PART 1: The Great Petticoat Disaster

By noon on Tuesday, thirty-seven women wanted to strangle Buck Harlan, the sheriff was hiding behind a water barrel, and the most feared cowboy in Willow Creek was standing in the middle of Main Street with a pink lace petticoat hanging from his neck.

And somehow, that wasn’t even the worst thing that happened that day.

It all started when Buck made the unfortunate mistake of opening his mouth at Sunday supper.

“Laundry?” he scoffed, watching his landlady, Mrs. Agnes Whitcomb, scrub a mountain of clothes. “Any fool can wash a shirt. Women act like it’s harder than breaking a wild stallion.”

Agnes stopped scrubbing.

Slowly, she turned around.

“Any fool, you say?”

“That’s right, ma’am. Soap, water, sunshine. Easiest money a man could make.”

Agnes smiled the sort of smile that usually came before somebody’s funeral.

“Then why don’t you open a laundry business, Mr. Harlan?”

Buck leaned back in his chair.

“Maybe I will.”

“I’ll give you twenty dollars if you last one week.”

Buck slapped his hand on the table.

“Make it fifty.”

By Monday morning, a freshly painted sign hung outside the old blacksmith’s shed.

BUCK’S FINE LAUNDRY — CLEAN CLOTHES, QUICK SERVICE, NO NONSENSE.

Buck had purchased three enormous wash tubs, twelve bars of soap, a wringer, and enough clothesline to stretch halfway across Texas.

He also hired his seventeen-year-old nephew, Tommy, whose only qualification was that he could count to one hundred without removing his boots.

“First rule of business,” Buck announced proudly. “Never let a customer see you sweat.”

Five minutes later, he was sweating through his shirt.

By eight o’clock, six women had arrived with laundry baskets.

By nine, there were twenty.

By ten, the entire establishment looked as though a tornado had struck a ladies’ clothing store.

White stockings dangled from the rafters. Silk blouses floated in soap water. Petticoats covered every available surface.

Tommy stared at the chaos.

“Uncle Buck, how do we know which clothes belong to which lady?”

Buck waved dismissively.

“Easy. We remember.”

“But there’s forty baskets.”

“Then remember forty baskets.”

Tommy frowned.

“What if we forget?”

Buck grinned.

“Women all wear the same sort of things anyway. Nobody’ll notice.”

Those words would haunt him for the rest of his natural life.

At eleven-thirty, disaster arrived wearing a purple bonnet.

Mrs. Beatrice Pemberton, the mayor’s wife, marched into the laundry and demanded her freshly washed garments.

Buck handed her a neatly folded bundle.

“Clean as a mountain spring, ma’am.”

She opened it.

Inside lay a bright red petticoat trimmed with black lace.

Her face turned scarlet.

“MR. HARLAN!”

Buck jumped.

“Something wrong?”

“I have never owned anything so scandalous in my entire life!”

Before Buck could answer, Miss Clara Bell, the saloon singer, entered carrying a bundle of her own.

“And I,” Clara announced, holding up an enormous pair of plain cotton bloomers, “have never worn anything that could double as a wagon cover!”

Tommy whispered, “Uncle Buck, I think we mixed up the baskets.”

“How many?”

“All of them.”

Buck closed his eyes.

Outside, someone began ringing the church bell.

Within twenty minutes, half the women in Willow Creek were gathered outside Buck’s laundry, each demanding the return of her personal belongings.

Mrs. Pemberton accused Clara Bell of stealing her dignity.

Clara accused the mayor’s wife of stealing her best stage costume.

The schoolteacher discovered that her Sunday blouse had been delivered to the butcher’s wife.

The butcher’s wife received a nightgown belonging to the preacher’s sister.

And the preacher’s sister threatened to leave town after somebody found her initials embroidered inside a pair of men’s long underwear.

“I can explain!” Buck shouted from the porch.

“THEN EXPLAIN!” thirty-seven women shouted back.

Buck swallowed.

“Well, you see, there appears to have been a small organizational misunderstanding.”

A wet stocking struck him directly between the eyes.

Tommy ducked behind a barrel.

Even the sheriff refused to intervene.

“Buck,” he whispered, “I’ve faced cattle thieves and armed outlaws, but I ain’t getting between a woman and her underclothes.”

By late afternoon, Buck had abandoned his pride.

He dragged every remaining basket into the yard and began sorting garments one by one while Agnes supervised with folded arms.

“Names,” she instructed. “You should’ve written down names.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And tied labels to every bundle.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And perhaps listened when women told you this wasn’t easy.”

Buck sighed.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Agnes nodded with satisfaction.

Then Buck reached into the final basket.

His fingers closed around a small blue cotton blouse.

Unlike the expensive silk and lace scattered around him, the blouse was old and carefully mended. One sleeve had been repaired with tiny crooked stitches, and a faded yellow ribbon was sewn inside the collar.

Buck stopped breathing.

He knew that ribbon.

He knew those stitches.

And when he turned the collar over, he saw three letters embroidered in uneven blue thread.

E. M. H.

The world around him seemed to disappear.

Twenty-eight years earlier, his little sister, Eleanor May Harlan, had vanished from a wagon camp during a violent thunderstorm.

She had been eight years old.

Buck had been eleven.

He remembered sewing that yellow ribbon into her favorite blouse after she complained that its collar scratched her neck.

He remembered the way she laughed at his terrible stitching.

And he remembered promising that he would never let anything happen to her.

It was the last promise he’d ever made to her.

“Buck?” Agnes asked quietly. “What’s wrong?”

He held up the blouse with trembling hands.

“Where did this come from?”

Agnes examined it.

“I don’t recognize it.”

“Whose basket?”

Tommy checked the remaining laundry slips.

“There’s no name on this one, Uncle Buck. Somebody dropped it off before sunrise.”

Buck’s voice cracked.

“Find out who.”

At that moment, the laundry door creaked open.

A woman in a dark traveling dress stood in the doorway, her face hidden beneath a broad-brimmed hat.

“Excuse me,” she said softly. “I’m looking for a blue blouse.”

Buck slowly turned toward her.

The woman looked at the garment in his hands.

Then she looked at his face.

Her expression changed.

“Where did you get that?” she whispered.

Buck could barely speak.

“It belonged to my sister.”

The woman took one step backward.

“Your sister?”

“Eleanor May Harlan. She disappeared twenty-eight years ago.”

The woman’s hand flew to her mouth.

For several seconds, nobody moved.

Then she whispered something Buck had not heard since he was eleven years old.

“Bucky Bear?”

His knees nearly gave way.

Only one person in the world had ever called him that.

But before he could reach her, the woman grabbed his arm and whispered urgently:

“Buck, listen to me. You cannot tell anyone you’ve found me. Especially not the sheriff.”

And as Buck stared at her in disbelief, he noticed something even more disturbing.

Through the laundry window, the sheriff was watching them.

His face had gone completely white.