Rose's Mail Order Husband - A Historical Mail Order Bride Story (Montana Brides) (7 page)

Rose gasped at the sight of the horse and started at a dead run toward the corner of the fence.

Violet stared. “But that’s….!”

“That’s right,” Iris confirmed. “It’s Jake’s horse.”

Violet and Iris hurried after Rose and came up to the fence after her.

The animal reared back, its eyes staring and saliva flying away from its foaming mouth. It ran back and forth in terror along the fence. Every time it came near the corner and saw the three women there, it ran off again.

Iris leaned over the fence and held her hand out to the horse. She called to it, and it settled down and swiveled its ears around. Finally, it snorted and shook its head before sidling up to her. The horse gave her hand a sniff and pretended to turn away in disgust before it abandoned the pretense and came close enough for her to catch hold of its bridle.

“What can have happened to Jake?” Rose asked.

“Anything could have happened to him,” Iris answered. “He could have fallen off, or he could be hiding out somewhere. He could have sent the horse back here in the hope that it wouldn’t give him away. Anything could have happened.”

“What should we do?” Violet asked.

“There’s nothing to do,” Iris replied. “When the Sheriff comes back, we can tell him the horse came home without Jake, but there’s nothing we can do until then. The only thing to do is put the horse away in the barn.”

“Will you do that, please?”
Violet asked. “I have to go back to the house and talk to Rita about the food. We’ve got stacks of food for the wedding. I hope the men come back in time for supper tonight. Otherwise, it will all go to waste. It’s a good thing the minister is here to help us eat it.”

“You go ahead,” Iris replied. “I’ll put the horse away. He looks like he needs to cool down anyway. I’ll walk him around the yard until he settles.”

“I’ll come with you,” Rose told her.

Iris stood at the corner of the fence, petting the horse and talking to it, until its breathing slowed and it stood quietly. Then she climbed over into the pasture and led the animal along the fence to the gate. Rose followed her, but the chance appearance of the horse confirmed her worst fears that Jake would never return.

“He looks like he’s been running hard for a long time,” Iris observed. “Something must have frightened him to make him run like that.”

“Do you think…?” Rose trailed off.

Iris shook her head. “I’m sorry,
darlin’. There’s just no way to know right now. I know the uncertainty must be killing you, but there’s just nothing more we can do but wait.”

“I can’t stand not knowing whether he’s safe or not,” Rose told her, “or whether he’s gotten into a gun fight with the Sheriff and is bleeding his guts out in some forgotten corner of the frontier.
I’d almost rather the Sheriff captures him and locks him up in jail. It sounds awful, but at least I would know he was safe. That’s all I care about.”

“I feel the same way about Mick,” Iris replied, “so it must be ten times worse for you. Come on and help me put the horse away. That will help take your mind off things.”

She led the horse into the barn yard and they circled the enclosure a few times to cool the horse down further.

“Being near him makes me think about being near Jake,” Rose remarked. “I know he can’t tell me where Jake is or what he’s doing, but he knows. For some reason, being near him calms me down a little bit. I know it doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way I feel.”

“It does make sense,” Iris countered. “I would feel the same way, if this was Mick’s horse. In a way, I feel the same way you do, even if it is Jake’s horse. He’s the only link we have to the men. I want to stay with him until the men come back.”

Iris led the horse into the barn, tied him to a post, and removed his saddle. She started brushing his neck while the sweat-soaked square of hair on his back dried.

“Do we really have to tell the Sheriff the horse came back?” Rose asked. “Couldn’t we just keep that to ourselves?” Rose caught Iris’s eye. “Wouldn’t you do that, just for me?”

Iris pressed her lips together. “I wouldn’t do that, if I was you. The Sheriff already thinks you helped Jake plan to kill Cornell. You
don’t want to go casting even more suspicion on yourself if you can avoid it. And Violet and I wouldn’t want to conspire to obstruct justice by helping keep it hidden.”

Rose sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

”Besides,” Iris pointed out, “knowing the horse is here, that he came back without Jake, won’t help the Sheriff find him. If anything, it will only make his job harder. A horse is a lot easier to find than a man on foot. A man can hide just about anywhere up in those mountains. You can spot a horse’s tracks a mile off.”

Rose brightened up.
“Really?”

Iris smiled and nodded. “Without the horse, Jake could hide up there forever and never get caught. He may have sent the horse back for that very reason.”

Rose blinked. “I didn’t know that.”

“Don’t give up hope just yet,” Iris told her. “You never know what could happen.”

Iris finished brushing the horse and took a hoof pick from the nail on the wall. She bent down, lifted one of the horse’s feet, and scraped the mud and stones out of the hoof with the point of the pick.

She cleaned one forefoot and then moved to the back legs, working her way around the horse in a circle. She
slid her hand down the horse’s rear leg and the animal raised its foot into her hand. Iris propped the hoof between her knees while she worked, but after one swipe with the hoof pick, she paused.

“Huh. That’s funny,” she muttered.

“What is?” Rose asked.

Iris hesitated. Then she continued cleaning out the horse’s foot.
“Nothing.” She completed her circuit of the horse’s legs and put the hoof pick away. “That’s done. Let’s put him up and go inside.”

Iris led the animal into a stall, scooped him a measure of grain into his feed trough, and tossed him a flake of hay from the crib. She gave him one last pat on the neck, and she and Rose went out into the fading light of late afternoon.

They stopped on the front porch to gaze toward the range again. Rose sniffed. Iris rested a hand on her arm. “They’ll be back soon.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Rose returned. “Your fiancé isn’t under suspicion of murder.”

“I just mean they’ll bring him back safely,” Iris corrected herself. “Everything will be all right. You’ve been saying so yourself for days. You should listen to yourself.”

Rose blinked back her tears. “That was before Jake ran off. That was when I knew he wanted to marry me. I wish I could believe it now.”

Iris gave her arm a squeeze. “Everything will be all right. Now come inside. You’ll drive yourself crazy, staring that way.”

Rose followed her inside, into the oppressive darkness of the house. The light coming through the windows faded to the pale purple of dusk. The three sisters moved though the rooms with the quiet reverence of church mice, hardly daring to speak above a whisper.

And still the men did not return. Rose sat at the window in the front parlor, unable to tear her eyes away from the western horizon. Her sisters exhorted her to lie down and rest or tried to engage her in conversation about anything unrelated to the disaster of Jake’s disappearance. Nothing worked. Nothing could take her mind off of it. Nothing could mitigate the disaster of losing him.

She gave up and turned away from the window when full dark set in. There was nothing more to see out there. She would go upstairs and cry herself to sleep again—until tomorrow, when she would do the same thing all over again.

But just as she closed her eyes on the window, three riders barreled into the yard.

The sisters met Chuck, Mick, and Sheriff Maitland in the hall.

“Did you find him?” Iris asked.

Mick shook his head. “We searched all over the canyon, the Bottom Run, and up on the table lands. We didn’t even find his horse’s tracks.”

“That’s because he’s not on horseback,” Iris told them. “His horse showed up here this afternoon with no rider. It looked half scared out of its wits.”

“We’ll go back out first thing tomorrow and keep searching,” Sheriff Maitland declared. “He can’t have gone far without a horse. He probably sent it back to cover his tracks.”

“That’s what I thought,” Iris replied.

“There are any number of places he could be hiding if he doesn’t have a horse,” Mick remarked. “We won’t likely find him at all.”

“We’ll keep looking anyway,” Sheriff Maitland replied. “We won’t stop until we find him.”

The men exchanged glances with their brides, but no one said anything until Violet took charge. “You’ll want to spend the night here, Sheriff. Let’s figure out where to put you up. Let me see here. The minister is in the Bird House, and these men are in the Fort House.”

“Well, Hamilton’s bunk is empty, isn’t it?” the Sheriff replied. “I’ll take that. If you have any objection,
I’ll sleep in the hay loft in the barn. Just about any place is good enough for me.”

“I don’t have any objection to you sleeping in Jake’s bed in the Fort House,” Violet assured him. “I can’t imagine Chuck and Mick object, either. Do you?”

Chuck and Mick looked at each other. Then they shook their heads. “It doesn’t matter,” Mick replied, “just as long as we get some sleep. I’m worn out.”

“Then come on into the dining room,” Violet told them. “There’s enough food to feed the Union Army in there.
It’s all left over from the wedding. You come, too, Sheriff. We need all the help we can get to eat it all.”

The party moved into the dining room, and Violet fetched the minister from the Bird House to help eat the food intended for the wedding. The men ate while the women watched in silence. Rose gritted her teeth to stop herself from getting sick at the sight of them eating. If only Jake was here! He could eat a horse, no matter what the circumstances.

She wanted to flee to her room, but she had to wait long enough to make a polite departure. Thank the stars for Violet and Iris! They didn’t eat, either, but just stared at their men in silent apprehension. The Sheriff and the minister devoured the roast beef and boiled pudding with gusto. Eventually, the conversation turned back to the search.

“Where will you look for this fugitive of yours tomorrow?” the minister asked.

“I suppose we’ll look out on the upper flats of the mountain,” Sheriff Maitland replied. “That’s about the only place I can think we haven’t looked already. We’ll just have to be extra careful that we don’t surprise him. He could do any desperate thing to avoid capture.”

“Is he a very dangerous criminal?” Reverend Miles asked.

“I don’t know anything about him, myself,” Sheriff Maitland returned. “I’ve never even spoken to him, apart from the interview we had yesterday. But if he was cold-blooded enough to shoot Cornell Pollard three times, and that within hours of setting foot on this ranch, I reckon he’ll stop at nothing to stay free. I reckon he’s just about the most unscrupulous scoundrel I’ve ever dealt with.”

Chuck and Mick exchanged glances with their brides, but Rose kept her eyes down, inspecting the woven fibers of the tablecloth. Did they care at all that this was her fiancé they were discussing so casually? The minister
didn’t even know the fugitive the Sheriff was describing was one of the men he came out to Rocking Horse Ranch to marry.

She waited a few more minutes before she excused herself and retired to her room for the night. She tossed around on her bed while the sounds of the house diminished and died away one after the other. Darkness covered the windows, and still she
couldn’t shed the tears burning in her eyes. Nervous energy kept her in a fever of dread.

The hours wiled away. Maybe she drifted off for a while. She
couldn’t tell. But sometime in the small hours, her door swung into the room, and a figure approached her bed. “Rose! Are you awake?”

“Iris!” Rose exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

Iris sat down on the edge of the bed next to Rose’s knees. “I’ve got to talk to you,” she whispered. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you. But we have to talk quietly. We can’t let anyone hear us.”

“What is it?” Rose asked.

“I know where Jake is,” Iris breathed.

“What?” Rose gasped. “How? How can you know where he is? The men said they searched all over the range and they didn’t find him.”

“I know where he is,” Iris declared. “Do you remember when I cleaned out his horse’s hooves?”

“Of course,” Rose replied.

“I saw something in the horse’s hooves that told me where Jake is,” Iris told her.

“What was it?” Rose asked. “How can you be so sure?”

“You probably didn’t notice it,” Iris told her. “No one would notice who hadn’t spent a lot of time out on that particular patch of country. That horse had a petal from a purple magnolia tree stuck in the dirt in its foot.
There’s only one tree like it growing anywhere around here. Wade Jackson pointed it out to me.”