Mail Order Bride- Fall

by Sierra Rose

  “Apologies for lengthy delay. Have looked into case concerning your prisoner, Cole Forrester. Talked to two men convicted for similar crime in Stockton and sentenced to hard time; they confessed to incident involving Hutchins family outside Leg of Lamb. Judge

  cleared Forrester of all charges, he is considered innocent and free to go. Letter containing details will follow.”

  Reese, wearing an expression of immense relief, sagged against the wall as if his legs would no longer hold him upright. “Innocent!” he breathed.

  The minister rose, brushed at his suit coat, and said, with an air of satisfaction, “Innocent!”

  Nodding firmly, Paul nodded. “Innocent!”

  Only the bounty hunter could, understandably, take issue. “Innocent!” he squawked. “Look here, I have come all this way plannin’ to pick up a wanted man. And now you tell me it’s been a wild goose chase? Am I to head off empty-handed?”

  “Dunno that you’ve got much choice, Mr. Justice. There ain’t a price on Cole Forrester’s head. Never has been. As far as I see it, nobody owes you a thin dime.”

  Justice seemed to gather his lean frame together, like a puff adder coiled up to strike. The Colt already in his hand—not with lightning speed, like a hired gunslinger, but slowly and suggestively—added to the mood of bullying intimidation. “As far as I see it, somebody owes me a thousand smackers. And I aim to be paid. Who’s to say I didn’t shoot Forrester dead and haul his body back to SanFran b’fore you ever got that there telegram? Huh?”

  “Oh, now, wait just a minute, Mr. Justice,” Martin Beecham protested. “All of us are witnesses to what has happened here tonight. Do you think anyone would doubt the word from a man of God?”

  “Padre,” said Paul. His keen gaze was taking in the stranger’s expression, his watchful pose, and the weapon with its trigger cocked and ready to use. “I appreciate your help, but it looks like things are gonna start gettin’ dicey. Best you leave now, head on back to the party.”

  “But I can’t simply—”

  “Yes, sir, you can. And you will. Take Austin and Colton along with you. Move out, and send Ben over here, as fast as he can make it. Then I’d like you to wait there till you hear from me. I think I will have need of your services later.”

  The minister looked from one to the other: two men, one on each side of the law, and a third caught in the middle. It seemed the trap had been sprung. Caught. Reese’s face with its faint scar had gone fish-belly white, and he had straightened in an effort to be prepared, whatever came along.

  Three left quickly through the jail house door; three remained behind, soundless and motionless. Paul gestured toward the chairs, then took his own, leaned back, and laced both hands together across his spare middle. He appeared calm, cool, and in complete control of the situation—exactly the attributes that anyone would wish for in their sheriff.

  “Anybody got a deck of cards?” he asked.

  For a minute or so, the room felt like a vacuum, empty of all but breath from the other two occupants. Paul watched, as if anticipating some reaction.

  Then, suddenly, he pushed back and uncoiled his formidable height.

  “Your weapon, Mr. Justice.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, give me your weapon.”

  Scowling, the man considered disobeying a law official’s direct order, then reconsidered. The Colt was handed reluctantly over, butt first.

  “Thank you.” Paul, rarely anything but courteous, even to the worst of miscreants, pulled away from his desk, crossed the room, and disappeared through a back door few people knew existed. Again, silence. Again, a waiting period.

  Without warning, there came the muffled sound of three gunshots, off in the distance, in the gentle hills bordering Main Street. Reese, who had remained to do his part as support for the corner wall, exchanged a befuddled glance with his would-be captor. They were still staring at each other when Paul returned as swiftly and quietly as he had departed.

  On his way back to desk and chair, the sheriff extended the Colt to its owner. No explanation. Only a nod. “Enough noise goin’ on at my church fandango to cover the bang,” he commented.

  It took just a very brief time before Ben, accompanied by a slightly winded physician, came charging through the door, loaded for bear. Within a split second he had had absorbed and assessed the scene, uttering merely a stifled, “Ah,” before taking his cue from the man in charge.

  “Gentlemen,” Paul acknowledged. “Thank you for comin’ along so fast. Everything okay back at my weddin’ celebration?”

  “Our ladies were put out at first, wonderin’ where their men folk had disappeared to.” Ben responded only to the timbre of an anxious husband, and not that of a lawman under duress, partially due to sight of the revolver once again resting so plainly in a stranger’s hand. “Then they began gettin’ the wind up. Nervous about stuff goin’ on that don’t include them.”

  “Nervous? We were fightin’ insurrection,” Gabriel countered testily. “They know somethin’ is up, and they’re hostile. Good thing we could leave Marty and your deputies there to soothe their feathers.”

  Paul was sitting up, now, with hands moved from his middle to the center of his desk where the telegram still lay. “Ahuh. I may not get Molly to bed tonight like I wanted to,” he murmured in tones of deep regret. “Like she deserves. However. We got a predicament to deal with here, as you can prob’ly guess.”

  “And it involves these two.”

  “So it seems. Listen, Ben, I gotta ask: d’ you happen to have a spare thousand dollars layin’ around that you can get hold of real soon?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “IT WAS A NICE FUNERAL.”

  “It was a lovely funeral. As funerals go, of course.”

  “Plenty of flowers, for this time of year.”

  “And the Reverend Beecham gave such a stirring eulogy.”

  Mrs. McKnight and Mrs. Tucker, both attendees at said service, paused to exchange glances. “I wonder why. He didn’t really know the man at all, did he?”

  “Well, no. I don’t see how he could have. Word around my circle is that the outlaw slipped into town and hid out somewhere until this here bounty hunter tracked him down.”

  Grace Ellen gave a little shriek of dismay. “Imagine, we could have been slaughtered in our beds if he’d continued his trail of crime in Turnabout.”

  “And if,” said Florence McKnight, with a great deal of satisfaction, “Forrester hadn’t been shot down dead when he tried to escape.”

  “Flo,” murmured her companion, as they trudged along the path through Eternal Rest Cemetery, “why do you suppose he even showed up in town?”

  The lodging house lady shrugged shoulders crammed into rather tight black mourning. Worn for decorum, of course. It was what one did to show respect, even if the decedent were unknown to anyone. “Sounds like he was just a drifter, Grace Ellen, only a few steps ahead of the law. Good thing this Justice feller took things into his own hands. Saved the rest of us a lotta problems.”

  “Ah, well,” the Society President sighed. “Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. It’s only Wednesday; hard to believe practically everyone in the area helped celebrate the sheriff’s weddin’, just last Saturday.”

  “For sure,” agreed Mrs. McKnight. “Dunno when I had a nicer time. And now, here we are, so much goin’ on... Good afternoon, Elvira. You wanna sit with us at the church dinner?”

  “Why, yes, thank you.” Elvira Gotham, approaching under the trees, accepted with alacrity. “It was very thoughtful of Ben to provide funds for everything today, wasn’t it?”

  The sky held a mixture of pure golden sunlight and a few lowering dark clouds that might mean rain, later on. Somewhere in the distance, a blackbird whistled, and a lift of wind suddenly rustled the crisping multicolored leaves of a nearby maple. As a backdrop to the graveyard, thankfully sparsely populated, thus far, a few ancient cedars had been left to guard the dead; and the knoll holdi
ng wooden crosses, carefully marked, looked out over Juniper Creek.

  Most ceremonies—whether nuptial or baptismal or burial, or anything else in between—in a small town bring out its residents in droves. This afternoon’s service was no exception.

  A simple pine casket holding the earthly remains of one Colt Forrester had just been consigned to its final resting place, after brief churchly rites. His executioner, one Pennyroyal Justice, who had trailed him for the last several years, had hastily departed once the death was confirmed, and was, according to rumor, sworn under oath never to return to these parts again.

  “Listen, Elvira,” Mrs. McKnight said now, after giving the matter some thought, “are you positive this Colt person wasn’t Ben’s brother?”

  “I’m positive.” Confidence rang out in her voice and shone across the face shadowed by her black hat. “Forrester is a common name, Flo; and coincidences do happen. And Ben assured me the dead man is no kin of his.”

  “Welllll... maybe some long-lost relative. You think?”

  Elvira, who had guessed at far more in this astounding tale than she would ever reveal, tightened hold of her reticule. “I suppose anything is possible, Grace Ellen. I’m just relieved that the matter is over and resolved, and I have no doubt Ben and Camellia feel the same. It must be so worrisome to have such possible trouble hanging over your head, through no fault of your own.”

  “Oh, certainly, certainly... Yes, you’re right. We’ll just put the whole thing behind us and go on.”

  Several other knots of attendees were making their slow way back to the Church of Placid Waters, talking over some of the same details, only to eventually quash questions once and for all. Then the topic turned to weather (weren’t they lucky not having to deal with storms today?) and the harvest (later than usual, but looking good).

  After a while, the grave site was emptied of mourners but for a designated few.

  “I don’t think it’s necessary that you actually cry, darlin’,” said Ben tenderly, pulling his wife tightly against his side.

  “But I always cry at funerals. It’s such a sad time.”

  “Well, Cam,” Ben risked a glance around to ensure that no curious onlookers remained, “it would be a sad time, if that was any more than an empty box we just put in the ground.”

  “It would be a lot sadder time,” burst out Gabriel, irrepressible even in this solemn moment, “if that was Reese down there, like it mighta been!”

  Another breeze blew through, tickling the women’s loosened hair, flirting with their long skirts, tugging at every man’s tie to wave like flags . A turtledove called from a flock of doves; definitely rain would be falling, at some point.

  “I suppose,” Ben, looking across the little clearing at his friend, said thoughtfully, “we broke some laws, doin’ what we did.”

  “Oh, a whole host of ’em,” agreed the sheriff, unperturbed. “Especially since this whole escapade was my idea. All you did was foot the bill.”

  “That’s all right. I got me an indentured servant for the rest of his days. Reckon he owes me putineer his first born child, wouldn’t you say, Cam?” Eyes twinkling, his glance swerved from his wife to his brother, standing silently off to the side with Letitia beside him.

  Reese, staring down at the clods of damp earth and pieces of green sod at his feet, took comfort in the supportive nearness of his dearest companion and love. “It’s a strange thing to attend your own funeral. To see the name you were born with markin’ your grave.”

  “It was the best we could do for you, son. Fakin’ Cole Forrester’s death, at the hands of a bounty hunter, keeps Reese Barclay from gettin’ killed for real.”

  Neither Molly nor Letitia had had much to say; they, like Camellia, felt a strange sense of loss that meant tears and sorrow. Hannah, practical, wise Hannah, was another story entirely.

  “I still don’t see how you managed everything,” she said with admiration for a plan so quickly conceived and so efficiently carried out. “One would almost think you’d done this sort of thing before.”

  In this new part of the cemetery, where so few markers stood, a couple of cast-iron benches had been installed under a small grove of oaks, almost as some park-like setting. Perhaps to encourage visitors to pray over the graves of their dearly departed. Perhaps to encourage a donation for upkeep.

  Ben was already concerned about the stress under which his wife had been laboring for the past week or so. Three months pregnant, with the joyous occasion of a wedding to help prepare, and then the apparent sorrow of an apparent kinsman’s funeral, she had borne up magnificently thus far. But even the strongest among us need succoring now and then, whether they admit to it or not. Ben seated her gently on the bench and nodded at Molly to join her sister.

  It seemed that, at this moment of closure, they needed to gather, clear up any details, and finish off this ugly sequence of events once and for all.

  Paul laughed softly. “No, how to employ chicanery ain’t somethin’ spelled out in the lawman’s handbook. But it worked pretty well, didn’t it?“

  He was leaning against a tree in a deceptively casual pose: arms folded over his chest, one ankle crossed over the other, but still very close to the bride he had finally, delightfully, been able to bed.

  “Once good ole Ben assured me he could come up with the cash, we went on from there. It was just the four of us in that room, along with Justice; if you remember, I’d already sent my deputies back to the reception.”

  “So he slipped out the back way, up in the hills b’hind Main Street, and fired off some shots with the bounty hunter’s gun,” Ben picked up the thread of the story. “Got Doc, here, to pronounce an invisible body dead. Handed the bounty money over to Pennyroyal, so’s we could get rid of him. Man. He lit out like a blue streak.”

  “And we were off and runnin’.” Reese, who was finally recovering his equilibrium, grinned.

  “It was up to me, next,” put in Gabriel at this point, chuckling. He had found a sycamore stump to plop down upon; might as well enjoy the telling of this yarn, since he had played as large a role as anyone else. “I hightailed it on over to the undertaker’s, told Simon there’d been a killin’ and I needed his cheapest coffin for the morrow.”

  Camellia was shaking her head, either in dismay or approval. Or a mixture of both. “And what about poor Reverend Beecham?”

  “Oh, he’s in on it. Only other’n, besides us, that knows the truth of what happened. And he agreed with what we did.”

  “The problem was that, even payin’ off Justice, and gettin’ rid of him,” Paul, recalling the past few worrisome days with clarity, mused aloud, “even gettin’ that telegram that Reese was innocent—how could we stop just any ole killer for hire from trackin’ the boy, and takin’ a pot shot? No, best thing to do was knock off Cole, for his own good.”

  Letitia couldn’t restrain a shiver.

  “The California Marshal said he’d put the news out, too. But I figured that wasn’t enough. Not to ensure a safe future for this feller her. So that’s when Miss Hannah stepped in.” He smiled at her with a warmth that went straight to the marrow of her bones.

  “And what possible advantage is there to having a job at the Gazette as reporter if you can’t use it?” she pertly wanted to know. “I simply wrote an article about a man wanted for murder, one Cole Forrester, who had been found innocent of all charges, and then killed anyway by a bounty hunter.”

  “So she spread the word like wildfire,” Gabriel pointed out.

  “Not only did we publish here in town, but I sent copies to newspapers in Denver, San Francisco, Albuquerque, St. Louis, Chicago... My, my,” she reminisced, with a wicked grin, “I used up the Gazette’s annual postage budget in one fell swoop.”

  A number of sighs went around the circle. Sighs of relief, of gratitude, or compassion, of general well-being, of congeniality.

  “So,” Ben said quietly into the silence. “No more Cole Forrester, I’m afraid. But I’ve got this bro
ther named Reese Barclay that I’m—” he paused, cleared his throat, and tried again, “—that I’m almighty proud of. I’m hopin’ he sticks around for a long, long time. Just as,” he exchanged glances with his circle of friends, “I’m hopin’ the same for my brothers in arms. Thank you.”

  Male hands reached out, male hands came together in a grip to cement the Burton clan, and everyone else as honorary members. These eight people had undertaken a conspiracy to protect one of their own, due to love and respect. They had succeeded, in hearts and spades.

  After a moment, after a few sniffles from the ladies and a few sessions of rapid blinking from these tall, stalwart men, Reese suddenly turned toward his own fiancé.

  “Tish.”

  Her limpid blue gaze met his, and her heartbeat began to ratchet up into nervous flutters.

  “You okay with all this? With my name, and so on?”

  “I am, of course. It’s all I’ve ever known you by, Reese Barclay.”

  Suddenly, there on that little knoll, near the marker that held all of his old life and in front of all this family who meant so much to him, he awkwardly went down on one knee before her. Letty sucked in a breath of astonishment and delight as he took both her hands in his.

  “Tish, sweetheart. I reckon we’d kinda already settled this, but I wanna make sure. I love you more’n the sun, moon, and stars above, and there’s nothin’ I want in this life except you b’side me, with every step. Letitia Burton, will you marry me?”

  Somehow she managed to smile through the ready tears; somehow she managed to reply despite a bubbling up of emotion. “Y-Y-Yes, Reese, dear. I would be exceedingly honored and—and h-h-happy to be your wife.”

  “Ahuh. Soon?”

  “As soon,” she swallowed past the lump in her throat, “as soon as humanly possible.”

  “That’s good. That’s mighty good. Next week, maybe? ’Cause I can’t wait much longer.” With a whoop almost like a crow of triumph, Reese pulled her into his embrace for one of his luxuriant kisses, with no beginning and no end.