Rose's Mail Order Husband - A Historical Mail Order Bride Story (Montana Brides) (9 page)

“I would love to,” Rose exclaimed. “I wish I could.”

“Why couldn’t you?” Iris asked.

A shaft of sunlight broke through the canopy of treetops and flashed across Rose’s face. “It would be so good for the soul, to spend time out here. I would love to. I wonder I never thought of it before.”

Iris shook her head and chuckled. “You better be careful. You might get infected with the outdoors. You might find you couldn’t live without it.”

“I’m finding that out now,” Rose remarked. “I don’t know how I lived so long without it. I spent so much time outdoors when I was young. I thought then that I never would live without it. I don’t know how I convinced myself to live so long indoors.”

“The important thing is that you know better now,” Iris replied. “You won’t go back to staring at your dressing table mirror anymore.”

“No, I won’t,” Rose declared.

They rode in silence for a while. Rose enjoyed the tranquility and beauty of the scenery so much she could almost forget what they were doing out there, miles from the ranch house, just her and Iris riding side by side through the hills.

Iris guided their horses up the main canyon along the river. Rose remembered every landmark and twist of the trail from her younger days of riding and exploring the range. She
hadn’t seen that country for years, but she greeted the rocks and bushes and ripples in the water as old friends. She loved them as if she hadn’t been separated from them for more than a day or two.

Somewhere along the Bottom Run, Iris veered off the trail, and they started climbing up into a side canyon, up into the mountains. A little stream trickled along the floor of the canyon, and the horses tiptoed over rocks and tiny pools of crystal water.

After a while, Iris broke the silence. “We’re getting close to the magnolia tree.”

Rose caught her breath, and all the worry of the last few days flooded back. She kept her eyes on the trail ahead, searching every rock and tree root for any sign of Jake. Iris searched right and left, too.

“Do you think we ought to call out to him?” Rose asked.

“Let’s get a little further along,” Iris suggested. “He won’t have become separated from his horse until after the magnolia tree.
Let’s wait until we get past it. He may be in an obvious place, or he may see us and come out to meet us.”

They climbed a while longer until Iris pointed and said, “There.”

A tree dripping with magenta flowers overhung the trail. Rose gasped in astonishment. She’d never seen any tree like it before. “How did that get here? It doesn’t look like it belongs here at all.”

“It doesn’t,” Iris replied. “Wade says someone must have planted it here, because it’s the only one of its kind in the area. It can’t have gotten way up here by accident.”

“But who could have brought it? Who would plant it….here?” Rose glanced around at the scrub pine trees and rocky dry earth.

Iris shrugged. “We’ll never know.” She urged her horse forward.

Just above the magnolia tree, the trail took a sudden turn, jutting up through a crack in the cliff wall. Iris’s horse stumbled on the fragile rock, and both horses shied away from the opening. Iris held her horse under tight control until he stopped stamping and stood still. She scanned the cliff face.

“He must be here somewhere,” she remarked. “I can’t see the horse going up there. For one thing, the trail isn’t really wide enough to ride a horse any higher.”

Rose looked around. “Where do you think he might be?”

“He could be anywhere,” Iris replied.

A shout answered them from the other side of the narrow defile. Both women wheeled their horses around, and there, sitting at the base of a tree on the other side of the stream, was Jake.

“Jake!” Rose slid down from her horse and jumped across the stream to him. She threw her arms around his neck and crushed him in her arms.

“What are you two doing here?” he asked.

Rose surveyed him. “Don’t look so happy to see us. Why don’t you get up and greet us properly?”

“I can’t get up,” Jake replied. “I sprained my ankle. I can’t stand up.”

“How did that happen?” Rose gasped.

“That horse,” he jerked his head toward Iris’s mount, “that horse threw me. A bird flew into his face and startled him. He threw me off and ran away. I landed on my foot, and I sprained my ankle. I
can’t stand up and I can’t walk. That’s why I’ve been sitting here since yesterday.”

Rose looked down at his foot. “Are you sure it isn’t broken?”

“It might be,” he told her. “I can’t stand on it, either way.”

“Then it’s just as well for you that we came,” Rose replied. “We’re here to take you back to the ranch. But you have to promise to turn yourself in to the Sheriff and let him take you back to Butte.”

“Turn myself in?” Jake repeated. “Am I wanted?”

“Of course you’re wanted,” Iris shot back. “The Sheriff has been looking for you since yesterday morning to place you under arrest for Cornell’s murder. You know that. He deputized Chuck and Mick to go looking for you.”

“I didn’t know anything about it,” Jake snapped. “I didn’t even know the Sheriff was at the ranch. If I had known he was looking for me, I never would have left.”

Iris and Rose stared first at each other,
then back at Jake. “If you didn’t run from the Sheriff, why did you leave?” Rose asked.

“I told you,” Jake declared. “I never even knew the Sheriff was at the ranch, let alone that he was looking to arrest me. After I left you at the Bird House, I decided to go for a ride up the canyon to clear my head before the wedding. I never saw the Sheriff, or Chuck or Mick, or anyone else after I left you.”

Rose laughed in pure relief. “We all thought you ran off to avoid arrest.”

Jake frowned. “I never would have run from the law. I never have, and I never will. If Sheriff Tom Maitland, or anyone else, wants to arrest me for Cornell’s murder, or for any other thing, they can come and do it.”

Rose felt tears falling down her cheeks. “I thought you didn’t want to marry me. I thought you didn’t want me to marry a fugitive.”

Jake gaped at her. “You thought I ran away from marrying you?
Never!”

Rose fell on her knees and threw her arms around him all over again, weeping on his shoulder and laughing for joy. Iris shifted from foot to foot in embarrassment.

“Anyway,” Iris put in, “the Sheriff is looking for you and planning to arrest you and take you back to Butte when he finds you. Rose and I came out here to bring you back to the ranch to turn yourself in. You’ll have to come with us.”

“I don’t plan on doing anything else,” Jake shot back.

“The minister is at the house,” Iris told him. “Maybe if you throw yourself on the mercy of the Sheriff, he might let you marry Rose before you leave.”

“I won’t throw myself on the mercy of the Sheriff,” Jake growled, “but I’ll do everything I can to get married before anyone hauls me away for Cornell’s murder. You can bet on that.”

“Then we all agree,” Iris concluded. “Now we just have to find a way to get you back to the house.”

“Can you ride?” Rose asked him. “If we got you onto a horse, do you think you could ride back?”

“I really don’t know,” Jake admitted. “I can’t put any weight on this foot. Maybe if I took it at a slow walk I could do it.”

Rose stood up. “Why don’t you head back to the house, Iris?
You’ve done enough, and you shouldn’t run the risk of getting into trouble if you can avoid it. You might get home before Violet finishes the laundry, and no one will ever know you were gone.”

“So what will you do?” Iris asked.

“I’ll get Jake onto Paddy,” Rose told her. “I’ll walk him back slowly. It could take a while to get back. You should be home long before us.”

Iris considered the situation.
“All right. I’ll go back ahead of you. But I think you’ll need my help to get him onto Paddy’s back.”

Rose surveyed Jake’s leg. “Okay. Thanks.”

Rose got under one of Jake’s arms, and between her and Iris, they managed to lift Jake up into a standing position on his good leg. Then he leaned on their shoulders and hopped over to Paddy. “Now what do we do?”

“I’ll lock my fingers together,”
Rose told him. “You put your knee inside my hands, and I’ll heave you up. This is the way we used to help each other get onto a horse’s back when we were children learning to ride and couldn’t reach the stirrups.”

“We did that, too,” Jake recalled.

“Good, then you know what to do,” Rose replied. “You won’t put any weight on your ankle. Then you can get up on his back. Just swing your other leg over.”

Jake chuckled.
“All right. Heave away.”

Rose bent down and made a basket out of her woven fingers. Jake slid the knee of his injured leg into the basket, Rose heaved, and Jake swung his good leg over Paddy’s back so he came to rest in the saddle.

Rose stood back and surveyed her work. “Good. That’s fine. Now, get on your way, Iris. Get home as fast as you can, and carry on shirking the laundry work. If anyone asks, you don’t know where I am and you haven’t seen me since last night.”

Iris stole a glance at her younger sister. “If I hadn’t ridden up here with you today, I wouldn’t know you were the same person I spoke to last night. You look different, your voice sounds different—everything about you is different.”

“What’s so different?” Rose asked. “I’m the same person.”

“No,” Iris replied. “You definitely are not the same person.
You’re someone I haven’t seen in many years. You might even be someone I’ve never met before.”

“Is it as bad as all that?” Rose asked.

“It isn’t bad,” Iris countered. “It isn’t bad at all. I only wish I’d met this person years ago.”

After Iris rode away, Rose took Paddy by the bridle and led him down the canyon. Jake rode with one foot in the stirrup and the other dangling. They went at a fraction of the speed with which Rose and Iris rode up over the same terrain.

They picked their way between trees and around boulders for a long time without talking. Then Jake remarked, “She’s right, you know.”

Rose’s head shot up. “Who? Right about what?”

“Iris,” Jake told her. “She’s right about you. You’re different.”

“Do you think so?” Rose put her head on one side, and then she turned back to watching her footsteps.

Jake nodded. “You’re not the blinking wallflower you were just two days ago. I never saw a person change so dramatically in so short a time.”

Rose snorted. “Blinking wallflower! Go on! I never was!”

Jake grinned. “I ought to know who I met at the hotel saloon in
Butte, and this….” He scanned her up and down with eyes. “This is definitely not the same person.”

Rose smiled to herself. “I didn’t know what to think of you then. I only knew I had to have you. I never saw someone more fascinating that you.”

“That just goes to show you really were a wallflower, if you though I was fascinating,” Jake remarked. “I’m just a kid from the sticks.”

“I didn’t know what you were,” Rose replied, “and I don’t know what you are now. I only know
you’re mine. I know for certain, when I look at you, that we’re meant for each other. Whatever the Sheriff does or says, we will be together.”

“That’s what you say,” Jake returned. “We’ll have to see how things work out.”

“All I have to do,” Rose insisted, “is to look at you and all my doubts disappear. I only worried after you left. Now that we’re together again, I feel just as certain as ever that nothing can come between us.”

“If we’re going to be together,” Jake maintained, “I think we ought to take this time to get to know each other again. If we’re going to be married, it wouldn’t do to marry a stranger.”

Rose laughed at him. “Isn’t that the point of marrying a mail-order bride? You’re not supposed to know the person beforehand.”

“I guess I feel differently now that I know you,” Jake remarked.

“You just said you didn’t know me,” Rose shot back. “You said you wanted to get to know me. You’re talking every which way.”

“You’re right,” Jake admitted.

“So what do you want to know?” Rose asked. “Here I am. Get to know me.”

Jake shook his head. “All I know is that you’re different. What happened to you since yesterday?”

Rose thought it over. “I thought you ran away from me. I thought you didn’t want to marry me if you were on the run or if you were under arrest. I thought you wanted me to remain free. All my hopes for our marriage and our life together came crashing down. I thought I might die from grief.”

“I told you I didn’t run away,” Jake told her.

“But I didn’t know that, and the Sheriff doesn’t know it, either. He assumed you went on the run, and we all assumed the same thing.” Rose shook her head. “It’s gonna take a lot of explaining when we get back to the ranch.”

“So what happened?” he asked.

“Yesterday,” Rose continued, “Iris and Violet and I were standing on the porch when your horse came back with no rider. When Iris cleaned out his hoofs, she found one of those purple magnolia flowers in the dirt. She didn’t say anything at the time. She only told me it wasn’t a good idea to keep the horse coming home a secret from the Sheriff. Later that night, she came into my room and told me she knew where you were.”