The Bridegroom

by Linda Lael Miller

  The two hours the trip took up—counting stops in Indian Rock and a wide spot in the road where a mail-rider was waiting to exchange pouches with the conductor—finally passed, and the engineer blew the steam whistle, announcing the train’s imminent arrival in Stone Creek.

  They’d barely stepped onto the small platform, with the few other passengers stopping there, when an earsplitting boom literally shook the wooden planks under their feet.

  Smoke and dust billowed skyward and then descended like an early twilight.

  Rowdy, who’d come to meet them, reacted immediately. “The mine!” he yelled unnecessarily. Like everybody else—including Gideon—he ran in that direction.

  “Gideon!” Lydia screamed. “Wait! You’re hurt—you can’t—”

  He looked back over one shoulder. “Go home, Lydia,” he told her. “Now.”

  Instead, she caught up with him. She might love and honor and cherish, his spirited bride, but she clearly came up short in the “obey” department. “Everybody’s always telling me to go home,” she sputtered, waving a hand in front of her face because the dust was even thicker now, “and I’m sick of it!”

  Gideon shook his head and moved faster. Hardheaded woman, he thought, loving her more than he’d ever thought he could—and that was plenty. Let her keep up if she can.

  He and Rowdy were among the first to reach the mine entrance, which was crisscrossed with fallen timbers and still belching puffs of dirt and smoke.

  Wilson, the foreman, his nose bruised and a little crooked but no longer bandaged, since Mike O’Hanlon had broken it with his fist, hurried over to Rowdy and then just fidgeted, evidently unable to talk.

  “Is anybody in there?” Rowdy demanded. It was Sunday, after all, and the mine was closed, but the question had to be asked.

  Gideon could have answered it. Breathless and grasping his side, he saw Mike O’Hanlon rise up in his mind’s eye as clearly as if the Irishman had been standing right in front of him. Heard O’Hanlon’s warning, verbatim, in his head.

  “When you speak to the owners, young Yarbro, you tell them we’ve taken all we’re goin’ to take. You tell them we’re tired of seein’ our children go hungry and our God-fearin’ wives ashamed. You tell them, Mr. Yarbro, that we’ll bury their precious ore, and ourselves with it, before we’ll crawl before them like whipped dogs one more time….”

  “Christ,” Gideon groaned. And then he headed for the opening of the shaft, knowing he oughtn’t to do what he was going to do, but bound to anyway.

  Rowdy, left behind, yelled his name.

  He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.

  He climbed down into that pit, making his way from fallen beam to fallen beam, pain searing his side, probably tearing the stitches loose, only too aware that other collapses were inevitable, now that the support structure had been compromised.

  Still, something drove him on. Mike O’Hanlon hadn’t been his friend, hadn’t trusted him. With good reason. Gideon had been squarely on the wrong side of the trouble between the workers and the owners, and just then, he’d have given just about anything to go back and do things differently.

  “Gideon!” Rowdy called, from high above, his voice echoing through the dusty gloom.

  “Shut up,” Gideon called back, once he had the breath. There was blood seeping through his brand-new shirt; his wound was open again. “You want to bring the rest of this goddammed hole down on top of me?”

  What Rowdy did next didn’t surprise Gideon in the least, because he’d have done the same boneheaded thing. He felt a rain of pebbles, knew his brother was following the same treacherous path he’d taken.

  The belly of that mine was as dark as a back closet in hell when Gideon reached it, but there was a faint, flickering glimmer of light down one of the side shafts, and he followed it, drawn like a moth to a candle.

  He found O’Hanlon half-buried in timbers and rubble, with a kerosene lantern burning on the ground nearby.

  “Young Yarbro,” O’Hanlon said, after gathering his inner forces, “fancy meetin’ you here.”

  “O’Hanlon,” Gideon retorted, digging frantically to free the other man and knowing it was impossible, “what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Leave off the diggin’, young Yarbro,” O’Hanlon said, his voice dreamy. “It’s useless, you know. But if you happened to have a drop of whiskey on you, it would be God’s own mercy.”

  Gideon dug harder, tried in vain to move the timber O’Hanlon was trapped under. “Hold on,” he muttered.

  “No whiskey, then?” O’Hanlon asked, as if Gideon had spoken.

  “No whiskey,” Gideon replied grimly. Every bone in O’Hanlon’s body was probably crushed, and now a little trickle of blood ran down the man’s filthy chin from one corner of his mouth.

  “And here’s the marshal,” O’Hanlon said, his gaze drifting past Gideon’s right shoulder. “My Mary’s a good woman,” he summoned the strength to say. “She knows how to look after wee ones and keep a house like it ought to be kept and cook a tasty meal, when there’s food in the larder.”

  “She’ll have a job at our place if she wants one,” Rowdy said gruffly.

  “Your word on that, marshal?”

  Rowdy laid a hand on Gideon’s shoulder. Overhead, the remaining timbers groaned and more rubble fell.

  “You have my word, Mike,” Rowdy said.

  At that, Mike sighed and closed his eyes.

  Rowdy bent, caught hold of O’Hanlon’s wrist. “He’s gone, Gideon,” he said. “And we’d better get the hell out of here, or we’ll be right behind him.”

  “The mine owners,” Gideon muttered numbly. He’d been away from Stone Creek, hadn’t known what was going on at the Copper Crown during that time. “They were going to bring in Chinamen?”

  “Yes,” Rowdy said, taking Gideon by the arm and dragging him back toward the network of beams they’d made their way down only minutes before.

  Gideon never had any recollection of climbing back up; he only remembered Lydia waiting for him in the daylight, and Wyatt standing with her.

  Nobody in Stone Creek ever forgot what happened next.

  At the first loud crack of timber, Rowdy took hold of Gideon again, and Wyatt lifted Lydia clean off her feet, and they ran, part of a stream of other people, all of them running, too.

  With the second deafening snap, half the hillside fell in, sealing Mike O’Hanlon in his grave forever, and the copper ore right along with him.

  Once they were a safe distance away, Gideon pulled free of Rowdy’s grasp, gasping for breath, and sank to his knees. Thrust his hands forward onto the ground.

  Neither Rowdy nor Wyatt touched him, and Gideon was grateful.

  “Gideon?” Lydia whispered.

  “Let him be for a minute, honey,” Gideon heard Wyatt say to her. “Just let him be for a minute.”

  “But he’s bleeding!”

  When he could, Gideon got to his feet.

  “God damn those sons of bitches,” he gasped out, dragging an arm across his face, sucking in air. “God damn them to hell.”

  “Time you went home, Gideon,” Wyatt said.

  THEY SUPPORTED GIDEON BETWEEN them, Wyatt and Rowdy did, just as they’d probably done after he was hurt a week before in Ruby’s Saloon. And when they reached the Porter house, Helga and the aunts were waiting in the side yard, gazing toward the billow of dust still looming above the collapsed mine, Helga holding Snippet against her shoulder, like a baby.

  No one asked for an explanation.

  The aunts stepped aside, to let the men pass into the kitchen, but each of them took one of Lydia’s hands as she followed.

  While the three brothers made their way slowly up the inside staircase, Lydia watched in stunned silence. When she’d seen Gideon disappear into that mine shaft, she’d tried to follow him, but Wyatt had stopped her, held her fast with both arms.

  She’d fought like a wildcat to get free, all to no avail, of course, and she’d heard tears in
that strong man’s voice when he whispered, “No, Lydia. I can’t let you go after him. I can’t.”

  Now the aunts pressed Lydia into a chair at the kitchen table.

  Helga bent to kiss the top of her head, and laid Snippet gently in her lap.

  Lydia stroked him, and wept—with confusion, with relief, with fear of all the things that might still lie ahead.

  Helga moved briskly to put on her bonnet. “I’m going to fetch Dr. Venable,” she said, and then she was gone.

  Lydia sat numbly in her chair, holding Snippet, grateful for his silky warmth.

  The aunts brewed tea, because they always brewed tea, believing it to be the antidote for any extremity. And God knew, they’d seen every kind of extremity in their long and eventful lives—war and fire, the loss of the men they’d loved. They’d been torn from their home in Virginia, a place where generations of Fairmonts had lived and died, and then from the mansion in Phoenix, too.

  For the first time, even in her distracted state, Lydia fully grasped the depth of courage they’d shown, how adaptable they’d been. Two elderly spinsters, able to confront any calamity as long as they could serve tea.

  “Do you think we ought to tell her, sister?” Mittie asked, sounding fretful.

  “Hush,” Millie said.

  Lydia blinked, focused on the two women she’d loved since she was a little girl. Like Nell, they’d made room for her in their orderly world, never seemed to resent the changes she must have brought about, just by being there. “Tell me what?” she asked, stroking Snippet’s back.

  The aunts looked at each other.

  Then Mittie said, “Jacob Fitch is dead.”

  Lydia frowned. “Jacob Fitch?” she echoed dully.

  “The man you were going to marry,” Millie reminded her.

  “Sister,” Mittie fussed, “Lydia knows who she almost married.”

  A giggle of pure hysteria escaped Lydia.

  “It’s really not very funny, dear,” Millie pointed out. “A man is dead, after all.”

  “He had a heart attack,” Mittie elaborated. “Jacob Fitch, I mean. Right at Mr. Davis’s table.”

  “My word, yes,” Millie agreed, putting one delicate hand to her bosom in belated horror. “Dead as a coffin nail.”

  Lydia stared at her aunts, the news finally sinking in. “Jacob Fitch is dead?”

  “That’s what we’ve been telling you right along, dear,” Mittie said patiently.

  “She’s in shock, sister,” Millie put in. “You can’t expect her to take everything in at once.”

  “I suppose not,” Millie agreed.

  “How did you—are you sure?” Lydia asked. She wanted to go upstairs to Gideon, but the starch had gone out of her, as Helga would say. She couldn’t have risen out of that chair just then for anything.

  “Of course we’re sure,” Mittie said. “It was in the newspapers, and Rowdy got a wire about it from the United States Marshal in Phoenix, too.”

  “Tell her about the lawyer,” Millie urged.

  “The lawyer?” Lydia echoed.

  “First I’ve got to explain that Mrs. Fitch—Mr. Fitch’s mother, dear—died, too.”

  “Tragic,” Millie said sincerely, shaking her head.

  Lydia closed her eyes.

  One of the aunts patted her hand.

  Lydia opened her eyes again, saw that it had been Mittie. “Mrs. Fitch?” Lydia prompted.

  “She was so upset, what with her son having a heart attack before her very eyes,” Millie rushed on, “that her heart gave out, too. On the very spot. They seem to have died simultaneously. By the time the serving girl got back with the police, the newspaper said, both of the Fitches were gone to Glory.”

  “Dear God,” Lydia whispered.

  “And then a lawyer came,” Mittie said. “Right here, to this house. He was looking for you, but we told him you were in Flagstaff because poor Gideon had been attacked by some maniac with a knife—”

  Millie’s withering glance rendered Mittie mute. “Sister, how you do ramble on,” Millie scolded. “Will you never get to the point?”

  Lydia braced herself up. “And that point would be—?”

  “Of course Mr. Fitch left his estate to his mother,” Millie explained. “But since she’s gone, too, poor creature, and Mr. Fitch thought he was going to marry you—”

  “We’re rich again, dear,” Mittie said. “Mr. Fitch hadn’t changed his will.”

  The room tilted sideways, as surely as if there had been another blast, somewhere deep in the earth, this one silent but just as forceful. “What?” Lydia asked.

  “Papa would be so pleased,” Millie remarked. “That we haven’t lost everything he worked so hard to build, I mean. He wouldn’t be pleased that the Fitches are dead, of course. Never that—”

  Mittie broke in again then. “According to the lawyer—his card is here somewhere—we’ve inherited our own house,” Mittie informed Lydia, brightening. “And three or four banks, in the bargain.”

  Lydia put a hand to her mouth. Scrambled to set Snippet safely on the floor before she dropped him.

  “We can go home now,” Millie said softly. “But of course we must bring Gideon with us. And dear Snippet.”

  “This is home,” Lydia said, still reeling.

  “But the mine fell in,” Mittie reasoned. “Didn’t it?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Lydia wanted to know. She was strong enough to stand now, to climb the stairs and go to Gideon.

  “Isn’t Gideon—unemployed?” Millie asked. “In Phoenix, he could be a banker.”

  Shaking her head, Lydia started for the staircase.

  Rowdy and Wyatt were just leaving the bedroom when she reached the upper corridor.

  Lydia nodded to them, as though they were acquaintances encountered on the street, and swept right on by, into her and Gideon’s bedroom.

  He was lying crosswise on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “He had a wife, kids,” he said, without looking at her.

  Lydia pulled the rocking chair closer and sat down. “Who?” she asked quietly.

  “Mike O’Hanlon,” Gideon replied.

  “Oh,” Lydia said, and that seemed to be all that was necessary, because Gideon fell silent again.

  Dr. Venable came, with Kitty. Together, in their strange, cooperative way, they examined Gideon. No new stitches would be required, they decided; the scar would be a little worse, that was all. Deftly, Kitty removed the remaining bits of thread from Gideon’s flesh, applied salve and a clean bandage, and offered him laudanum, so he could sleep.

  Gideon refused, and the doctor and his wife took their leave.

  Twilight seeped into the room, but neither Gideon nor Lydia moved.

  Helga brought a supper tray and left again.

  Gideon didn’t eat, and neither did Lydia.

  The streetlamp at the corner came on, and the house quieted.

  “Lydia,” Gideon said.

  “I’m here,” Lydia replied. She rose out of the chair, at last, like a woman moving in a dream. Stripped off her clothes, donned a nightgown—one of the new ones she’d charged to Gideon at Mr. Blanchard’s mercantile that day.

  Since Gideon was lying on top of the covers, she couldn’t pull them back to get into bed. So she curled up beside him, as she had that first night at Ruby’s, after he’d been hurt.

  He rolled onto his side. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he said.

  “Yes, Gideon,” Lydia responded, touching his face. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “I need—”

  Lydia kissed him, traced the outside of his mouth with the tip of one index finger, lightly. “I know.”

  Gideon drew her nightgown up then, with urgency, but with gentleness, too. The garment seemed to dissolve into the ether. Then he somehow got out of his own clothes without leaving the bed, a painful process in its own right. “Do you want—?”

  “I want you,” Lydia told him.

 
He eased her legs apart with a motion of one knee, kissed her hungrily.

  Lydia arched her back, gave a small, involuntary moan.

  And Gideon entered her, in a slow, deep thrust, made of sweet fire.

  They moved together, rhythmically, but not frantically, the way they might have done on any other night of their lives. At first, the joining of their two bodies was leisurely, almost like a dance. It was, in its essence, a celebration.

  They were alive.

  They loved each other.

  And they belonged together.

  But as the friction increased, so did their need.

  Gideon drove harder, deeper.

  Lydia received him eagerly, then desperately.

  The bedsprings creaked. The headboard clattered against the wall.

  And when satisfaction consumed them, they shouted each other’s names.

  A long time had passed before either of them spoke.

  “I love you, Lydia,” Gideon said.

  She nestled against him, her face buried in his neck, and she answered in kind.

  They lay in silence for a while, arms and legs entwined, content.

  The darkness deepened, and the old house settled on its foundation, with comfortable, familiar sounds.

  Gideon caressed Lydia’s breast, and her breathing quickened a little, turned to a gasp when he bent his head and took her nipple into his mouth, suckled.

  Lydia crooned, ready for him all over again, and deliciously certain that he would make her wait until her desire had reached a fever pitch.

  When at last he was on top of her again, inside her again, he made a sound that was part chuckle, part groan. “Lydia?” he rasped.

  “What?” she moaned, nearly lost.

  “Remind me—” he paused, with a hoarse gasp, as she raised herself to take him deeper “—to move this—damn bed—away from the wall—”

  Lydia laughed.

  And then, in the very next moment, she climaxed in a series of violent spasms, and this time, though the bedsprings still creaked, and the headboard still banged against the wall, Gideon covered her mouth with his and absorbed her cries, meeting them with his own.