by R. Kent
“I’m saying there’s been some mistake. Maybe you can get a room at the Water—” It hit me. This was McKade’s doing.
“I’m a mail ordered bride,” she announced pridefully, as if that explained everything.
There was a moment where the air just hung, waiting.
“I don’t need a bride.”
She splashed down into the mud from the boardwalk. “You ordered me.”
“I didn’t.” Panic ripped through me. I felt a rush of blood pounding in my chest. I cleared my throat as bile burned in the back. I didn’t. It was McKade. She was a pawn in his game.
Sahara dropped her carpetbag into the muck. “I have your receipt right here.”
My mind raced. Flight or fight. I wanted to run but my feet remained bogged in the mud.
She bowed her head, digging into her tiny purse. The pooch of cloth matched her dress. It was looped at the top with ribbon that extended enough to have been hanging from her petite wrist.
Her sun-faded green store-bought dress was dusty and yellowed with sweat under the armpits. The acrid wetness had, at one point, run along the bodice to her slender waist. She wore white gloves on her hands to attest that she was a proper, civilized lady. But the white had been soiled with use.
“Here.” Sahara waved a folded paper in my face. It flapped open and looked official, like a land deed, except not typewritten.
The page was crowded with thin, squiggly letters threaded together in a running stitch. It didn’t resemble the writing that I knew how to read. There was a date in block letters that I could figure out. And a fancy wax seal, out of which two little red ribbons hung as tails. It sure did look official, but a deed would have been worth more. “I…I can’t read.” I stammered. “I mean I can.” I stabbed at the loop-the-loop writing with my pointer finger. “But not that. I can’t read that.”
I snapped my finger back, hearing Ma chastise me as a little girl. “Pointing is impolite.” I brushed at the front of my coat then stuffed my knuckles to my hips, cocked my head, and leaned in, interested like. I was interested in what that paper read.
Sahara slumped, making herself appear shorter than she already was. She sighed loudly and rolled her eyes skyward in a colorful display, then made a big to-do over smoothing out that paper. She held it to her nose and read aloud. “One mail order bride, Sahara Miller, paid in full. Delivery to Austin, late of Molasses Pond, Arizona Territory.”
I interrupted. “There must be some mistake.” I knew there wasn’t. This was McKade’s doing. He would control me through a woman. He would use Seth and Jeb, with their unscrupulous interests, to threaten me.
I didn’t want her but, doubtless, she wouldn’t be safe in town. Whether I wanted her or not, taking her was the right thing to do. Just until she can go back to wherever she came from. But maybe Rose…
Chattering townsfolk began encroaching. The sorrel danced lightly from side to side.
“How old are you?” I asked quietly. I looked to the boardwalk of the Watering Hole for Rose.
People were closing in, loosely forming a horseshoe shape in front of us.
The sorrel thrust his tail out and snorted into the damp wind.
“Plenty old enough. My mama was married and widowed at fifteen.” Sahara erected her tiny frame to stand fully upright. “I turned sixteen last June. I’m near to sixteen and a half years now.”
A horde banded together and closed in. Barflies. Merchants. A few women. Miners. Cowboys. Kids. Seth was grinning. Jeb bounced on his feet like he needed to visit a privy.
The sorrel wanted nothing to do with any of them. I couldn’t blame him for his sentiments. Their invasive approach was threatening. How could I leave a girl to this mob? How could I leave her to the likes of Seth and Jeb? It wasn’t right.
I maintained a manly stance as the convoluted concerns of two fiery redheads got difficult. I dipped my forehead and tucked my chin. Only momentarily.
Attempting to hide my frustration, I lifted my head and stretched my shoulders as if the event were tiresome. I was too aware of not showing weakness. Predators preyed on the weak.
It would be easiest for me to jump onto the sorrel’s back and hightail it out of town. But I couldn’t leave Sahara.
As a warning to those encroaching, I slid my left hand to caress the hard shaft of leather in front of my leg. I switched the horse’s reins and overtly flexed the fingers on my gun hand.
There was a collected intake of breath. Those with any sense set back on their heels.
“My bag.” The girl showed absolutely no concern of being crowded. But she was concerned that the sorrel would run over the top of her bag.
I scooped the carpetbag from the mud.
A cheer went up. Rice and the like was thrown. The sorrel bolted sideways within the short length of the rein, swinging his rump into the projectiles.
I thrust the carpetbag and basket at Sahara Miller.
Having had enough, the horse ran backward, squatting low over his hocks. I went with him for a few strides, so as not to let the animal jam on his bridle. My face was pelted to stinging by one overzealous well-wisher. Seth.
I batted pebbles away from my eyes and cheeks, but they continued nipping at my clothing.
I shoved my hand to the butt of my revolver, too fast, too easily, and too naturally. The gun’s comforting familiarity filled my palm. It sang to me. Wanting to be pulled. Needing to spit fire at the threat.
My surroundings came into keen focus. I concentrated on Seth’s stance. I saw how his arm was loose and relaxed with the throw of a few last pebbles. His holster was tied down for serious business. Just above his knee. The butt of his revolver was perched. Ready.
I honed in on him. I heard the excited rhythm of his fast breathing. And I waited for the telltale lump I knew he’d swallow before committing himself to draw.
My hammer loop was clear. But my weapon would be a split second behind his if he drew on me.
I was itching to grab the handle. Itching to cock my gun on the draw. To hear the click, click, click, click of assurance that the next moments would come together in split seconds of deadly clarity, speed, and accuracy.
My senses heightened. My adrenaline surged. My muscles grew tense with anticipation, and restraint.
“Enough. That’s enough.” Rose shouted.
Flight or fight. There were only ever those two options.
Rose stomped and stumbled her way to the middle of the churning mess. She crossed her arms over an ample bosom and glared at Seth and Jeb. “The two of you. Enough.” She pointed at Seth. “You.” Rose shook her finger as if scolding a naughty child.
Both held their hands up in mock surrender. Feral smiles slithered across their stubbly faces.
Rose shoved her bouquet of wilted flowers at me. She whispered so that only I could hear her, “If you have any thought to the poor girl’s safety, you must get her out of town now.”
McKade raised his hand. A chorus erupted. For he’s a jolly good fellow. The obliterated song was no doubt heard in the next valley. For he’s a jolly good fellow.
“Jack McKade,” Rose shouted above the raucous noise toward where McKade still stood on the boardwalk outside of the Watering Hole, “let these folks go home.” She adjusted her small cap and patted her damp locks. “It’s starting to rain for godsakes.”
McKade lowered his hand. The crowd hushed and began to disperse.
A gulp of cold air hit my lungs, making me realize I had been holding my breath. The sorrel got all four of his feet to touch the ground at one time. Sahara continued to stand rooted, clutching a motley carpetbag and the mud-splattered wicker basket to her chest.
Gunshots snapped the chill air.
The sorrel spooked anew. He barreled sideways and back. My sight filled with bulging, white-ringed eyes; flaring, snorting nostrils; and scrambling, sweat-lathered red. I swung onto the flailing sorrel before he hauled loose from me.
The sorrel steadied under my solid seat. Just long
enough.
I grabbed hold of Sahara and hoisted her behind me, wicker basket, carpetbag, and all. I wouldn’t have been much of a man if I’d abandoned her to a mob.
I gave the sorrel his head. He burst into flight.
A gruff voice from the crowd jeered, “Half-breed.”
Mad whooping, like a band of whiskey-liquored Indians, followed in my wake.
Chapter Four
Past the outskirts of town, I cupped my foot under Sahara’s dainty shoe and slid her from the frightened sorrel. One of her arms was looped through the wicker basket, the other through the handle of her carpetbag. With white knuckles, Sahara clutched at me, making her dismount difficult.
“We’ll walk a bit.” I needed time to think. I needed my world to slow down.
“Where are we going? Why did you have to be so rough? Couldn’t we have rented a buggy? How long do we have to walk—”
I spun into Sahara’s face.
Her eyes jarred open as wide as a night owl’s. For a second, she looked like a bewildered fawn. Sahara shrunk back in a twinge of alarm.
I hadn’t meant to scare her. I just wanted the chattering chit to shut up. This can’t be happening. She has to go. I can’t have a wife. I don’t even want a wife.
Her brows scrunched. Her pasty white face flattened and tensed, as if she expected me to hit her.
Stupid girl. What did she think? I relaxed my posture and stepped away. Sahara was too small for the frontier. Too weak. Too vulnerable. She’d never survive.
Sahara stiffened her back, tightening her lips.
After staring her down, I walked off. I was married.
This arrangement wasn’t going to work. No. No, this wasn’t right. Totally wrong. It was totally wrong. And how was I supposed to live as me? How would I keep my secrets? “Grr.” I had too many secrets to have a wife.
I stomped along the trail. Wheel ruts had worn into the ground from over-burdened Conestoga wagons and heavy mule trains passing through the land in their haste for gold. I kicked at anything in my way. Rocks skittered at my punts. With the toe of my moccasin, I sent a soggy meadow muffin to heap elsewhere. Even mud readily leaped from a solid wallop. My mood turned as cold and foul as the fall drizzle needling its way to prickle my skin.
Around folks, I was socially awkward, easily derailed, full of self-doubt, and always on guard. I never relaxed around Whites. I wanted to be alone. To be an upstanding man, I’d have to live alone.
And none of it was Sahara’s fault.
It was McKade’s doing. If not directly him, he’d have put his hired boys up to it. Why? Why me? Why not the butcher, or the baker, or the candlestick maker? What was I to him?
I flung myself back onto the sorrel. “Let’s go home.” I gestured for Sahara to step on the top of my foot then offered her my hand.
She shoved the basket and carpetbag at me, before climbing behind.
The horse jigged. The pace was quick and jerky. I felt her thin arm slap across my midsection in reaction. The girl couldn’t ride. Her body was too rigid. Her butt smacked the sorrel’s loin each time he rose up. I swallowed a word of disgust before it escaped my lips.
“Don’t be foolish,” I snapped, “wrap both your arms around me and hold on tight.”
Bony arms barred across my stomach with the pressure of a blacksmith’s vice. Claws dug at my waist. The girl shivered against my back, quaking enough to disturb the horse anew.
“Do you have a shawl or cloak in your bag?” I felt a nod in reply and set to work at the clasp.
What I pulled out was a rag. It was clean but much too delicate. The thin shawl wouldn’t hold against this biting fall weather. There was pitifully little else in Sahara’s bag.
At nine years of age, I had been lost and wandering without much in the way of clothes. Like Sahara, I had once owned pitifully little. I wore undergarments and a torn boy’s shirt. My exposed legs had burned to blisters under the severe summer sun. My feet had swelled and cracked as I limped along, dragging overlarge saddlebags like a tiny version of an overburdened pack mule.
Our wagon train had pulled out of Henniker, New Hampshire, in 1855. The people leaving waved to the people staying. Those who stayed shook their heads, muttering about “foolish pioneers.”
My folks had been pioneers. I’m pretty sure now that they had also been foolish.
“Wrap yourself up. It’s a long ride to the hogan.” I balled the flimsy shawl and passed it off to Sahara.
Sometime in 1856, on the Cimarron Route of the Santa Fe Trail, Indians had descended from the rocky cliffs toward the stalled Conestoga wagons. The band emerged as if birthed from the boulders themselves. They looked savage, yes. Wild. I fancied they were free.
I ran toward them for a closer look, scurrying through low scrub, tumbling weeds, and ragged rocky ground. From behind a red boulder, plagued with a thicket of brown mesquite, I stared up at the Indians on their painted ponies. They passed so near that I could have petted the hairy legs of those splendid little ponies.
Our wagon train had crossed the paths of several bands over the year’s travel. Most of the Indians were harmless. Some were beggars. A few were thieves. Fewer were hostile. Those that were hostile had been liquored on Whites’ whiskey.
None of them were anything like the chilling stories told around the campfires at night. Stories depicting horrible red savages with war-painted faces, charging down into White settlements on their seasoned warhorses. These Indians were not “whooping and crazed, set to hacking innocent folks to death, taking prisoners to torture, and lifting scalps.” They were just people.
Savagery was what the Whites made up.
Sahara shivered too loudly behind me, distracting my mind from its memories. I halted the sorrel, tied the baggage handles in his mane hair at the withers, and wiggled from my warm jacket. Her lips were tinged blue as I fastened my coat around her damp shoulders.
The anxious sorrel jolted in anticipation when I turned back to looking through his ears. Without my asking, he spurted into a jarring jog. Sahara wrapped her scrawny arms back around me in a death grip. My Sunday-go-to-meetin’ shirt was too thin. The bindings were too thick. Would she notice?
With my legs, I squeezed the nervous sorrel forward faster.
Sahara rooted her head into my back like a piglet looking for grubs. Her shivering had calmed. The sorrel loped more easily.
In the hills, in 1856, I remembered, the wagons had sat lodged on an untamed pass. The pulling stock were exhausted. Men lolled in sweat-soaked shirts. Older children ran water to the thirsty. Women prepared cook fires for hot coffee to sooth the pains of encroaching futility.
That’s when the Indians emerged from the unforgiving landscape in a magical, mystical way.
A big beast of a horse and its grizzly bear rider topped the ridge in their wake. The pair stood, silhouetted by the fierce sun, watching, waiting. Neither horse nor rider were Indian—both too big. The monstrous animal pawed the ground and tossed his head in the air, protesting the restraint of his brutal rider.
No one had heard the Indians until they descended from the rocky ridge. No one had seen them until they had wanted to be seen.
Indians could reach out and touch a person before anyone was even aware of their presence. Several such occurrences had happened along the journey. Spooky, but harmless.
Counting coup. I hadn’t known what a coup was. As a child, I hadn’t felt like a coup. I remembered thinking that the Indians shouldn’t have to get so close to count. I could count from far away. That’s what I was doing, counting, from the brush as warriors rode toward the broken-down wagon train.
Sahara squirmed against my back. The girl was skinnier than her clothes made her appear. Her fussy, sharp arms raked my lower rib cage. “Are we almost there?” she asked in a timid voice. It wasn’t the same brashness that had met me at the stagecoach.
“Soon.” I slowed the sorrel to a jog, then to a walk, and halted. His actions had smoothed. His gait transitioned
downward easily. Yet Sahara jammed between my shoulder blades, bracing against the horse.
“We’ll walk for a bit.” I said.
When Sahara loosed her death grip from my midsection, she slid down the rain-slicked, angular rump of the sorrel. Her gloved hands grasped at tail hairs and air.
Sahara heaped onto the wet soil with a resounding thwack. Lathered sweat from the anxious animal had already soiled her dress. But red earth now upstaged the white lather, leaving the green dress suffering.
When she gained her feet, Sahara slapped at the grime, spinning in place like she was chasing off a clinging kitten.
I hopped down then led the sorrel. Carpetbag and basket in one arm, I towed him in my gun hand. The rustle of material and the pattering splash of store-bought women’s shoes told me that Sahara quietly followed.
I wanted to forget she was behind me. My mind wandered through haunting memories again.
Bronze men with shiny black hair rode astride smaller ponies of mixed parentage. Spanish. The ponies, not the men. Left behind from the days of the conquistadors.
The ponies were all unshod, yet their feet were perfect. Each animal was a stallion with a heavily crested neck. The sight of so many uncut males ridden together was uncommon in civilized circumstances. Amazing.
The riders had the utmost control over the ponies, using very little in terms of physical restraints—ropes, bits, or bridles. A single leather line was tied around the lower jaw and held in one hand. I was envious. If they weren’t riding bareback, the men sat only on a woven blanket. I wanted one of those cayuse ponies on a string, ridden with just a whisper.
The man on the monstrous horse atop the ridge sat in a saddle. That horse wasn’t any cayuse. And that man was no Indian. Six other big men on big, saddled horses flanked him. The sun was at their backs, obliterating details.
The nimble compact Indian ponies floated over the boulder-strewn, steep land as if walking to church on Sunday. The cayuses were made for this land—small horses with colors and broken coat patterns capable of blending into the harsh background.
I had stared, marveling at their mystique. Enthralled.