Badlands Bride. Cheryl St.John

to read and write. I think that’s good, don’t you? He doesn’t sound like a demanding sort of fellow.”

      “Or discriminating,” Hallie added.

      “Right,” Tess agreed, the comment apparently sailing over her head. “He’s not superficial like most young men who care only that a woman be from a good family.”

      Hallie heard the resentment in her voice. Obviously Tess was not from a well-to-do family, or she wouldn’t have responded to an ad from a desperate frontier man. “Does he say how old he is?”

      Tess frowned at the paper momentarily. “No.” Her expression brightened. “But he does mention that he’s never had a wife, so he must be young.”

      Or uglier than a buck-too!hed mule, Hallie thought more realistically. What was this poor girl getting herself into? She almost wanted to offer her assistance if the girl needed someone to provide for her so badly she was willing to do this. But she held her tongue. Her family had told her often enough that her thinking was not that of a typical twenty-year-old woman. Tess was obviously delighted with her plan. “What else does he say?”

      “Only that the country is beautiful and that I would have everything that I need.”

      “How romantic.” Hallie made a few notes on her tablet. “Are you worried about being so far from anyone you know?”

      “Well...” Tess chewed her lower lip. “I don’t have family, but a couple of the other girls have accepted positions in the same community, so we’ll be traveling together. I’m sure Mr. DeWitt will see that I can visit from time to time.”

      Hallie noted the term accepted positions for later reference. “Are the other girls as excited as you?”

      “Oh, yes!” Her pale eyes sparkled. “This is an adventure of a lifetime!”

      “I want to speak with the others, too. Can you give me their names?” Hallie scribbled a list and thanked Tess for the interview.

      Hallie met the other young women, then hurried home to write her article. The enormous, masculinely furnished house was quiet, as usual. She slipped into her father’s study and seated herself in his oversize chair, arranging paper, pen and ink on the desk top. She loved the room, did her best thinking among the familiar heavy pieces with the Seth Thomas mantel clock chiming on the half hour.

      Nearly three hours passed before Hallie noticed the time. Double-checking the information, wording and neat printing, she blotted the pages. Her father would undoubtedly cut it in half, but, pleased with her work, she delivered it to his office.

      He read the pages while she waited. “This is just what we wanted, Precious,” he commended her.

      Gladdened at the acknowledgment, she ignored the patronizing nickname.

      “Keep on this,” he said.

      “You mean...?”

      “I mean follow up. Go with them when they shop for the trip, watch them pack, all that. We’ll run a series on the brides, right up until you wave them off at the stage station.”

      Surprised and more than a little pleased, Hallie nodded. “All right.” She patted the edge of the desk in satisfaction. “All right.”

      Hallie read her articles in print each day, delighting in the fact that her father hadn’t cut more than a sentence or two. She was so delighted, she didn’t allow the fact that her father’s new apprentice was covering the boxing championships and making headlines nearly every other day upset her—too much.

      The day before her subjects were due to leave, she stepped into the office early. On the other side of the partially open mahogany door her brothers’ voices rose.

      “I’ll take this sentencing piece,” Charles said. “I’ll be at the courthouse this morning, anyway.”

      “Right,” Samuel said. “Evan?”

      “I still have the lawyer to interview and, of course, the matches tonight. I’ll try not to take a punch myself this time.”

      Male laughter echoed.

      “That’s some shiner!” Charles said.

      “Great coverage, son.” Samuel added. “You’ll do anything to get an unusual angle. That’s the stuff good reporters are made of.” The aromatic scent of his morning cigar reached Hallie’s nostrils, and she paused, a hollow, jealous ache opening in her chest at her father’s casual praise of Evan Hunter. “How many more matches?”

      “Another week,” Evan replied.

      Hallie reached for the door.

      “What’re we gonna do with Hallie?” Turner’s voice carried through the gap beside the door. “Her brides leave tomorrow.”

      Hallie stopped and listened.

      “That turned out to be an excellent piece,” Charles commented. “We’ve had good response.”

      “Plus we got the jump on the Journal,” Samuel agreed.

      “Who’d have thought that when you came up with something to keep her off Evan’s back during the matches, we’d actually get a good piece of journalism?” She recognized Turner’s voice.

      They laughed again.

      A heavy weight pressed upon Hallie’s chest. Hurt and self-doubt squeezed a bitter lump of disappointment into her throat. Of all the patronizing, condescending, imperious—

      They’d handed her the story like presenting a cookie to a toddler they didn’t want underfoot! And now they gloated over their own superiority. Hallie had never felt so wretched...so cheated...so unimportant.

      “Do we have any sources in the Dakotas?” Charles asked.

      “Why?”

      “The real story is on the other end of that stage line.”

      A moment of silence followed Charles’s comment, wherein Hallie imagined them nodding piously at one another.

      “Yes, when the men who sent for those gals set eyes on them,” Samuel agreed. “No. We don’t have anyone that far west.”

      “Too bad,” Turner said.

      “Too bad, indeed,” Charles said. “We could have had a real follow-up story there.”

      “Let’s just hope the Journal doesn’t think of it.” Samuel added.

      Heartbroken, Hallie gathered her skirts and trod stealthily back out the front door. She walked the brick street without direction. It never entered her mind to go home. Her mother would only tell her as she always did that her father and brothers did such things for her own good. Clarisse Wainwright had been born and bred to be a genteel wife and a mother to Samuel’s sons. The fact that Hallie had come along had been an inconvenience to all of them, or so Hallie saw it.

      Hallie hadn’t been born the proper gender to take a prominent place at the newspaper, as much as she wished to, as much as she knew the same amount of ink flowed through her veins as her brothers’. They’d patted her on the head and sent her on her way since she’d been old enough to toddle after them.

      The truth lay on her crushed heart like lead. They would never see her as good enough, as equal, as valuable or necessary. Even Clarisse had been necessary only to the point of bringing Charles and Turner into the world. Now her mother lived the life of a pampered society wife, spending her days with her gardening club, at the tearoom and playing the latest vogue card game, bridge.

      Hallie would never accept an invalid life like that. Surely there was some way to prove herself to her father. If only he would give her a chance, he’d see she was as capable as Charles and Turner—and more so than Evan Hunter—because she’d been born to the life.

      If only she’d been born a man.

      Her mother had forced her into dresses