Alma's Mail Order Husband (Texas Brides Book 1) (3 page)

Alma raised her eyebrows. “You’re not
thinking of getting married, too, are you?”

Amelia shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking about it
at all until you brought it up. Now that you’re getting married, I
just might.”

Alma burst into a happy grin. “You’d look
beautiful in this dress, too. I would love it if you got married,
too. I don’t want to be the only married one of the three of us,
and Allegra is pretty adamant that she isn’t going to get
married.”

“No, I’m not.” Allegra came over from the
fireplace, drying her hands on a towel. “I’m certain of that.”

“You might change your mind,” Amelia
suggested. “Forever’s a long time. You never know what might
happen.”

Allegra shook her head. “No. You two can get
married. I’m staying free. I’ll keep working the ranch while you
two stay home and mind the children.”

“You’ll work the ranch—along with our two
husbands?” Amelia asked. “That could be tricky. What if the men
won’t ride with you? What if they want you to stay home, too, while
they run the ranch?”

A shadow crossed Allegra’s face, but she
shrugged it away. “I won’t let that happen. This is my ranch more
than theirs. I have more right to work it than they do. If they
can’t become used to that idea, then this isn’t the place for
them.”

“Don’t you think Amelia and I would have
something to say about that?” Alma asked. “You’re not suggesting
you’d drive both of us and our husbands and children away, just so
you could work the ranch alone, are you?”

Allegra stiffened. “I’m not suggesting
anything. I’m just saying that I’m not going to give up working the
ranch just because you two decided to get married. I hope you both
make certain your husbands understand that. Otherwise, we’re going
to have a problem here.”

“Don’t worry,” Amelia replied. “I’m not
getting married. I’m still going to work the ranch with you. I just
never really thought about it until Alma decided to get married.
It’s not a half bad idea, anyway. But I’m not getting married,
either.”

“And,” Alma added. “I’m not giving up working
the ranch just because I’m getting married. I told Jude he can
expect all three of us to keep working the same way we always have.
I think I can be pretty sure he won’t just walk in and start taking
over. All three of us will make certain that doesn’t happen. He
better wake up early in the morning and pack a lunch if he wants to
get the jump on us.”

Allegra laughed. “Alright. Just so we all
understand each other. Now, quick! Change into the dress so we can
see it on you.”

Alma took down the dress and ducked behind a
curtain in the corner of the room that served as the sisters’
closet. Allegra sat down on the bed next to Amelia and kicked off
her boots. Then she unbuckled her gun belt. She refastened the
buckle and hung the belt on the bedpost. She did the same thing
with the plain leather belt holding up her pants. Then she ran her
fingers through her short hair.

“I guess we’ll all be going into Eagle Pass
at the end of the month,” Allegra remarked. “We don’t get out to
town much. We’ll have to make an inventory of supplies to get when
we’re there. We might not get in again until next spring.”

“What did you have in mind?” Amelia
asked.

“The most important thing is salt blocks for
the cattle,” Allegra replied. “And we’re running low on lamp
oil.”

“What about food?” Amelia asked. “Do we have
enough salt and flour for ourselves?”

“I’ll check before we head out to work
tomorrow morning,” Allegra told her. “I sure hope this Jude McCann
character likes tortillas and prickly-pear relish. He could be a
real Yankee for all we know. He might not fancy the food we eat or
the way we eat it. He might get weird about us not using dishes and
forks and knives and all that.”

Amelia chuckled. “That would certainly throw
a wrench in their marriage, wouldn’t it?”

Allegra stared at her middle sister. Amelia
almost never joked or saw the funny side of anything.

Alma’s voice floated over the top of the
curtain. “What would throw a wrench in our marriage?”

“Nothing,” Amelia called back. Then she
lowered her voice and murmured to Allegra so Alma couldn’t hear.
“He’s from Amarillo. You would think he’d eaten country style
before.”

Allegra shrugged. “I wonder if she asked him
about that in their letters.”

Amelia smirked again, but they didn’t speak
about it anymore, because Alma came out from behind the curtain,
wearing their mother’s wedding dress. She swished right and left.
“What do you think? The train is long enough to make up for the
difference in height. I don’t have to let it out at all. I just
won’t have to lift it up when I walk.”

Her sisters stared at her with their mouths
open, but neither answered her.

Their silence startled Alma. “What’s the
matter? Doesn’t it look good?”

Neither Amelia nor Allegra moved. After a
moment, Amelia succeeded in closing her mouth.

“Is it that bad?” Alma asked.

Clarence broke the silence from his place by
the fire. “You look like your mother.”

Alma whirled around. “Papa!” she gasped. “I
didn’t know you were listening.”

“How could I miss it?” he asked.

Alma peered through the half-light of the
lamps, trying to find his eyes in the dark. How much could he
really see? “Can you see from over there? You’re in pitch
darkness.”

“I might be in the dark,” he told her. “But
you’re in the light. I can see you just fine. I didn’t realize you
resembled her so much. You look the way she did when I took her to
the altar. Looking at you, I could almost believe she’s still
alive.”

Alma smiled into the shadows. Then she turned
back to her sisters. “So? Do you think it will work all right?”

She smiled at her sisters, but they didn’t
respond.

Amelia pried her eyes away from the dress and
stared off into the darkness. Allegra gazed at her older sister a
moment longer. Then she exploded into a flurry of movement.

She kicked her legs out along the length of
her bed. She kicked all the articles Alma laid out so neatly from
the trunk and sent them flying onto the floor. Then she kicked
Amelia in the hips. “Get off my bed! Get off! Get off! This is my
bed, now get off!”

Amelia cried out in surprise and retreated to
her own bed, which just happened to be the next bed over. She went
around the other side of it and sat down with her back to the
room.

“What’s the matter with you?” Alma exclaimed.
“What’s wrong?”

Allegra didn’t answer. She gave her empty bed
a few more kicks for good measure before she stretched herself out
on top of the blanket with her face to the wall.

Alma stared at the back of her youngest
sister’s head. Was that a quiver she saw in Allegra’s shoulders?
Allegra never indulged in emotional outbursts. She preferred
indifferent mockery.

On any other night, Alma would have gone to
Allegra’s bedside to find out what disturbed her so much. But, for
some reason, the wedding dress stopped her from doing it. She
hurried behind the curtain and took the dress off. She put on her
night clothes in its place. When she came out, she laid the dress
out on her own bed while she put everything back in the trunk. Then
she laid her mother’s wedding dress on top of the pile and closed
the lid.

She glanced around the room again. Was that a
sniff she heard coming from Allegra’s bed. More and more
frequently, Alma noticed her youngest sister slept in her work
clothes. She took off her gun belt, boots, and hat, but she laid
down on top of her bed in her pants and work shirt and slept that
way until morning. She didn’t even cover herself with her
blankets.

Alma stole a look at Amelia. Her middle
sister sat on the edge of her bed, gazing off into the darkness,
unresponsive to her surroundings. Alma didn’t bother to ask if
Amelia would blow out the lights before she went to sleep. She
didn’t say good night to her father, either.

The rupture they all feared so much didn’t
need her or anyone else getting married. It already happened long
before she even planned to get married. It crept up on them by
degrees, over the course of years. Long over-familiarity bred
complacency in their relations with each other.

Now, they didn’t even bother to speak to each
other. They knew each other too well, and they took one another for
granted. Alma didn’t have to ask Amelia if she would put out the
lights. She already knew she would do it. She didn’t have to say
good night to her father. He would be drifting in his dreams before
the fire, already miles away from her and the rest of their family.
He wouldn’t appreciate her calling him back from his travels just
to wish him good night.

Alma looked around the room one last time.
Getting married was the best thing she could do, the only thing she
could do. They had lived together so long that now they no longer
lived together at all.

On the morning of July 31, the Goodkind
sisters rose at the first light of dawn as they usually did. But
instead of saddling their horses and hitting the trail to tend
their cattle, they went to the barn and hitched up the old
wagon.

Alma took the job of brushing down the horses
as Amelia and Allegra rolled the wagon out of the barn and
organized the harness and its fittings. They loaded the wagon with
food supplies, a cooking pot and pan, and piles of blankets.

They would get to the town of Eagle Pass in
about four hours if the trip went well, and they hoped to be home
before dark. But they always went fully prepared for unforeseen
circumstances when they left home. They never knew what might
happen out in the middle of the desert. Even one night in the open
could be fatal without the right supplies.

Amelia piled up the blankets into a soft
throne just behind the wagon seat. Then she rigged up a sheet over
the top of it with two corners tied to the ends of the seat and the
other two corners tied to the sides of the wagon. The sheet made a
little tent over the throne.

Alma backed first one horse and then the
other into place next to the wagon shaft. As she and Allegra put on
the horses’ collars and hitched up their harnesses, Amelia escorted
their father out of the house and seated him on the throne under
the tent.

He leaned on her shoulder when he climbed
into the back of the wagon, and he leaned forward at the hips
before collapsing into the pile of blankets. In the end, he settled
himself into his nest under the shade and waited for his daughters
to finish getting ready to go.

Amelia climbed into the seat. Alma double
checked all the harness fittings and Allegra doubled checked the
provisions, including a supply of grain for the horses. She glanced
back toward the barn. “Do you think we should bring an extra saddle
horse for your man to ride home? Do you think he’ll have a horse of
his own to ride?”

Alma followed her gaze toward the barn. “I
didn’t think of that.” Then she shook her head. “No. If we take
another horse, that’s another mouth to feed that he might not even
use. If he doesn’t have his own horse, he can ride in the back of
the wagon with Papa and Allegra. Then he can ride one of our horses
when he gets here.”

Allegra nodded her approval.

“And you can stop calling him ‘your man’,”
Alma continued. “That goes for all of you. He has a name, and his
name is Jude.”

Allegra ignored her. “Just think. By the end
of the day, you won’t be Alma Goodkind anymore. You’ll be Alma
McCann. What do you think of that?”

Alma blinked. “I didn’t think of that,
either. It doesn’t sound like me at all. It doesn’t sound like a
Mexican woman at all. It sounds like some Irish washerwoman.”

“All except the ‘Alma’ part,” Allegra pointed
out. “And anyway, you’re not Mexican. You’re Mexican, Apache, and
Irish. So you could be an Irish washerwoman after all.”

Alma shook her head. “I don’t know. If I
wasn’t on my way to the church to get married, I might say I didn’t
like the sound of it, but I guess it’s too late now.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Allegra replied.
“You’re about to get into the wagon to go to the church.”

Alma blushed. “That reminds me. I forgot
something.” She ran inside while the others waited for her.

She came out with a bundle wrapped in a white
sheet. Amelia gasped up on the seat. “You didn’t! You didn’t almost
forget to bring your wedding dress!”

Alma kept her eyes down and busied herself
with tucking the bundle into a corner of the wagon next to her
father’s throne. “Don’t tell Jude.”

Allegra laughed and climbed into the back of
the wagon. She stretched out on her back on the bare boards and
pulled her hat down over her eyes. Alma got into the seat next to
Amelia.

Alma took the reins from the brake handle and
spread them out in her hands. “All set?”

No one answered her. She clucked to the
horses and the wagon creaked away from the barn. A minute later,
the wheels slotted into the ruts in the dry cracked road. Alma
relaxed and let the horses pull the wagon along the well-known path
toward Eagle Pass.

As soon as the sun cleared the eastern
horizon, the heat bit into their skin and brought out the sweat on
the horses’ backs. Alma glanced back over her shoulder. Allegra
hadn’t moved, but kept her face hidden under her hat. Clarence
dozed under his shade. Amelia stared away into the distance,
unresponsive to everything.

How she wished she could talk to one of them
right now! But none of them would appreciate her breaking in on
their private worlds. The only way they tolerated one another’s
company was through diligent respect for one another’s private
mental space. Alma knew them all well enough to know that.