The Mail Order Bride

by R. Kent

  The Watering Hole’s outhouses came into sight. Caution wasn’t necessary. A man running to a privy wouldn’t usually get interrupted. A man running to a privy in torrential downpour that had lasted for four days, was probably on the verge of lunacy and shouldn’t be harassed for any reason. I trotted directly to the sheds and slammed into the middle of three.

  The floor felt unsteady, as if it was floating. It most likely was. But the roof was tight, making the inside dry. I fished the fireworks out and set to work, dribbling the long fuse in circles around the shed’s hole. I plugged the cherry bombs on the line in succession, then rigged the firecrackers to spark off after the initial booming explosions. Dynamite would have been better.

  It took me several matches to light the damp fuse. I was surprised when a wet sulfur tip finally burst into a minute flame. I coaxed the match to burning before stabbing it at the fuse.

  The length of line crackled to life, akin to a sparkler’s starburst. I shot from the privy on a dead run. Hot sweat beaded on my cold forehead, mixing with the rivulets of rainwater sluicing down my face. I swiped the back of my hand over my eyes to clear the dousing, only to cause moments of blurry vision.

  At the corner of the Watering Hole that began the alley between it and the bathhouse, I looked back, praying the fuse hadn’t gone out. I had calculated a length correctly to the amount of time needed. I think. Probably. I mean, I took my best guess.

  I charged through the alley then climbed onto the boards at the other end. Even though they were wet, they creaked under the shifting load. I held my breath and crouched against the wall, waiting.

  The window to McKade’s office was directly above my head. The fireworks in the outhouse still hadn’t blown. I popped my head up to peek through the office window. A gun-tough sat inside on the sill, plucking at the cylinder of his six-shooter. Beyond him, I caught a glimpse of Sahara pacing the length of the room. The pastor was collapsed on a braided rug.

  Bam. Bam. Bam. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.

  The hired thug ran from the window.

  Crack, crack, crack, crack.

  I smashed the glass. “Sahara. Get the pastor.”

  Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.

  She spun around and hugged the slumped pastor under his arms. I attempted to climb through the broken glass while Sahara struggled with his weight. She couldn’t lift him. Dragging his listless body also failed.

  My shirt caught on the jagged points, snagging me from tumbling in. The bruise over my ribs shrieked. I shoved my hands onto shards and felt the searing slicing as I pushed to tear myself loose.

  “Austin.” Sahara screamed.

  Shots fired. The glass over my head rained down like hail. Sahara pushed at my shoulders, knocking me back outside to the wet boardwalk.

  I grabbed her wrist, trying to pull her with me.

  She ripped from my grasp.

  A revolver thrust through the broken window and fired at the boards. I rolled to the alley and made my escape beneath the bathhouse boardwalk.

  When the rain was a blinding curtain, I crossed Main Street behind the fountain and took refuge against the solid side of the bank. Now what? I should have gone with the direct approach of guns blazing.

  “Austin. I know it’s you. I know you’re still out there.” Jack McKade’s voice boomed over the roaring downpour.

  I stepped from the protections of a solid wall, and its darkened alley to walk down the middle of Main Street. The deluge lessened to a nagging drizzle. My sodden, moccasin-covered feet mired in the crud, making sucking sounds with the pull of every step. If I had to run, I couldn’t. Flight or fight.

  It was time to make a stand.

  McKade’s men were already lining up on the boardwalk in front of the Watering Hole. Sahara was crammed through the swinging doors. Jack McKade muckled onto her arm, forcing her to walk ahead of him.

  Lily leaped around them. “This isn’t all there is,” she shouted at me. Lily held up the flour sack filled with the copper ore. I expected steam to come off of her, she was so heated. In her other hand, Sahara’s necklace and bracelet dangled from her tight grip. “No matter what Sahara wants us to believe, this isn’t all there is. I want it all. All of it. Do you hear me, Austin.”

  There was a handprint across Sahara’s left cheek. Blood smeared her sleeves. Her red hair sprung from a tangled bun to hang in her eyes. My heart sank into my roiling gut at the mussed sight of her.

  “There is no more.” Sahara shrieked at Lily. She squirmed in McKade’s tight hold. “I don’t love you, Austin. You’ll never be a rich gentleman. I’ll throw my lot in with Mr. McKade. The Watering Hole is where the money is.” Her speech was stilted. She sniffled too loudly.

  I didn’t know if she was trying to fool them, or trying to fool me.

  “I’m tired of living in a sod hut,” she hollered.

  Hogan.

  “Don’t rescue me, Austin.”

  “It’s McKade I’m here for now.” I regretted it as soon as I said it. Sahara seemed to shrivel into her delicate green dress. I wanted to run to her. I wanted to put my arms around her shoulders. I wanted to tell her I didn’t mean what I said. I needed to tell her—

  I loved her. I loved Sahara Miller.

  Seth and Jeb hammered through the saloon doors dragging the pastor’s beaten body between them. “We got us a friend of yours,” Jeb said. “Says he knows nothin’ ’bout no copper strike. But I’m not likely gonna believe him. You two was thick as thieves in that tent of his.”

  Seth jerked the pastor’s head up by his hair. “He’s still alive if you’re interested in trading him for your strike.”

  “We didn’t agree on that,” Jeb said to Seth. “You said I could kill him.”

  “Well, now I’m saying we could get us a claim,” Seth retorted.

  “No. No. You said I could kill him.”

  “Well, now he’s worth more in trade.”

  “No, no, no, no.” Jeb punched his knife into the pastor’s gut, punctuating each no. The pastor collapsed onto the boardwalk, snatching at his stomach.

  Sahara lunged to put pressure on the belly wounds. The pastor came alive with the deadly pain. He clutched at Sahara’s hands and fussed with his watch pocket. A glint of steel passed between them. Sahara tucked her hands inside her skirts as McKade’s men yanked her away.

  McKade’s shotgun blasted the air. He kicked the hound dog scurrying from the saloon with its tail already tucked. “Jeb. Get your mess off my property.”

  Jeb twisted his meaty claws into the frock coat, lifting the pastor from between the shoulder blades. He drudged the pastor through the muck to deposit him in the slurry that was center Main Street.

  He danced a jig back to the Watering Hole, hooting and hollering like it was a holiday celebration. Before Jeb climbed the step to the boardwalk, he cut the reins that hitched Charlie Horse to the rail.

  Seth plucked his revolver, exploding several rounds into the air, spooking Charlie Horse out of town. He leveled his barrel on me.

  I trudged a few steps forward, dropping to my knees in the cold mud. Blood saturated the pastor’s coat. I shoved his hands away. Not only blood, but ingesta gushed from the knife wounds. I jerked the pastor’s clothes apart and pressed my hands to the ragged holes.

  “Kill him for me.” The pastor clawed at me with his gore-covered fingers.

  I looked at McKade. He pushed on the barrel of Seth’s Colt Navy revolver, lowering it. With his fingers forming a mock gun, McKade pointed at me, dropping his thumb hammer down. Bang, McKade silently mouthed.

  “Kill McKade,” the pastor begged.

  “I will. I’ll kill him.” That was a promise.

  His throat gurgled. A fat tear escaped his eye to roll across his pale cheek. “I loved Jamie. I loved Jamie McKade. I followed him here from back East.” He choked on a swallow. “His uncle, Jack McKade, drove us apart. ‘Unnatural,’ he had ranted.”

  The pastor tried to sit up. I held him down. “He too
k Jamie from me.” Tears ran from his bloodshot eyes. “McKade took Jamie on his murderous spree. Away from me.”

  “Hush,” I said. “Easy. It’s okay now.”

  His eyes stared at my face, but he no longer saw me.

  “Jamie wrote me every day. Then the letters stopped.” He coughed. His heaving expelled more vital fluids from his belly. “I know Jamie will come back for me one day. I know it.” His throat burbled with blood as he sobbed. “Tell him I love him. Tell him. Tell him I loved him to my last breath.”

  “He knows.” Blood pumping beneath my palm dwindled until its beat was gone. “He knows, but you’ll tell him yourself.” Red trickled from the corner of the pastor’s mouth. With the pad of my thumb, I smeared it across his bottom lip.

  The rain stopped. A sliver of sun poked through the scurrying clouds.

  Jack McKade stood tall and proud on his boardwalk. “Austin killed Jamie McKade,” he shouted. “Austin gunned down the young man in the streets of Durango. Jamie was just a city dandy celebrating his twentieth birthday.”

  Sahara’s hands flew to cover her mouth. Her eyes grew wide with horror.

  “He’s a killer.” McKade hollered, pointing at me.

  It was kill or be killed. I had no choice. I didn’t know who he was. It didn’t matter who he was. It mattered that he called me out and pulled his smoke wagon. I didn’t have to accept his invitation to the gunfight, but I’d have been shot in the back if I didn’t. At least I’d had a fighting chance in a showdown.

  “Austin’s a cold-blooded murderer,” McKade shouted. “Who will be next?” He was intent on whipping the crowd up like a politician on election day. “You.” He pointed to a panhandler. “You?” He thrust his hand toward a woman in the doorway of the assay office. “You?” McKade’s eyes scanned a huddle of men in knotted neckerchiefs.

  The men coughed and guffawed, shifting their stance.

  I swiveled my head around looking for Justice. I wasn’t a killer like McKade. I had regret. A dead man was always someone’s nephew, or cousin…or son. Justice?

  Those men in neckerchiefs lifted the pastor’s body from me. They carried his dripping carcass to Percival’s Mercantile and laid him out on the board walkway, folding his hands across his chest.

  With a jerk of McKade’s shaggy head, he signaled for Sahara to be taken inside. The hired guns followed, escorting Lightning Jack McKade safely back into his lair.

  Rooted in the muck, I shivered, wondering what it was all for. I had journeyed to the edge of the frontier to be alone. To work a living on my own land. To become a man.

  Lost in self-pity, I hadn’t heard the Indians until they had already descended. I hadn’t seen them until they had wanted to be seen. It was their way. They fled past me. Their hands touched my wet shoulders and sopping hair. Counting coup? No. I wasn’t the enemy.

  A feather with one side painted yellow fluttered to the mud in front of me.

  Apache warriors rampaged through the tent housing. Their fierce whooping and painted faces inspired denizens to flee in fear. Wooden facades offered no protection against the angry band flailing knives and hatchets. But there was really nothing here for them.

  With four days of pouring rain, Molasses Pond was buttoned up. There were no wares on display outside. No doors gaping open in invitation. No mule trains with provisions had come through the pass in a month.

  The Apaches would have known. They watched. They listened. They waited. It was unlike any tribe, even in desperation, to raid without purpose and planning.

  Gunmen emptied from the Watering Hole in pursuit of the Apaches. They shot their handguns with no worry to accuracy, smashing glass windows and splintering wood.

  A woman ran from the bathhouse, her little girl hanging limp in her grasp. Blood blossomed over the girl’s pristine dress. Red smeared the length of the woman’s apron as the unconscious girl slipped from her grasp.

  McKade hunkered inside, beneath the broken front window of his saloon. The tip of his double-barrel poked above the sill as he reloaded. Behind him, Sahara pulled her coat onto her shoulders then wrung her hands together, pacing the office again.

  Rose stood framed inside the open doors of the empty saloon. The plume of her hat drooped over her forehead.

  I could hear the whoops and shouts and gunfire from around the burned out livery. The skirmish wouldn’t last long. Every Indian would fade into the landscape as easy as ghosts.

  Rose waved, pointing to the end of town. She was telling me to go.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I hit the thickets on the outskirts of town. Smoke billowed in the distance too far away to be the waning skirmish at the livery. I would bet buttons to silver dollars that that smoke signal called the Apaches off. Single shots of gunfire pecked at the stilled air only now and again. It was over in minutes.

  For years to come, the Whites of Molasses Pond would, no doubt, inflate stories of fighting off an Apache raid. I twirled the painted feather between my fingers as I left town.

  Townsfolk were silently picking up ravaged canvas tents and strewn lumber. A gathering huddled around the little girl who had been struck in the shoulder by an errant bullet. Panhandlers and diggers crept from hiding. A dog padded its way across Main Street. And Jack McKade flailed that sawed-off shotgun around on the boardwalk of the Watering Hole, shouting orders.

  A twig cracked. The brush rattled. A blur flew at my chest.

  Caught by surprise, I hadn’t cleared either gun from a holster. A jolt of adrenaline tore through me, but the heightened alert calmed with the scent of her lilac soap. “Sahara.”

  Her warmth permeated my cold body as if springtime sunshine blistered through a heavy snow cover. I ate it up.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” she said in a breathy whisper.

  I buried my face in her neck. My eyes blurred with welling tears.

  “Bles-sed me.” Rose emerged from the brambles. “I left a shoe back there in that muck.” She lifted her leg and grabbed off the remaining one. “I know buggies were invented. What I don’t know is why I have to suffer walking.”

  Thank you, I mouthed silently.

  Rose winked. “Okay, you two lovebirds, I need to trot back down to that wreck of a village.”

  Sahara loosened her hug, beaming a smile toward Rose, but she was already cussing her way back to town. “It’s my gift to you,” Rose said in a singsong shout. “Don’t squander it.”

  Sahara’s piercing eyes focused on my lips as if it were the first time she’d noticed them. She ran her fingertips over my mouth, brushing ever so softly that I shivered. Her eyelids fluttered closed. She shifted to her toes, replacing fingers with her mouth in a delicate caress.

  Her warm breath whispered over my lips. Her insatiable mouth teased too gently, too timidly. I wanted more. I needed more.

  I entwined my hands in the silky mass of her fiery red hair and deepened our first kiss. When I sunk my hungry mouth onto hers, I thought she’d pull away. Maybe I hoped she’d pull away because I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t stop. I nipped and sucked on her plump lower lip until she yielded, opening for our tongues to entangle.

  It felt as if our souls had made promises. It felt like there was nothing more right than the two of us together.

  Sahara returned my fervor. Her kissing became feral. Her hands found the small of my back, pressing me to her until the rising heat burned between us.

  Her palms roamed up my back and down my sides. My skin tingled. I needed to feel her flesh on mine—

  “It won’t work,” I said as I tore myself from her.

  “It will.” Sahara reached for me.

  I steeled myself against her. “I’m not a man. You deserve a man.”

  I walked off.

  It was eerily quiet on the journey home. I listened to the pitter-patter of Sahara’s feet behind me. Once in a while, I heard her sniffle.

  We parted ways at the hogan. She went in. I went to the overhang.

  The
cow moaned. The heifer calf stretched like a lazy house cat as she climbed from beneath her dam. I fluffed dried grasses and brush in front of them, not having the heart to put the calf in her pen. I heard the pup yip. She would be dancing and jumping around Sahara’s legs in frenetic circles of happiness.

  I stirred the coals to life then fed them kindling until the flames were strong enough to devour chips. Empty whiskey bottles littered the ancient stone floor. Brass casings were scattered in a haphazard trail through the cavern. A tall pile of manure mounded ever higher at the far edge, waiting to be taken to the garden. Even my few personal things were disheveled, as if ransacked by a rampaging bull.

  First things first. I untied my neckerchief and gently crept from my sopping shirt. A shiver ran through me. Now that the rain had settled, the cold air turned crisp. Gooseflesh pimpled my skin. I rolled the length of my binding about my chest, snugging each pass across the front. A sigh of relief escaped my lips.

  The coloring over my ribs had dulled. The dark purple bruise was encircled by a thick ring of pale green. The pain wasn’t as sharp as it had been. I prodded the center and winced. Still sore, but workable.

  Using a bucket of rainwater, I doused my head, scrubbing my hair with a bar of soap as well as torturing my underarms. My teeth chattered uncontrollably. If I clenched my molars to still the quaking, my entire body shook.

  I shimmied into the scraped buckskin smock, hung my wet button-down near the fire, then began to clean up. The mess kept my mind occupied. If I stopped to think, I thought about her.

  I envisioned her face so easily. The way her eyes were greener than lush prairie grass. The countless shades of red in the strands of her thick hair. How her tresses shimmered with the touch of the sun, or in the glint of firelight. Her button nose was sprinkled with freckles. And her gap-toothed smile was caressed with a quaint awkwardness.