Miss Ellie's Purple Sage Saloon — Jerrie Hurd

SHOWDOWN AT THE PURPLE SAGE

Miss Ellie Wells forced Seth Watkins out of the second story of her Purple Sage Saloon, naked, at gunpoint. Never mind that he had just given her the Purple Sage for her birthday -- he didn't pay his whiskey bill, and if he thought he didn't have to because he was her "partner," he'd better think again. Soon she tossed the wedding dress he bought her onto the same dusty main street. Miss Ellie didn't "partner," in any sense of the word. And she never let anyone see her cry. When Seth returned with a bride, Marta Mae, niece of Colorado's richest railroad and mining magnate, Ellie marched right over to present the newlyweds with a bottle of French champagne and her best wishes. But Marta Mae wasn't fooled. She recognized the threat this tall, confident woman posed, and she wasn't going to allow anything or anyone to imperil her fragile new marriage. She promptly handed the bottle back to Ellie along with a temperance pamphlet, little dreaming how the war she was starting would spread far beyond the borders of their quiet town....

They came from all points to be part of the grand adventure...intrepid women carving new lives on the great American frontier.