He crossed his eyes and nearly fell from the chair. They took that as a yes.

Glory’s “room” was one of the upstairs gilded “cages” that gave the Bird Cage its name and fame. Getting the poor slob up the stairs posed a challenge, because he was bigger than Tess expected. When she took his arm and braced it across her shoulders, the hard muscle beneath his shirt surprised her. Apparently the fellow had only recently turned to liquor. Jerking him off of his downward path could be a good deed.

Or not. This could be the biggest mistake of her life. Still, a woman had to do what a woman had to do.

“Let’s sit him on the bed,” she told Glory. “I don’t like him towering over me like that.”

The stair climb had brought the fellow around a bit. His eyes now looked more wary than dull.

“What are you gals up to?”

“Saving your sorry ass from boozing yourself to death,” Glory answered primly. “And setting you on the road to riches.”

“That’s right. We’re doing you a good deed, is what.”

Tess nearly strained a muscle helping Glory sit the fellow on the bed. He didn’t carry much fat on him to lighten things up. Finally, she straightened up and looked him narrowly in the eye. “I’ll put it to you honest, cowboy. If you aren’t already hitched to a wife, you can earn yourself three hundred easy dollars in one afternoon’s work. Just stand up with me before a preacher and say ‘I do.’ Then you can be on your way to whatever hell you’re headed for.”

The poor man nearly toppled over. Glory and Tess both took an arm and hauled him upright again.

“You see…,” Tess continued, hoping to make her proposal sound reasonable, “my father left me the ranch when he died. It’s not much of a ranch,” she added hastily. It wouldn’t do to set the fellow’s thoughts running along lines of greed. “But it’s home, you know? But my noaccount brother gets the whole thing unless I get myself hitched by March fifteenth. And today is March first.”

In truth, her father had been buried on a hot day back in September. He had given her six months to find a husband, but she had kept putting things off, hoping a miracle would happen. A miracle hadn’t happened, and so now she found herself facing this sorry excuse for a man in Glory’s gilded cage.

He made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. “You…you want me to marry you?”

Tess bristled. “You don’t have to make it sound like I asked you to go to hell and back.”

He laughed again. This time it was definitely a laugh. “You want me to marry you?”

“A few minutes with a preacher,” Tess continued through gritted teeth, “then, when the deed is in my name, you can collect your money and be on your way. I don’t need a husband, and if I did, I sure wouldn’t choose a drunken bum like you.”

Glory lifted a cautioning finger at her. “Now, Tess, honey. You’re wanting this man to do you a favor. Mind your temper.”

The prospective groom heaved an alcoholic sigh and shook his head. “I’m not much for lovin’ and leavin’.”

Tess hastened to squelch that notion. “You won’t be doing no loving in this deal, mister! You can be sure of that!”

“You wouldn’t be married long,” Glory hastened to assure him. “Once things have settled down and people have forgotten about Colin’s stupid will, you’ll get an annulment, won’t you, Tessie? It’ll be like the marriage never existed.”

“Right!” Tess confirmed. Then she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You aren’t already hitched, are you?”

The man chuckled a little too cynically. “Hell no.”

“And you could use the money, couldn’t you?” Tess took an envelope from her shirt pocket, extracted a sheaf of bills, and dangled the money before his eyes. “Couldn’t you?”

The poor sot’s eyes crossed as he tried to focus on the greenbacks. “Three hundred dollars,” he said slowly.

“Three hundred dollars,” she echoed temptingly. Good old money, the bait that would hook almost any fish. “And you’ll be a free man to use the money however you want.”

He reached out to take the money, but she pulled it away. “When the deed is in my hand, cowboy. Not before.”

He squinted suspiciously. “No strings?”

“I’ll cut the strings while the ink is still drying on that deed.” Her heart jumped. The fish had taken the hook.

“Nobody gets hurt.”

“Not a soul.”

“Nothing ill… illegal,” he slurred.

“Of course not. Say a few words and sign a piece of paper. Then you leave, and a while later, I send word that you’re legally free. Simple.”

Simple. Right. Anything but, a voice in her head warned. But she had no choice.

Her groomtobe looked a bit queasy. “You got yourself a deal.”

TESSwasn’t about to let her fish squirm off the hook while she dillydallied about. Glory stood guard over the groom on the excuse of letting him sleep off his liquor in her room, while Tess dispatched the bartender’s son to the Diamond T to fetch Rosie and Miguel for the wedding. The ranch was an hour’s ride on a fast horse, and longer for her foreman and stepmother to hitch the buckboard (Rosie flat refused to climb up on any horse) and drive back to town, so Tess had time to talk Preacher Malone into a hurryup wedding and also drop by lawyer Bartlett’s office to inform him that she was about to head up the matrimonial trail. She didn’t bother to tell him what a short trail it would be.

Tess left the attorney’s office with a chuckle bubbling in her chest. The look on Harvey’s face had told her that he didn’t think she had what it took to lasso herself a man, not if her daddy had given her six years instead of six months.

Arrangements made, Tess had time on her hands, something she didn’t want. So far the morning had moved fast- the ride into town, meeting Glory in the Bird Cage, putting her persuasive powers to the test with-what was the damned fellow’s name? She hadn’t even asked. Oh well. His name didn’t really matter.

Tess walked over to the hotel for lunch, even though her stomach didn’t much welcome the idea of food. Through the steam swirls rising from her coffee she saw her father’s face. She had labored so hard to please that hardedged, obstinate man. His rare words of praise were hoarded treasures. His impatience, hot temper, and above all, his razor strap, had inspired her to labor even harder to please him.

Her brother, Sean, on the other hand, had fought the bit like a sour mustang. He had hated the ranch, hated the work, hated the livestock, the dust, the summer heat, and the winter cold. On his fifteenth birthday he’d up and left. Colin had been both furious and embarrassed that his only son “had a limp noodle spine.” And he’d leaned even harder on Tess, who had tried her best to be better than a son to him.

But in one thing she had never pleased him. Colin couldn’t understand why his daughter couldn’t lasso herself a husband and bring him home to help run the Diamond T. Her mother could have told him that no man wanted a woman who could handle a branding iron but not a clothes iron, who could butcher a hog but didn’t know the first thing about fixing a fancy pork roast. By the time Tess had reached marrying age, however, her mother wasn’t telling Colin anything. She had died in childbirth, trying to deliver a third child, when Tess was ten.

Tess dropped another lump of sugar into her cup and stirred. I’ve got myself that husband now, she told her daddy silently. But things aren’t going to be the way you wanted, you stubborn old jackass. You’re gone now, and I have to live life the best I know how. And I’m not taking up with some man who wants the Diamond T, not me, and who thinks he can step in and run things better than some silly woman.

So now she was stuck with a pickled bum. But not for long. Everything would work out, Tess assured herself. She would make it work out.

By three o’clock, Tess had rebraided the long black hair that hung to her waist, washed her face at the OK Corral watering trough, and readied herself to meet her bridegroom on the steps of the white frame church on Allen Street. Just as she arrived at the church, Glory turned the corner, headed her way, and the man beside her walked on his own two feet, though his boots didn’t exactly track a straight line. From the other direction, a familiar wagon rattled toward her with Rosie and Miguel perched up on the box. Perfect timing. It was a sign, Tess told herself. A good sign.

Rosie and Miguel arrived first, and her plump, brownhaired stepmother jumped down from the wagon to give Tess a hug. “You found someone so fast!”

“Glory helped.”

Glory and Rosie were good friends from the days when Rosie also had earned her living at the Bird Cage. The two women sometimes banded together to give Tess annoying lectures on how she ought to wear frills and curls to catch a man, but Tess loved them anyway.

Miguel, dark, lean, and wiry, climbed down from the wagon more slowly, favoring a stiff knee that had been stomped by a cranky steer two years before. He gave Tess a smile, but his attention swung quickly to the pair coming up the street. “That him?”

“Yup.”

“Big fella. And that don’t look like fat filling him out. You sure about him?”

“Seems pretty noaccount to me. I found him drunk in the Bird Cage. He jumped on the money fast enough.”

Miguel’s eyes narrowed. “You sure he won’t jump on more than the money?”

Rosie batted the foreman with her reticule. “Don’t talk like that in front of Tess.”

“Woman, I’m just looking out for the girl’s interests. She ain’t no lilylivered little miss who ain’t ever heard a cow turd called a cow turd.”

Tess put her hands on her hips. “Call a truce, you two. And don’t worry about my bridegroom. I made it pretty clear the money is all he gets.”

Miguel scowled, first at Rosie, then at Tess. He had been foreman at the Diamond T for the last thirteen years, and in many ways, he had been more of a father to her than Colin McCabe. He had a father’s protective instincts.