He closed his eyes and let out a long sigh before setting the tintype back on the table.
“Happy anniversary…” he said dully.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled his boots off. He did not bother to change out of his clothes before lying back on the bed and falling into a fitful sleep.
*****
Over the next few weeks Jacob threw himself into his work even harder than usual. He had found over the past two years that keeping yourself busy was the best way to keep your mind from betraying you by dragging you into a bottomless pit of despair.
The problem was that it didn’t seem to be working nearly as well as it used to, and he wasn’t sure why. He finally decided that it was loneliness, which seemed to have dug its heels in for the long haul. Nothing to be done for it, though.
It occurred to him one day that there was no real reason to keep mining. He had found what he came for and then some. If they had stuck to the original plan he would have returned home to Anna a year ago and they could have started a new life.
But that life was gone now, and this was all he had left. So he continued to mine and save up for a life that he would never have. He supposed he could always call it quits and head back east. But it seemed pointless without Anna. This was familiar to him now, and that offered some measure of comfort in an odd sort of way.
Still, though, it didn’t help with the loneliness. He tried to remember when he had last had an actual conversation with anyone and realized that it had been before his and Anna’s anniversary.
Well, time to stop feeling sorry for himself, he decided. Today he would go into town and get dinner at the saloon instead of cooking alone. There were several people around town that he knew reasonably well who would probably be there.
It might not be a long-term solution, but just having a conversation with someone would probably go a long way toward making him feel human again. He headed home, tended to Moses, and washed up before heading into town.
The smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke greeted him like an old friend as he walked through the door of the saloon. He had spent many nights here trying to drown out the clamoring of his despair in the months after he’d lost Anna.
He had barely made it through the door when he heard a familiar voice from the back corner.
“Hey, look what the cat dragged in!” exclaimed a barrel chested man with a thick red beard.
“Ha! Well I’ll be!” interjected the other man at the table. He was wiry and of average height, although he appeared small next to the other man. His brown hair was disheveled, but clean. “Jacob Daughtry, we thought you done high-tailed it back to civilization!”
“No such luck, gentlemen,” Jacob replied with a laugh. “Charlie, Garrett, how’ve y’all been?”
“Can’t say as I can complain,” Charlie said with a lopsided grin.
“’Fair to middlin’,” Garrett boomed amiably. “Come and join us, stranger.”
“I’ll do that,” Jacob said. “Soon as I’ve got myself a drink.”
He made his way to the bar and, a few minutes later, made his way to Garrett and Charlie’s table with a mug of beer in his hand. He seated himself and took a sip of beer.
“Piss warm as always,” he said with a laugh, setting it down on the table. The beer was always piss warm, but none of them ever really cared.
“Smoke?” Charlie asked, offering Jacob his tobacco pouch.
“Eh, why the hell not?” Jacob said, accepting the pouch. He rolled himself a cigarette with practiced ease and placed it between his lips.
“So, what have you boys been gettin’ into?” he asked around the cigarette in his mouth as he scooped up Charlie’s matches from the table and struck one. He held the flame up and lit his cigarette, shaking out the flame when he was done. He took a long pull, savoring the roughness of the smoke in his throat.
“Well, as it happens, tomorrow’s a big day,” Garrett replied with a grin. “Charlie here is gettin’ married.” He gave Charlie a hearty slap on the back.
“Ha! Married,” Jacob guffawed. “To who? Or what, rather. There’s not an eligible woman within a hundred miles of here.” Charlie shook his head.
“She’s from New York,” he said proudly, pulling a tintype from his breast pocket and handing it over the table to Jacob. The girl in the photograph was plain, but well-groomed with an earnest face. Jacob snuffed out the stub of his cigarette and studied the photograph briefly before handing it back over to Charlie.
“New York, huh?” he said.
Charlie nodded with a smile.
“How’d you manage to get a girl from New York to come all the way out here? Come to that, how’d you even meet a girl from New York in the first place?”
“Haven’t met her yet, strictly speakin’,” Charlie replied.
“Oh, I see,” Jacob said with a laugh. “You ain’t met her yet, but you’re gettin’ married tomorrow. Makes perfect sense. Just how many of these you say you’d had?” he said, holding up his beer mug.
“Laugh all you want,” Charlie said good-naturedly, taking a drink from his mug of beer. “I put an ad in the paper and she answered it. We been writin’ each other for nigh on six months now.”
“You put an ad in the paper,” Jacob repeated, laughing. “What’d it say, ‘Man wants wife, respond if interested in sweatin’ in the desert for the rest of your natural born days’?”
“Well…yeah, more or less,” Charlie said. “Minus that last part, o’ course.”
“Lots of folks are doin’ it,” chimed in Garrett.
“You serious?”
“I am,” Charlie said. “She’ll be comin’ in on the stage tomorrow, and we’re goin’ directly to the justice of the piece to get hitched.”
“Huh,” Jacob said. It was all he could think of to say.
“You’re more’n welcome to come to the weddin’, such as it is,” Charlie said amiably.
“I may do that,” Jacob responded thoughtfully. “Mind if I…?” He gestured to Charlie’s tobacco pouch, still sitting on the table.
“Not a bit.”
Jacob nodded his thanks and rolled another cigarette. He smoked in silence and drank his beer as Garrett and Charlie continued to talk. He paid their conversation no mind, lost now in his own thoughts.
He had never considered remarrying. It wasn’t a conscious choice. It was just something that had never occurred to him, partly because he knew that, out here, his options were pretty much nil. But what if he did have options?
He brushed the thought aside. This business of finding a woman in the newspaper seemed far-fetched at best. He finished his beer, snuffed out his cigarette, and stood to go.
“Well, boys,” he said. “That’s it for me.”
“Well, alright,” Garrett said. “Don’t be a stranger, now.”
“We’ll see ya tomorrow for the weddin’, won’t we?” Charlie said.
Jacob thought it over for a moment.
“Yeah, I reckon so,” he said. Why not? Couldn’t hurt.
He nodded to them, made his way out the doors, and headed for home. Once he was there, he almost regretted leaving the saloon. After the boisterous noise inside its walls, the silence here seemed almost to mock him.
His eyes fell on the old six- string guitar that stood propped up in the corner. It was the only thing that his father had left to him. It was a C.F. Martin with a light brown finish. All of the tuning keys were placed on one side of the head stock, which curled elegantly at the end.
He picked it up and ran his fingers lightly over its finish. He had not so much as tuned it since Anna had been gone. He sat down and plucked each string in turn, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was still very close to being in tune despite having not been tuned in so long. He tuned the couple of strings that were off and strummed a few chords experimentally.
To his disappointment, the notes sounded flat and dull. He supposed he should have expected as much. After all, the same strings had been
on the guitar for far too long. He set it aside with a sigh and made a note to see what he could do about getting some new strings when he went into town tomorrow.
He set it aside and prepared for bed. Sleep was slow in coming.
The next morning he made his way into town. Charlie had not specified a meeting place or time, but he supposed if he was around when the stage came into town he’d be sure to find him.
In the meantime, he decided to visit the general store and see if he could get the owner to order some guitar strings for him. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the dim interior.
“Howdy,” Sam greeted him from behind the counter. “Good to see ya.”
“Same to you,” Jacob replied.
“You lookin’ for anything in particular?”
“Yeah, actually. I was hopin’ to get my hands on some guitar strings,” Jacob said.
“Ha! Thought you’d forgotten about these,” Sam said, rummaging behind the counter.
“Excuse me?”
“You ordered these two years ago,” Sam said, coming back up with a small package. “By now, I just figured you’d given up playin’.”
“Oh,” said Jacob. He had forgotten even ordering them. “Yeah, no, I uh…I didn’t give it up.” He supposed that wasn’t, strictly speaking, true.
“Well, that’s good to hear,” Sam said with a smile. “This be all then?”
Jacob hesitated for a moment. There were other things he needed, but he hadn’t brought Moses with him to carry them. He decided they could wait.
“Yeah, that’ll be all,” he said. He paid for the strings and left, slipping them into his pocket as he made his way out the door.
Once he was outside, he began looking for Charlie. He didn’t have to look long.
“Hey!” Charlie shouted, waving Jacob over from the other side of the dusty street. Jacob raised his hand in greeting and made his way over to him.
“You made it,” Charlie said. He seemed genuinely pleased, and excitement radiated from him. Jacob hoped that he wasn’t getting his hopes up for nothing. He half expected the girl from New York not to even show.
Garrett joined them a few minutes later and the three of them decided to wait at the saloon until the stagecoach arrived. After a couple of mugs of beer the three helped themselves to some of the cold cuts, cheese, and celery that the saloon offered. Jacob ate his food and sipped at his beer wordlessly as the other two men spoke of the imminent wedding.
“What about you?” Charlie finally asked him. “You ever consider gettin’ married?”
Garrett froze and looked at Jacob worriedly. He knew what a touchy subject Charlie had just brought up. Charlie seemed to be oblivious.
“Don’t know,” Jacob said with a shrug. Realization dawned on Charlie as he looked at Jacob’s face.
“Jeez, I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I wasn’t thinkin’.”
“It’s fine,” Jacob said, holding up a hand. “No harm done.”
Garrett visibly relaxed. The subject was quickly changed and Garrett and Charlie made small talk until they heard the sound of hooves outside. Charlie’s features lit up. He set down his unfinished beer and headed for the doorway. The other two men downed the rest of their beers before joining him.
The three of them watched as the stagecoach clattered along the dusty street drawn by four horses. They approached it as it drew to a halt. Two men and a woman climbed down, but Charlie paid them no mind. After a moment another woman exited the coach.
“Sarah!” Charlie exclaimed, waving to her.
“Charles,” she replied with a timid smile. She looked exactly like her photograph, though perhaps a bit more disheveled from her travels.
Just as Charlie had said they would, the pair went straight to the justice of the piece. And just like that, Jacob watched his friend marry a woman he had not laid eyes on until that very afternoon.
But later, as he lay in bed alone and listened to the silence, it didn’t seem like nearly so crazy an idea.
Chapter 3
Cassandra stared absently at the wallpaper, letting her eyes idly pick out patterns and shapes in its design. She had given up, for the moment, trying to conjure a solution to her problem. She had already established that she couldn’t possibly consider staying with Hannah, but she was at her wits’ end as for what to do about it. She still had told no one about the baby.
Her breakfast that morning had stayed down, so that was something, she supposed. She unbraided her hair and let it fall loose against her back. After a moment she stood and retrieved the brush and began to brush and re-braid her hair.
There was a brief knock at the door, and Hannah came in with a newspaper under her arm.
“It’s good to see you up,” she said to Cassandra with a smile. Cassandra offered her a weak smile in return.
“I thought you might like something to read,” she said, offering Cassandra the newspaper.
“Thank you,” Cassandra said, accepting the paper and setting it down.
“I’m going out for a bit. Do you need anything?”
Yes, a man to marry me and help raise my child, Cassandra thought drily. And quickly, please. Time is of the essence, you know!
“No, nothing,” she replied, shaking her head.
“Alright. I’ll be back in a little while,” Hannah said. She let herself out and shut the door behind her.
Cassandra sighed and picked up the newspaper. She made her way over to the window and drew aside the heavy curtain to allow enough light in to read by. None of the articles particularly interested her, but she skimmed through the stories anyway. It was better than staring at the walls and worrying over what to do.
She stopped reading when she reached the personal ads and was about to set the paper down when an advertisement caught her eye.
MATRIMONY – Young widower, reasonably wealthy and intelligent, seeks to make the acquaintance of a young woman, of reasonable intelligence and adaptable, with an eye to matrimony. Must love music. Address Jacob Daughtry, You Bet postal office, You Bet, California.
Cassandra stared at the ad. She had not considered becoming a mail order bride. She wasn’t entirely sure she was considering it now. It was an insane plan. At the mere thought of it she felt a surge of simultaneous horror and an almost electric feeling that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was the first thing she had felt in weeks that wasn’t abject despair.
She read over the ad again. What could it hurt to just write him a simple letter? It’s not like just by doing that she would be committed. She would write him a letter, and if she changed her mind, no harm done.
Her heart hammered in her chest as she sat down at the writing desk and got out paper, ink, and a pen.
I’m really going to do this, she thought with disbelief. She dipped her pen into the ink and began to write.
Dear Mr. Daughtry,--
She stopped writing. It felt like a betrayal to Jonathon, writing to another man like this. She told herself that she was being absurd, but it didn’t make her feel any differently. She almost put the letter away. But then she set her jaw and continued writing. If this was what it took to provide for her and Jonathon’s baby, then so be it.
Dear Mr. Daughtry,
My name is Cassandra Whitmore. I saw your personal advertisement in the newspaper here in New Orleans. I am 23 years of age, educated, and am possessed of a fierce love for music.
She paused for a moment. How could she tell him she was pregnant? What man would want her knowing she was already with child? She stared down at her letter for a long moment before continuing.
I would be generally pleased to make your acquaintance and arrange for a marriage.
Regards,
C. Whitmore
It felt odd signing Jonathon’s last name on a letter to another man. Again, she felt that hovering sense of betrayal. She shook it off and put the letter in an envelope. After a moment’s thought she decided to include a tintype image of herself. The only one she
had was the one that Jonathon used to carry. For the baby, she reminded herself.
She slipped the picture into the envelope with her letter, sealed it, and addressed it. She decided to bring it to the post office right away. She was afraid she would lose her nerve if she didn’t.
Hannah was just returning as Cassandra was leaving and they met just outside the front door. Hannah beamed when she saw Cassandra.
“I…I was just going…um,” she stammered. She realized that she wasn’t entirely certain that she meant to tell her family what she intended to do.
“Doesn’t matter,” Hannah said with a smile. “I’m just glad to see you out and about.” She gave Cassandra a brief hug. “Hurry back for supper.”
Cassandra gave her a small smile and nodded. She waited until her cousin was back in the house to continue on her way to the post office. She paused outside of it and looked down at the letter in her hand.
I could still change my mind, she thought. But, she realized, she really couldn’t. She was completely out of options. All of her hopes were riding on this one letter to some stranger in California.
She stepped inside, paid for postage, and mailed the letter.
It was done.
*****
Jacob made his way into town and headed for the post office, Moses plodding at his side. Half of him didn’t put much stock in the mail order bride business. The other half hoped that he had gotten a response.
“Got anything for me, Ansel?” he asked. He half expected the man to say no. It had been a few weeks since the ad should have appeared in the paper and he had yet to receive a letter. But Ansel surprised him.
“Matter of fact, I believe I do, hoss,” Ansel. “Just a moment here….ah, there it is!”
He handed Jacob a sealed envelope with a New Orleans postmark.
“Much obliged,” Jacob said with a nod. He put the letter in his pocket and headed to the general store with Moses. He tethered him outside and stepped inside the general store.
“Afternoon,” Sam greeted him.
“Afternoon,” Jacob replied with a nod.
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