The Outlaw Takes a Bride

by Susan Page Davis

  “I’ll tell Sally.” Johnny went into the main room, but she wasn’t there. “She must be filling the tick,” he called to Cam. “I’ll go get her.”

  He ambled out to the barn, surprised at how low the sun was. Sally would be starting supper soon. He liked knowing his wife would cook for him and make sure he had a good supper.

  “Sally?” he called outside the barn. She didn’t answer, and he stepped into the shade under the roof. There was the new mattress, with Sally lying on it fast asleep. He stood over her, grinning. Just like Goldilocks. Her hair fanned out on the striped ticking. Her face was smudged with dust, and she looked like a child. An adorable child. He sank to his knees beside her and reached out to touch her shoulder.

  “Sally.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered, and she looked up at him then tried to push herself up, her face flushing.

  “I must have dozed off.”

  “It’s all right. Must be a comfy mattress.” He winked at her, and she gave him a timid smile.

  “It surely is, Mark. I hope you’ll try it tonight.”

  Johnny swallowed hard. “Well, I dunno.…”

  Her smile disappeared. “What time is it?”

  “Nigh on suppertime.”

  “Oh no. I didn’t start the sweet potatoes.”

  He helped her up. “I’ll carry this in for you. Are you ready to see your new room?”

  “I’ve been waiting with bated breath.”

  He laughed, knowing that wasn’t true.

  “Well, figuratively,” she amended, brushing the hay and dust from her skirt. “Am I filthy? I feel as though I am.”

  “Not too bad, but if you’d like a bath tonight, I’ll fetch extra water.”

  She frowned. “You’ve been working all day. You’d better let Cam lug the water, and that mattress, too.”

  Johnny tried to stand it on edge, but he couldn’t manage with one arm. “Guess I’d better ask him to help me.”

  He laid the mattress down and dared to seize Sally’s hand. “Come on. I want to be there when you see it.”

  They hurried across the yard to the cabin, and she didn’t pull her hand away. Johnny refused to think about how it made him feel to walk with her like this, her warm fingers curled around his.

  They walked through the dim main room and stopped before the closed door. Sally surveyed the planed boards and the wrought-iron hinges and thumb latch.

  “It looks nice.”

  Johnny smiled and squeezed her hand. “Open it.”

  Sally put her hand to the latch and squeezed it then slowly pushed the door inward. She took two steps into the room and stopped. Cam stood near the far window with a piece of sandpaper in his hand. Johnny dodged around her so he could see her expression. She was smiling.

  He looked over at Cam and grinned.

  Cam stepped forward. “We had some trouble putting the bedstead together, ma’am, but it’s fine now. And we’ll bring in the mattress for you whilst you’re cooking supper.”

  “Thank you,” Sally said softly. She glanced at the row of hooks on the inside wall then walked to the near window and looked out through one of the four small panes. “I can see the garden.”

  “That’s right,” Johnny said, “and from the other window, you can see the road toward town. That way, if you hear someone coming, you can look out and see who it is before they tie their rig up.”

  She turned toward him, her face aglow. “You’ve done a wonderful job, boys.”

  Johnny could hardly contain his pleasure at hearing her words of praise. “And we put baseboards all around,” he added. “It’ll keep out the drafts and some of the vermin. Don’t know if you want the walls painted.”

  Sally looked around at the plain, pine-board walls.

  “I thought maybe later on, if the money’s not too tight, you might want to plaster and wallpaper,” Johnny added. His mother had told him once that wallpaper was a sign of permanence. If a woman wallpapered her parlor, she was staying put.

  “That might be nice,” Sally said, “but this is fine for now. Very fine. Thank you both.”

  “We’ll get that mattress in,” Johnny said, “and you can put your new linens on it. Come on, Cam.”

  When they carried the straw tick through a couple of minutes later, Sally was bustling about the kitchen. She had stirred up the cook fire, and it already felt hotter in the house. Johnny wished there was a way to cool things off for her. He’d have to think about that outdoor oven soon.

  They situated the mattress on the bed frame.

  “There.” Cam patted his side as smooth as could be expected. “You and the missus will have a fancy place to sleep tonight.”

  Johnny felt his cheeks fire up, as they always did when Cam mentioned his private life with Sally.

  “Maybe I can filch the tick off the bunk bed,” Cam said.

  Johnny considered that. “All right, but we’d better ask her first, not just do it.” He had had some vague idea that he might sleep out there on the narrow bed, now that Sally had this fine room, and not tell Cam he was still, for all practical purposes, a bachelor. “I reckon we should build a bunkhouse by fall.”

  Cam grinned. “Thinking you’ll prosper come fall roundup? Maybe you’ll need to hire some more hands.”

  “I doubt that.”

  In the kitchen, Sally was stirring some kind of batter in an earthenware bowl.

  “Ma’am, do you mind if I take the mattress off that there little bed?” Cam asked.

  “Oh, help yourself, Cam.” Sally leaned over the worktable, frowning at a sheet of paper. “Two eggs.”

  “I’ll help you,” Johnny said.

  “Naw, I can get it,” Cam said. He folded the bedding from the bunk. When he’d gone out with his prize, Johnny sat down on a stool on the opposite side of Sally’s worktable.

  “Need anything?”

  She glanced up at him and smiled. “Not right now, thanks. But I would take you boys up on the offer of bathwater later.”

  “Sure. We’ll fill the boiler for you.”

  Sally went to the cupboard and came back with two eggs, which she cracked into her mixing bowl. Johnny looked over his shoulder to make sure Cam wasn’t coming back inside yet.

  “Listen, Sally…”

  She stopped stirring and gazed into his eyes. “What is it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said. I’ve decided not to tell Cam how much money we have.”

  She smiled a little when he said we.

  “He asked me, when we were working today, why I charged so much at the mercantile, when he knew I was about broke. So I told him that…that a payment came in for the cattle. But I didn’t say how much.”

  She nodded. “That’s probably wise, Mark. Now he’ll know you can pay him for his work, but he won’t know all your business. Even though he’s a friend, I think it’s good for an employer to keep a little distance between himself and his workers.”

  Johnny nodded slowly. He and Cam had lived closer than most brothers for the last few weeks, but still, he knew they were as different as a peach and a cactus. For a while their future had depended on each other. He wouldn’t have made it out of Colorado alive without Cam’s warning and urging to make haste. And Cam wouldn’t be surviving now without him. At least not comfortably.

  But if none of that business at the Lone Pine had happened, Mark would still be dead, and someone would probably have contacted him, and he supposed he would have inherited his brother’s property. They hadn’t found any papers in the house indicating otherwise.

  That put him in mind of something else. He ought to write a will, bequeathing all of this to Sally. That was what Mark would have wanted, and Johnny knew at once that he wanted it on paper. If anything happened to him, there should be no question about who owned the ranch. The way things stood now, Cam could open a can of worms if he died.

  But would a will he signed with Mark’s name be legal? Johnny clenched his teeth together. It would be as legal as this m
arriage.

  “You look powerful somber,” Sally said.

  “Just thinking.”

  “Care to share your thoughts, Mr. Paynter?”

  The subtle reminder of their bond only made Johnny more uncomfortable. He should be telling her everything. A man shouldn’t keep secrets from his wife. Though Sally’s tone had been light, her face was dead serious.

  “I…I need to write a will.”

  She blinked. “That’s an odd thing to say. You don’t expect to leave this earth soon, do you?”

  Johnny rubbed the back of his neck and wished it wasn’t so hot in here. “No, but you never can tell, can you? I just meant I want to make sure that if something should happen, you would get the house. The ranch. Everything.”

  “I’m your wife. Wouldn’t I get it anyway? I mean, this is Texas.”

  He hesitated. When it came down to it, Sally had lived in Texas a lot longer than he had. She knew the laws better. “I guess so. I just wasn’t sure what would happen if I didn’t have a will.”

  “I suppose it would be better to have it on paper,” she said.

  He nodded. “I’ll get started on that extra hot water. And can I move your things into the other room for you?”

  “That’d be nice.”

  Hauling the water one bucket at a time was hard work, but somehow Johnny didn’t want to ask Cam to help get his wife’s bathwater. It took him quite a while, and Sally had to help him heft and tip each pail up when he brought it to the kitchen, but at last both the stove’s reservoir and the boiler were full.

  Supper was ready then, and he didn’t move her things until afterward. Sally had kept most of her clothing and personal belongings in her trunk so far. He would have to get Cam to help him move that into the bedroom, but he could take her satchel in, and her things from the little cupboard.

  She was in there before him, shaking out the snowy new bottom sheet. Without asking, Johnny went to the other side of the bed and tucked in the edge.

  She smiled big. “Thank you.”

  He cleared his throat. “We’ll bring your trunk in later.”

  “I’m in no hurry.”

  He went out to the main room and brought the box cupboard in. It was light, with only a few things inside.

  Sally stood by the row of six hooks. “I’ll leave you half.”

  “Two is plenty,” Johnny said.

  “All right, then, I’ll hang up my Sunday dress.”

  “My ma always brushed hers on Saturday night,” Johnny said. “Us boys’ pants and jackets, too. She’d starch our Sunday shirts real stiff and press ’em.” He gulped. “We don’t have a flat iron. I’m sorry. I should have thought of it when we were in town.”

  Sally turned her bright smile on him again. “Well now, I’m real happy to tell you that I can save you some money. I’m a dressmaker, you know. I’ve got an iron in my trunk.”

  Johnny laughed. “No wonder it’s so heavy.”

  Sally laughed, too. “You made a joke, Mark! I think you’re making progress.”

  “What do you mean?” The way she said that made him feel like there was something wrong with him. Other than being a bold-faced liar.

  She walked over and stood facing him, her arms crossed. “We can have a good life together, Mark Paynter. And we can have good times. Happy times. It’s up to us to make them.” She reached up and touched his cheek, sliding her warm fingers into his beard along the side of his jaw. “You’ve got to believe that.”

  Johnny’s stomach went all wobbly. “I do,” he said quickly.

  She held his gaze a moment longer. “All right. Well, maybe you can open that trunk and bring me the green dress, while I spread the quilt out.”

  “Sure.” He escaped into the main room, feeling he had disappointed her. What did she want? He knew what he wanted. He’d been tempted to pull her into his arms and kiss her. But if he did that, and then she found out he wasn’t Mark, how much would she hate him? This wasn’t a game, and when he kissed her again—if he ever did—it had to be when she knew the truth.

  He unbuckled the straps that encircled her trunk and opened the lid. Green dress, she’d said. Something blue and soft was on top. A shawl, maybe. He hadn’t seen her wear that yet. He pushed it carefully aside, thinking how pretty Sally would look in that cloud of fluffiness, with her blue eyes gazing into his.

  Underneath was the sturdy, dark green material of the dress she’d worn for the wedding. He lifted it out. That was the dress, all right, the color of the pines in the Colorado mountains. He wondered if she had made it herself. The front was all full of tucks and folds, with shiny mother-of-pearl buttons right down the middle. As he lifted the skirt free of the trunk, something beneath it shifted. It looked like a packet of letters, similar to the one Mark had kept, only this batch was in Mark’s handwriting.

  Johnny’s hands clenched around the folds of the green dress. Sally had kept all of Mark’s letters, the same way he had kept hers. She was familiar with Mark’s handwriting, which was nothing like Johnny’s. What would he do when she noticed that his writing was not the same as it used to be?

  His broken arm would help for another month or so. No one expected him to do much writing while it healed. But there would come a day when he had to write something, and Sally would be there to read it.

  Maybe he could tell her that the broken arm had changed it somehow. It had made his bones heal back differently, and that made his handwriting different. Sloppier, for sure. Mark had always written more neatly than he did. Johnny figured he stood a fairly good chance of getting Sally to believe it.

  More lies.

  He hated himself for even thinking it, for planning to lie to her again. But if he didn’t, she would unmask him. Even if he wrote a simple will to benefit her, or if he went off on a cattle drive and sent her a note to tell her he was all right, she would know, or at least suspect. But he couldn’t go the rest of his life without writing anything.

  He sat down on the hard boards of the bunk with the dress spread across his knees. This wasn’t right. It hadn’t been right from the start, and it still wasn’t. But if he told her, would she be more hurt than if he didn’t? She probably wouldn’t want to stay with him, but what would she do? Would she go back to her folks? She hadn’t when her first husband died. Would she be too mortified to face them again if she learned her new marriage was a fraud?

  “Mark?” Sally came to the doorway of the new bedroom, smiling. “There you are. I thought maybe you’d gone out to the barn.”

  He stood and walked across the room, holding out the dress. “No, I’m here. This is the dress you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the one.” She took it and held it up with a satisfied glint in her eyes.

  “I was recalling how pretty you looked in it,” Johnny said. “Did you stitch it yourself?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He looked at it again. “You’re really good at sewing, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not bad. And I meant what I told you before.… If we ever truly go broke—I mean, if something terrible happened and we lost all the cattle or something—I might be able to help earn some money by sewing again.”

  “Thanks. I hope you won’t ever have to worry about that.”

  “So do I, but I wanted you to know that I can if we need it.”

  He nodded. The last thing he wanted to do was ask Sally to support him. He’d already done enough to ruin her life, if she only knew.

  He was tempted again to kiss her, and he turned toward the door. “I’d best see if Cam needs anything else.”

  That evening, while Sally took her bath in the new room and he leaned on the corral fence watching the calves, and later, when Sally got out her Bible and read aloud from the book of Romans, he kept brooding about Mark’s letters. If he could read those letters, it would certainly help him out some. He would know what Mark had promised her and what Sally had expected when she got off the train in Beaumont. And he might learn a few other things from his ol
der brother—like how to win a woman’s love.

  He knew Sally liked him, but that was only because she thought he was Mark. Deep down, he wanted her to like Johnny, too—all right, to love Johnny. Because he already understood why Mark was attracted to her. Just reading her letters, he had fathomed that. Now that he’d been living under the same roof with her for several days, he truly wished he were Mark so that he wouldn’t have to disappoint her.

  CHAPTER 13

  Sally patted her hair into place and eyed herself critically in the small hand mirror she’d brought along from St. Louis. Maybe someday, she and Mark would have a fine ranch house and a big, beveled mirror. For now, the little cabin with its rough addition and her brass-framed hand glass would have to do.

  She hoped she would pass muster with the ladies at church. Mark had seemed to like her green dress. He’d really opened up a little yesterday. Or so she had thought, until it was time to retire.

  She frowned and reached for her small pendant with the green stone. It was the only piece of jewelry she owned besides her two wedding rings and an onyx mourning brooch her aunt had sent her after David’s death. She was married now, and she would not wear the brooch again, but the pendant held happier memories. Her father had traded supplies for it and a turquoise necklace for her mother to some Comancheros. Sally was only twelve years old at the time. Her mother had said it was a waste to trade for jewelry, but the men offering it needed supplies, and they didn’t have much else to trade. They claimed Sally’s was an emerald, but her father said it probably wasn’t real. Later, they’d heard the Comancheros traded people as slaves, and her father regretted doing business with them. But Sally loved the square green stone on its gold chain.

  As to Mark, she had lain awake for hours last night, debating whether or not to touch him or to say something. He had kept to his side of the new bed and didn’t seem inclined to cross the invisible line between them. Sally didn’t know what more to do. If her father were here, she’d ask him to have a frank talk with her husband. But there was no one. She certainly couldn’t discuss the topic with Cam. Her hopes had slowly waned until his even breathing told her he had drifted into sleep, and she had held back the tears that hovered so close to the surface.