Badlands Bride. Cheryl St.John

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СКАЧАТЬ she realized what she was thinking. No. It was too dangerous! She slid the ticket back into the envelope. She would cash it in, buy a cashier’s check for the amount plus the cash and return it to DeWitt.

      We could have had a real follow-up story there. The voices from the other side of her father’s door haunted her. Get Hallie off our backs...let’s hope the Journal doesn’t think of it... Turner’s condescending tone came to her. What are you pouting about now, Precious?

      What if she did it? What if she used this ticket to get her to the Dakotas? She could interview the men who sent for wives. She could get the follow-up story on the other women—the real brides.

      But what about this DeWitt person? He was expecting a wife. Hallie turned that question over a few times before a solution came to mind. She could simply explain the situation to him, give him his money back and call it square She could get her story, and he could send for another wife. He’d have to anyway, since Tess had backed out.

      Enthusiastic now, she planned her departure. She couldn’t tell her family. They’d never allow it. Her mother would have a conniption fit. It would most likely take them a day to notice she was missing, and by then she’d be long gone. She’d write from the first station.

      Satisfied with her plan, Hallie tucked the envelopes into her reticule and stood. She had packing to do if she was going to catch that stage tomorrow.

      

      Cooper paced the dusty expanse of hard-packed earth surrounding the stage station and surveyed the broad horizon, temporarily forgetting its stark beauty. He saw only the barrenness of the land...the lack of people and buildings. He’d told her in the letter, but seeing was believing. And by now, wherever the coach was, she’d had time to see plenty.

      Cooper frowned at the vista before him. The stage should have arrived sometime that morning. It was now early afternoon and there was still no sign of it. In his mind the delay signaled only one thing: trouble.

      “Sky’s clear here,” Stuart Waring, another of the impatient grooms, said from behind him. “But that don’t mean they didn’t run into rain or mud.”

      Cooper turned to the two farmers sitting on crates against the log wall. Stuart wore a faded shirt with a string tie cinched around his scrawny neck. His scarred boots had been polished and shined. The ever-present wind snatched at his hat, and he secured it quickly.

      “Coulda had a horse go lame,” Vernon Forbes said. His jacket bore threadbare spots at the wrists and elbows, and he held a small, battered package. A gift for his bride? Cooper hadn’t thought of that.

      Angus Hallstrom, the station operator who worked for Cooper, leaned against the doorframe and picked his teeth with a piece of straw. “Fact that the stage’s been robbed three times in as many months ain’t sittin’ well with me.”

      Cooper had been thinking the same thing. He didn’t like the uncomfortable feeling that tiptoed up his spine and settled on his shoulders. Having money stolen or losing a month’s mail was one thing... harm coming to the woman he intended to marry was another.

      George Gaston, the portly justice, sat in the only chair and sipped black coffee from a dented metal cup. Cooper observed the motley group of men and imagined what the city women would think of them.

      A strange uncertainty rippled in his chest, and he glanced down at his clean buckskin pants and fringed shirt. What would Tess Cordell think of him?

      Fifteen years ago, even ten years ago, content living, hunting and trapping with the Oglala, he’d never have imagined he would pair himself with a white woman. Time had changed that, as it had the existence of his people—rather, the people of his heart—and most of them were surviving on reservation land.

      Buffalo no longer roamed the grasslands in great herds, like rippling black seas. The Oglala, Santee, Yankton and other Sioux had been forced to make treaties in order to receive food.

      Cooper paced to his team of horses, waiting in the shade of a wind-bent tree. He ran a hand down the black’s hide and noticed his own skin, callused and rough, sun-darkened nearly to a shade like that of his Sioux family.

      His white skin had given him an advantage over the men he called his brothers. He’d taken a land grant offered only to whites. He’d traded and sold years’ worth of furs for wagons and tools, caught his own horses and purchased everything else he’d needed to start his business.

      For now, he could only take food and winter supplies to the reservation, but someday, and he hoped it would be soon, he would be in a position to really help his people. And Tess Cordell would help him do just that.

      

      Hallie covered her mouth and nose with her damp handkerchief and tried not to choke on the thick dust gusting in around the drawn shade. The wheels hit another gully and her groan was drowned out by the other women’s cries.

      Zinnia Blake held her wilted, green-feathered hat in place on her head with a dirty-gloved hand and Hallie tried not to laugh at the way the flesh beneath her chin jiggled. They hit another indentation and Zinnia flattened the hand over her enormous bouncing bosom. Even in the dim interior, her face glistened as red as a freshly washed tomato. “Isn’t it awfully hot for this late in the fall?”

      “It can’t be much farther,” Olivia Mason predicted. She pounded on the roof with the heel of her hand and peeled back the shade. “Mr. Tubbs, is it much farther?”

      The monotonous sounds of the creaking coach and the horses’ hooves were the only reply.

      The wind stuck a coil of red hair to Olivia’s pale cheek and she dropped the shade back into place. “He promised we’d be there this morning.”

      “Mr. Tubbs is doing the best he can,” Evelyn Reed said, coming to the driver’s defense. Hallie hadn’t heard her speak more than a dozen words the entire ten-day trip and figured she must be as tired of the other women’s complaints as she. Zinnia had been sick from the steamer’s constant chugging up the river. Olivia had insisted on changing clothes twice a day, and then complained about having no clean ones.

      Once they’d crossed the Missouri and boarded Mr. Tubbs’s stage, things had grown progressively worse. Zinnia had a case of heat rash that drove her to tears. Olivia thought there should be a laundry at each rustic relay station. The meals were horrible, facilities for tending to nature’s call primitive to nonexistent, and Hallie had a crick in her neck from sleeping sitting up.

      But she was having a glorious adventure. She took copious notes, describing the weather conditions, the vegetation, the stark but beautiful outcroppings of stratum eroded by time and nature. She would have a story to beat all stories when she got home. Maybe she would even write an article for a magazine... or perhaps a book!

      The jarring motion of the coach slowed, and the women glanced expectantly at one another.

      “Thank God!” Zinnia panted. “We must be there. And, good heavens, I no doubt look a fright.”

      Olivia tucked stray red coils into her neat chignon.

      The stage picked up speed again. Overhead, Mr. Tubbs shouted unintelligible orders to the horses. Inside the coach, the farers bounced and jostled. Hallie flipped up the shade and peered through the dust, gritting her teeth at the jarring of her backside against the poorly padded seat.

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