by Eveline Hart
Fools Rush In
Mail-Order Bride
Eveline Hart
Dedication
I’d like to dedicate this book to YOU! The readers of my books. Without your interest in reading these heartwarming stories of love on the frontier, I wouldn’t have made it this far. So thank you so much for taking the time to read any and hopefully all of my books.
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And I can’t leave out my wonderful mother, son, sister, and Auntie. I love you all, and thank you for helping me make this happen.
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Most of all, I thank God for blessing me on this endeavor.
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Visit the co-author’s website EVELINEHART.COM to visit my blog and learn more about me : )
Copyright 2017 by Kenzo Publishing - All rights reserved.
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In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document by either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited, and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
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Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Based off a true story . . .
Other books by Natalie Dean & Eveline Hart
About Author - Natalie Dean
Chapter 1
California, 1873
A wild pounding thrummed through Aíne Murphy’s veins.
No, she thought ruefully. Anna. I’m in America now. My name is Anna. The name didn’t sound quite right, and she squirmed with the thought of it.
She was a proud daughter of Erin, to be sure. But since she’d set brogues down on American shores, she’d encountered far too many who thought far less of the fair Emerald Isle.
“NINA” signs in a storefront window. “No Irish Need Apply.” The harsh lash of wicked tongues spitting racial slurs like “Paddy”, “Bridget” or “Mick.”
The thrumming drive caught her attention once more. She couldn’t be certain if it was the excited thrill of her own pulse or the frenzied galloping of the horses pulling the stage next to the Central Pacific train that carried her, anxious but hopeful, into Colfax, California. The horses kicked up huge plumes of swirling yellow dust. It was like powdered golden sunshine. She picked up her copy of The Sun that she’d carried with her all the way from New York
The Sun. Aptly named, she thought. The penny paper had certainly given her a shining ray of hope. A gentle smile tugged at the corners of her full, pouty lips.
As the train pulled into the station, Anna gave a last look around the train. All kinds of people made the arduous journey. Some folks came in pursuit of gold. Some came searching for better circumstances. Others came seeking both.
Anna had come for love.
Well, not love, exactly. More like a business contract. Her eyes drifted back to the paper. The whole affair had started with an advertisement in The Sun.
“Lonely prospector seeks bright, young woman who is matrimonially-inclined, to entertain correspondence with an eye toward true love and many golden sunsets. Must keep a smart house and be handy at the hearth. Will share stake and prospects. Please reply to J. D. Callahan, Colfax City, California.”
Anna took a deep breath, thinking about what her future would be like. She had no idea what this man was really like and to most people back home she would be considered crazy for seeking out this uncertain future. Anywhere would be better than where she had been. She hoped her fear had not driven her to make a bad decision. Looking down into her soft satchel, she looked into the eyes of the reason she had made this decision. How could she not do everything she could do to protect this part of her.
Chapter 2
“I’m thinkin’ of getting’ me one of them mail-order brides,” Parker Cassidy mumbled from behind his newspaper, his Laredos kicked up and crossed on the wooden desk at the agency.
“A mail-order what?” Jesse had asked. He had been busying himself tacking up the latest “Wanted” poster on the board near the door. Duke McAllister’s murderous countenance stared back at him from the yellowed parchment. It was the outset of the Pinkerton Criminal Agency’s involvement in McAllister’s case.
Cassidy dropped his heavy boots to the floor. He was a big man. Not fat, exactly, but sporting a fair amount of muscle that threatened its way to flab in a few short years. He slapped the paper down on the surface of the desk. “A bride! Somebody to share my bed and make my breakfast, lunch, and dinner in this godforsaken hell.”
His booming voice filled the whole of the room. “I ain’t getting’ no younger.”
Jesse stifled a laugh. “That’s for sure.”
He jibed at his boss, but subconsciously, he drifted a hand through the premature streak of gray that had crept into his right temple. Hard living and a dangerous job had coaxed it from his black hair a bit too early for his own liking. He didn’t share Cassidy’s chauvinistic attitude toward women. Having a woman in his life was something he had not thought about in a long time. Maybe it was time to start.
As an only child, Jesse had been very close to his mother who had died from Malaria on the long trip from Illinois to what was then Alder Grove, Ca. He could still see her face when he closed his eyes. He was only five-years-old at the time, but she was a beautiful woman who supported his father no matter what he wanted to do. His father had been a quiet man, not the laughing and joking sort like his mother.
His father’s hopes of getting rich in the gold mines began to dwindle after the third year. While the first three years had provided him with ample land and a home for him and Jesse, and money in the bank, the supply of gold dwindled, and men were forced to go deeper into the mountains and stay away from home longer to make a decent living. Being a single parent, he wasn’t able to do this, so he accepted a job as a lawman in the town after it had been renamed Illinois town. His quiet stern look made him very successful, as he appeared to be much more of a threat than he was. His reputation for being honest and having good morals had made him a prime candidate for the job. He ran for sheriff that same year. Best sheriff the town ever had.
Jesse had loved his father. It was no secret that he was well sought after by the few women who came into town. His father had been so in love with his mother that having another woman was not something he was interested in. He said many times that he had given all his love to one woman and she still had his heart.
Jesse continued pinning the pictures up on the board as Parker continued talking about getting a mail order bride. He thought about his father and how as a young boy he had always looked up to him. When they went to town, and his father was wearing his uniform, badge with pistols strapped on both sides of his hips, he felt safe. His father knew everyone in town, and everyone knew him. He made it his business to know everyone, and to know about everyone. Jesse loved listening to his father’s stories of tracking, securing, and taming the hot heads in the west in order to keep the town safe for the families who were settling nearby.
In 1845 the town was booming with gold miners and Illinoistown was renamed Colfax. The steady stream of people taking a stake in the mountains attracted just as many thieves as preachers, so his father had hired more deputies to keep the peace. Jesse knew the job like the back of his hand by then, and in his early 20’s he took on the job with his father. This didn’t make him popular with his friends, but by then it was in his blood. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else w
ith his life.
Three years into his job he married the mayor’s daughter and was blessed with two children.
Thinking about it now, after all this time, still made his blood boil with an anger that kept him determined and focused on bringing thieves and murderers to justice. Each time he locked one up, he knew he was sparing a family the pain of losing a love one. It was a pain he never wanted anyone to experience as he had.
Arranging the last of the posters on the board, he walked over and stood, looking into the eyes of Duke McAllister staring back at him from the picture. The man had been impossible to catch, up until now. Jesse grinned thinking it was only a matter of time and he would make sure that he was caught. And when he did, he would make sure McAllister knew who was responsible for his capture. He was going to remind him of a few things he was sure he had forgotten.
Cassidy handed Jesse the paper, breaking his concentration. “There it is. In black and white. Right next to the ads for cattle and wagon parts.”
Jesse held it up and read it outloud, “A widow lady, fifty-four years of age, having a small business of her own; wishes to make the acquaintance of a middle-aged gentleman with a view toward marriage. He must be a person of sober life, religious conviction and of some business experience. One preferred who has some means of his own,” Jesse laughed. “Oh, that leaves you out, Cassidy,” he quipped. “The only conviction you have is to be so drunk on Saturday night that the Sunday church bells won’t wake you up.”
Cassidy landed a solid punch on Jesse’s shoulder. “Poke all the fun you want, Callahan. You see ‘old.' I see ‘experienced.'”
Jesse ripped the paper from his friend’s hands, if for no other reason than to save some poor, unsuspecting widower from a potentially terrible match. “No, what I see is an arse. Time to get back to work. Where are those new posters you were going to bring?”
“Go ahead, change the subject,” Cassidy said pointing his finger at Jesse. “But it’s worth a thought. Mark my words. The things we do for love, huh?”
Jesse started laughing at him again and almost slammed the door on his backside when he walked out to get the posters. The discussion had not left Jesse without cause for consideration, however. A sudden twinge in his hand caught him off guard, and he grabbed for the angry scar. He rubbed at the raised skin in the center of his palm, his face contorted in pain.
“Aye,” he muttered. “The things we do for love.”
He picked up the paper, noted a scrap of information near the bottom of the back sheet, and began to pull on his riding gloves.
He locked up the Pinkerton office and jogged down the wooden steps, spurs jingling in his boots. He swung his right leg wide over the saddle of his bay. He leaned down and whispered in the filly’s ear. “What say we go pay a visit to the postmaster, Mae? Just do me a favor, now.” He sat tall in the saddle and wheeled the horse off toward the town center. “Don’t tell Cassidy, okay.”
Chapter 3
The interior of the railway car was stifling. It was not much more than a narrow wooden box, a flat-topped ark carrying the collected droves to the Promised Land of the West. A meager passage ran down along the middle, with crosswise benches bracketing either side. A small stove occupied one far end of the car, while a privy maintained the opposite end.
As Anna fanned herself with the paper, sweat trickled down her long, slender neck and pooled in the small valley between her rounded bosoms. Her linen chemise, nothing more than a long shirt-dress, clung to the alabaster skin under her frock, stuck by the incessant moisture of the ninety-degree heat. The tight lacing of her bodice did her no favors either. Nor did the course woolen weave of her simple dress and stockings. It was the kind of dress she had worn in Ireland, and even though it was not comfortable for this weather it was all she had been allowed to bring when she had traveled from her home land. Her scarf was thin so it wasn’t hot but it kept her red hair a secret. She was a talented mender from a young age and adding material to her clothes had enabled her to keep her wardrobe for a much longer time than the other immigrants. The Great Hunger had not been kind to many Irish families and so many simple things in life had been sacrificed.
At first, Anna was delighted with her grand luck in securing a house position upon her arrival in New York. She had been a teacher at an orphanage in Ireland which acknowledged her as being honest and respectable. But the pay was sparse. This new position afforded her a small room, albeit in the attic, so she was able to avoid the base, unsanitary conditions of the tenement wards, The Jessups had afforded the cost of her travels from Ireland to the New World, so, for a time, at least, she was indentured to the family until her debt was paid off. She was happy that she would be able to send much needed money back home to the family and Da.
Obadiah Jessup indulged, and his indulgences wept through his pores. His snifter was never void of brandy. His corpulent waist never missed a thick, long chain of golden rope drifting from his pocket watch. The pudgy flesh of his fingers strained against the biting band of his gold wedding ring, a testament to his penchant for fine, rich foods. Her first sign that there would be trouble in her new job began when her master made it obvious that Anna was on the menu.
After the second month working there she would have lewd looks from the Master as she went about her daily chores. When she bent over to light the drawing room fire. When she rolled her sleeves to wash the family dishes and exposed her fair, ivory arms. When she leaned over the cherry wood of the dining table, reaching to dust the center, legs slightly spread to give her balance. Then looks gave way to something far more wicked. Something shameful. Everyday he warned her not to say anything, especially to his wife Margaret. Sometimes he would laugh and tell her he knew people all over and she would never be able to leave without him finding her. “I am Obadiah Jessup of the Manhattan Jessups,” he would say. She was trapped. Between the family and the maids there were so many people in the house, but Anna was so alone. She kept his secret, many secrets. She spent hours into the wee mornings sobbing into her straw-stuffed mattress. Her sacrifice became too hard and that was when she began to hatch her plan to escape from New York, and the clutching grasp of Obadiah Jessup.
Colfax, like many of the early mining camps and boom towns of the time, squawked with the pang of growing pains. The squeal of the train’s brakes pierced through the air, prompting horses in the main street to rear and whinny in alarm. The tinny keys of “My Darling Nelly Gray” spilled out from the swinging louvered doors of the saloon, along with one of its less than sober patrons. The drunken man, with more than a little encouragement from the bartender, exploded into the street, end-over-head, and landed with a sobering splash in a nearby horse trough. The Palomino tethered nearby remained unfazed and continued lapping up the dusty water.
Anna’s ear caught the brash bray of a heavily made-up woman leaning against the wooden façade of a parlor house. Her deep, ruby lips- painted in the same color as her taffeta dress - parted in tawdry laughter at the risqué joke of the cowboy loitering on the wooden porch.
The rhythmic bite of metal on stone chinked in the air. The undertaker plied his trade, chiseling generic epitaphs into granite headstones. Business must have been booming, Anna thought. Ten more headstones lined up behind him, all waiting patiently for their turn under the hammer. She shuddered. What had she gotten herself into?
The town, as it was, fell out into a T-shape. The railroad station paralleled the bar of the “T.” The rest of the town stretched out in a fairly straight line from there. Buildings abutted one another tightly and looked as if they were held together by a sheer force of will.
“Those buildings go up fast, darlin’,” a friendly male voice answered her unspoken question. It was a burly man in a red-checkered shirt. She remembered seeing him on the train. She pulled her scarf closer around her hair. He unloaded his bags from the baggage car. “Nobody wants to spend time building when they could be out there, diggin’ for gold.” As he tossed one of the huge duffels to th
e dusty ground, a metallic clang sounded.
The big man saw the look of concern on Anna’s face. He smiled a broad, crooked grin. “That’s where I’m planning to be as soon as I finish unloading my equipment.”
“Oh,” Anna sucked in a sigh of relief. She suddenly wished she hadn’t taken such a big breath as the pungent odor of manure assaulted her nose, musky and loamy. She raised a gloved hand over her mouth and nose.
The big man laughed. “Perfume of the West, darlin’,” he chortled. “Best get used to it. You’ve just the one bag, then?”
“Aye,” Anna gave the bag an unconscious squeeze.
“Planning on doing a bit of prospecting yerself?” the big man asked.
Anna clutched her bag to her chest tightly. “I’m not here for mining, sir. I’m here ta be married. Only, I had the notion that me groom-ta-be would be meeting me here at the station.” She cast a furtive glance around the gathered crowd.
“Married?” the big man scoffed. “If you favor my opinion, Miss, marriage’s a far sight more dangerous than prospectin’, but to each his own,” the big man shrugged.
“Per’aps you can direct me how to get to the Grass Valley Camp from here? That’s where my betrothed has his claim.”
“You’ll want the stage for that,” the man pointed to the stagecoach that had paced the train on her way into town. “Be wary, though, Miss. There’s a reason they call the roads out here the ‘Wild West.' Fare thee well.”