The moment I stepped inside the saloon men's eyes played on me like I should be a prize. Dressed in my blue and white calico dress I was out of place but on display. Men in a corner stopped their card game long enough to take me in. Another man, alone, drank his whiskey from a bottle, licked his wet lips, as if he savored my taste.

The bartender, to his credit with white cloth over his shoulder and a wrinkled brow leaned over the bar. "Ma'am. Can I help you?"

The two men who were having a tug of war with the Indian girl stopped long enough to leave her stranded between them. I took the pair for brothers with rust-colored beards, dressed as prairie hunters-likely for Buffalo.

"Ma'am." This time the bartender broke my stare. I halted my forward momentum. Thoughts shifted to where I imagined standing on the stain of wood where my husband's life was ended by a gambler. "I reckoned it was time enough for me to see the place where my husband was killed."


The bartender rubbed the stubbles of his chin, as if trying to think back. "Sorry for your loss, Ma'am." Between his words the air was heavy with silence. He seemed sincere enough. "Say, you wouldn't happen to be the widow woman a few miles between here and the sandhills?"

"I'm the one and only."

"Ma'am this would be no place for a lady."

"Unless she be a painted one. What about this young girl? You reckon she belongs?" It was then a lump of fear caught my throat.

I turned to see Tad standing in the hard-packed dirt street looking through the gaping hole of the saloon. I had put him in a sore spot. I turned and eyed the men I took as brothers. The one in the chair stuck his legs out in front of me. "What's she to you?"

He smelled fowl as a carcass in the sun. He stood and kicked his chair away. Then he grabbed the Indian girl and twisted her arm toward the stairs where some harlots waited for business. I was taking her upstairs to get what I paid fer. Did you want to watch?"

The Indian's stark blue eyes pleaded with me. No doubt, she was considered a half-breed. "She doesn't look your type."

He smiled with a hiss. "Am I you're type?"

"Not hardly."

The other man stuck a leg in front of me. "Why don't you come sit in my lap?"

"Ma'am. I think you should leave," Said the bartender whose brow deepened.

The brother with free hands beside the table, grabbed me and tugged until I fell into his lap.

Without room to think, I slipped the derringer out from under my dress and shoved it into the back of his neck. As I sat there, I watched his blue eyes pop like cue balls. "I got no time for your kind." I shoved the nose of the barrel further into his neck.

I looked over at the girl. "You have a choice now girl. I need help on my homestead. Room and board if you want it."

The man stood over the girl and pulled out a bowie knife, holding it to her throat. The one in the chair squirmed, as I pressed on him.

A silver-haired man from the balcony yelled. "That's enough! If the woman wants the girl, let her go. But she owes me for her stay. I have papers."

I shoved away from the man in the chair. The other fellow shoved the girl into my arms. "What about my poke?"

What I took to be the owner of the establishment spoke. "Have another girl of your choice on the house with my best whiskey."

I pulled two gold coins from my sewn slip pocket. "Here's my retainer. Send me a bill and I will make good on the remainder when the crops come in." I swallowed the lump in my throat as I turned away with the girl.

The owner saluted me from above as one of the painted ladies swooned over him. "Have a nice day, Miss Taylor. Forgive some of us for our bad manners."

I breathed a sigh, as I led the Indian girl away with me into the dusty street, I was relieved that Tad had not pulled his rifle and come closer. I knew he figured me for too much grit, and not enough horse sense. But I also knew those kinds of men don't let insults die, when just the wrong look can get you killed.

I spoke to the Indian girl, as we climbed into the buckboard of the wagon. "What's your name child?"

"My mother named me Skye."

"You are free to work with me. I live alone with my son. If you go, I will not try to stop you."

"I was abandoned by white mother and raised by a Cherokee whore. My father is Cheyenne. This is the only life I know. A bird with broken wing knows no freedom."

Tad and I looked at each other, as he snapped the reins and we left the town behind us until a speck on the horizon. After a gulf of silence between us, I took stock in what had happened.

Within her blue eyes was a window to her soul, and I aimed to find it. I could see her true self hiding, the girl inside, never able to live that part of her life. Her wayfaring eyes spoke like an unread book. "I too have been lost in a man's world with nothing but my heart, and seeds to sow, and find my place. I suspect we need each for season."