by Merry Farmer
She caught the hem of her skirt on a loose nail at the bottom of the stairs. The short, ripping sound only made her cheeks burn brighter with embarrassment. “I truly am sorry about the mess I caused up there,” she burst out before Sam could say what she was certain he was going to say. “I don’t know what it is, but disaster seems to follow me wherever I go. I come by it honestly, though. It seems like disaster has followed my entire family for as long as anyone can remember. Why, the story goes that my grandfather fell overboard and drowned in the Hudson River as he and my grandmother were disembarking from their journey across the sea. It’s a good thing my grandmother was already carrying my poor papa, or I wouldn’t be here.”
Sam stopped when they reached the spot and turned to face her. “Let’s just deal with why you are here first,” he said.
“I’m here to marry you, of course.” She turned her best smile up to him, batting her eyelashes the way her Cousin Myrtle had shown her.
Sam turned a strange, mottled color. He rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re nineteen?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?” Her heart pounded harder.
“Not if you don’t mind being married to a man past thirty,” Sam said.
Julia loosened her shoulders, feeling a touch of relief. “I don’t mind at all. Younger women have been marrying older men for as long as marriage has been around. I think it’s because you’re so good at protecting us.” She paused. “And because you men need a little time to make your fortunes before you can support a wife and children.” She paused again, and when he didn’t reply, she rushed on with. “I’m sorry I told Mrs. Breashears I was older than I was, but I honestly don’t think it would have mattered. She seemed very eager to find a husband for me and send me on my way.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Sam muttered. Julia had heard the same thing too many times to let it bother her. Sam took a breath, stood a little straighter, and went on. “I don’t have a problem with the age difference if you don’t, but it makes me think. If you’d like to take some time before we’re married to just live here, get your bearings, get to know people, that’s fine by me. We don’t have to rush into anything.”
Disappointment and a good measure of fear seized up in Julia’s chest. “Are you…are you saying you’ve changed your mind? Because I had a cousin, Melba, who was supposed to marry a man once, and he changed his mind. Of course, that was probably because Melba ran off with the butcher’s son. But she did come back. Only, the man wouldn’t marry her then, and she ended up in the streets up in New York. At least, until she died in childbirth with the butcher’s son’s baby.”
“Wha—” Sam continued to stare at her in disbelief for a few more seconds before shaking his head and drawing in a steadying breath. “I’m not changing my mind, I’m just giving you a chance to settle in slowly. I don’t know how you ladies come out here and marry someone you don’t know so fast.”
“It’s because we don’t have much choice,” she explained, wondering how he could possibly not understand the position most mail-order brides were in. “A woman isn’t given many choices in this world, Mr. Standish. Marrying is just about the only way we can be certain to have a roof over our heads. Even then, there’s no guarantee that the man we marry will treat us kindly. Remember the story I just told about my Cousin Elizabeth? And while I don’t think I’ll end up at the bottom of a well with a broken neck by marrying you, I’d rather risk that than continue living a shiftless existence, wondering if I’ll go the way Cousin Melba went. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d feel much better if I stood up in front of a preacher with you right away. That way I’ll know that my journey is finally over and that I can breathe easy at last.”
She finished by drawing in a quick breath and fighting the sudden urge to cry. But she’d never seen any point in tears. They’d never solved anything, and she was much more inclined to laugh than cry anyhow.
She wasn’t so sure about Sam, though. He just stood there, staring and staring. Although the look in his eyes had changed from the bare tolerance she was used to into a tenderness that she hadn’t expected. Perhaps she shouldn’t have blurted out her sad tale quite so fast.
“All right,” he said at length, voice hoarse. He cleared his throat, then offered her his arm. “If you say so, then let’s go get hitched.”
Chapter 2
Sam liked to imagine that he was on top of things, that he was aware of everything going on around him at all times. It was a skill every good barkeep had to develop so that he would know when his patrons had had enough, when fights were about to break out, and when men playing cards in his establishment were trying to cheat. That skill had served him well through years of living life on the fringes of society. But throughout his entire marriage ceremony, he felt completely clueless.
“That was positively beautiful,” Julia told him with a sigh as they left the church as man and wife. “What a nice preacher. Rev. Pickering you said his name was?”
“Uh, yep,” Sam answered.
“I’m so sorry that I knocked his candlesticks over and stepped on his foot.”
Sam glanced to his friends—who had witnessed the ceremony and now walked beside them—for help. Neither Travis nor Trey looked like they were going to lift a finger to intervene. In fact, they both wore grins that said watching him now was better than a stage show.
“Mrs. Rev. Pickering seems quite nice as well,” Julia went on. “Holly her name is?”
“Uh-huh.” Sam nodded.
They turned left at the end of the church path and headed up toward Elizabeth Street, past the school and the baseball field.
“I wonder if Mrs. Rev. Holly and I can be friends,” Julia went on talking, her voice a cheery lilt. “I’ve always wanted to have a cadre of friends.” She let out a sudden laugh that nearly made Sam jump out of his skin. “No, that’s not true. I’ve really always wanted to have just one, close friend. But that’s hard to do when you’re constantly on the move and when tragedy keeps you busy.”
“Tragedy?” Sam asked, wondering if he would regret it.
“Well, yes.” She glanced up at him with guilty eyes. “As I’ve hinted, people in my life seem to fly off to meet their maker before their time. But I’m sure that won’t happen to you,” she rushed to add. “It’s just that the people I’m related to seem to be accident-prone.”
Travis snorted in his attempt to stifle a laugh. Sam turned and scowled at him. Trey had a hand over his mouth too, but the teasing spark in his eyes was unmistakable.
“The only reason I was at Hurst Home was because my dear brother, Walter, had an accident at work last year,” Julia continued as they headed past the town hall. At least The Silver Dollar was right around the corner now. “He worked in a brewery, and I’m afraid he wasn’t watching what he was doing. He fell into a vat of boiling beer.”
Sam choked, not sure whether he should be horrified or laugh. No, he should be horrified. It was tragic. But Julia seemed to take it with a steady resolve. “Are you okay about it?” Sam asked anyhow.
Julia heaved a sigh. “Well, no. I’d much rather have my brother whole instead of bottled.” Travis made a strangled sound on Sam’s other side. “But Wally would want me to continue on and be happy. So would our parents.”
“And, um, how did they—” Sam pinched his lips shut before he could finish the question, not sure if he wanted to know.
“Papa was killed in the war,” Julia answered as if he’d asked her what she wanted for lunch. “Mama was struck by a carriage on her way home from the laundress where she worked.”
“Oh.” It was a lame thing to say, but Sam couldn’t think of anything else.
He glanced sideways at her as they turned onto Main Street, stepping up onto the boardwalk that ran in front of his saloon. Something unfamiliar and fuzzy filled his chest, like too much head on a beer. For someone so young, Julia had been through so much. Sam wasn’t sure if he’d ever known as many people as she seemed to have lost. It gave him a sens
e of…responsibility.
No, that wasn’t it. He felt responsibility for his patrons, to keep them happy and to keep them coming back. The feeling seeping through him as he looked at Julia—her simple yet pretty grey dress, her cheerful smile, the swell of her considerable breasts in contrast to her slim waist—he hadn’t noticed that until now—sent a whole other kind of thought through him. He wanted to…he wanted to take care of her.
No, that couldn’t be right. He wasn’t a care-taking sort of man.
“Well, this is it,” he said, nodding to the saloon.
Julia blinked at him, then at the saloon. “This is your place of business?”
“And my home,” Sam said.
“And your home?” An uncertain, almost disappointed look came into Julia’s eyes. It turned her already young-looking face into a picture of threatened innocence. The urge to take her in his arms and shelter her flared even hotter.
“Well, my friend, it looks like you have things in hand here,” Travis said, thumping Sam on the back and shaking him out of the uncomfortably warm feeling. “Wendy’ll be expecting me home for supper soon.”
“Is Wendy your wife?” Julia asked, smiling at Travis. “Maybe we can be best friends too.”
Travis had a hard time schooling his face into a smile that didn’t look like he was laughing at her. “I’ll ask her. Maybe we can have you around for supper sometime.”
“Oh, I’d like that,” Julia answered with such genuine feeling that the sliding sensation in Sam’s chest came back.
“How about you, Trey?” Sam asked. “You got work to do too?”
“Heck, no,” Trey laughed. “I’m coming in to have a drink.”
Sam narrowed his eyes at Trey, ready to throttle his friend if he so much as thought of making fun of Julia. She was his wife, after all, and no man was going to tease her.
As soon as the thought hit him, Sam shook his head. It’d never bothered him when people were teased before. Domestication couldn’t have been making him soft already, could it?
“Come on in,” he said.
Julia was still clutching his arm and had been since they stepped out of the church. She smiled up at him now, but there was enough trepidation in her look to cause a lump to form in Sam’s throat. Which was ridiculous. He was proud of his saloon. He’d accepted Howard’s offer to come to Haskell to run it right after the place was built. And no, it wasn’t as rough-and-tumble as things had been in the early days of Cheyenne, but it was his.
As soon as he pushed through the double-doors—which he’d always thought would be more suitable for a hotel than a saloon—Julia drew in a breath. Her eyes went wide as she took in the saloon’s main room. “It’s so big,” she said.
“It’s all right.” Sam couldn’t help but grin with pride.
The main room of the saloon was large enough for six round tables with six or seven chairs each around them. A large, stone fireplace stood to one side of the room to keep the place warm in winter. A row of tall windows faced the street. They were open to let in the light, since it was afternoon, but Sam kept them shuttered at night, especially when things got a little rowdy. A small platform with an upright piano stood to the left side of the room for when they had entertainment, and the bar ran along the entire right side. A staircase tucked to one side of the fireplace led up to the second floor and a variety of small guest rooms where people who couldn’t afford a room at The Cattleman Hotel sometimes stayed to sleep off their drinks.
“Sam, you’re back.” Sam’s sole employee, Chan, an old Chinaman who had worked on the railroad, waved to him. “You married now?” Chan asked, nodding to Julia with a toothy smile.
That simple question brought the entire saloon to silence. It was still early, so only a handful of men were there, wetting their whistles or playing cards between train journeys or after quitting work early. They all turned to Sam and Julia, chairs scraping. Sam met their inquiring stares with the same ferociousness he would have used to stare down a rambunctious drunk.
“Yeah, I’m married now,” he said as if challenged. “This is Julia, and I want you all to treat her nice.”
He set his stance, ready for a fight. Instead, Julia broke into a smile and said, “Hello,” and the rugged men at the tables melted like butter.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Old Benny, the cooper, jumped up from his seat first. He strode over to shake Julia’s hand, cheeks pink. “I’m Benny, and this is Gus.” He gestured to his brother and assistant at the cooper shop.
Gus rushed to shake Julia’s hand as well. “You sure you want to marry this grizzled old sack of bones?” He gestured to Sam.
“I already did,” Julia answered. Sam couldn’t tell if her wide-eyed expression was cluelessness or if she was just being kind in the face of Gus’s rough joke. “And I’m very happy I did,” she added.
Benny and Gus chuckled and exchanged looks. Those sly looks were turned on Sam. “Why, you old coot,” Gus said.
“Oh, Sam isn’t old,” Julia informed him. “He’s only just past thirty. He told me.” She nodded with sincerity.
“Sam has a wife,” Chan spoke up from behind the bar. His smile was as broad and toothy as ever. Coupled with his thin moustache and goatee which were quite fashionable in China, and his narrow eyes, Sam worried Julia would be afraid of the man.
On the contrary, Julia giggled and strode over to the bar to meet him. “Yes, he does, and it’s me. I’ve only ever met one other Chinaman before. He was the servant of a diplomat in Washington D.C. whose laundry I used to deliver. That Chinaman wasn’t nearly as friendly as I’m sure you are.” She thrust her hand across the bar.
Chan laughed uproariously and took her hand. He said something loud and musical in Chinese, then turned to Sam with, “You found yourself quite the lotus blossom here.”
A whole new emotion washed through Sam—jealousy. He didn’t like it. Not just feeling jealous, but the fact that he’d experienced more emotions in the last two hours than he had in the last two decades. It just wasn’t right.
He shook away the jealousy and stepped over to Julia’s side. “Yeah, I did.” He nodded to Chan, took Julia’s arm, then turned to the rest of the bar. “A round of drinks on the house, fellas! To celebrate my new wife.”
It was just the thing to take everyone’s attention away from him and Julia. The men cheered in thanks and left their chairs to crowd their way up to the bar for their free drinks. Sam nodded to Chan, who nodded back and reached around to the back of the bar for the special whiskey they used when the house was paying. It was watered down just enough to keep the saloon’s patrons happy without letting them overindulge. It was cost effective too. Trey knew all about the ploy and shook his head as he sat.
“Come on.” Sam steered Julia out of the way of the crush of men and toward a narrow door leading to the back of the saloon. “I’ll show you where we’ll be living.”
Julia walked with Sam through the small door and down a dim hallway.
“I must say, I never expected that I would be living in a saloon,” she said, craning her neck to look through an open doorway halfway along the hall. It appeared to lead to a storeroom. “I always imagined that the kind of women who lived in saloons were, well, more like my Cousin Roberta than my Cousin Ethel.”
“Huh?” Sam paused before a door at the end of the hall, his hand on the knob.
“My Cousin Roberta entertained for a living,” she said. “My Cousin Ethel converted to Catholicism and became a nun. Come to think of it—” She paused, laying a finger on her chin. “Ethel’s the only one in the family who has made it past the age of forty. It’s a shame I’ve no interest in becoming a nun. I could have gone to live with her at the convent instead of taking shelter at Hurst Home. But then, I never would have met you.” She ended her wild speech with a grin.
Even in the dimness of the hall, she could see Sam’s face grow pink. Maybe she shouldn’t tell all the stories of her relatives so early in the marriage.
&nbs
p; Sam cleared his throat. “Uh, right.”
He pushed open the door, showing her into a simple but cozy living space. There was a bed in the far corner, a wardrobe against the wall beside it, and a washstand near the foot of the bed. The opposite wall held a stove and cupboard, along with a sink that had a small pump in it. A table with two chairs stood near the center of the room. There was plenty of space left over, but the walls were bare and there was no carpet on the floor.
“Well,” she said, letting go of Sam’s arm and stepping deeper into the room. She turned in a small circle, smiling up at the space. Two of the walls held small windows, telling her this apartment was on the corner of the building. “I think I can really make something of this space.”
Sam strode up to her side, his expression puzzled. “Make something of it?”
She finished her perusal of the space by turning to him with a smile. “Yes. All it needs is a woman’s touch.”
“A woman’s touch?” Sam looked nervous.
“That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” She blinked a few times. “It’s a wife’s duty to make her husband’s life as comfortable and happy as possible. I can’t snap my fingers and accomplish the happy part of that, but I most certainly can get to work on the comfortable portion right away.” She grinned at Sam, then turned her attention back to the room, walking to the bedroom corner. “Yes, a few light touches here, some curtains there. Oh! Maybe a nice quilt on the bed or, yes! Some crocheted doilies over the back of the chairs to give the room a gentleness.”
She did a complete circuit of the room, only to return to Sam’s side as he was running a hand nervously through his hair. “I don’t know how I feel about a bunch of changes being made.”