Fifty-three-year-old Alfred Marsh and his wife, thirty-year-old Mattie, owned a lonely stage station called Muddy Gap. It was on a mountain pass forty-five miles or so almost due north of Rawlins, Wyoming. Mattie was sixteen years old when Alfred brought her here. He had gone all the way to Denver to find a bride. He smiled and bought her pretty things, telling of the wonderful life they would have together. Mattie was working in the grocery store in Denver and had no friends. The last time she thought she might get to know one, she didn’t get to go, her father died the morning of a church picnic. In Denver she worked and went to her one-bedroom apartment and read or slept. She was so lonely and she cried herself to sleep most nights. Alfred changed all of that; she was now happy, always smiling and laughing. They were married and he took her to his home, that stage station miles and miles from their closest neighbor. By wagon it was a two-day trip one-way to Rawlins. He went into town while she stayed and ran the station, alone.