Mail-Order Man

by Martha Hix

  Skylla straightened, massaged her fist against the ache in her lower back, and stuck by her guns. “Blast it, Claudi. How can you stand in this kitchen and argue about Braxton when Kathy Ann is still missing!”

  “She’s only been gone a day. Charlie is looking for her. And I sent Geoff to help.” Claudine elaborated. “I’m concerned about the girl—believe me I am—but what do you want me to do? Drown myself in worry about a disobedient whelp while I see you throwing away this ranch? Brax could well sell this place out from under our feet.”

  “You have nothing to prove—not even a whisper of proof—that he has ulterior motives. Claudi, you’ve jumped to a conclusion.”

  “Ask Homer Daggitt if you don’t believe me. He’ll tell you Brax Hale is a cardsharp. Everything he presented to us was the same as stolen. The shoat, the chickens, the food, the supplies. Think, Daisy, think. If Brax cheats men at cards, what else is he capable of?”

  “Homer Daggitt is a mean-minded man, and everyone in town knows it.”

  After pacing up and down the kitchen, Claudine said, “Have you ever asked yourself why Brax wants this marriage so much? A man with his appeal shouldn’t need to come all the way to Texas simply to answer a newspaper advertisement. He could get a wife of means anywhere.”

  “Oh? How many rich ladies did we leave behind in Mississippi, Claudi?”

  “He could have waited for a Yankee bride.”

  “He isn’t looking for an easy berth. He’s wanting to be settled.”

  “Yes, and green apples are purple. Skylla St. Clair, that man is not—I repeat, not!—right for you. He’s going to hurt you. You just wait and see.”

  “You aren’t being fair to Braxton.”

  “Oh? Daisy, the Hales were déclassé long before the war. And there were rumors, awful rumors about his parents.”

  “He shouldn’t have to pay for the sins of others.”

  “You should have a look at the strange fruit in his family tree. Take a hard perusal of that colored boy, Skylla St. Clair. You’ll see a family resemblance.”

  “If I looked for strange fruit, I’d look no further than Teddy Twill. Your own kin.” Several times Skylla had wondered if Braxton had ties to his batman, since the bond between them was evident. As she’d concluded, she now answered, “Geoff is a fine young man.”

  “How do you feel about tying in with a liar?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I was specific. The age limit was twenty-nine.”

  “Braxton is twenty-nine.”

  “Impossible. The strapping blacksmith who served as stud to a multitude of Vicksburg women couldn’t be twenty-nine. Not unless he started rolling women in the hay at fourteen.”

  “May I remind you of a secret you shared with me one stormy evening in Biloxi? A storm—next to a hurricane—had uprooted the chinaberry tree outside my bedchamber window. You and I were scared witless. We got tipsy on scuppernong wine. We—”

  “I was grieving for my third husband, Mr. Lewis.”

  “And I was worried sick over James leaving for the navy. I told you I’d given him my virginity, and you admitted you lost your maidenhood at eleven. And your young man had been twelve.”

  “Skylla!”

  “The point is, Braxton could have been promiscuous at fourteen with those Vicksburg ladies.”

  “With Joanie Johnson? He did it with Joanie Johnson.”

  A pair of yucks merged into cackles, and cut the strained moment. Joanie Johnson’s daddy had been the richest cotton planter in the Delta, but his daughter was the most repugnant creature in the entire Deep South.

  Claudine sobered, grabbing the baton of argument anew. “Furthermore, the next week—the next week—Brax’s mother took delivery of a piano. It was said the buyer’s name was Johnson.”

  “You’re making an awful accusation.” Even more awful than Joanie Johnson. “Virgil Petry would’t have sent us a scoundrel,” Skylla pointed out. “If you heard those rumors long-distance, the lawyer surely would have heard them, too.”

  “My initial reaction as well. Which is why I’ve written Virgil and asked him to explain his reasoning.”

  Incensed that Claudine would go to such lengths, Skylla had to school her anger, else she would have shouted something scathing, rather than reply quietly: “I’m wondering why you waited to make these accusations. I’m wondering why you didn’t say something the day Braxton arrived here.”

  “I should have.” Claudine went over to a chair and sat down. “Since it’s my duty to protect my stepdaughter, may I have the liberty to point out some other facts? Your cherished Sergeant Hale is not—I repeat not—a degreed member of the medical profession. He’s just a quack who calls himself a doctor.”

  “Uncle told me he was a self-taught man, that he’d gotten his learning through books, and by looking over his father’s shoulder. Moreover, he studied Indian medicine.”

  “Quackery.”

  “Claudi, he doesn’t claim to be a doctor with credentials. He was drafted into the practice of medicine during the war. Furthermore, has he ever asked anyone to address him as Doctor?”

  The redhead went for the whiskey, downed a shot. A black look speared Skylla; Claudine had not given up. “He’s a crook and a liar. He’ll have to go.”

  Skylla’s head swam, bedeviled with Claudine’s arguments. Was he devious? Surely not. Whatever the case, no one was perfect, and she decided to trust his integrity. “He can’t go anywhere. He’s got to convalesce.” Oliver Brown had given a good prognosis before leaving, but Braxton remained bedridden. Skylla continued her obstinance. “He’s not going anywhere until I say so.”

  “Oh, Daisy . . .”

  “I want to know something. Do you really want to send him away? Or are you up to something? Since you’ve long known of Braxton’s past, I don’t believe you’ve given up on him, not on the strength of the idle gossip of a buffoon.”

  Claudine studied her fingernails. “I can’t stop thinking about him.” A tear made a path down her check. “If he were to say the word, I’d have him in an instant. We’re alike, you and me. We’re both weak for Brax Hale.”

  “Whatever are we going to do, Claudi?”

  “I just don’t know. Trust in the fates, I suppose.”

  “I’m back.”

  Convalescing in bed the afternoon after he’d removed the slug from his leg, Brax pulled the covers over his head and rolled onto his side, away from the returned Piglet. “Just my luck. The Comanches didn’t lift your scalp.”

  He expected one of her usual smart-mouthed remarks, but Kathy Ann sang a different tune. “I’m sorry about shooting you.”

  “Is that so?”

  She stepped over to the bed. Her pudgy hand held up a crumpled sack. “This is for you.”

  He expected spiders to crawl out of the offering. Instead, stuck-together horehound candy filled the sack.

  “I didn’t eat any of it. I saved it all for you.”

  Brax put the peace offering on his lap. “Did you steal this candy?”

  “I didn’t. I traded Mr. Kreitz for it.”

  “What did you trade?” he asked and dreaded the reply.

  “A couple of topaz stones. I found them in the kitchen the other night. They were in an empty medicine bottle.”

  Brax recalled Titus squirreling this and that away. Boon surprises weren’t the problem. “A trip to town wouldn’t take long. Where have you been? Your sister’s worried sick.”

  Reaching into the sack, Kathy Ann helped herself to a piece of candy “I went to town to sell the jewels, so’s I could get money to go to New Orleans. When Mr. Kreitz wouldn’t give me real money, I got the idea to come back and give the candy to you. It was dark by then, so I slept under a tree. I was on my way here when Geoff and Charlie found me.”

  She licked her fingers. “You know what happened before that? I saw Stalking Wolf from a distance. Sarge . . . he acted real peculiar. He was standing on a bluff overlooking the Llano River, jabbering to the s
ky and stabbing himself with a knife. He scared me half out of my skin.”

  “He mourned for a lost loved one, Kathy Ann. That’s the way Indians deal with loss.”

  “Indians don’t have feelings. They’re like wild dogs, doing nothing but going around fighting and acting ugly.”

  “They’re people, just like you and me. On second thought, few are like you and me,” Brax corrected dryly.

  He’d never encountered an Indian as rotten and no-account as the pair in this sickroom. They were a lot alike, Brax and Piglet. Troubled, rootless, opinionated. Merciless.

  “They have ways that are unusual to the white man,” he said, “but theirs is an admirable race.”

  “I don’t understand why they do the stuff they do.”

  “They’re just as stymied by our ways.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Did you know there’ve been many cases of whites marrying Indians? It’s not a bad life, I promise you. You might want to read up on Cynthia Ann Parker. She—”

  “I’ve heard of her.” Piglet’s face brightened. “What with her, and with your recommendation, why, a girl might find herself a place with heathens.”

  “Don’t get any harebrained ideas. You are too young to be away from your family.” Topaz not out of his mind, he asked, “Kathy Ann, what kind of getup was Stalking Wolf wearing? Make that, was he wearing any sort of jewelry?”

  “I didn’t get close enough to tell.”

  “Nothing flashed in the sunlight?”

  “No.”

  It could be that the Comanche chief hadn’t chosen to wear as adornment the topaz stones he’d stolen from Titus. Brax doubted it. Indians had a great respect for beauty and beautiful objects. They would have been fascinated by the bright blue baubles. Brax wondered what had become of Titus’s lost treasure.

  “What’s the matter?” Kathy Ann got a worried look on her face at his silence. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m all right. I’m thinking about something.”

  It suddenly struck Brax. He was conversing with the Piglet. Conversing without antagonism. Strange, he ought to feel more antagonism than ever. She’d nearly killed him; then two men had put their lives on the line to save her hide.

  Brax looked her dead in those beady eyes. “Where are Geoff and Charlie?”

  “Building the aqueduct, I guess. Last I saw, they were headed that way. Least, that’s what Geoff told Charlie to do, help him and Skylla. Claudine’s filing her nails.”

  Being a man who enjoyed having good ideas and having others act on them, Brax was pleased that Skylla hadn’t forgotten his mention of an irrigation ditch. But he didn’t want her doing men’s work. He needed to get into his boots.

  If someone had told him in Vicksburg that he’d end up working a ranch, he’d have called the accuser “touched in the head.” He remained averse to ranching, and would gladly say goodbye to being a strong back, but he felt good about his efforts.

  Did this mean he wanted to settle here? No! While he knew Skylla had a soft spot for this ranch, he also knew she’d be better off once it was no more than a memory.

  He’d show her the soft life in California. That’s the sap’s way, Hale. He wouldn’t be a sap to set her up properly. Whatever she did, and wherever she did it, she’d be fine.

  Nonetheless, his conscience kept nagging him about leaving her to her own devices. He decided to nip it in the bud. Men had been deserting women for centuries—a lesson well learned at his pappy’s knee—but . . . But, hell. Elizabeth Hale had had it tough, but she’d lacked Skylla’s backbone. And Brax wouldn’t leave Skylla with four children and no roof over their heads.

  What if she got in the family way while he was making certain the marriage would be legal? Surely once or twice wouldn’t hurt. Didn’t you learn anything about conception? Then again, Songbird, a mother of two, had never conceived with him.

  His bullets might be blanks.

  The slurp and suck of candy-eating drew his attention. “Planning to leave any of that for me?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Then go to the kitchen and get something decent to eat.”

  She got one of those hardheaded looks on her moon face. “You aren’t my boss. I don’t have to do nothing just ’cause you say it.”

  Once he could navigate around, he intended to check the looking glass and see if he’d sprouted gray hair over her. “Could I ask you a favor? Would you please, please hand me that rifle over there? Yes, that one. Thank you.” Brax took up Claudine’s Spencer, got the Piglet brat in sight—boy, had her raisin eyes gotten big—then said, “If you’ll move just a little to the right, we won’t knock a hole through Skylla’s outside wall when I blow your brains out for back-talking me.”

  Kathy Ann hit the floor.

  Brax lowered the scope to her level. “Are you or are you not going to fill your belly with something besides sweets?”

  “I’m gonna, I’m gonna,” she squeaked, her head covered with her hands.

  Brax set the rifle beside him on the bed. “I take it you like the idea of living.”

  “I-I d-do.”

  “Then stand up. You and I need to talk.” As she struggled to stand, he asked, “Do you understand you could’ve gotten yourself and two men killed, traipsing off like you did?”

  She licked her lips and studied the floor. “Me and Charlie and Geoff, we wouldn’t be any loss. We’re all misfits.”

  “If you’re fishing for me to say, ‘Aw, Piglet, that’s not so,’ you’re in for an overlong wait, because when you hurt Skylla, you hurt me. And I’m the meanest S-O-B in Mason County.”

  “You are not,” she countered, stretching out the words.

  “What did I say about back talk? You’re on the path to destruction, and I don’t want to see that happen.”

  “Why would you care?”

  Brax looked at the brat, clucking his tongue like an exasperated father. Strange girl, this blonde. He reckoned anyone would end up strange, if they’d been reared in the bitter life of a New Orleans whore. Who on the face of this earth hadn’t known a corner of hell, though?

  Coming up in the Hale household had been no heaven on earth. Nevertheless, when he kept his little sisters in line, it never took threatening them with a shotgun. Come to think of it, his sisters never needed as much as a harsh word. How did he keep the girls—and Larkin—in line? Cards on the table, no aces hidden in a sleeve, and an occasional bluff had made for the winning hand. But Kathy Ann wasn’t like his malleable sisters. She was more like Brax himself. She needed someone to give a damn.

  Whereas he liked to shirk duties, thanks to his years of having had too many of them, he figured she needed to be useful. Mere asking wouldn’t do the trick, though. Extortion might work.

  His thigh hurt like a gigantic nail in one’s foot when he lifted himself up to settle against the rungs of the bedstead. Poking a pillow behind his back, he inched into blackmail. “You owe me.”

  “Do not. I brought you candy.”

  “That’s not enough. Candy won’t make up for this hole in my leg. Since we don’t have a sheriff to keep order in Mason County just yet, I have no choice but to take the law into my own hands. So, I’m gonna give you two choices.”

  “Two choices?”

  “Two choices. You, Miss Kathy Ann St. Clair, are going to help get Skylla to marry me. Or I’m gonna have Charlie Main lock you in the smokehouse until your lard is rendered off and what’s left is no more than pig jerky.”

  Her face had gotten even whiter during his proposal. “Skylla won’t let you do that.” Bravado switched to common fear. “Please don’t lock me away. ”

  A modicum of guilt for summoning her fear of closed places went through him. Hale, you’re getting soft in the heart. “I won’t lock you up. You’ll do what’s right. I know you will.”

  “I promise I will.”

  He hoisted a hand and crooked a finger to bring her forward. “I’ve got a plan. Let’s talk about it.”

/>   She moved near enough for whispering. Brax explained his scheme, and when he was done, he asked, “Are you with me or not?”

  “I like tomfoolery. But I don’t think Claudine or Skylla will play along. And Charlie, gosh, are you sure about him?”

  “Absolutely. Now, listen up. And listen closely. If you’re out of the game, then I’ll have no recourse but to become your stepfather.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Right, ugh. Because once I’m your legal father I intend to take over as your guardian. Then you will toe the line. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

  Kathy Ann scowled, but after enough time to consider her options, she replied, “Okay. Count me in on the scheme.”

  “Good. Now be a love and go fetch some corn liquor to bribe Charlie with. The good stuff.”

  Kathy Ann rushed to fetch the whiskey, and the weirdest feeling came over her. The sergeant had made her feel needed. She liked the feeling. Maybe she wouldn’t hurt so much with Sarge around to make her feel wanted.

  Once in the barn, she caught Geoff snoozing, a saddle for a pillow. He roused up, then pulled straw from his clothes. “Did you tell him you’s sorry?”

  “I told him.”

  “Dat be good, Miss Kathy Ann.”

  She proceeded to the whiskey Charlie had been helping himself to on the sly. Her arms around a jug of leftovers, she said, “You know what? I like your master. For a while there, he talked to me like I’m a real person. Kind of like a good father. Sort of like Ambrose. Then again, your master can be real rotten. Scared the p-waddy outta me, but that’s not important right now. He wants me to help with a prank.”

  “Dat right? What kinda trick?” At the end of her lengthy explanation, he chuckled and shook his wavy head. “Da massa, he cagey. Real cagey.”

  “He is. And you know what, Geoffie? I hope he wins.”

  “Me, too, Miss Kathy Ann. Me, too.” The quadroon settled back in the hay. “I think I just ride dis un out. Take me a nice long snooze. I plumb wore out.” He began to snore.

  “I meant what I said about hoping the sergeant wins,” she said to herself.