Try Me and See (The Kansas Trilogy Book 2)

Justice Has a Price in 1872 Dodge City

Widow Abigail Miller arrives in Dodge City planning to survive the winter and move on to California. Still haunted by her husband’s murder and struggling with laudanum addiction, she wants nothing more than to leave violence behind.

But after befriending Lily Belle, a woman caught in a corrupt land scheme, and Tasiwoo, a Comanche survivor of Adobe Walls, Abigail uncovers a fraud that threatens to ruin settlers across Kansas. Confederate veteran Thomas Dawes has built the Fort Dodge Land Trust on falsified railroad maps, inflated land values, and new investments used to repay earlier victims. To keep his empire from collapsing, he relies on intimidation, surveillance, and murder.

With the help of young frontier lawmen Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp, Abigail begins gathering the evidence needed to expose him. In a town where meaningful law barely exists, every step brings her closer to the truth—and closer to becoming Dawes’ next target.

Grounded in court records and historical documents, Try Me and See is a richly researched historical novel about financial crime, frontier violence, Native displacement, and one woman’s refusal to look away. Book 2 of The Kansas Trilogy by Kenyon J. Blunt.

Discover Try Me and See and enter the dangerous, divided world of 1872 Dodge City.

Excerpt from the book

Summer, 1869

The laudanum should have lasted until evening, but Abigail Miller’s hands were already shaking as she pressed her back against the ballroom wall. The black silk dress that had fit perfectly last summer hung loose on her gaunt frame. Dark circles shadowed her green eyes while trembling hands smoothed her skirt.

She’d come to welcome the first female dentist in Lawrence, Kansas—Dr. Lucy Hobbs Taylor—a small victory for the women’s rights cause that had drawn Abigail to Kansas. But even that achievement rang hollow now, several years after Sam’s death.

When her friend, Sara Robinson, waved from the front of the receiving line, Abigail managed a slight nod but retreated to the back where men clustered around the punch bowl. The same wealthy families who’d rebuilt their fortunes from the ashes now celebrated progress, while others, like her, still counted their losses.

Abigail avoided eye contact, dreading the pointless conversations that would follow. The same questions about how she was managing. Whether she planned to remarry. If she’d consider moving back East. None of them would ask the hard questions—how she survived after watching Quantrill’s raiders murder Sam, or what it felt like to lose her unborn child.

Bodies pressed closer. A man’s elbow brushed her shoulder, and she jerked away. Another guest stepped backward, his boot grazing her skirt. Her chest tightened.

She made her way to the front of the line, exchanged brief pleasantries with Dr. Lucy, and headed for the bar, planning her escape through the side door.

There he sat. The spitting image of the man who raped her and killed Sam.

The red-haired bushwhacker’s face swam before her, every detail crystal clear: the way his beard had been singed, the tobacco stains on his yellowed teeth, the stench of whiskey on his breath.

Her stomach heaved, and her legs buckled, forcing her to grab an empty table for support. The room tilted sideways as her chest constricted, each breath coming in sharp, painful gasps. Heat flooded her body in waves, sweat beading on her forehead despite the cool evening air.

Abigail’s hands gripped the table’s edge, her knuckles white. The surrounding faces blurred and doubled. Memories crashed over her: the rope burns, the knife, Sam’s final breath. She tasted blood where she’d bitten her tongue.

“Ma’am? Are you all right?” A stranger’s voice cut through the fog in her mind. Several men had gathered around her table, their concerned faces swimming in her vision.

“I need… a minute.” The words came out breathless, her tongue thick and clumsy. Her corset seemed to tighten of its own accord, squeezing the air from her lungs.

“Shall I fetch a doctor?”

“No.” She pressed her forehead against the cool wood of the table, but closing her eyes only made the memories sharper.

The floor rose to meet her. Consciousness slipped away.