Spring Brides

by Judith Stacy

  “I’m sure,” she answered. She could hear the fire burning in the stove, the wind against the walls.

  He no longer held back. She closed her eyes to savor the sensation of urgency, his hands and his mouth on her, leading her until her body rose to receive his.

  And how good he felt, inside her. The storm in her grew and grew until finally she cried out in release, awash in the pure pleasure of him. His movements quickened, until he suddenly stiffened and groaned against her neck. Then he slumped against her and rolled away, his breathing heavy, both of them bathed in sweat.

  After a time, he lifted his head to look into her eyes. “Are you…all right?”

  “I’m not the one shot,” she answered. She gave him a mischievous smile, not because she wanted to tease him but because she didn’t want to weep. “Have I done you in, Ingram?”

  “If you have, I don’t mind,” he said. He put his arms around her. “I intend to marry you, Eleanor Hansen. You might as well know. I decided it a long time ago.”

  “I’ve…never had much luck with making plans,” she said. He looked into her eyes, then moved away, stretching out beside her. The remark had brought the ghost of Rob Markham into the room—as she intended.

  Dan had said he loved her, and he was waiting for her to say it, too. She knew that.

  But she closed her eyes and turned to him, not yet done with the goodbye.

  Chapter Seven

  Ten days.

  Ten days was far too long to wait. Dan rode in past Petey’s grave, taking his time, testing his ability not to cause the all-but-healed wound in his shoulder to stab with pain. He was doing surprisingly well, he thought, but pain or no pain, he was determined to see Eleanor today, regardless of what Hapwell said about him staying off horses. He couldn’t stand the bunkhouse any longer. He had been in Eleanor’s care and presence for weeks, and if he hadn’t already known it, he knew now that the company of men would never be the same for him. He was tired of hearing about cows and the weather and Karl Dorsey.

  Dan missed her. He lived in the memory of their last night together. There was no doubt that he’d had to leave her house: how could he have stayed and not taken her to bed again? He was still amazed that it had happened. He had no idea what he might have said and done during the worst of his recovery, but whatever it was, it clearly hadn’t mattered to her. She had seen past the ravings, and she had given him everything a woman had to give.

  He didn’t see any smoke coming from the schoolhouse chimneys, nor did he see the mare in the enclosure. He frowned and urged his mount forward, touching the brim of his hat as he passed by Petey’s marker. The wind was strong enough to make the clapper in the Union Pacific bell peal softly from time to time, and it gave the place an eerie and empty feeling, one he had to shake off before he could dismount.

  The door to the schoolroom stood slightly ajar. Everything inside seemed to be in its place, ready for the next lesson. He walked through to her part of the building. That door was closed. He rapped on it softly, then pushed it inward.

  Anyone else might not have noticed, but he did. He couldn’t sense her presence, nor did he see any of the few personal belongings she’d brought with her. The stove was cold.

  He walked to the bedroom and pushed the door open. The bed had been stripped, the mattress rolled. The room had been stripped, as well. She might never have even been here.

  “Eleanor?” he called, still not ready to believe it. “Eleanor!” And he listened hard for some reply, already knowing it was useless.

  He went back outside to look around. There was no snow on the ground now. He could see hoofprints and wagon tracks. And a single small footprint in the mud that must be hers.

  After a moment, he got back on his horse and began to ride toward the Selby house, picking up speed as he went, as the sense of dread began to well up in him.

  Men working in one of the enclosures near the house hailed him when he rode by, but he ignored them. He caught a glimpse of Mick coming out of the bunkhouse.

  “Dan!” Mick yelled after him. “Wait! I got to talk to you! Dan—!”

  He abruptly reined the horse and wheeled it around. “What do you know, Mick?” he asked when he reached him.

  “I know it ain’t no use to go bothering Mrs. Selby about this.”

  “About what, Mick?” he asked, his voice deadly.

  “Ah, damn it all, Danny. Eleanor…she’s gone—”

  “Gone where? By God, tell me what you know!”

  “I don’t—she got on the eastbound train.”

  “She wouldn’t do that. Not without…” He didn’t believe for a minute she would just leave and not say a word. “I’m going to see Mrs. Selby—”

  “Wait, now, damn it.” Mick grabbed the bridle and gave a sharp sigh. “She left you a letter.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Hester’s got it. She told me when I went to see her last night. Eleanor left letters for Mrs. Selby and the young-uns at the school. And there’s one for you.”

  “Why didn’t you bring it?”

  “She wouldn’t give it to me—and me her best customer, too. She said Eleanor made her promise she wouldn’t give it to nobody but you—her hand to your hand—and if she couldn’t, she was to burn it—”

  Dan swore and spurred his horse, jerking the bridle out of Mick’s grasp.

  “The colonel’s looking for you!” Mick yelled after him. “You’re going to tear that bullet hole open—see if you don’t!”

  Dan’s shoulder was killing him by the time he got to the river. He stopped long enough to water the horse, then took off again, riding straight to the exchange when he finally reached Soul Harbor.

  “Where’s Hester?” he asked one of the men leaning on the bar.

  The man grinned. “In a big hurry, are you?”

  “Where is she!”

  “Here I am, Danny,” she said from the stairs. “Look at you! I never thought I’d see you looking this good again. I thought we’d be planting you up there with Lillyann.”

  “Where’s the letter?”

  “I got it. Come on up. I’ll give it to you.”

  He followed her up the stairs, holding on to the banister to stave off a sudden wave of dizziness that washed over him.

  “Come on, Danny,” Hester said, slipping an arm around him. “You done got too big for your britches, is what.”

  “I want the letter, Hester.”

  “Well, we got to get there, don’t we?”

  “Did…she say anything?”

  “Not much. She just told me what to do with the letters she wrote. I wish I could write a fine hand like hers—so pretty.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “No. She missed her mail. The west train brought her a letter last week.”

  They reached a door and Hester opened it.

  “Here’s yours,” she said, stepping just inside. She handed him the envelope, and he stared at his name in the fine handwriting Hester admired so.

  “If she said anything about me in there, you tell me, Danny,” Hester said as he made his way back downstairs.

  “Here,” the bartender said, shoving a shot glass of whiskey at him when he passed. “You look like you need it.”

  “I’ll have to owe you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the bartender said.

  He took the whiskey and sat down at the nearest table, laying the letter in front of him for a moment before he opened it and began to read.

  Goodbye, Dan. I couldn’t say it to your face. It would have been too hard for me. You will think you know how it is with me. You will think that I can’t bear being a witness to the terrible danger you court. It is true. I can’t. What you don’t know is that that is not the only reason I have gone. You are a good person, a decent person. I knew it the very first day we met. The truth is I am not. I am not speaking of what happened between you and me. That was beautiful, and I will remember it always. It’s the life I lived before I came to Soul Har
bor that shames me. I was a woman of the town, someone not fit to teach children—

  He abruptly stopped reading and looked up. Then he began reading again.

  —not fit to teach children. I was “Nell” Hansen then, and I have no explanations for the things I have done nor any excuses. I had hoped to start a new life in Wyoming. I just didn’t count on finding you, loving you. There. I have said it now. I do love you, Dan, and that is the true reason I am gone. One last thing. On the wagon ride here to catch the train, I heard it. I heard the singing in the wind. Eleanor.

  He sat for a long time, but he didn’t reread the letter. He was aware that the bartender was watching him. Eventually, he drank the whiskey.

  Mick didn’t ask him anything when he returned. No one did. Not then and not in the weeks that followed. After a series of noisy arguments with Mrs. Selby, the colonel unexpectedly left for England. The schoolhouse sat empty.

  Dan knew that he must seem to be all right to Mick and the rest of them. He ate when he was supposed to eat. Slept when he was supposed to sleep. His strength returned.

  But he wasn’t all right. He knew it for certain the afternoon he saw the reverend’s sister and one of the church women arrive at the Selbys’ front door. They disembarked from their buggy and went bustling into the house—and came right back out again, both of them clearly agitated.

  “Ladies,” he said when they stomped past him to their buggy.

  The reverend’s sister immediately turned on him. “Well, I see you’re up and around again,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That woman—no decent woman would have put herself in that situation.”

  “What situation is that, ma’am?”

  “You lived with her—for weeks!”

  “If you mean Miss Hansen, she saved a life, ma’am,” he said. “Mine. Nothing you say will make me think hard of her.”

  He walked away, leaving them both in a huff. And he delayed his departure into town for a time, not because he hadn’t made up his mind, but because he needed to work out a feasible plan. Eventually, he went to see Mrs. Selby and got an advance on his wages, and then he rode to Soul Harbor.

  He went to the exchange, looking for the man who sold train tickets and handled the mail.

  “You still got that letter for Eleanor Hansen?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but you can’t have it.”

  “I don’t want it. I just want to see it.”

  “Why?”

  He reached across the counter and caught the man by his shirt-front. “Are you going to show it to me or am I going to hurt you?”

  “All right! You cattle people are damn touchy, you know that?”

  “Living with cows all the time will do that to you,” Dan said. “The letter?”

  The man sighed and hunted until he found it, holding it up so Dan could see—everything except what he wanted to see.

  “Get your thumb off the return address,” Dan said.

  The man started to argue but thought better of it.

  Dan read the name and the town. Mrs. Maxwell Woodard. Salisbury, North Carolina.

  He had to start somewhere.

  “Where you off to?” Hester asked when she saw him waiting on the platform as the train going east pulled in.

  He didn’t answer her.

  “You going to bring Eleanor back?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “You know, I…don’t think I told you two letters from North Carolina came that day. One was for Eleanor. And somebody said the other one was for the reverend’s sister. I stole that one.”

  “You what?”

  Hester shrugged instead of elaborating.

  “Bring her back, Danny,” she said, giving him a little grin. “If she won’t come, tell her the sad news—tell her a letter to the reverend’s sister got itself dropped down the outhouse hole.”

  “Hester, what are you—?”

  “She’ll know what it means. Get on the train, Danny, and quit bothering me.”

  He boarded the train, but he stood watching Hester make her way back up the slope to the exchange. After a moment he shook his head and smiled to himself. Help sometimes came in strange guises.

  February was no time to be traveling across the plains. It took him a lot longer than he anticipated to reach St. Louis. He passed the time thinking about everything except the thing that troubled him most. What if?

  What if she wasn’t there? What if she wouldn’t come back with him? What if she—?

  He traveled the length of Tennessee to Knoxville and eventually made it into North Carolina. He got on the train again at the railhead in Morganton, assured that it would take him into the town where Eleanor was at least known.

  He arrived to find the place like what he expected; he’d passed through hundreds of Southern towns just like it during the war. Some had been left far worse off. The military presence was apparent the minute he stepped off the train, but the boredom of occupation duty had taken its toll. The soldiers barely glanced at him. He asked a man stacking boxes where he could find a meal, and was directed to a restaurant near the depot. He ordered fried eggs and biscuits, and he ate slowly, listening to the conversations around him, surprised at how quickly he heard the name “Woodard.”

  “Is that Maxwell Woodard they’re talking about?” he asked the nearest man.

  “Yeah. Occupation commander. If you got business here, you best see him about it first. Save yourself a lot of grief. The Yankees run everything.”

  Dan got directions to the army headquarters and went there as soon as he’d finished eating. He found the place busier than he expected, and he sat down on a barrel outside to wait, watching the passersby. Looking for Eleanor.

  It was cold and threatening to rain, and, after a time, he decided to take a chance.

  “You know where Mrs. Maxwell Woodard is this time of day?” he asked a young soldier standing guard by the doorway.

  “She’ll be here directly,” he said. “Always brings Colonel Woodard his vittles around noon.”

  “Is that her?” he asked, because he could see a young woman walking in their direction with a basket on her arm.

  “That’s her.”

  Dan waited until she reached the front entrance of the headquarters. “Mrs. Woodard, ma’am, I wonder if I could trouble you for a minute.”

  She stopped and looked at him inquisitively.

  “I’m looking for Miss Eleanor Hansen—”

  “Why?” she interrupted, and her tone of voice suggested that she had better like the answer. She reminded him a great deal of Eleanor at that moment, and he tried not to smile.

  “I’ve come a long way to find her, ma’am.”

  She looked at him steadily, clearly not convinced that he was worthy of any information she might have.

  “From Wyoming…” he said, blundering on.

  “Are you Dan Ingram?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, taken aback.

  “Then you stay right where you are. I’ll return directly. Don’t let him go anywhere,” she said to the young soldier guarding the door. She hurried into the building, and he could hear her making her way up the wooden stairs to the second floor. She was gone longer than he expected, and he eventually sat back down on the barrel again, glancing up at the overcast sky occasionally. By the time she returned, it had started to rain, something that seemed not to trouble her in the least.

  “Walk with me, sir,” she said. She led the way to the middle of the street, where she stopped and turned to look at the upstairs window of the building she’d just vacated. Two men in uniform stood watching. “My husband and his sergeant. They want to see you,” she said. “Just in case.”

  Dan didn’t ask “just in case” what. “Is Eleanor here, ma’am?” he asked, walking with her when she crossed the street and stepped up on the sidewalk.

  “If she is, what are your intentions?”

  “I’ve come to get her, ma’am. I want her to come bac
k to Wyoming Territory with me.”

  She made a small noise, one he couldn’t necessarily interpret as approval.

  “She knows I want to marry her,” he said as they walked along.

  “Well, you took your own good time getting here.”

  “Some of that was my stupidity.”

  “And a gunshot wound. How is your shoulder?”

  “My—it’s…well.”

  “That’s good to hear. My husband was shot not too long ago. Weather like this bothers him.”

  Dan didn’t know what to say to that. He just kept walking. They passed a burned out house.

  “Our best friend—Nell’s and mine—used to live there.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that, either.

  She stopped walking. “Nell—Eleanor—is in there,” she said, pointing to the last house on the street. “She’s living with her mother again. I trust you understand that neither Mrs. Hansen nor I wish to see our Eleanor hurt. Good luck, Mr. Ingram. You will need it.”

  She continued on her way, leaving the entire matter of approaching the woman he’d come so far to find in his nervous hands. He stood for a moment, then continued to the house she’d indicated, and opened the gate. When he knocked on the door, he didn’t really expect Eleanor to open it, but she did. She gave a small cry of surprise, but recovered quickly.

  They stared at each other.

  “I’m…sorry you’ve come all this way,” she said finally. “I wrote you a letter. Hester—I guess she didn’t give it to you.” He thought she was about to cry.

  “She gave it to me,” he said.

  “You should have read it.”

  “I did read it.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Eleanor, it’s cold and wet out here. Do you think I could come in?”

  She stood back to let him inside, but she clearly didn’t want to.

  “Who is that, Nellie?” a woman’s voice called from the back of the house. “Tell the rent man he’ll get his money.” The woman stepped into the hall. She had flour on her hands.