The Bride Lottery

by Tatiana March

  “Can’t you see?” she went on. “It was your father who made the sacrifice. He married your mother, and as a result he lost his career as a soldier and suffered public disgrace. And it was not your sister but her husband who made the sacrifice. He wanted to hunt buffalo, but he had to take up the white man’s ways, prospecting for gold, so he could support a wife and child. Just like it is with us...”

  Just like how with us it is you who needs to make a sacrifice. Give up bounty hunting. That is the only solution. But I love you, and I can’t ask you to give up the only life you know.

  Jamie made no reply. Miranda felt his arm tighten around her. He lifted his hand and stroked her hair. One more time, Miranda wanted him to kiss her. One more time, she wanted to feel his body pressed against hers.

  She tilted up her face. Her eyes misted, making her vision blurred, but she refused to cry—refused to spoil their last moments together with a show of weakness—yet when she spoke her voice was thick with tears. “Do I always need to ask?”

  * * *

  Jamie would have never admitted to being a coward but he knew it to be true, for he wished he had ridden away instead of staying for the night. Why did saying goodbye have to be so hard?

  “You don’t have to ask,” he replied to Miranda’s question.

  Adjusting his position on the hard floor, he leaned over her, cupped her face between his hands and lowered his mouth to hers. This time, the kiss was soft and tender, one of parting, a kiss that tasted of farewell and tears, of lost opportunities and sorrow.

  Miranda understood it, too, for she made no effort to deepen the embrace. When Jamie lifted his head, he could feel her following him, trying to prolong the moment, trying to postpone the instant of parting.

  He leaned back and let his gaze drift over her features, memorizing them. Already, the grief of loss ached in his chest. A part of him, the part of him that lacked chivalry, wished he’d bedded her, had not left her virginity for some other man to take.

  He would have given anything to feel her naked skin against his, even if just once. To be inside her, just once. To make her his woman, in a way that could never be turned back, never be wiped away, never be forgotten or denied. But of course, it couldn’t be.

  “Don’t be sad, Princess,” he said. “It’s for the best.”

  She blinked to stop the tears from falling. “I know.”

  He wished he had something to give her, some memento to remember him by. Something she could take out once in a while as the years passed and recall her youthful adventure with a bounty hunter.

  But he had nothing to give her. All he had ever bought her was boy’s clothing, a gun and a bedroll. Of those, only the gun would last through the years, leaving Miranda’s only memento of him an instrument of killing. Perhaps that was fitting.

  In the stove, a piece of timber collapsed, sending up a hiss of sparks. Heat enveloped them. From downstairs came the sound of a trumpet playing a mournful tune. Jamie pulled Miranda tighter against his side and resumed the slow, smooth stroking of her hair.

  He wanted to tell her that he loved her, wanted the words said between them, just once, but he knew it was no use. Why deepen the wound? It was best for her to forget him, find someone else. A man who could keep her safe, give her the kind of life she deserved.

  He could feel her body trembling against him, understood how hard she fought to keep the tears inside. He did not wish to drag out the parting. He had to leave her while he could summon up the strength to do the right thing.

  “Sleep, Princess,” he said softly. “I’ll watch over you.”

  With a tired sigh, Miranda relaxed against him. Minutes passed. Jamie saw her eyelids flutter down, heard her breathing grow slow and even. Her head drooped to his shoulder. When he could be sure that Miranda slept, he eased their bodies apart.

  Taking care not to wake her, Jamie got to his feet, leaned down to scoop her into his arms and carried her over to the bed. He lowered her down on the mattress, settling her beneath the covers and tucking them snugly around her.

  Straightening, he watched her for a long moment. Her hair fanned over the pillow, like a web of gold. Her smooth complexion was tanned to honey. One of her fists was clenching and unclenching. She must be having a dream.

  “Dream of me once in a while, Princess,” he whispered.

  Then he turned on silent boot heels and walked out of the room. Out of her life. Back to the lonely existence of a man who earned his living by hunting down other men. A man who had no home, no family, and whose only hope for the future was to meet a good death.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jamie lay flat on his belly at the top of the cliffs, surveying a narrow canyon and the path that came up from it. For a week, he’d been trailing Frank Floyd, a small, wiry outlaw known as Nine Lives Floyd. Wanted dead or alive, the man had robbed a bank in a mining town called Burnt Oak, killing a female customer who had panicked and started screaming.

  Since the death of his sister, Jamie had been particularly eager to hunt men who robbed banks. And all through his years in the business he had detested outlaws who were prepared to kill a woman. In addition to the bounty of five hundred dollars, Frank Floyd gave him the satisfaction of ridding the world of a piece of scum who had done both.

  The slow, steady clip of a horse’s hooves against the stony ground alerted Jamie. He peered into the shadowed depths of the canyon. The midday sun burned against his back, coating his skin with sweat and parching his mouth with thirst, but he hadn’t made a single move since he settled into his vantage point at the first glimmer of dawn.

  At the bottom of the canyon, a lonely rider emerged between the rocks. Pinto pony. Thin, wiry man with two cartridge belts crossing his body, bandit style. Fancy black Stetson, with concho beads of silver. Winchester rifle strapped to the saddle.

  Jamie eased forward on top of the cliff. He moved with supreme care, not letting a single grain of sand ripple down into the canyon, where all sound would be magnified with an echo from the walls.

  He waited for the outlaw, now hidden out of sight, to climb up the path. The moment the pinto emerged between the rocks, Jamie intended to call out a demand to surrender. He was not afraid of gunfire. A man with his six-shooter already drawn had an advantage against a man with his weapon still in a holster.

  Wait for the best line of fire, about ten paces along.

  Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. Now!

  Jamie lifted the revolver in his right hand and took aim. When he tried to cock the hammer, a sudden pain pierced his palm. His fingers refused to work. The sweat on Jamie’s skin turned to ice. He barely managed to bite back the demand to surrender he’d been about to shout out.

  At a steady clip, without a care in the world, Frank Nine Lives Floyd rode up the path from the canyon and vanished out of sight where the trail dipped down again. Jamie pushed up to his knees. He lowered the hammer on his gun, slid the weapon into the holster and took out his left-hand gun, just in case the outlaw had spotted him.

  Baffled, Jamie inspected his right hand, slowly curling and uncurling his fingers. There was no pain, no stiffness. The puckered white scar in the middle of his palm seemed no different from before.

  Dismissing the pain as a cramp that had passed, Jamie settled back down on his belly to wait. Two hours later, Frank Floyd returned, at the same leisurely pace of a man unaware of danger. From this direction, Jamie only had a clear firing line for a second. He lined up his revolver, waited for the right moment.

  Use your left-hand gun, his mind whispered, but something held him back. In his head, he could hear the voice of his sister, telling him the scar in his palm would reveal his fate. He’d always refused to accept the Indian superstitions, but now he wanted to know. Wanted to understand what it all meant.

  Cock the hammer. Now!


  The pain came again, like a hot poker piercing the center of his palm. His fingers twitched, weak and without control. Jamie felt the gun slide from his grip. The long steel barrel hit the rock beneath him with a sharp clatter. If his hand hadn’t suddenly come alive and darted out to snatch back the revolver as it skittered along the rock, it would have tumbled down into the canyon.

  Holding his breath, Jamie craned forward to see the outlaw’s reaction.

  The man was riding along at an unhurried pace. The brim of his black Stetson tilted as he cocked his head to listen. He looked left and right, until he noticed the small flurry of grit and pebbles rattling down the canyon wall. Unperturbed, the outlaw rode on.

  Jamie knew what Frank Floyd was thinking.

  It was just a rabbit, or a bird, or a lizard. For if it had been a lawman or a bounty hunter, the last of his nine lives would be gone and he’d lay sprawled in a pool of blood on the ground, the echo of gunshots ricocheting from the canyon walls.

  * * *

  For three days, Jamie kept up his vigil. He lay flat on his belly at the top of the cliff, as unmoving as a corpse. Without food. Without water. Without fire. Without shelter. The way an Indian brave might do, when seeking a vision to reveal his fate. At night, the desert chill made him shiver. During the day, the sun intensified his thirst and fatigue.

  But he endured, as was the Indian way. Four more times, Frank Floyd rode past him, the pinto pony’s hooves clattering on the rocky path, as if mocking Jamie for his inability to complete the hunt. Thirst and starvation and exposure to the elements gave Jamie a narrow tunnel focus, the way a human mind does when stripped to the basic instinct for survival.

  Finally Jamie understood the meaning of Louise’s prophecy. It didn’t mean that some infirmity from the old injury would cripple his fingers. It meant that his fingers would refuse to obey a command from his brain. The scar was merely a symbol, the pain a subconscious sign of the mental battle that would change the direction of his life.

  He had lost the taste for killing.

  Slowly, Jamie crawled back from the cliff edge. Only when he was safely away from the precipice did he scramble to his feet. Staggering, shuffling, he made his way across the rocky ground and tumbled down the slope, half skidding, half falling.

  Stunted trees and vermilion stones and clouds of dust swirled in his vision as he forced his feet to move. His tongue felt thick and swollen in his mouth. He could feel his heartbeat all through his body, as weak and insubstantial as a tremor. A tune filled his ears, a feminine voice singing, with no words, merely a soft, mournful melody.

  “Miranda,” Jamie rasped through cracked lips. “Miranda.”

  He’d endured his quest to learn his fate, but if his endurance failed to carry him through alive, he wanted her name to be the last word he spoke. He stumbled, fell to his knees. His right hand slammed on an ocotillo branch. A spike pierced his palm in the center of the scar, as if reminding him what his subconscious had been telling him.

  His life as a bounty hunter was over.

  Jamie swayed upon his knees, pulled the cactus spike out of his palm. He could not feel anything. There was so little life left in him, his nerves couldn’t spare the energy to signal the sensation of pain to his brain. He lifted his palm to his mouth, licked away the drops of blood.

  It was as if that tiny bit of moisture gave him strength. He scrambled up to his feet and lurched along. A joyful neigh came from the small grassy valley, bisected by a creek, where he’d left Sirius grazing.

  Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Clip-clop.

  The brown shape of the bay gelding appeared on the edge of his blurred vision. Closer and closer it came, until Jamie could touch the shiny coat, could lean against the powerful flank. His hands reached up, fumbled for the leather canteen tied to the saddle horn. Please, God, let my fingers work now, he prayed as he struggled with the cap.

  The canteen snapped open. Water spilled onto his shaking hands. Too thirsty to wait, Jamie didn’t slosh around the first mouthful and spit out the desert grit and dust, but he drank it all, the grains of sand scraping his throat as he swallowed. Careful not to deliver a shock to his dehydrated body, he drank slowly, pausing to catch his breath between mouthfuls.

  When he’d quenched his thirst, hunger made its demands. Jamie walked over to where his possessions lay hidden behind a thick juniper. He pulled out his saddlebags and settled to sit cross-legged on the ground beside Sirius. The gelding kept butting at his shoulders with his nose, blowing and sniffing, nuzzling him with what Jamie took for horse kisses.

  He patted the animal, then searched for food in the saddlebags, tossing the rest of the contents aside. A book. A thick white envelope. A small painting, wrapped in a green-and-brown neckerchief. Jamie uncovered the picture of a small girl and a fair-haired woman riding on a gray Appaloosa. He spent a moment studying the painting, then propped it against a stone, so he could look at it while he feasted on strips of jerky and kept sipping from the canteen.

  Water. Food. Rest. The picture of Miranda and Nora on Alfie.

  Revived, Jamie let his thoughts wander. It was your father who made the sacrifice. And it was not your sister but her husband who made the sacrifice, Miranda had told him.

  He understood the message his subconscious was telling him. If he loved Miranda, he had to give up bounty hunting. But how could he support a family? He didn’t have the money to buy a piece of land to raise horses. No peaceful business would employ a former bounty hunter. No store would employ a part-Indian clerk. He had an aversion to being underground, which ruled out mining.

  Lawman?

  Cow puncher?

  Those seemed the only options. Jamie’s gaze fell on the thick white envelope. The address had been written on a typewriter. “Mr. James Blackburn, Carousel Saloon, Devil’s Hall, Wyoming Territory.”

  The two previous letters had been addressed by hand, jointly to him and Louise. They’d burned them unopened. It was Louise who had insisted they destroy the letters from their mother’s family. She had claimed to sense evil when she stroked the envelope with her fingertips.

  It had just been a mix of superstition and hate that cut too deep, Jamie suspected. Two years older, Louise had remembered their grandfather’s rejection more vividly. And unlike Jamie, who had gone on the road after their mother died, Louise had remained in town, suffering the sharp edge of prejudice as she tried to keep their mother’s dressmaking business going.

  Jamie picked up the envelope from the ground. This one was different. Official looking. And it didn’t have Louise’s name, so the choice was his. Quickly, not allowing the impulse to fade away, Jamie tore open the flap. Inside were several sheets of thick, expensive vellum, each covered with lines of neatly typed text.

  Dear Mr. Blackburn,

  Enclosed is the last will and testament of your grandfather, Eustace Wilkinson, who passed away in May of this year. As you will see, he has left the bulk of his estate to your cousin, Ethan Wilkinson.

  However, there are some holdings in the western territories your grandfather has chosen to bequeath to you. The most important of these is a substantial block of stock in the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, together with land holdings along the railroad tracks. The properties may have significant commercial potential, should the railroad and the towns near it grow and prosper. If not, the land will still have value for ranching use.

  There are also significant stock holdings in the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific Railroad, as well as several smaller local railroad companies.

  In order to claim your inheritance, you are required to contact my office within six months of the date of this letter and fulfill the following two conditions:

  1. You will never use your middle name, Fast Elk.

  2. You will marry a woman of European white origin.

  I
await your instructions.

  Yours truly,

  Lionel McLeod, Attorney at Law.

  Jamie scanned the rest of the documents. Listings of land parcels, copies of stock certificates, an excerpt of the will. His fingers tightened around the papers as he recognized the moment of choice. Just like his father and his brother-in-law, he had to give up something for the woman he loved.

  How much was he willing to give up for Miranda?

  Both he and Louise had middle names, from their father’s parents. Louise Katherine after a white captive who had lived the rest of her life as an Indian squaw. James Fast Elk after the Cheyenne brave who had loved his white wife.

  Giving up the name meant nothing. Jamie groaned at his grandfather’s ignorance. For many Indians, the name was sacred, never to be spoken out loud. When he’d called himself James Fast Elk Blackburn, he’d been using his middle name in the white man’s way, mostly to annoy his grandfather.

  No, his Indian heritage was not in a name. It was in the blood that flowed in his veins, in his physical features, in the color of his hair and his skin. It was a set of skills already learned, ancient beliefs he had always made an effort to ignore and an affinity with nature.

  Anyway, he’d already dropped his middle name on the certificate recording his marriage to Miranda. And he’d already married a woman of European white origin. He had already fulfilled both conditions. Moreover, his subconscious had already told him he must give up bounty hunting. Surely there was nothing else he needed to give up?

  Even as the thought formed in Jamie’s mind, a cold, hard feeling settled in the pit of his belly. He’d have to give up the hate. The hate that had sustained him over the years, had given him the stiff pride to become a man at the age of twelve.

  The childhood trip to Baltimore burned bitter in Jamie’s memory. He thought of his mother’s shaking fingers as she bundled him into his coat before they fled into the night. He had sworn never to ask for anything from her family again. To accept the legacy, he would have to forgive, for otherwise living on the wealth would tear him apart.