Mail Order Annie - A Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Novel (Mail Order Romance - Book 1 - Benjamin and Annie) (5 page)

             
The next morning, after she finished the breakfast dishes and collected a few scraps of food, a crust of bread and some slices of bacon, in a canvas bag for their midday meal, Moran brought his horse out of the barn and held it by the bridle by the cabin door until she came out, ready to mount up and depart for their tour of the valley. Moran lifted her up and set her astride the horse behind the saddle, then he stepped up in the stirrup and situated himself in the saddle in front of her. Clucking his tongue to the horse, they ambled off at an easy pace in the direction of the hills through which they passed on their way into the valley from Eckville. Anne had never ridden astride before, and the warm rubbing of the horse’s flanks on the insides of her legs produced a curious sensation of amalgamation with another warm-blooded body. Instinctively, she squeezed the horse with her legs to stabilize herself and held onto Moran’s belt to keep her balance. As the horse meandered up the well-worn trail, swinging its hips underneath her, she marked the closeness between her own body and Moran’s back, the closest thus far. She entertained the strange sensation of intimacy with him, and let her body register the comforting security of sheltering next to his great mass. In the beautiful surroundings she now recognized as familiar, this comfort seemed to agree perfectly with the reluctant happiness that crept, step by steady step, into her heart and replaced the fear and despair originally lodged there. So this is what it will be like, she thought, and she smiled to herself behind Moran’s back.

             
At the top of the pass, Moran turned the horse around, and Anne saw stretched out before her the sweeping view of the valley she so admired upon arriving from Eckville. Tall thunderheads hung over the northern canyon, their sparkling white tops raking the blue sky and their slate grey bottoms streaking down in sheets of rain to the grassy meadows in the distant reaches of the valley. Closer to them, the sun flashed over the granite of the cliffs, rising to the eagle’s nests in the uppermost reaches of the valley walls. The wind rushing up the valley floor groaned through the long waves of grass with a deep sonorous sigh, speaking its puzzling mysteries into Anne’s ear and telling her all its secrets. For reasons not known to her, she understood this voice and hearkened to its message, and she felt that this spirit of the valley might be a friend to her, possibly even a long-lost relative, and that living here with it, growing from its soil like a tree and taking her nourishment from its fruits, feeding her body with its air and water and light, she had found a place in the world she never knew that she needed. She felt that this place, this opening between the valley and the outside world, that she would surely pass each time she left and re-entered the valley, would provide her soul with the same life-giving sustenance she found by the creek side behind the cabin. She drew a hearty breath of the wind into the bottoms of her lungs, and a tingle of energy dispersed to the extremities of her limbs.

             
The next moment, Moran kneed the horse, and turned it into another path Anne had not noticed. This path traversed the side of the valley around its eastern rim, until it led them back around behind the cabin to the northern end of the riverbed. There, it dropped down into a steep canyon, following the creek bed up into the hills at the back of Moran’s ranch. Along the way, every turn and twist of the path, and every new vista around stands of trees and over hillocks, stunned Anne with some new panorama of exquisite wonderment and astonishing magnificence. Even quiet little scenes of the babbling brook weaving its surreptitious way through the forests and clearings lining its banks made her catch her breath in amazement that such a miraculous world could exist without ever being known to human beings. In his letters, Moran told her that, before he bought this land, only local Indians lived here. He believed he was the first and only white man to ever lay eyes on its wonders. Now she shared that distinction with him.

             
At the top of the canyon, the path eventually petered out into the dense forest, and Moran reined in his horse in a grassy clearing near the creek. He tethered the horse to a peg in the sod and ushered Anne through the trees to a deep pool. A tremendous crashing of water streamed into the pool in a thick white sheet of water falling from an upper cleft in the rock. Anne laughed aloud at the magnificence of mist and noise echoing through the steep cliffs around them. Moran smiled at her exuberance. Anne tiptoed to the very edge of the water and lifted her arms into the cooling spray. When she moved away, she found her dress and hair saturated, but the color burned in her cheeks and the ecstatic smile lightening her face could not be diminished. They lingered by the waterfall, and ate their lunch in the grassy knoll, before mounting their horse and wandering home with their hearts refreshed. Dappled shade winked through the trees, and Anne’s wet dress dried in the warm sunshine.

             
“This land is so amazing,” Anne marveled. “I never knew that creation could be so wonderful. Did you know about this place when you bought this land?” Anne opened the conversation.

             
Moran shook his head and gazed around at the scenery. “I knew nothing about the land when I bought it. I hadn’t even seen it. I got off the train in Eckville just like you did, with one moth-eaten suitcase in my hand. I walked across the street to the Post Office, slapped a hundred dollars on the counter, and signed my name on a piece of paper. That was how I bought the land. Back then, they used to advertize Back East for people to come out and settle the land. They practically gave it away. Banford Forsythe got his land the same way. After I got the title to the land, I walked out from Eckville. I had nothing. No horse, no rifle, not even a decent pair of boots. All I had was an ax head in my suitcase. Of course, there was nothing here. When I got here, the first thing I did was use my ax head to whittle a handle for it. Then I just slowly built everything up from there. I had some money that I inherited from my parents. That’s how I bought the land. With another two hundred and fifty dollars, I bought six head of cattle. I drove them out here on foot, as well. I had nowhere to live, so I just slept out with the cattle the first summer, under the stars. That’s how I came to find all the good spots, all over the valley. This is just one of them. There are plenty of others just as impressive as this one. I just thought you might like to come down here and cool off in the water. The first winter, I built a sort of teepee tent out of saplings. That was one cold winter, I can tell you! That was enough to get me determined to build the house. So the next summer, I started working on it. It took four years to build it.”

             
“I didn’t think about that,” Anne mused. “I didn’t put two and two together, that you would have built the house and the barn and everything else with your own two hands. At first glance, it all looks so rustic and rough-hewn, but when I think about it in those terms, it really is quite impressive and excellently done. You should be proud of yourself.”

             
Moran shrugged her compliment off. “Not really. I just needed a roof over my head to keep the snow off.”

             
“And everything else?” Anne prompted. “Did you do everything else by hand, as well?

             
“Just about,” he confirmed. “It took three years before I had any stock to sell at the sale yards. After that I had some money to spend on a rifle. Let me see. What else? It’s so long ago, now, that I can’t hardly remember. But yeah, I just built everything up, bit by bit. I got the horse. Then I got the stove and the lantern. That sort of thing, that you need money to get. Just about everything that could be made by hand, I made.”

             
Anne found her eyes drawn to his weathered, wrinkled hand, resting on the knee of his pants. The black dirt still highlighted the lines across his wrists and the crescents of his fingernails. She noticed the gnarled scars crisscrossing his knuckles. Automatically, she reached out and lifted the hand into her own, and the thick callouses on his palm told her a different story to the one she saw at the Eckville Saloon. The hideously grotesque paw of Caliban that so haunted her there now appeared fine and admirable to her, almost precious. She caressed the back of his hand and traced the scars with her fingertip, venerating its superlative intensity and resilience. She longed to succor that hand and the man attached to it, to promote him and to draw onto herself some morsel of the admiration she felt for the spirit that moved him.

             
She lifted her eyes to find him inspecting her closely. Only then did she realize what she was doing, stroking his hand devotedly and deferentially. She blushed, embarrassed, and, so as not to drop the hand suddenly like a hot potato, she gently replaced it on his knee. He did not comment on it, and turned back to surveying the surrounding trees.

             
On the way back to the cabin in the late afternoon, Anne let go of Moran’s belt and held her arms around his waist instead, letting herself feel his body more closely than ever. They did not speak on the journey, or during their meal, or afterward. Moran only said, “Good night,” before he left the cabin for his own bed. No words seemed adequate to describe either the experience of the day or the feeling passing between them.

             
After breakfast the next morning, Moran departed to tend to his herds in the northern end of the valley, leaving Anne alone once again in the cabin with her own thoughts. She busily finished her chores, washing up the dishes, making the bed, and sweeping out the cabin. Once more, the Proverb provided a rhythm and a reference point for her work, ennobling it and gracing it with purpose and direction. She had just walked outside with the thought of bringing in some more firewood, when she heard the patter of horse’s hooves coming toward her from the south, from the direction of the pass through the hills. She lifted her hand to her forehead to shade her eyes from the sun and watched the rider trotting up the trail to the cabin. With the sun behind him, she did not recognize him until he came close enough to see Webster Forsythe’s curled moustache underneath the square-cut hat. At first glance, his peculiarly urbane costume struck Anne as audacious and out of place in the remote and earthy environment of the valley, but he smiled benignly at her as he dismounted, tossing his horse’s reins over a post by the door.

             
“I see that you arrived safely,” he began casually, looking around the yard. “I hope that this place has not taxed your sensibilities too much. I tried to warn you that this place was crude and inhospitable. I hope you were not too disappointed on your arrival.” His condescending view of Moran’s homestead infected Anne, banishing the image of Moran’s construction from her mind. She saw the tiny, rough-hewn cabin and the desolate surroundings as he saw them, as the ultimate nadir of human existence. She longed to take his fine hand and flee with him, back to the life she left behind, to the person she used to be before getting off the train in Eckville.

             
“No,” she returned shyly. “I was not too disappointed. Moran told me it would be like this. If I was disappointed, I have no one to blame but myself. And from what I saw in Eckville, I am surprised you would come out here, onto his land. Do you really think it’s wise? If he found you here, he would be furious.”

             
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I plan to leave before he gets back. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay. I was concerned for your safety when you left with him the other day, and I vowed to check on you from time to time.”

             
“That is very thoughtful of you, Mr. Forsythe,” she smiled at him. “I appreciate your solicitude for my well-being, but I am quite alright.”

             
“You don’t have to stay here, you know,” he replied. “I came out here to reiterate my invitation that you come stay with me and my family at our house. If things get too bad out here, you could come there to get away.”

             
“I appreciate the offer,” she thanked him, “but I don’t think I’ll accept it. This appears to be the life I’ve chosen.”

             
“Is it really?” he put his head on one side. “I think in time you may come to reconsider. The novelty of this place hasn’t worn off yet, but when it does, and you think back on the life you left behind, and the life you rightfully deserve, I think you will want somewhere else to go.”

             
“That is a possibility,” she conceded. “Certainly, the picture you paint of your life is much more desirable than this one. I have never worked so hard before in my life, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of the work that will need to be done if I stay. I’m not used to this sort of thing.”

             
Forsythe shook his head sadly. “It is criminal, that a lady like you should be reduced to this,” he observed, scowling around again. “I can hardly bear to think of any human being living like this. Only Benjamin Moran could think that this is any suitable existence for himself or anyone else. Look!” he kicked a wooden bucket resting on the ground by the door. “He doesn’t even have running water! It’s scandalous! It’s a sin!”

             
“Certainly it is harsh and difficult,” she remarked. “He told me it would be hard, but I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

             
“Let me take you for a ride,” he offered her his hand. “Let me take you away from all this, even for just a little while. My heart breaks when I see you standing there in an apron, like any country drudge. Come on, I know a nice place just over the hill where we can sit and talk.”