His Make-Believe Bride

by Martha Hix

  When both men had finished with the formalities, she couldn’t help but wonder if Mr. Kincaid—Mr. Samson Kincaid—had additional relatives in the area, besides this cousin and the uncle. She yearned for a family. Yet Linnea knew little of family life; her parents and two sisters had passed away from an airborne disease in 1890.

  Back then, the authorities in Linden, Texas, had scrambled to contact relatives to take in a girl of nine. Someone had heard an uncle lived in Minden, Louisiana. Which was all it took for the mayor of Linden to arrange transportation to the small town near Shreveport. Once she arrived there, no uncle could be found.

  Some man at the police station had taken one look at the filthy urchin and barked, Take her to the orphanage. They shelter rabble trash!

  “Mrs. Kincaid?” she heard, as if from afar. “Ermentrude Kincaid? Honey wife?”

  Oh, my goodness. Someone was addressing her, and that someone was her second husband. His cousin the lawyer stared at her quizzically. She honed her attention back to the here and now.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said, as she had learned to say from Miz Myrtie. “Pardon me for being rude. So nice to meet you, Attorney Kincaid.”

  “Think nothing of it, dear lady,” the one known as Grant Kincaid responded. “Welcome to the family. I do hope we will see more of each other in my home or yours.”

  “Absolutely, Cousin Grant! Just let my missus get settled, then we’ll have you out for supper.”

  “Yes,” she concurred, wondering who would do the cooking. Not to worry. If they didn’t have a cook already, they could surely hire one. She nodded at the handsome attorney. “You must visit us. I would love to entertain you in our home. Jewel . . . Mrs. Craig . . . plays piano, and I do enjoy singing.”

  “Piano?” Grant asked, appearing perplexed.

  “Well, we’ve got to get going,” Sam said quickly. “Nice seein’ you, Cousin Grant. Take care!”

  “Absolutely.” He bowed toward Linnea and smiled. “Welcome to the family, Mrs. Kincaid.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Gotta go. Gotta go.”

  Choosing not to question why her new husband rushed them along, she smiled. She felt she might get along nicely with her cousin-in-law. She hoped others in the Kincaid clan would accept her, as well, and would care enough to show her how to be part of a loving and loyal circle of kin.

  Don’t be ridiculous, Linnea Powell . . . Linnea Kin—Ermentrude Kincaid. If they find out I am all about a lie, they will circle the loving-kin wagon around Rancher Kincaid.

  By the time Lawyer Kincaid had finished his “so happy to meet you” niceties and moved on to the steps leading into the Jones Feed & General, the bride had started to shake in her button-top shoes.

  She halted just before stepping into the surrey. “I find I am more than a bit tired, Mr. Kincaid. While I’m sure you are expecting a wedding night at your home on the range, please know that I would prefer to stay at that hotel I mentioned.”

  He glanced to the side, obviously making sure there weren’t any bystanders to overhear their conversation, while licking his lips nervously. “Mrs. Kincaid, I know you’re a maiden lady. You may not quite understand how it works, the wedding night. It could be there’s some hollering, and we’d ruin the hotel’s sheets. And you might get all blushed-up, passing the other tourists tomorrow morning.”

  Linnea couldn’t keep from blushing right then and there. “I meant you could go home and I’ll stay at the hotel.”

  “Well, no, sugar doll. It can’t be that way. The cotton seed I ordered will be here any day. I’ve earmarked every dollar in my pocket. It all goes to the cotton. We can’t build a cotton empire without planting those seeds.”

  “But you said in your letters you planted cotton last year. You’d have seed from that.”

  “There’s no cotton gin around here to harvest the seeds. Not yet, anyway. Charlie and I do plan to install one. And not one of those hand-crank models, either.”

  Samson offered his hand—it felt strong, warm, even sheltering, but that wasn’t the point of this situation.

  “Please step into our coach, Mrs. Kincaid, for the ride home.”

  She climbed into the surrey, plunking down on the front seat.

  He went around to the other side, lifted himself onto the seat beside her, and took up the crop to tap the horse’s haunch. He said, “In case you aren’t aware, Murray Gin Company in Dallas builds the finest machines. Charlie and I, we have our eyes on one particular model, but that’s not what you asked about. We did plant our rows, Miz Ermentrude.” He squinted to the west, to the fade of late afternoon sunlight. “This part of the country . . . well, I don’t suppose I have to tell you—you’ve known it a good bit on your trip here. Nature can be pretty unforgiving around these parts. This is where desperate people go for a last chance.”

  Whereas she had begun to feel a kinship between herself—a desperate widow—and a couple of Mississippians set on establishing their claim to the Llano Estacado, all of whom were determined to thrive and survive on this part of the earth, she reminded herself that Mr. Kincaid’s remarks were what her late husband would have called a “diversion tactic.”

  Right then, a buzzing insect dove into Linnea’s neck. She swatted the pest away. Trying her best not to curl a lip, she asked, “You don’t have a sufficient well?”

  “We do have a well. A new one. We dug it this past winter. Had to dig two of them. We engaged the same diggers we had last year. Had to, no matter their asking price. The first well started coughing up some dark stuff. Wes Alington—the sheriff, the one I mentioned—says it’s oil. Alington thinks it has a value, but he asks too many questions of newcomers and reads too many newspapers and dime novels. I just don’t see oil having any purpose at the High Hopes Ranch.”

  “No cotton. No water. Just oil. Next you’re going to tell me you don’t have any cattle.”

  “There was some hoof-and-mouth going around, but Charlie and I managed to fence about a fourth of our herd down by Blackwater Draw. It’s a distance from our High Hopes, but what could we do? We had to destroy the rest.”

  Linnea began to wonder if she had landed in hell, not Texas.

  Why in the name of good sense did this husband of hers and his uncle decide to plant their roots in a place like this? Please, God, don’t tell me I’ve made another bad decision.

  She tried to find something positive to latch on to. “At least you have good taste in conveyances. This surrey is quite nice.”

  “That’s what the liveryman said when he rented the pair to me and Charlie. It’s the finest in modes of transportation, outside motor cars. We are truly breezing down the highway.”

  Even before a trio of riders—perhaps cowboys, perhaps desperados—headed their mounts in a swirl of dust on their way to what looked to be Scarlet Garter Jenny’s Saloon, Linnea Powell, now Mrs. Kincaid, understood the situation.

  She could have looked locally for one of those Waitress Required signs, but she’d made a mess for herself, more than once. Lubbock did not bustle, not like Shreveport. It was probably all over this Texas town already, how Samson Kincaid and Charlie Craig had taken themselves a couple of brides.

  This particular bride could only give herself a verbal lashing. When will you learn not to jump first and think second?

  It was time to run.

  Run and run fast.

  But just where did “Mrs. Ermentrude Kincaid” figure to go?

  She glanced from left to right, then back to the left. Headed north from Lubbock, she and the mister drove past the city-limits sign, taking a rutted path, the landscape dotted with the occasional makeshift dwelling. The land was so flat it seemed as if she could see the earth’s curve. Shreveport might be flat, but oaks and pine masked it.

  Soon, they reached grass that swayed in the wind and kept threatening to unpin her traveling hat. While there was an occasional tree, the barren patches added grit to the wind.

  Water might turn this land into a Gard
en of Agricultural Eden, as her husband had proclaimed in his letters to Ermentrude, but at the moment it simply appeared to be a lonely, hard place.

  She stole a glance at her mister’s profile. He looked strong, capable—sufficient to make this sad place into one that provided contentment via having more than enough money for simple survival.

  Her new man handled the horse and rented surrey easily, steering them down the road to his ranch. As he did so, she continued to ponder her current dilemma. The next westbound coach wouldn’t arrive for another week, and she had one dollar left in the bottom of her purse with which to feed and shelter herself between here and Clovis.

  She knew naught of ranches and country life. Yet she had enough sense to know that these fellows had to have been desperate to think their fortunes would come from the hell of Lubbock County, Texas.

  Was there nowhere to go tonight but the High Hopes?

  “Mr. Kincaid? Please just turn us around, and . . . if nothing else, I will ask the Antlers’ proprietor if I might wash the supper dishes in exchange for a cot in the storeroom.”

  “No, ma’am, my sugar doll. We’re headed home.”

  Beaten but not whipped, she gritted out, “Don’t you ever call me ‘sugar doll’ again, not as long as you live, or as long as I live here, or whichever comes first.”

  “If that’ll make you happy, sug—okay, Mrs. Kincaid. You got a deal.”

  Boy howdy, did she ever!

  After five or ten minutes, he broke the silence by tilting his cleft chin in her direction, saying, “The Nussbaumers run a nursery-house in San Angelo. I promise you, the first extra dime we have, we’ll send to them for your flower seeds.”

  A smile touched the corners of his mouth, not to mention his blue eyes, and there seemed to be honesty in his voice. For the second time since sealing their vows with a kiss, Linnea told herself to behave, to accept, to learn to appreciate. You’re here to be a wife—don’t ruin your chances at a fine man and his fine home.

  “That would be nice, Mr. Kincaid. Flowers bring such brightness to a home.”

  “That they do, Mrs. Kincaid. That they do.”

  Minutes later the distant landscape began to change. “Interesting,” she remarked. “Trees.”

  “They grow alongside a draw. Luis and Manuel—the ranch hands Wes Alington ran outta the county—called it an arroyo. Arroyo being Spanish, like the boys.”

  “Is the High Hopes thereabouts?”

  “No, ma’am, it’s not. Charlie and I, well, we didn’t have an interest in building near any place that might flood. We’ll be home soon enough, though, for you to eyeball the place.”

  “Thank you.”

  They rounded a bend, and she gawked at the small cluster of structures, along with a windmill, on the horizon. She gasped. Surely not! For the third time since becoming Mrs. Kincaid, she lost the reins of her senses. “What in the name of hell is that?”

  Linnea didn’t need a reply. Realization sank in, clearing her vision. There wouldn’t be any arranging flowers or consulting with the valet about Master’s wardrobe.

  Tall, dark, handsome, and broke, Samson Kincaid had more ambition than he had prospects.

  Chapter 4

  What in the name of hell is that?

  Sam, frankly, found it odd that his new missus had cursed. Could he blame her? To use her own brand of wording: Hell, no!

  Had he expected this? Of course, yet he’d hoped her disappointment wouldn’t be too deep. He turned his sight on his home. Their home. Always, he looked on the place as a work in progress, a safe haven with promise. Second thoughts slammed through him. Ashamed for lying to get her here—no honorable Mississippian, not even in mean times, would do such a thing—Sam wished he’d written the truth, concentrating on the positives of High Hopes life.

  Not that any rushed to mind.

  It was taking time to reach a prosperous state, but his ranch kept to a good course, all things considered. Wishing he could take her hand, maybe even pull her close and promise everything would be all right, he silently vowed to never, ever let her go hungry or not have a roof over her pretty titian head, not as long as the Good Lord allowed him to walk this earth.

  “I do apologize, dear wife. I know things don’t measure up to your expectations.” He hurried on. “We have a large smokehouse, where we store seeds and feed, and tack and saddles. And the big place, that’s our little home of sod,” he finally answered, trying to avoid a look at the one-room, single-window shack.

  “You said it was brick.”

  “It is brick.” He pulled the surrey to a halt a couple of stones’ throws from the house he had described in writing as “right fine, ready for a lady of the house.” There were a lot of Lubbock folks living in worse. “Looky there at the window. That’s real glass. It even opens. It faces east to catch the morning sun. See that chimney? It just happens to be one of Charlie’s works of art.”

  “A soddy. Your residence is a soddy?”

  “Ours. It’s our place now, Miz Ermentrude, er, Mrs. Kincaid.”

  “You said in your letter. I’ve got it in my valise. You said you’d built a cozy home of timber and bricks.”

  “It is cozy.” Lacing the surrey reins around his hand, now that they had reached home, he ventured a glance at the lady of the house. “I might not’ve worded it quite right. There is some timber, and the sod is cut into what you could call bricks.”

  He was quick to add, “It’s just like most of the other houses in this part of the country. I don’t reckon I have to tell you there aren’t many trees, not on the Llano Estacado, except a few along the draws.” Sam eyed the rugged landscape. “I’m told it’s a might bit prettier north of here, up in the canyons.”

  “Why didn’t you buy a place up there?”

  He fidgeted. He’d been green as grass to buy land, sight unseen. “Land up-country wasn’t presented to me, that’s why. I bought the place before I left Mississippi. Maybe that wasn’t the smart thing to do, but it seemed like it at the time. Charlie and I were both ready—more than ready—to make tracks out of Natchez. We were desperate. I don’t know if you can understand about desperate, but—”

  “I have some idea of it.”

  He glanced at his bride, wondering how she came to empathy. Were he a man to bet money, he would wager there was a lot to be learned about the young lady he had sworn before God to love, honor, and cherish.

  For now, he felt compelled to take up for himself. “I find a lot to like in these plains. Hereabouts, you and I—and Charlie and Aunt Jewel, and even Cousin Grant—we can all put the hard times of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to rest.”

  “You promised withdrawing rooms and ice-cream socials, not to mention piano recitals and tailor-made clothing.”

  “I didn’t say anything about tailor-made anything.”

  “I’m just trying to make a point.”

  “You’ll have those things, one of these days. In the meantime, I’d much rather be here than in Mississippi. This place has a future. A future even bigger than Texas itself. I’m bettin’ we’ll be rich, one of these days, from—”

  “Wonderful. You’re a gambler, too.”

  “No. No, I’m not a gambler. Not with cards or dice.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  He alit from the surrey, secured the gelding, and went around to his bride’s side. Offering a hand, he said, “I’m not real good with words. All’s I can say is, it may not look like much to most people but . . . it’s like looking at heaven compared to a down-on-its-luck, washed-out place like the Kincaid cotton farm, south of Natchez.” As she didn’t appear particularly excited about his explanations, he left it at: “It’s hard to find lumber around here.”

  “You got enough for those ugly boards that are holding the place up.”

  Trying not to eye all those butt-ugly two-by-four stabilizers, he tugged at his collar, for it had started to get unseasonably warm. “At least it’s not a dugout like Charlie’s got.”

/>   She took his offered hand and stepped down to Sam’s idea of heaven, but stood still. “Who built this place of yours? Please tell me it isn’t an example of your talents as a carpenter.”

  “It’s not a forever house.” Damn, can’t the woman see I’m struggling? “I believe you’ll find it comfortable, sugar doll.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “You’re not being very nice, Mrs. Kincaid.”

  “Don’t call me that, either.”

  If he could make her understand. “Losing family like we did, that’s why Charlie and I left Mississippi. I guess we could’ve gone to Alabama to be with my uncle Sandy Kincaid and his folks. They do some better over there. But northwest Alabama is prone to tornados, so Charlie and I decided to live in a part of this great country that isn’t likely to flood, or get blown to smithereens.”

  “They have tornados here.”

  “True.” He hadn’t taken that into account when choosing this property. In fact, they hadn’t taken much into account, except for floods being of the one-per-hundred-years variety. “Cousin Grant Kincaid—he’s a lawyer, you may remember—he came here to get away from Alabama tornadoes. Imagine his surprise.”

  “You should’ve quit while you were ahead, because you sound like a triad of rubes.”

  Now he was getting plain old irate. “Granted, our home is a soddy. Yes, it leans to the left. Charlie and I aren’t architects, just eager builders. I’m proud to say our home—mine and yours!—won’t be falling down, not with those sturdy buttresses.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “You won’t find a better fireplace. My uncle’s trade was brick masonry. Charlie’s specialty is chimneys that don’t smoke up the cabin.” Matter of fact, Sam helped Charlie from time to time—it was a way to bring in hard cash.