the cookhouse on purpose. Not this time or the last time." If this was anyone's fault, it was Morgan's. He'd been the one to dump that great big sack of flour in front of her and shut her up in the cookhouse to bake, rather than let her go fishing. If it had been up to her, she'd be stretched out in the meadow, pulling a few fat bull trout from the creek, and their cookhouse would still be standing. But no, Morgan had to go force her into an apron and lock her in the dark little hut for the afternoon. If anyone was to blame for this, it was definitely him. Not that she was game to tell him that yet; she'd wait till he cooled off some. She'd at least wait until the fire was out. Morgan was worse than a grizzly coming out of hibernation when he was in a mood. And he was pretty much always in a mood. "How do you burn a stove down?" Jonah asked as they watched the remains of the cookhouse smolder. "Surely the whole point of a stove is that it's fireproof." "Junebug could burn down hell itself," Kit sighed. He and Morgan had that mountainous look they got when she was in trouble. They went all immovable and stony, and she knew there was no way around them. "It wasn't my fault," she reminded them. "It never is." Morgan looked madder than usual. "But this time it really wasn't." They weren't listening. They never did. Not for the first time, Junebug wished she had a sister. A proper live one. Technically she had three of them, but they were all bundled up under the chokecherry tree, no use to her at all. Sleeping with the angels was written on their gravestones, but Junebug never believed it. Why would you sleep if you got to see angels? No, she was certain those three little girls were having a time of it, flying about, instead of being here to help Junebug deal with their brothers. And she sure did need some help. With the cooking, for a start. Those four could eat more than a herd of buffalo. And they were fussy as hell, always complaining that she'd burned this, or put too much salt in that. Where was it written that she knew how to cook just because she was a girl? Nowhere, that was where. And she hated cooking. Almost as much as she hated doing their laundry, and she hated that something fierce. Those boys stank. After winter, their long underwear was fit for burning rather than cleaning. And did they thank her when she took the trouble to burn it? No. Morgan just shouted at her about the cost of new underwear. "They were unwashable," she'd tried to explain, but that had been another prime example of a time when he didn't listen to her. "Don't just stand there." Kit thrust a pail at Junebug. "You made this mess; you help clean it up." Junebug followed him down to the creek. "I told you, it was Morgan's fault." "You're just lucky we were smart enough to build the cookhouse close to the water and away from the woods. The last thing we need is a wildfire." Kit scooped up creek water. "It was my idea to build it close to the water," she reminded him, filling her own pail. "So I wouldn't have to haul water so far." "I swear, Junebug, you're as lazy as a house cat." "Lazy!" Oh, Junebug could have dumped the whole pail over his head, and she would have if he wasn't already halfway back to the smoking cookhouse. Lazy! She did nothing but work. She scrubbed and cooked and mended and fed the animals and gathered eggs and did the work of seven women. At least. Maybe ten women. But did they give her any credit? No! Instead, it was you can't pick blackberries, you have to milk the cow; you can't go wandering, you have to darn some stinky socks; you can't go fishing, you have to bake bread with all this stupid flour. And when Morgan's deadly flour blew itself up, it was somehow her fault. And she was also to blame for how slow they were to put out the fire. Well, she wasn't taking that. "No!" Kit said flatly as she stalked up behind him. "I don't want to hear it." "But-" "No." He kept his back turned on her, like she was nothing more than an irritating mayfly. "You know the rule. You got something to say to me, you write it in your book," Kit told her shortly. "I will," she promised his great big slab of a retreating back. "You just wait." As soon as the fire was out and Morgan was done growling at her, she marched straight down to the trading post. It was a ramshackle log building down by the creek, older and more substantial than the cabin they lived in. The trading post was the chief reason the McBrides were in Buck's Creek at all; their father had been sure he'd make his fortune trading with the trappers, and with the Nez PercZ, Blackfeet, Bitterroot Salish, and Crow, who took a well-established trade route right through the mountains. The McBrides' wide mountain meadow was a pleasant camp spot for travelers, with fresh flowing water and abundant game. And it did good business in fair-weather years. Good enough that the McBrides had settled in, building a cabin farther upriver, on the rise near the tree line, and a barn and forge. In the beginning Junebug's pa had dreams of Buck's Creek being a proper town, but it was too high up and got snowed in through the heart of winter. Instead, the town of Bitterroot sprang up four hours down the mountain, just far enough away to be wretchedly inconvenient, in Junebug's book. Junebug loved the trading post and would have spent all day, every day working there, rather than cooking and laundering and being the general workhorse that she was. Interesting people blew into the trading post-you never knew who you'd meet. Or what they'd bring with them. Once she'd almost taken possession of a stuffed beaver from a man named Garneau; the beaver was marvelous, frozen in a look of perpetual surprise, its mouth open, showing its two jutting teeth. But the best thing of all was that Garneau had dressed the beaver up like a gunslinger. It had a little bandolier around its beaver chest, and a cowboy hat perched on its beaver head. And it even held a gun, carved out of aspen and painted to look just about real. It was the darnedest thing. Junebug would have bought it for sure, if only her brothers hadn't been right there, complaining about how Garneau had ruined a perfectly good beaver skin. Someone, somewhere, now had the pleasure of that beaver, and her brothers had never recognized how nearsighted they'd been. They just didn't know a good thing when they saw it. As she reached the trading post, Junebug climbed over Thunderhead Bill's snoring body and headed inside, yanking her book off the shelf on her way past. She reached for the inkpot and sent splatters of ink across the page as she scrawled her complaints into the book. She stumbled a little over the word irascible and eventually crossed it out and wrote blockheaded instead. Kit didn't take complaints in any other form except written. He'd laid down the law on that when she was knee-high, and had even taught her to write so she could follow through. He stocked up on ledgers when he went to town, and made sure she had ink. All that trouble just so he wouldn't have to listen to her moan. Junebug was supposed to put her complaints in the book, and he was supposed to read them after she'd gone to bed. Every day she'd check the book after breakfast, only to find he'd gone through and corrected her spelling. Now and then he bothered to write a response to her complaint. Usually listing all the ways in which she had things upside down and backward, which she didn't appreciate. It was an unsatisfactory arrangement, to say the least. But if it weren't for the book, he'd get away without ever getting a piece of her mind. So at least it was something. As she wrote, Junebug was dimly aware of Roy and Sour Eagle sidling up to the counter. She heard the rustle of newspaper as Sour Eagle folded his old reading paper away and tucked it under his arm. Their companion Thunderhead Bill was still snoring out on the porch. The three old trappers had blown in with the last storm of winter and hadn't seen fit to leave yet. They'd taken a shine to sitting around the porch of the McBrides' trading post all day, gossiping like old women. Not that Junebug knew any old women, but Morgan said they were just like 'em, and Morgan wasn't prone to falsehoods. "Whatcha writing there?" Roy asked. Junebug ignored him. She didn't like Roy in the slightest. He was uncouth. Not that Junebug was quite sure what couth was, but whatever it was, Roy wasn't it. "That your complaints book?" Sour Eagle prodded, although he knew perfectly well that it was. Junebug liked Sour Eagle a sight more than she liked Roy. He was dignified and gentlemanly in his ways. Sweet too. What's more he told some mean war stories, complete with all the details Morgan said she was too young for. "It is," she agreed, slamming it shut, "and it's just between me and Kit. It ain't for the likes of you. Why, it'd sear your eyes right out of your sockets, the fury in those words." Sour Eagle respected the power of words. He gave her an understanding look. "You burn the cookhouse down again?" "It was Morgan's fault." She put the book back where it belonged. No one would dare touch it. Not when there'd be Kit to face if they did. Why, Kit had scared the wits out of Roy just yesterday when Roy had tried to put his hand in the jar of sweet strap candy without paying for it first. Junebug had never seen a grown man cry before. Roy had honked like a goose, his face all red and scrunched up, and Kit hadn't even touched him. Just the idea of Kit's anvil fists had been enough. "Junebug, are you still in the letter-writing business?" Sour Eagle asked, tactfully changing the subject away from the fire as he watched her rub the wet ink from her palms onto her overalls. "Well, spit, you know I am." "Roy here needs a letter writ." Junebug narrowed her eyes and looked Roy up and down. "He does, does he? Can he pay?" She didn't believe a man like Roy Duncan had a cent to his name. Or that he had anybody to write to. Although she supposed every man had a mother. She'd had a ma, too, once, although her ma was out of mail reach now; Junebug would have given anything to be able to write Ma a letter and tell her how these boys were using her up with chores. Her gaze drifted to the open door and the fenced-off plot by the slow-moving creek. The cross that marked her ma's grave was leaning toward the creek in that wonky old way that it had. What good did a dead ma and three dead sisters do her, she thought, feeling a stab of bleakest misery. Couldn't there be one woman to help her? Junebug had been nine when her mother died. Old enough to remember her, although her memories were bitsy and jagged, like clay pot smashings after you'd dropped a pot. Just lots of bits of broken clay that couldn't carry water no more. That had been a fearful bad year, the year Ma died. First Maybud had died, and then Ma. And Ma hadn't gone easy. She'd moaned and sweat and scared the wits out of Junebug with all the noises she made in the night. After she died, the boys had buried her next to Maybud and the other girls under the chokecherry tree. Pa must have helped, but Junebug didn't remember it; she didn't remember much of Pa at all. The thick minty smell of his chewing tobacco, the sound of him cracking his knuckles, the way he'd drawl, Well, now . . . when you asked him a question he didn't want to answer. That was about it. He'd run off not long after Junebug's ma went under the chokecherry tree. And the less said about that, the better; Pa was a touchy subject around here. Junebug didn't wish Pa back, but she sure as hell wished Ma and those girls back. And it wasn't just about the chores. Sometimes she got so lonely- "I got money," Roy said bullishly, interrupting her thoughts. Spit. There was no use wishing for what couldn't be. "I do," Roy insisted, his nose all out of joint as he took her silence for disbelief. "Honestly earned." Junebug fixed him with a calculating look. She reached under the counter and pulled out her sign: "Junebug McBride, Public Letter Writer." "I charge twenty-five cents a page," she told Roy sternly, "and I require payment in advance." "Is she worth it?" Roy asked Sour Eagle suspiciously. "I cain't be paying for no substandard letter, not in this circumstance." Junebug took offense at that. "I'll have you know that you cain't find better in these parts. I'm loquacious." Roy blinked. She assumed he had no idea what loquacious meant. She wasn't too sure herself, but it was a word Kit used to describe her letters, and it sounded plenty fancy. One of these days she'd get around to looking it up in the dictionary. "You'd have to be the best," Roy said as he fussed in his pockets, "you're the only." Excerpted from Kit Mcbride Gets a Wife by Amy Barry All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
