Christmas Mail Order Bride - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides: Book 1) (6 page)

“The whole thing seems too ghastly to be believed!” she cried in despair. “I just can’t stand it!”

“Well, it looks to me like you don’t have much choice in the matter,” he commented. “I can always go get another job. You’re married to him. You’re stuck with him for life.”

“Thank you very much for reminding me of that,” she snorted.

“I’m sorry, miss,” he apologized. “I don’t mean it that way. But you’ve only been here a few days, and you’re already running away from him and crying in the barn. How are
you
gonna manage?”

She shook her head despondently. “I don’t know. But it can’t be as bad as it seems. Right now, it seems bad because I’m upset, but maybe in the morning, it won’t seem so bad. Maybe if I just make more of an effort to please him, things will get better.”

“Well, you can always try,” Caleb stated.

“Like you said, it’s only been a few days,” she continued. “I’m sure that after I settle in a little more and get to know him better, I’ll understand what he wants and I’ll be able to give it to him. Then he won’t be disappointed in me. Then we’ll get along alright.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Caleb replied.

“I’m going to keep trying,” she declared. “Like you say, I’m in it for the long haul now. We just got married, and we barely know each other. I have a long way to go before I give up on him.”

“Well, I wish you luck in your marriage,” Caleb nodded at her.

“And I wish you luck in your job,” she returned.

“I think maybe I’ll be better off somewhere else,” he pondered. “I can make more money somewhere else, where I don’t have the same history I have here. And I have a mother to support.”

“Have you?” she perked up. “That’s nice.”

“Sure, it is,” he agreed.

“I don't have a mother,” she sighed. “I’m an orphan.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he consoled her. “It’s good to have someone that will take care of you when you’re young, and sometimes it’s even better when you can take care of that person in return.”

“It must be wonderful to have a family,” she mused.

“Yes, it is,” he assented. “Even if you’re only a family of two. But you’re a member of a family now. You’re a member of the West family, and George and Matilda are real nice people.”

“Yes, they are,” she rejoined. “I’m proud to be a member of their family.”

“You’ll be okay here, I think,” he asserted. “You’ll figure it out, one way or the other.”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?” she answered.

“Yes,” he conceded.

“I appreciate your talking to me about it,” she thanked him. “I feel better about it now.”

“Do you think you’ll go back to the house now?” he suggested. “It’s one thing for a guy like me to spend the night out here with the horses. It wouldn’t do for a lady like you to do it. Anders would have a fit, if you did.”

“Yes, I guess I’ll go back,” she considered. “It’s just so peaceful here. The breathing of the horses puts me into such a relaxed frame of mind. I could spend the night out here very happily. I understand why you come here to get away from it all.”

“The horses always welcome you,” Caleb rejoined. “They’re always happy to see you when you come out here. And the smell of the hay is soothing, too.”

“I suppose I’ll see you again, if I ever come out here again,” she mentioned but as the words formed in her mouth, a curious prickling sensation spread over her whole body, and she peered at him in the obscurity of the lantern light. She found him staring back at her from the other side of the halo of the lantern’s pale glow.

“I’m in here a lot, day or night,” Caleb breathed. “You always have a good chance of finding me in here.”

Instinctively, her hand sought out his. “I shall look forward to it.”

Just at that moment, they both jumped nearly out of their skins as another male voice boomed out through the darkness. “What are you doing out here?” Anders broke the circle of light, the shadows around his eyes and cheekbones casting his features into a skeletal mask.

“Anders!” she leapt to her feet. “What are you doing out here?”

“I just asked you that!” he bellowed. “Get back in the house! I’ve been looking all over for you! And you!” He hissed at Caleb. “You stay away from her, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Yes, sir,” Caleb intoned submissively, but Penelope noticed an edge to his voice that almost derided the older man in his intemperate fury.

Penelope took a step toward Anders, partly to placate him, but mostly to cut the two men off from each other. “It’s alright, Anders. I just came out here to get some fresh air. I’m coming back up to the house now. Come on, let’s go.”

But Anders refused to be pacified so easily. “If you so much as give her a sidelong glance,” he pointed his finger at Caleb’s chest. “I’ll see you hanged from the gatepost! If you don’t know how to keep your place around here, you’ll find yourself on the wrong side a’ me, boy, and you would find it a very unpleasant place to be.”

“Yes, sir,” Caleb replied.

Anders persisted in his warning. “I put up with your insolence for a lot a’ years around this place, on account of my old Dad took a shine to you. But now that there’s a lady around, I can’t tolerate you
steppin’ out a’ line. If you turn a hair in her direction, you’ll be hounded out of the county, and you’d be lucky to get away with your life.”

“Yes, sir,” Caleb reiterated.

“Now get out of here!” Anders commanded. “Don’t let me see you near her again!”

“Yes, sir,” Caleb repeated. He set his lantern down on the bench he and Penelope so recently vacated and he faded into the darkness of the barn.

After he left, Anders rounded on Penelope. “What do you think you’re doing, associating with a dog like him?”

“Why do you have to be so brutal to him?” Penelope retorted. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

Anders gaped at her in rage. “You’re not going to start defending him, are you?”

“You shouldn’t be so hard on him,” Penelope insisted. “He’s a good boy.”

“You stay away from him, if you know what’s good for you,” Anders fumed. “If I see you with him again, I’m gonna get the wrong idea, and then I’ll have no choice but to get rid of him and punish you.”

“You won’t punish me,” Penelope stiffened. “Neither of us did anything wrong. I came out here to get some air, and he was here and talked to me. That’s all. There’s nothing for you to get the wrong idea about.”

Anders went very still, glaring at her. “You think I won’t punish you? You’re wrong there, missy. I would advise you not to push me too far, or you could find yourself in very hot water.”

“Don’t threaten me, Anders,” Penelope grumbled.

Anders gritted his teeth, seized the lantern with one hand, and with the other hand, he shoved her at the back of her neck toward the door of the barn. “Get out of here!” he growled menacingly. “Get back to the house!”

She pitched forward and almost lost her footing on the soft floor of the barn, but corrected herself in time and marched ahead of him out into the brisk night air and back up the steps to the house.

             
Three days later, Penelope dressed herself meticulously in her nicest clothes and prepared to travel to town to shop for her Christmas gifts. She buzzed around the house in a ferment of activity, infecting everyone, especially Matilda, with her spirit of excitement.

“I only wish I could come with you,” the older woman smiled at her glowing cheeks and her sparkling eyes.

“Well, why don’t you come, then?” Penelope suggested. “Even if you don’t buy anything, you’ll have a fun day out in town. You can help me pick out some things for George and Anders.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Matilda demurred.

“Why not?” Penelope pestered her.

“I just couldn’t,” Matilda’s old eyes crinkled sadly. “It wouldn’t do any good.”

Penelope didn’t press her any further, but attended to her own travel arrangements. She wheedled the money out of Anders, and he ordered the family carriage to be hitched up and assigned one of his men to drive her. Penelope straightened her hat in front of the mirror in the hall, just inside the front door. Anders glared at her as she fixed the pin in place. “I don’t see why you have to go,” he complained. “It’s a waste of time, if you ask me.”

“But, darling,” she kissed him emphatically on the cheek. “I want to get you something extra special for your Christmas present. It’s my way of showing you how much I esteem and adore you.”

He lowered his eyes to the floor, but a blush of scarlet brightened his cheeks. “I don’t want anything for Christmas,” he muttered.

“Not even my esteem and adoration?” she teased.

His protests devolved into inarticulate grumbling, and he left her alone in the hall. Through the window, she spied the carriage drawing up in the drive, its horses champing at their bits to sally forth onto the open road. The driver, whom she didn’t recognize, shouted over his shoulder to someone out of view and tucked his shotgun under his seat. George stood on the porch, observing the scene with the superior detachment of its master. When she emerged from the house, he grinned at her fancy attire and tripped down the steps to open the carriage door for her. She seated herself inside, and George slammed the door. He gave her one last parting smile before he banged the flat of his palm against the outer wall of the carriage to signal the driver that all was ready to depart. With another shout to the horses, the driver slapped them with the reins, and the carriage jostled out of the driveway onto the road. The weak winter sunshine made a show of lighting up the pastures and hills along their route. Penelope giggled with delight at the rattling of the wheels in the ruts, and she enjoyed the passage of the landscape so much more than the last time she traveled this road that she indulged in recognizing landmarks and peculiarities along the way that she missed on her first journey to the ranch.

At one point, the road traversed a narrow bridge before plunging into a dense patch of forest, and the trees shaded the road from the pale streaks of sun. Penelope scanned what little of the forest she could glimpse through her window, but the window only afforded her the limited view of the tree trunks flicking past. She braced her feet against the floor to keep her balance on the seat.

Her exultation at being out of the house, on her way to town for a shopping spree, fell away abruptly when she heard an alarmed ejaculation from the driver. Another voice shouting somewhere behind them answered him. She peered out of her window to ascertain the nature of the disturbance and saw a fleet of horsemen overtaking them with the swiftness of the wind. She couldn’t discern the meaning of their shouts or the communication between them and the driver of the carriage, but they approached so rapidly that she felt an instant apprehension burning in her chest. “What’s happening?” she called out to the driver through the window.

He shouted something back at her that she didn’t hear, but she sensed a shift in the rhythm of the carriage as he goaded the horses into a gallop. The shaking and creaking of the wheels against the ground took on a screeching noise as the carriage strained to its maximum speed. Penelope grabbed the door handle to steady herself from the violent pitching. Just then, the first rider drifted past her window and Penelope saw his face clearly. His head was shaved almost completely bald except for a thatch of black hair sprouting from its pate and running back across his skull to the base of his neck. His copper-colored skin glowed with beads of sweat but bold lines of black and white paint streaked his cheeks, slanting back across his cheekbones toward his ears. His chest, too, was bare, and he gripped the flanks of his horse with his knees, without saddle or stirrup to keep him mounted. Even without this characteristic outfit, Penelope recognized him for an Indian warrior, and she cried out automatically in fright. He turned his head and grimaced at her through the window, and when his eyes met hers, he let out the most ear-splitting, spine-chilling shriek she ever heard in her life. She would have screamed back in terror, had her heart not nearly stopped in her chest. The rider lifted an ax-like weapon, waved it over his head, and kicked his horse forward out of her view. But the rest of the group now flowed all around the carriage, yelling and brandishing all sorts of strange weapons. She heard the driver yell out something unintelligible, and this time, she really did scream in response. She looked forward as best she could, and the riders drifted out of her sight as they surrounded the horses straining and foaming in their traces. The pitching and tilting of the carriage reached an unimaginable fervor until, with one incredibly horrendous bounce, it sailed up out of the ruts in the road and smashed down onto its side. The impact hurled Penelope first against one wall of the interior of the carriage, then back against the other wall, bashing
her this way and that, before the carriage settled lifelessly into a ditch at the side of the road with Penelope lying insensible inside it.

She opened her eyes and blinked upward into the blue sky. She squinted into the trees above her, struggling to remember where she was and how she got there. Painfully, she flexed her fingers inside her gloves. To her relief, she felt the string of her handbag still looped around her hand. She tried to move her head from one side to another to see more of her surroundings, but a splitting pain forced her to keep still. She groaned feebly, unable even to cradle her head with her hand. Then a human voice spoke just next to her ear. She strained her mind to decipher the words, but her brain wouldn’t assemble the speech into anything she could understand. She blinked her eyes to clear her foggy thoughts and, because she couldn’t move her head without intolerable pain, she swiveled her eyes around in their sockets to look for the speaker. She saw nothing but just as she braced herself to move her head again, a human head with a human face poked into her view. She blinked again, harder this time, to distinguish its features. At last, her vision cleared enough to recognize the black hair and twinkling black eyes, the high cheekbones and the wide-set features, and she knew she was looking at another Indian. Dread seared her heart, but she couldn’t move to flee. The person spoke to her again, and only then did she realize the voice and the face were female. A hand rested on her shoulder, and the tone of the woman’s voice seemed soothing to Penelope’s ear. More voices, both male and female, sounded near her.

In spite of the pain in her head and body, Penelope induced herself to sit up, grunting in agony. She ran her hand across her forehead, and felt that her hat was gone. Blinking lights and shadows obscured her vision and she thought she might fall over unconscious again but somehow, she dragged herself into some semblance of coherence and peered at the people surrounding her. The first unusual aspect of this collection of personages to strike Penelope’s notice was the presence of several children, running and skipping and yelling at the edge of the tree line. Unlike the horseman she spied through the window of the carriage, these people all wore full heads of hair, and they walked on foot, milling around the shattered carriage. The only horses to be seen were the same two animals that pulled the carriage away from the West ranch, now unhitched and standing quietly near their broken shafts and tangled traces. A few men held them by their bridles, stroking them and calming them. Penelope saw no sign of the painted assailants who drove her carriage off the road. Still, she didn’t allow herself to relax. The women around her continued talking to her, patting her on the back and on the shoulders, and one or two examined her forehead. In spite of their ministrations and their appeasing speech, she struggled to her feet. She would have made every effort to get away from them if she hadn’t feared some reprisal from them. She considered herself their captive, and in any case, after glancing up and down the road, she realized she didn’t know where she was or which direction to go either to get back to the ranch or to go onward toward the town. Even after examining the wrecked remains of the vehicle, she didn’t remember on which side of the road the carriage had crashed, and when she tried to walk, aching pain slowed her to a decrepit limp. The Indian women observed her efforts and patted her again to encourage her to desist. At last, she surrendered to the crushing imposition of her injuries and sat down heavily on the turf. The Indians moved around her in a cloud of activity but after making a thorough examination of the wreckage, they only took the horses and Penelope with them. After a lengthy discussion with one of the men, the woman who first appeared over Penelope’s head returned to her side and guided her by the hand to one of the horses. Through signs and gesticulations, they tried to induce her to mount the horse. Penelope responded by pointing back toward the road but they frowned in return, and when their movements and expressions took on a more negative aspect, she relented and suffered herself to be lifted onto the horse’s bare back. As soon as she mounted, they led her away up the road with the rest of the group walking along around and behind them. The man held onto the horse’s head as they went, and the conversation between the people on the ground settled into a familiar banter punctuated by laughter. The children still played around the periphery of the entourage, stopping to inspect insects and fungi along the way, sorting out stones and picking at the vegetation, before running to catch up with the main body of the group.

Although she could understand nothing of their conversation, Penelope sensed nothing overtly threatening about their behavior, except that they took her with them, away from her intended destination and her home. As they trudged along the road, she hoped they would take her back to the ranch, but before they exited the forest, they veered off on a side track deeper into the trees and she quickly lost all notion of where they took her.
Some time later, exhaustion overcame her heavy head and she slumped forward onto the shoulders of the horse, dozing fitfully. She would have slid off onto the ground had not some firm hand propped her up again.

The chill of evening sinking over the countryside awakened her. She sat up and looked around her, recognizing nothing of the landscape. As she rubbed the last sleep out of her eyes, the band broke out from the trees of the forest into a wide, clear field, its bare clods lying exposed to the frost. At the other side of this field, she noticed a cluster of low hovels half embedded in the ground. As the group approached them, Penelope scrutinized these dwellings carefully, trying to comprehend their curious construction. Only their roofs protruded above the ground. No visible walls extended up from the ground to the roofs. Their doorways seemed to lead down into the earth. When her escort stopped her horse near one of these strange structures and handed her down from its back, the woman who appeared to be acting as Penelope’s custodian took her by the hand and ushered her through a doorway into one of the houses. A circular window in the very center of the roof sent a shaft of light into the dwelling, showing her it’s interior. Besides the round shape of the large single room and the fire burning on the floor in the center of it, everything in the building appeared to Penelope to represent nothing more than a poor family home, with bedrolls laid out here and there, bundles of herbs and haunches of meat hanging from the rafters, and a wide assortment of people seated all around. White-haired elders and little children lounged and talked and cooked and sewed throughout the room. Some of them glanced up at her as she entered, exchanged a few casual words with Penelope’s custodian, and returned to their own occupations as though her presence indicated nothing more unusual in their lives than the arrival of another familiar relative. Her custodian conducted Penelope to an empty mattress of blankets on the other side of the fire and, by pressing down on her shoulder, induced her to sit down on it. The woman drifted away and busied herself over the fire, cooking food and conversing with the other people in the room. After a little while, she brought Penelope a wooden bowl steaming with soup. The smell infused Penelope’s nostrils with aromatic fumes, reminding her of the gnawing hunger in her stomach she so diligently ignored on their long ride to the encampment. She drained the bowl in one gulp, and the woman chuckled pleasantly. She refilled the bowl and stood over Penelope as she drank that off, as well, before she took it away. As soon as she departed, the warmth of the soup spread its mysterious magic through Penelope’s battered body. She wondered briefly if the woman had poisoned her, but she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer anyway, and she tipped over onto the blankets underneath her. The undulating voices around her and the savory perfume of the wood smoke billowing up into the light of the roof hole tantalized the margins of her consciousness for another fleeting instant, and then she fell into a profound sleep. In the dark of night, she woke once to find herself wrapped snugly in blankets. She heard the wheeze of snoring in the background, but she fell asleep again without remembering where she was.