A Promise To Keep — Elaine Robinson

Thirty-six-year-old Maggie answers a newspaper advertisement for a wife and mother for two children. At last she will have a home, a husband, and children to care for. Instead, her home is a covered wagon because her new husband is relocating his family from El Paso, Texas to the Arizona Territory where he hopes to claim land for homesteading. Half way there Maggie finds herself in the New Mexico desert with a missing husband, an empty water barrel, and two resentful step-children. She prays for help and Charlie Yates limps, on foot, into her campsite. Maggie and Charlie strike a bargain. Maggie will share her wagon and supplies and Charlie will lead them out of the desert and help search for her husband (who left to find water). The bargain binds them closer to each other than their marriage vows which they believe are A Promise to Keep.