title: Mary's Musket
author: Osbourne, Kirsten
description: When Mary Mitchell agrees to go on the Oregon Trail with her family, she certainly has ulterior motives. Believing that married women are no more than servants to men and children, she wants to get her own homestead, and Oregon is the place she can do just that. Her father discovers her plans, and he tells her she must marry one of the single men who are on the Trail with them, and she only has a week to decide who it will be.Bob Hastings is enamored of boyish Mary from the moment he meets her, and he continually asks her to dance with him when they have music nights on the trail. One night he even got up the courage to kiss her. He knows Mary's predicament and offers himself as her husband, though he knows she doesn't want a husband or children.Will the two of them be able to see past their differences and find happiness? Or will the hardships of the Trail be too much for them to withstand?