Alma's Mail Order Husband (Texas Brides Book 1) (6 page)

“How are all the folks at home?” she
asked.

“They’re just fine,” he replied.

“Did you tell them you were getting married?”
Alma asked.

“I told my cousin,” Jude told her. “He sent
his congratulations.”

“Didn’t you tell your parents?” Alma asked.
“You said they still lived up there. Didn’t you see them?”

“I didn’t tell them,” Jude admitted. “They
would only get upset.”

“Upset?” Alma gasped. “Why?”

Jude colored. “My mother would get upset that
I was getting married somewhere away from home where she couldn’t
attend the wedding and get her fingers stuck into every detail of
how it was to go off. And my father would get upset that I made the
decision to get married without consulting him first and letting
him lecture me about the rights and responsibilities of a husband.
That’s why I didn’t tell them.”

“But isn’t that the parents’ job?” Alma
asked. “Isn’t that what a father and mother are supposed to do when
their son gets married?”

Allegra called back over her shoulder, “Don’t
let her fool you, Jude. She didn’t consult with Papa before she
made the decision to marry you, either. And you can bet your boots
she never let anyone lecture her about her rights or
responsibilities.” Allegra snorted and turned back to the front of
the wagon.

Alma shook her head to get the blood out of
her cheeks. “I only meant that it’s normal for the parents to want
to have something to say about their son getting married. And at
least I told you and Amelia and Papa I was getting married. At
least we all went together to the church, and you were there with
me when it happened. Jude’s parents don’t even know he got
married.”

“Oh, they’re used to it by now,” Jude told
them. “My sister ran off and got married without telling anyone.
She hooked up with a local plowboy on the quiet, and the next
minute, they’ve flown the coop and are living happily as lawful man
and wife out in Nevada. Shoot, she didn’t even write home for about
four years afterward, either.” He laughed. “Didn’t my Mama cry when
she received that first letter!”

Alma stared at him in shock. “That must have
upset your parents very much.”

Jude shrugged. “Heck, that’s the least of
their worries. At least my sister married the guy. It could have
been a sight worse for everyone if she hadn’t. Once it was all said
and done, my parents thanked their lucky stars for small mercies.
They’ve had their hands full with the three of us ever since we
were small. They’re used to that sort of thing by now.”

The glorious red and purple of sunset colored
the sky by the time they pulled into the Goodkind ranch. Amelia
stopped the wagon in front of the house, tossed the reins to
Allegra, and jumped down. “Come on inside with me, Papa,” she
called.

Alma leapt to her feet and helped extricate
her father from his encampment of blankets. She and Amelia
virtually lifted him down from the wagon box and set him on his
feet on the ground. Amelia took his arm and guided him into the
house.

Once he was clear of the wheels, Allegra set
the horses moving again and drove the wagon into the barn. Jude
helped her and Alma put the horses and wagon away. “Your father
doesn’t look so spry on his feet.”

“Didn’t I tell you he broke his back?” Alma
asked. “He was thrown from a horse five years ago and can’t ride
anymore. He can’t move much.”

“You told me,” Jude replied. “I just didn’t
realize it was so bad until I’ve seen him with my own eyes.”

“He’s a lot better than he used to be,”
Allegra put in. “For a long time after the accident, he couldn’t
walk at all. We had to carry him everywhere and do everything for
him. He had to learn how to walk again.”

Jude looked through the open barn door toward
the house. “I don’t think he likes me very much.”

“What do you mean?” Alma cried. “He doesn’t
even know you. Besides, you just married his eldest daughter, the
first of his daughters to get married. Of course he’s going to be a
little stand-offish for a while. But he’ll come around in time.”
She laughed. “I’ll whip him, if he doesn’t.”

“What makes you think he doesn’t like you?”
Allegra asked. “He didn’t say a single word to you after we left
the church.”

“It was just the way he was looking at me on
the way back here,” Jude replied. “I don’t think I’ve been stared
at like that since the schoolmaster caught me stealing chocolate
donuts from Lucy Spangler’s dinner pail.”

“You didn’t!” Alma twittered.

Jude smiled. “All the time. They were the
best donuts in town, and no amount of punishment could keep me away
from them.”

“You’re a bad man, aren’t you?” Alma teased.
“I can see we’re going to have to be very stern with you. Well,
you’ll get no chocolate donuts around here, young Mr. McCann. It’s
strictly tortillas and roasted meat.”

“I can live with that,” Jude replied. “As
long as I don’t go to bed with an empty stomach, I can manage. A
man could live on the memory of those donuts.”

“Good,” Alma shot back. “Because from now on,
that’s all you’ll have to sustain you. Now, what do you want to do
with this horse of yours?”

“Do you have a place for him?” Jude asked.
“If you haven’t, I can turn him out. He’s used to sleepin’ rough.
He can fend for himself outside until the morning.”

“Fend for himself outside?” Alma gasped.
“Nonsense! He’d freeze.”

“Nah,” Jude retorted. “He’d be fine. He’s
done it before.”

“He hasn’t done it in this desert,” Allegra
replied. “He wouldn’t be walkin’ around today if he had. It drops
below freezing out there at night, even in the summer. Here, give
him to me. I’ll put him here.”

She showed Jude’s horse to a hook in the wall
at the end of the building. Planks of wood suspended on ropes from
the ceiling created partitions between the horses’ tethering pins.
She tied the horse up in an empty place, dropped grain and hay into
his feed trough, and patted him on the flank.

“He’ll be comfortable there until the
morning,” Allegra told Jude. “Now, let’s get up to the house.
Amelia will have supper on the table for us.”

“Does she do the cooking?” Jude asked.

“We take turns,” Alma told him. “And we also
rotate who cleans up afterward. That makes it fair.”

“But someone must be the best cook,” Jude
remarked. “You must have noticed which of you does the best job of
cooking.”

Alma and Allegra looked at each other. “I
can’t say I’ve noticed any difference,” Alma replied.

“Me, neither,” Allegra agreed. “It all tastes
pretty much the same to me.”

“You mean,” Jude gasped. “You mean you always
eat the same food?”

“Sure,” Alma replied. “We all like it, so why
change it?”

“But doesn’t that get….?” Jude stopped.

“Get what?” Allegra asked.

“You know,” Jude continued. “Doesn’t that get
a little…you know….boring? Don’t you ever change anything?”

Alma and Allegra looked at each other again.
“No. We have the same food every night for supper, and we have the
same thing for breakfast in the morning, too.”

Jude stared at them. Then a shudder coursed
through his body. After it ended, he turned away. “Okay. I can live
with that.”

“Good,” Allegra exclaimed. “’cuz that’s all
there is to eat around here.”

“But, wouldn’t you like to learn how to make
something else?” Jude turned to Alma. “Wouldn’t you make something
else if I asked you to, just to make me happy?”

Alma felt the heat rising in her cheeks, and,
at the same time, she became aware of Allegra watching her
reaction. So this is how it starts. This is the pointy end of the
wedge. She had to draw the line right here and now.

She laughed in Jude’s face. “Oh, darling, if
you want me to learn how to cook chocolate donuts just for you, I
suppose I could learn how to do it. But you’ll have to order the
chocolate special delivery from San Antonio. And unless you want
the donuts fried in bull tallow, you’ll have to buy shortening,
too.” Allegra joined her in raising the rafters of the barn with
their laughter.

Jude frowned at them. “Alright. You win.
Forget I even asked.”

Alma wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “You see,
I’m sure all of us would love to eat some other food. We only eat
the food we eat because it’s the easiest and the cheapest and the
most available. The only foods we buy in are flour for the
tortillas and salt. Everything else we get from here. The meat
comes from our own cattle, the chili’s we grow in the garden, and
the…..other stuff we get from the surrounding countryside. That
way, we don’t waste our hard-earned money on things we don’t really
need.”

“I see,” Jude told her. “You don’t have to
worry about me. You won’t ever catch me complaining. As long as I
go to sleep with a full stomach, I’m happy.”

“You mentioned that before,” Allegra
muttered.

Alma closed the door behind them and slotted
the latch bolt into its hole. At the same time, Amelia lit a lamp
and placed it in the middle of the table. “Come on and get your
supper, folks,” she said. “You left it late enough. Come now before
it gets cold.”

She set the plate of tortillas, the platter
of meat, and the bowl of grilled vegetables on the table.

“We’ll need another chair,” Allegra pointed
out.

Alma and Amelia stared at the table. “I
hadn’t thought of that,” Alma mumbled.

“Here, Jude,” Allegra continued. “You take my
chair. I’ll get a stool from the barn to use until we can make
another chair. Don’t pay any attention to Alma. Just tell yourself
she was half out of her mind with excitement at the idea of
marrying you that she forgot just about everything else. She very
nearly forgot to pack her wedding dress in the back of the wagon
this morning.”

“Allegra!” Alma gasped. “I told you not to
tell him!”

“I’m trying to help you out, darling,”
Allegra shot back. “I’m trying to smooth over the fact that you
forgot to arrange for your new husband here to sit in a chair at
the supper table. Now stop complaining and eat. I’ll be back in a
minute.” She took a lit candle and stepped out into the night.

At her command, Jude sat down in her chair.
Alma and Amelia took their usual places around the table along with
their father. Clarence intoned his usual blessing, and the family
fell to the food.

Jude observed them without comment as they
each took a tortilla and filled it with meat and vegetables before
eating with their bare hands. He watched one person and then
another finish their first wrapped tortilla before starting
another. Only then did he reach for a tortilla of his own and fill
it from the platter and the bowl.

No one noticed his hesitation. They munched
contentedly, occasionally making comments with their mouths full,
and pushed more food in when they finished.

Allegra came back and helped herself. The
chewing and casual exchange of snatches of conversation filled the
little house.

Jude took his first bite and chewed. After
the first few bites, he slowed, rolling the food over his tongue.
Cautiously, he opened his tortilla and peered into it in the light
of the lamp. He hesitated another moment. Then, he asked, “What is
this vegetable? I don’t think I’ve ever had it before.”

The sisters glanced at each other. “It’s
prickly-pear cactus,” Allegra told him. “Oh, and green chili.”

Now that he’d tipped his hand, the whole
family watched him chew up the mouthful he’d already taken and
waited for him to take another bite.

“Don’t you like it?” Alma asked.

Jude swallowed with great ceremony and took
another bite of the tortilla in his hand. “I like it alright. I’m
just not used to the taste. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”

A glance flew around the table, and a smile
twitched at the corners of Alma’s mouth.

They ate silently for a while. Jude watched
the sisters help themselves to one portion of food after the other,
but he didn’t take another for himself. The stack of tortillas
shrank before his eyes.

“Is this what you have every night?” he
asked.

“Yep,” Alma replied. “We’ve eaten this every
night for as long as I can remember. Maybe you can ask Papa, but I
think we’ve always eaten this.”

“Maybe Mama didn’t know how to cook anything
else,” Amelia put in.

“I certainly don’t,” Allegra added. “This is
the only thing I ever learned how to cook. How about you, Alma? Did
Mama ever teach you how to cook anything else?”

Alma shook her head. “She died when I was
nine. She’d just finished teaching me how to roll out the tortillas
and keep the fire going when she died. I guess none of us ever
really learned to cook properly.”

“What about you, Jude?” Amelia asked. “What
would you eat at home in Amarillo?”

Jude’s eyes flicked across the table toward
Clarence. “You know, meat and potatoes and some kind of greens. And
we’d almost always have some kind of pie or pudding for desert. My
mother makes good pies. She’s a very good cook.”

“I told you he was a Yankee,” Allegra growled
to Amelia.

A chair screeching across the floor made them
all jump. Clarence kicked his chair back and left the table,
retreating to his usual position by the fire.

The younger generation watched him depart and
then returned to talking among themselves. Allegra took the last
tortilla. “What’s eating him?”

“Something,” Amelia mumbled. “He hasn’t said
a word since the church.”

“Maybe he’s just emotional about our lives
changing,” Alma suggested.

Amelia and Allegra drifted away from the
table toward their beds. Amelia sat cross-legged on top of her
quilt and started darning one of her socks. Allegra took off her
gun belt and started cleaning the cylinders of her revolvers. Jude
observed them. “Another work day tomorrow,” he remarked to
Alma.