Mail Order Bride- Twenty-Two Brides Mega Boxed Set

by Emily Woods

  Hope was listening intently. “And what happened to your parents?”

  This was hard to talk about. Beth swallowed hard. “My mother got sick of the life very quickly and one day, she...left, taking all the money that my father had earned in the first two years. He became a hard man after that, and less than a year later, he sent us to live with his sister. The following year, he died. We heard different reports of how that happened, but it didn't matter to us. All we knew was that our father was gone. He was killed shortly in some kind of gunfight, and we never heard from our mother again.”

  She didn't mention the part about his giving them the last of his gold. It didn't seem relevant. And now she really was past the point of possibly revealing the moment when one of miners had mistaken her for his former girlfriend. The man had been so drunk and had pushed himself on her. He hadn’t gotten far when George found them and hauled the man off her. In a rage, the man had beaten George so badly that he was hardly recognizable.

  Beth felt sick at the memory, but she’d mostly come to terms with it. The whole incident was the reason that she had never looked for love, and as a result of the beating, George had been injured in a way that would prevent him from having children, or so the doctor had said.

  But now her attention was on Hope. Had she just ended the first chance she'd had at friendship with her shameful past?

  “I'm so sorry that happened to you,” Hope murmured, touching her arm a little. “I hope your relatives were kind to you.”

  That was another sad story, but Beth didn’t have it in her to talk about, and it wasn’t relevant, so she just made a brief humming noise that neither confirmed nor denied the statement. “Thank you,” she said simply. “I've never told anyone about my past before. I've been too ashamed.”

  “I'm glad you told me,” Hope replied quickly. “And I hope you don't regret it. I also hope you know that you are not responsible for any of those things. You have no reason to feel ashamed. And you know what? I bet that God will use your life experiences to help other people, starting with me. You see, now I can tell Gabriel and he can tell his brothers and for sure, they'll let him go.”

  Beth hoped it would be so.

  As it turned out, the two older Morris brothers, Henry and Michael, were not moved by the information. Tearfully, Hope relayed how they'd all but laughed at Hope as she'd tried to explain how terrible it would be for them. Hearing this, Beth felt something build in her belly that she couldn't immediately identify, and she felt the strongest compulsion to go over to the Morris wagon and slap the two brothers upside the head.

  However, she knew better than anyone that violence never convinced people to do things of their own accord, so instead, she formed a plan.

  “Using the dried apples, I see,” George observed that evening when she was putting together dinner. “I sure love a dried apple pie.”

  It wasn't a pie exactly, but more of a pastry. Still, it was a tasty treat when combined with the leftover strawberry preserves she’d been saving. Her earlier conviction of saving them fled in the face of helping Hope.

  “Well, you'll get to have one, but I'm making these for...someone else.”

  His brows shot up. “Beth...” His voice was low and worried. “You're not, uh, taking a fancy to someone, are you?”

  The thought made her laugh out loud, and the harsh sound startled her brother, as well it should. She couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed.

  “Oh, brother. How could you even say such a thing? Of course not, but I want to help Hope convince Gabriel's brothers to let him go with her and her family to Oregon. I plan to tell them about the hardships we endured with our father at the gold miners’ camp, but I need to soften them up first.”

  George looked at her with concern. Rarely did Beth say so much all at once, and rarer still did she mention their time at the mining camp.

  “What are you going to tell them?” he asked in alarm. “Surely not…”

  She knew exactly what he was talking about, but she was determined.

  “Don’t worry, brother. Nothing like that. But Hope is the first friend I've had in a long time. You're a good brother, but you're a terrible girlfriend,” she tried to tease, causing his eyes to widen even more. Beth never joked. She cleared her throat and continued. “So, yes, I'm sure. It won't be easy, but Hope has helped me to see that just because these things happened to us doesn't mean that we need to feel ashamed.”

  Several emotions flitted across his face. Beth recognized worry, sadness, and regret.

  “I should have been able to protect you...”

  “Shh,” she said forcefully, hating how he always beat himself up for the attack. “I'm fine, aren't I? And by God's grace, I will continue to be. Now, these pies will be ready in about twenty minutes, and I want to bring them over hot. Your dinner is just there.” She pointed to the second pot that was resting in the embers of the fire. “Go ahead and help yourself.”

  When the pies were finally done, she scooped them out with a long-handled spoon and set them on a tin plate. After covering them with a towel, she took a deep breath to shore up her courage. For the first time in a very long time, she was going to approach a man and speak to him.

  She prayed that God would give her strength.

  3

  Michael Morris fell silent as his brothers argued yet again. As the middle child, he always felt pulled in two directions when Henry and Gabriel disagreed. Additionally, he had the unfortunate ability to be able to see both sides of an argument, which made it worse for him because he almost never knew who to support.

  However, in this case, he agreed with Henry. The three of them had made the decision together to go to California, and now Gabe was making all kinds of excuses to get out of it just because he'd met a nice girl.

  “Listen!” he finally said, causing them to both shut up. “Gabe, we need you. If just the two of us go, we won't be able to work the claim as efficiently. Henry, you're never going to convince anybody of anything if you just keep yelling all the time.” He turned to his youngest brother again. “It was kind of a low thing you did, though, getting Hope to come here. Did you really think that we were going to let some young girl make us change our minds?”

  “Excuse me?” came a soft voice from behind them. “Am I interrupting something?”

  The three of them turned around to see Elizabeth Lewis standing before them with a covered plate of something. All three of them were speechless. Over the past three months, the woman had never said a word to any of them, or anyone else in the entire wagon train that they'd seen. For the first week or two, a number of them had thought she was mute, or perhaps challenged in some way, but then someone had overheard her talking to her husband.

  “Uh...no,” Michael replied quickly. “What can we do for you?”

  She didn't approach any further, and he could see real dread in her eyes. But why would she come here if she was afraid of them?

  “I, um, made these pies tonight, and, well, I thought you might enjoy some.”

  None of them moved. The confusion on their faces might have been comical if they hadn't just been in the middle of a big fight.

  “What kind of pie?” Henry asked gruffly, his shoulders relaxing a little.

  Michael moved towards her, slowly. “It doesn't matter,” he said before she could reply. “We like everything. That was mighty nice of you to do for us, Missus Lewis. Um...” He didn't know what to say. Her random act had set them off-kilter. “Would you like to sit with us for a spell?”

  For a moment, she looked as though she might, but then she just thrust the plate into his hands and shook her head.

  “No, thank you. Good night.”

  Being so close to her for the first time, Michael had a chance to really see her. Most of the time, her face had been shielded by her bonnet and none of them had any idea what she truly looked like. Now, however, he'd nearly been bowled over by her large, dark brown eyes. Granted, they were probably so large because she w
as terrified, but of what...or whom?

  Setting the plate on the ground, Michael jogged after her.

  “Missus Lewis? Ma'am?”

  She slowed down, but didn't stop or turn around.

  “Thank you for the pie. I'm not sure what we did to deserve it, but we're mighty glad to get it. None of us have had anything good like that since we were in Missouri.”

  She mumbled something and stopped. Michael came around to face her, but kept his distance. She reminded him of a newborn calf: timid, skittish, and fragile.

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  Looking up again, she stared into his eyes for a second and then looked at the ground around his feet.

  “I thought so.”

  Her voice was soft, but firm at the same time somehow. It was a quiet strength, but he could hear it.

  “Well, I don't know why you did it, but if there's something we can do for you and your...husband…” As he said the word, he realized that he had to get a hold of himself. His stomach had clenched with undeniable attraction, but she was a married woman, and he had no right feeling this way. “Just let us know.”

  He was about to turn away when he saw that she wanted to say something.

  “Um, well, there is something,” she said. “But, um...maybe you're busy?”

  He thought about the unpleasant conversation that they'd been having before she showed up.

  “No, ma'am, we're not busy. What can we do for you?”

  She flinched a little as though she'd been bitten by a bug or some such, but then he watched her swallow and push her lips together.

  “Would you do me the courtesy of listening to my story?”

  Blinking, he didn't understand her at first. “Your story?”

  “Hope told you some of it, but I want you to hear it from me.”

  Before dinner, Hope had tried to convince them that going to California was dangerous and that they wouldn't even make much money. He thought she'd gotten her information from a book or from her father. He had no idea that it had come from this shy woman standing in front of them.

  “Uh, well, yeah. Okay. Do you want to come back to our wagon?”

  She looked over his shoulder to where Gabriel and Henry were once again arguing, and her face became somewhat pinched.

  “Actually, do you think that maybe I could just tell you? Then you could relay it to the others? Your older brother especially?”

  He hesitated because he didn't want to be disloyal to Henry, but it was pretty clear to him that Elizabeth wasn't going to be able to say her piece in front of the three of them. And he didn't blame her. Henry could be intimidating at the best of times.

  “Sure, I'll listen. But won't your, uh, husband be upset that you're talking to me all alone?”

  Her eyes flickered over to her wagon where George Lewis was whittling away at a stick, looking very unconcerned about his wife's whereabouts.

  “No, he's fine. I told him that I was coming over here and why.”

  They were about halfway between her wagon and his, so he gestured to a large stone where they could sit. A number of people were still milling about, and it wasn't dark yet, so there was nothing improper in what they were doing. Adding to that, her husband was nearby, so Michael took a seat and waited.

  She sat down primly on the rock and folded her hands in her lap. Biting her lip, she stared at the ground.

  “I lived in a mining camp for three years of my life. My father struck it rich at first, but he went through the money very quickly. In less than two years, the gold was pretty much gone, but he stayed. The gold had gotten into his blood, and he refused to believe that there wasn't more.” She paused and took a deep breath. “It was the same with all the men there. None of them wanted to leave, and none of them got rich that I saw. The only people who made any money were the men who sold to the miners.”

  He wanted to ask a question, but worried that it might throw her off, so he kept quiet and waited.

  “Those men were greedy, charging crazy amounts of money for necessities and even more for luxuries. I say luxuries, but I mean things like soap and coffee. A man would maybe make six to ten dollars a day panning, but he'd have to pay twenty-five dollars for a pair of shoes.”

  At the mention of those numbers, Michael's mouth dropped. “You're kidding me,” he choked out. She had to be. Who would pay that much for a pair of shoes?

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Coffee was forty dollars a pound, bread was two dollars a loaf and so on. You can't imagine.”

  “But if men are making ten dollars a day on average, and many men probably made more than that...”

  “And many, many men made much less.” Her eyes became grave. “And when men become desperate, they resort to drinking in excess, which then caused them to—to do terrible things, unspeakable…” She couldn't finish, but Michael had heard enough.

  Keeping his voice soft and compassionate, he tried to reason with her. “It must have been hard on you, but we're not young girls. We're strong men, and we'll support each other.”

  She shook her head. “My father and his friend were strong, but it didn't take long for them to start fighting and accusing each other of stealing. And then there were other men in the camp who were much less honorable, and they would rob each other in the middle of the night. You can't fathom the crimes that went unpunished in those parts.”

  For a few minutes, they didn't speak, each person lost in his or her own thoughts.

  “I wouldn't wish that life on anyone,” she finished. “And when Hope told me that Gabriel didn't want to go with you, I felt I had to tell you about my experiences. If a man is determined to go, nothing will make him change his mind, but if he doesn't want to, no one should force him.”

  Although he suspected that there was more to her story, he could see that she was drained.

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “I'll be talking to my brothers about this. I, uh, just thought that Gabriel was backing out because of Hope.”

  “And love isn't a good enough reason?” she enquired gently, but then she clearly regretted asking because she immediately lowered her head and stared at her fingers.

  “I wouldn't know,” he answered honestly. “I have no idea what that feels like.”

  Why was he confessing this to her? He felt like an idiot.

  “I'd better be getting back,” she said softly. “George will be wondering about me. Thank you for listening.”

  Quick as a rabbit, she jumped up and scurried back to her husband, leaving Michael to wonder about his brother's situation and the sudden ache in his own heart.

  “I just don't think it's right that we force him to go. We can keep in touch, and if things don't work out for him in Oregon, he can come to California.”

  Henry glared at him. “I can't believe you let some simpering woman change your mind about all this.”

  Irritation bubbled up inside of him, and Michael fought to get a hold of his emotions. “First off, she wasn't simpering, and second, she painted a pretty convincing picture. I barely want to go now.”

  Eyes widening in disbelief, Henry blew out an angry breath. But before he could shout some more, he seemed to think again. Gritting his teeth, he grimaced as he said, “Brother, from what you've told me, Missus Lewis's father was in a different situation. Not only was it a different place, but it was also a different time. We have no idea if the two situations can even be compared.”

  He waited for a minute while Michael turned his comments over in his mind.

  “I suppose you're right, but I still think that Gabe needs to make the choice himself. I'll go with you and we’ll be fine.”

  His loyalty to his brother would last until the end of his life, but Michael knew his heart was no longer in it. Mrs. Lewis had succeeded in making the idea of the gold mining significantly less appealing. He enjoyed the idea of getting rich, but she'd really gotten to him. Would he be willing to take the chance at the cost of losing himself? And according to her, hardly anyone even
got wealthy unless they were mining several claims at the same time.

  “Fine,” Henry relented, his shoulders sagging a little. “He can go. You tell him. I don't want to.”

  Gabriel came back to their tent a short while later, but Michael didn't need to ask where he'd been. For several weeks now, he'd disappear after dinner and then show up an hour or two later with a smile on his face. He couldn't deny that Hope made his brother happy, but he just didn't have much confidence that it would last. The two of them were very young.

  However, tonight his expression was morose.

  “Well, brother,” he said when Gabriel approached. “You owe Missus Lewis a debt of gratitude.”

  Gabriel scowled at him a little, but Michael could tell that his curiosity was piqued. “Why's that?”

  “Well, she made a pretty convincing case to me that we should let you decide for yourself about California, and I managed to get Henry to agree.”

  Watching Gabriel's face change from mournful to elated made Michael laugh out loud.

  “You're kidding? Right? You're pulling my leg?”

  “Nah, I wouldn't do that, little brother. The lady has firsthand experience at a gold mining camp, and through her stories, I realized that it's not right to force you to go. So, you're off the hook.”

  Gabriel gave a whoop of joy and raced back in the direction he'd come, presumably to celebrate with his sweetheart. Despite his sadness at the thought of parting ways, Michael couldn't help but be happy for his brother. What must it be like to love someone like that? He didn't have any idea.

  Unbidden, Mrs. Lewis' face came to his mind. His heart thumped wildly, and he made a low noise in his throat, nearly cursing himself. He might not be a fine Christian man with outstanding morals, but he was no degenerate chasing after another man's wife.

  He blamed the isolation of the journey and the lack of female companionship, of which there was no shortage in the bigger cities. However, that was no excuse. Instead of thinking about himself, he tried to focus on his brother. He grinned, happy that Gabe was happy.