Iron Ties by Ann Parker

waist as if he owned her. No wonder the justice of the peace had balked until Mark doubled his fee. He knew we were eloping. Probably guessed that Mark was a sporting man, gambling on making his fortune by marrying me.
    Yet even as she thought this, another inner voice insisted: Nonsense! We loved each other. Through all the hard times, all that conspired to part us, we stayed together. There was no reason for him to walk out last year. We were planning to sell the saloon and move to California, for William’s health. Something took him from me. Maybe he was bushwhacked by cutthroats and his body tossed down a mineshaft.
    Inez shook her head and dismissed the tired argument. It rose regularly like a spirit, summoned whenever she thought of the day Mark had left the house to talk to a prospective buyer for the saloon and never returned. Not a whisper of his whereabouts had reached her ears after that, except for a tenuous tale of a sighting in Denver in December. And the teller of that tale, she reminded herself, was not entirely to be trusted in his motives. Yet, ever since January, she’d had a recurring dream in which she was awakened by the metallic sigh of a key in the lock. The front door bolt would slide open, footsteps sound in the hallway, and Mark’s silhouette would appear at the threshold to her bedroom. Recently, the dream had taken a new twist, ending with Reverend Sands rolling away from her in the sheets and reaching for his revolver on the nightstand as Mark drew his gun.
    Inez shuddered and pushed the unpleasant vision from her mind.
    She pulled out a figure-hugging navy silk polonaise and closed the wardrobe door, shutting her nightmare within. Smoothing her short hair back from her face with practiced fingers, Inez glanced once in the mirror, noting that her hair was growing out from the hasty shearing she’d given it that winter.
    Grabbing a clean apron from the hook, Inez covered her dress, thankful that Leadville’s chill summer evenings kept her from stifling in her many layers of clothes. Her gaze landed on Preston Holt’s damp jacket hanging nearby, and she remembered her riding gloves. She hunted through the jacket’s pockets, finally unearthing the crumpled gloves, and laid the damp wad by the washbasin.
    She carried the jacket downstairs and into the kitchen, where Abe labored over a second crate of bottles and the dregs of the Red Dog barrel. Inez hung the jacket over a chair, smoothing out the folds before pushing it closer to the large cast-iron stove, still radiating heat from the day’s cooking. “You and Angel can leave whenever you’re ready,” she told Abe as she left the kitchen.
    She was halfway across the barroom when she heard Chet say, “Hell, Angel, ya were a sight more friendly when ya worked down the line. Come on over here and bring me some luck.”
    Inez glanced over at Sol, trapped behind the long mahogany counter, his face draining of color as he fumbled beneath the bar for the shotgun.
    Inez shoved her way through the crowd gathered around the back table in time to see Chet, holding a deck of undealt cards, grab Angel and pull her onto his lap. Angel squirmed, moving faster than Inez could shout a warning.
    Chet looked down. The handle of a slim knife quivered above the tabletop. The blade nestled between his forefinger and thumb, piercing the deck of cards and the tabletop below. He slid his hand away tentatively, as if half expecting to leave a finger behind.
    Angel bounced off Chet’s lap, hissed at him, and yanked out the knife. Ruined playing cards scattered. She slapped the tabletop to get his attention. When he looked up, she held out her hand, thumb crossing her palm.
    Inez pushed a gawker out of her path and hastened to Angel’s side, adding her own imprecations. “Chet, you fool! While you’ve been stalking silver in the Rockies these past months, Angel’s gotten married. She’s Mrs. Abe Jackson now. Comprende?”
    He blinked in whiskey-induced