Sixteen Brides Read online

  “Some did. Yes.”

  Another sister asked, “And were they…satisfied…with their decision? Are they still in the area?”

  Ella could hardly believe her ears. Were they actually thinking of going on to Cayote? Entertaining the idea of instant marriages? She had her answer when one of them wondered aloud if the “tall man in the plaid shirt” she’d seen today would be at the dance in Cayote.

  “I’m just trying to be practical,” she said, and glanced around the table with a little shrug.

  “You don’t have to explain yourself,” another woman said. “Not all of us came to supper wanting to tar and feather Mr. Drake. At least not until after we see what Cayote has to offer.”

  Ella shook her head. Mama patted her arm, then leaned close to whisper, “You cannot make the decision for them, Ella. They are grown women.”

  Mama was right, of course. The same freedom that allowed her to come west allowed fools to follow the likes of Hamilton Drake, even after they had learned of his questionable integrity. It was none of her affair. She grabbed a biscuit and took a bite. But then Mr. Drake actually thanked Ruth and Caroline for “clearing the air,” and Ella decided that she had had enough.

  Standing up, she blurted out, “I want my things from the train. Mama and I will not be going on to Cayote.” Ella glanced at Mrs. Haywood. “We can stay at the Immigrant House?”

  Mrs. Haywood nodded. “Delighted to have you. Plum Grove is poised to become the county seat. There’s plenty of homestead land near town—and in our case ‘near’ really does mean ‘near.’” She directed her next comments to the rest of the ladies. “If anyone is interested in a job, I’m looking to hire cooks for the dining hall and at least two ladies—or a married couple—to move in over at the Immigrant House and keep things running there. Plum Grove is going to be growing fast. Stay here. Grow with us.”

  Jeb Cooper spoke up then. “I’ll be happy to help anyone who decides to stay with their freight.” He smiled at Sally. “I’m a terrible dancer, so you don’t have to worry I’ll come to collect on Friday.”

  Sally smiled. “Guess we’ll pay you with fresh eggs, then.”

  “Those of us staying in Plum Grove tonight should probably get to the station and get our things,” Ella said. Mrs. Haywood promised to meet them at the Immigrant House and help them get settled. Ella couldn’t believe that in addition to herself and Mama and Sally, only five other ladies joined them. Ruth Dow. Caroline Jamison. Hettie Raines. Mavis Morris. Helen Smith. That was all. Mr. Drake would still arrive in Cayote with eight “prospective brides.” The idea made her skin crawl.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known….

  ISAIAH 42:16

  Ella woke in the night shivering. Nothing was visible through the curtainless windows on the far wall of the women’s dormitory. Mama slept on the next cot, her white hair surrounding her head like a halo. Presently the “angel” sat up and, pulling her comforter around her, trundled over to the window, where she stood transfixed. When Ella went to her side and looked out, she whispered, “It can’t be.” Snow. Blowing wildly across the little town. It had already accumulated enough that the expanse of prairie between the Immigrant House and the mercantile had nearly disappeared beneath a blanket of white.

  Mama wondered aloud about how the women in Cayote were managing. “I wish they all would have stayed here with us.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Ella murmured. Of course she wasn’t really certain, but Mama shouldn’t be losing sleep over eight foolish almost-strangers. Be careful about calling other women fools. You married Milton Barton once, remember? With a sigh, Ella padded back to the middle of the room and stoked the fire in the little stove and lit two lamps. Once the fire was going again she sat on the floor beside it, trying to warm both hands and feet while she listened to the wind moaning about the building. She wondered about that nice Mr. Cooper. It bothered her to think he might have been caught in the storm because he’d stayed long enough to help them unload their things from the train. What did a person out on the prairie do when weather roared in? Ella didn’t like most of the answers that came to mind.

  Sally sat up, her rumpled hair sticking out in all directions as she muttered, “Who sent the extra freight train through the building?” Laughter revealed that all eight women were wide awake. Presently most were clustered around the windows to peer outside.

  “Do you think it’s doing this over in Cayote?” Mavis Morris wondered aloud.

  “When it’s snowin’ sideways a body can’t hardly tell which way it’s comin’ from,” Sally said. “But Cayote ain’t all that far away. It’s likely blowing there, too.” She shivered and padded back to where Ella sat on the cot she’d pulled closer to the stove. Settling in, Sally resembled a stuffed sausage with only a few tufts of hair and the tip of her nose peeking out from the folds of the comforter.

  “I suspected weather was coming,” Mama said, groaning softly as she moved closer to the stove. “My joints were hurting all evening.”

  Ella frowned. “We should have brought in more wood.” Opening her trunk, she pulled out extra stockings and two sweaters, one for herself and one for Mama. With Mama swaddled in several layers of clothing and a thick tied comforter, Ella accompanied a worried Ruth Dow across the hall to check on Jackson.

  “Come with us before you freeze to death,” Ruth said to her son. “The ladies won’t mind.”

  “I’m fine,” Jackson answered from inside a mountainous sandwich of feather beds. “In fact, I’m almost hot in here.”

  “Well, if you need anything—”

  “I know, Mother.”

  “You aren’t…frightened? The wind’s powerful.”

  “It’s wind. Unless it picks us up and blows us somewhere, I can’t see it doing any harm as long as I stay in here. Just be sure to call me for breakfast.”

  Ella chuckled. “He must be fine. He’s thinking about food.” When the two crossed back to the ladies’ dormitory, the others had pulled four cots into a square around the stove.

  Mavis wondered aloud if the storm was worse in the west and if the eastbound train would make it through later today. “And I sure hope those baggage handlers did something to protect all our—”

  “Chickens!” Ella leaped to her feet and raced out back, lamp in hand, her heart thumping. Mr. Cooper had hauled the birds around to the back of the Immigrant House, where Ella could keep an eye on them, but now—in this weather. Expecting the worst, Ella sighed with relief when she opened the back door and saw her live chickens huddled together in one corner of the crate. Blocking the door open with one foot, she hoisted the crate and carried the squawking birds to the dormitory.

  Mavis was still grousing. About the weather, about Cayote, about the freight handlers, about myriad and sundry things. Finally, her friend Helen spoke up. “Don’t think about all of that, Mavis. Think about something positive. Soon you’ll be back home and all this will be just an interesting story to tell.”

  “If I wanted to be at home I would never have signed up for this…disaster.” Mavis began to sniffle. “Maybe I should have stayed with the others and gone on over to Cayote. The one fellow—what was his name—that ranch hand with Mr. Gray? The clean-shaven one. I thought he had kind eyes.”

  “Lowell Day,” Caroline said, “and the man’s eyes are anything but kind.”

  “Mrs. Jamison’s right, Mavis,” Helen Smith said. “Those were shifty eyes. I didn’t like the way he looked at us at all.”

  “Well, he might have had other nice qualities. But I’ll never know, because now I won’t be at the dance, will I?”

  “Mrs. Haywood said there’s a dance right here at the dining hall this Friday, Mavis. We could stay. Maybe talk to Mrs. Haywood about those jobs she mentioned.”

  Mavis sniffed. “Cleaning out slop pots for a bunch of strangers?”

  “We wouldn�
�t have to run this place for her. She said she needs help in the dining hall kitchen, too.”

  Ella bowed her head and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep. Mavis was a complainer and a fool, and having little patience with the former and having been the latter herself, Ella did not suffer either lightly. When Mrs. Smith continued to try—and fail—to comfort her friend, Ella finally broke in. “You can still go to the dance in Cayote if you want. I’m sure the stationmaster would honor your original ticket. Maybe there’s a position you’d like better over there.” Or maybe you can get a man to propose, since that’s really what you want.

  “Well, maybe I’ll just do that,” Mavis said. “Mr. Drake said he could still fill my dance card if I changed my mind.”

  “I’m sure he’d be very happy to try,” Ella said.

  “You don’t think anyone would want to dance with me, do you? You think I’d be stupid to go to Cayote. You really think those women who went ahead with Mr. Drake are fools.”

  “I think,” Ella said, “that what a woman does or doesn’t do should be up to the woman, and she should make up her own mind and not change it when the wind starts to blow. I think a woman should be who she is, not what others expect her to be. And if she wants to go to a dance looking for a man, she should go and not feel like she has to explain herself. And if she wants to have her own farm, she should do that and not feel like she has to explain that, either. And,” Ella said, hunkering down inside her comforter, “I think you should be quiet now.”

  Caroline Jamison spoke into the tension with a voice so soft Ella had to listen carefully to hear what she had to say. “We should all be thankful, for the storm’s givin’ us time to think about what we really want to do now.” She paused. “I don’t really know what I expected when I signed on with the Society. Now that I consider it, I wasn’t thinkin’ so much about the future out here as I was about gettin’ away from…” She paused. “…about gettin’ away. But after talkin’ to y’all on the train—especially you, Ella—I’m thinkin’ on a plan.”

  Mavis’s laugh was harsh. “Did you have your eyes open when we got off the train today? Or were you so blinded by that rancher’s attentions that the sun completely addled your brain?” She snorted. “You wouldn’t last a month out here, little Miss Georgia, and it takes five years to prove up on a homestead.”

  Ruth Dow spoke up. “For your information, Mrs. Jamison is from Tennessee. And you just might be surprised at what she can handle.”

  The wind picked up. The building shuddered. The women shivered.

  Hettie Raines joined the conversation. “My husband and I got caught in a storm like this once. A confinement. The mother had buried two babies and the husband insisted we come the minute she felt the very first pain. As it turned out, it was a good thing we did. We likely wouldn’t have made it otherwise because of the storm. The poor thing was in labor for two days…and it snowed for three.”

  “Everything turn out all right?” Mama asked.

  “Just fine.” Hettie chuckled. “The farmer brought his prize bull inside. Said it was for the warmth. Although I think he was more worried about the bull than keeping the doctor and his assistant—or his wife and baby—warm.”

  “Guess his wife knew what was important to him,” Ella said.

  “Oh, he loved her,” Hettie said with a giggle. “He just loved the bull a little more.”

  “Hello!”

  Caroline opened her eyes. The wind had died down.

  “Hello!”

  Lifting her head she peered about the room, hoping someone else was going to get up and see who in the world was outside hollering. All she wanted to do was hunker back beneath her inadequate blankets and go back to sleep. She could see her own breath in the frigid morning air. It was too cold to get up.

  “Hello.” Someone rapped on the dormitory door. “Is everyone all right in there?”

  “We would be if they’d hush.” Sally coughed and turned over to look at Caroline. “Want me to tell ’em?”

  “No,” Caroline said as she sat up. “You stay covered up. I’ll go.” As she threw back the covers, she wrinkled her nose. Hopefully Ella’s chickens could go back outside today. Mrs. Haywood would throw a fit if she saw what those hens—and the lone rooster—had done to the corner of the room. Ah, well, a floor could be cleaned. A woman couldn’t just sacrifice her livestock to the snow, could she? Keeping one thin blanket wrapped around her, Caroline padded in her stocking feet toward the door.

  A stage whisper sounded from the other side. “It’s Martha Haywood. Is everyone all right?”

  Caroline opened the door and stepped into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her. “Everything’s fine. Although I will say if this is springtime in Dawson County, y’all could do better.”

  Mrs. Haywood chuckled. “Well, we frequently do. It’s been known to blizzard in April. This was just a light dusting by comparison. A few inches at best. It won’t take long to shovel a path to the necessaries this morning.”

  “Well, I guess there’s always somethin’ to be thankful for if a body looks close enough.” Caroline smiled.

  “I’d still love to hear that you’re going to give Plum Grove a chance. My William’s up on the Graystone Ranch helping with calving, but when he gets back, I know he’d be glad to help you all locate good homesteads. William knows Dawson County like few others—although he isn’t a professional land agent like Mr. Drake.”

  “Well, thank heaven for that,” Caroline said quickly. “In my considered opinion, the world’s got no need whatsoever for a man like Hamilton Drake.”

  Mrs. Haywood smiled. “You’ll get no argument from me in that regard. I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Jamison. I’ve been feeling more than a little overwhelmed since my William left last week. How about I hire you to lend a hand at the mercantile until he gets back? Then you can ride out and see what Dawson County has to offer before you make your decision about going or staying. I really think you’ll like us once you’ve given us a chance.”

  Caroline liked Mrs. Haywood already. She liked her well-kept store with its pristine shelves and the bolts of bright calico fabrics stacked on the shelf behind the counter. She liked the cards of jet buttons and the lace collars on the top shelf of the glass display unit, and she liked the sweet redheaded young girl named Linney, who had seemed so eager to help her yesterday. And so she nodded and said, “Why, thank you, ma’am. I’d like that. Very much.”

  As Mrs. Haywood made her way toward the back door with a promise to have breakfast served up in the dining hall within the hour, Caroline turned back toward the dormitory just as Jackson called her name.

  “You’re staying?”

  “I’m stayin’. At least for a few days.”

  Jackson smiled. “I think we will, too. If Mother wanted to get married again we would have stayed in St. Louis. She really does want a homestead—although I don’t think she was expecting things to be so…empty.”

  “I don’t think any of us expected what we got,” Caroline said as she smiled and gave a little shiver, “snow included.”

  Jackson’s voice sounded wistful as he said, “If we don’t settle here, it means we won’t be able to visit Mr. Gray’s ranch. And he said he’d teach me to ride—if I wanted to learn.”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, sure.” He chewed on his lower lip for a minute. “Do you think it’s hard?”

  Caroline shook her head. “Of course not. I used to ride all the time. I had a li’l ole mare named Shiloh. She was gentle as she could be. That’s the kind of horse ya’ll want to learn on.”

  “Do you think they’d have any horses like Shiloh on Mr. Gray’s ranch? I’ve been reading that book Texan Joe and it sounds like all the horses out here are bucking broncos and wild mustangs.”

  “I don’t know a single thing about what kind of horses Mr. Gray would have on a ranch,” Caroline said. She really didn’t want to pursue the topic of Lucas Gray. “But maybe we can go up to the livery and see what th
ey have in the way of horses for hire. In fact—if you’ll go ask Mrs. Haywood to lend us a couple of shovels, we’ll shovel our way to breakfast at the dining hall and then maybe go on to the livery this very mornin’—depending, of course, on what your mama thinks of the idea.”

  “She won’t like it,” Jackson said. Finally, he opened the dormitory door all the way and stepped out into the hall. “She’s always worrying about me getting hurt. And horses?” He shook his head.

  “George Washington Jackson Dow,” Caroline said with mock horror. “Did you sleep in your clothes?”

  He licked the palms of both hands and smoothed his hair. “Don’t tell Mother.”

  Caroline just shook her head. She pointed toward the front door. “You’d best get started shoveling so there’ll be a good reason why you’re so rumpled. The sons of generals have no call to look so raggedy. And besides that, you need to be in your mama’s good graces when we ask her about your learning to ride.”

  Caroline had just bent to scoop her first shovelful of snow when a snowball glanced off her left shoulder. “Hey!” She brushed it off and shook a finger at Jackson. “You’d better watch out, Mr.—” Another snowball landed. Jackson laughed. Caroline made a show of standing her shovel in the snow, then bent down to make her own snowball. Jackson had pelted her a third and a fourth time before she had a chance to scrape together enough snow to launch even one defense. It fell apart in midair. With a screech, she made another one, this time packing it firmly and sending out a victorious shout when it hit its target. Turning her back on Jackson, she slid her way around the corner of the Immigrant House.

  “Hey,” Jackson called. “I didn’t hit you too hard, did I?” He sounded worried.

  Instead of reassuring him, Caroline concentrated on making snowballs.

  “Caroline?”