by Kate Whitsby
Jude glanced around the church. “Well, what do you want to do next? Do you have business in Eagle Pass, or do you want to get going? I understand it’s a fair hike back to your place.”
“We should get going in time to get home before dark,” Alma told him. “But we have some supplies to get from the store before we leave.”
“It’s already done,” Allegra told them. “I got the stuff when I went over there to look for Jude. All the supplies are loaded into the wagon. We can go home any time you want.”
“Then there’s nothing left to do but change out of my dress,” Alma remarked. “Allegra, would you help me get my comb out the same way you put it in? I would appreciate it.”
“Sure.” Allegra followed her back to the cloak room and took the comb out. “You go ahead and get changed. I’ll help Amelia get Papa loaded up. That way, as soon as you’re finished, we can hit the road.”
“Okay,” Alma agreed.
Allegra disappeared, leaving Alma alone in the dusty shadows of the cloak room.
Alma laid her head piece inside the sheet she used to bundle up her wedding clothes. She hesitated to take her dress off and she looked down at the white skirts ruffling away from her body. If only she could see it in the looking glass just once. If only she could carry that image of herself back to the distant reaches of the ranch. Her womanly beauty never saw the light of day there.
At least Jude would carry the image. He would remember it when he saw her with mud and grime all over her face, when he saw her smeared with soot from the branding iron, and when she cracked a whip to round up her stock.
He would always carry the memory of his first sight of her. He would know the woman who lurked under her chaps and hat, even when she didn’t know it herself. She dropped the dress off her shoulders and stepped out of it. As soon as it left her body, it took its magic with it, leaving her once more the cowgirl she was when she came into the cloak room the first time.
When she put her pants on again and buckled her belt, the heavy, dirt-encrusted canvas scraped her skin. She always thought they were soft and comfortable. Now they felt like alien armor or a tortoise shell that stopped her from moving the way she wanted to. Would she ever get rid of it? When she looked into her future, she didn’t see any way she could. She would be working the ranch until she was old and grey, wearing the same hard clothes. She would never be soft or fine or female the way she was in that dress.
She laid the dress inside the sheet and folded up the corners. How long had she worn it? Ten minutes? It would go back to the bottom of the trunk and rot there. Someone would find it in another forty or fifty years and wonder who wore it to get married. They wouldn’t know her skin touched its delicate folds. They wouldn’t smell her in its sleeves and waist band.
She tied the corners of the sheet, braided her hair into its usual rope down her back, and put her hat on her head. When she opened the door, the outfit of the cattle puncher she wore into the cloak room felt like a disguise, a masquerade designed to prevent people from seeing the real Alma underneath.
The church stood deserted. Her father, sisters, and husband must be outside. That word sounded so strange in her mind—husband. It didn’t sound like anything having anything to do with Alma Goodkind.
Local people knew the Goodkind sisters as tough, hard-riding gunslingers who worked their ranch in all weather, all year round, and drove a hard bargain at the auction yards in the fall. They didn’t have any use for men. Their father, the only man in their lives, was a cripple. They never gave the local boys a second glance, and Allegra, the youngest, laughed at them.
But she wasn’t Alma Goodkind anymore. She was Alma McCann, wife of one Jude McCann of Amarillo. She could make herself over as anything she pleased.
In front of the church, Alma found her father on his throne between stacks of flour sacks and Amelia in the wagon seat. Jude stood near the church door to meet her.
He raised his eyebrows at her clothes. Then he smiled. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you like this. You told me you and your sisters worked your ranch by yourselves, and after meeting them, I should have expected you to dress the same way. It’s just a shock to see you like this after that dress you were wearing in the church just now.”
Alma dropped her eyes, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at her clothes. “I’m sorry. I just don’t have anything else to wear home. I should have planned to make another dress to wear, but I didn’t even think of it until after we already got here. I’ll work on that when we get home. I understand you don’t want your wife wearing a man’s clothes.”
“If you’re going to keep working the ranch,” Jude pointed out. “You may as well keep wearing these. It’s the most sensible thing you could wear.”
“I’m not sure I want to keep working the ranch if it means dressing like this,” Alma told him. “That dress…” She glanced back over her shoulder toward the church door. “I think that dress did something to me. I don’t think I want to go back to the way I was before.”
Jude raised his eyebrows again. “You don’t?”
Alma cast around for something. “This…..” She looked down at her clothes. “This doesn’t really fit me anymore. I didn’t know it before, but I think getting married changed me somehow. I don’t want to be….this…anymore.”
Jude shrugged. “You be whatever you want to be. Be what you’re most comfortable being. But after the way the three of you have kept the ranch going all these years, you might find it a little more difficult than you think to walk away from it. Anyway, your sisters—and me—we might need your help.”
Alma brightened up. “I’ll be happy to help any way I can, and I’m not really ready to walk away from the ranch. I just think I’ll start making a slow shift away from it.”
“Toward what?” he asked.
“Toward being your wife, of course!” Alma laughed. “What else?”
Jude chuckled. “Well, then, that’s just fine with me.” He tipped his hat to her. “I’ll meet you there.”
Alma laughed again. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
She put her foot into the spokes of the wagon wheel to climb up into the driver’s seat. But Amelia turned around and pointed back toward the wagon box. “Why don’t you and Jude ride in the back and let me and Allegra drive home? That will give you a chance to get to know each other a little bit better.”
“Oh!” Alma exclaimed. “I didn’t think of that.” She caught Jude’s eye. “Is that all right with you?”
Jude looked at his new father-in-law enthroned on his mountain of blankets. “It’s fine with me. I had planned to ride my own horse, but we can tie him onto the back of the wagon. I’m happy to ride with you if….if everyone else is agreeable.”
Clarence Goodkind didn’t even blink in his direction. Allegra climbed up the other side of the wagon into the seat, and Alma got into the wagon box as Jude tied his horse by the reins to the back of the wagon. Then he joined Alma.
She looked around inside the wagon box. “Where’s your luggage?”
“What luggage?” he asked.
“Don’t you have a trunk or something?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you didn’t bring anything.”
Jude jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward his horse. “I brought my bedroll, and a few odds and ends in my saddlebags. I brought my rifle, and a shotgun, and a few letters from home. What else is there?”
“Aren’t you coming out to our place to live?” Alma asked. “I thought you’d want to bring more than that.”
“I don’t have more than that,” he told her. “That’s all I’ve had while I’ve been workin’ on the range, and that’s what I brought. What more is there?”
Alma shook her head. “Alright. I’m just surprised. That’s all. If you don’t think you need any more, that’s fine with me.”
“I’m sure if I need anything, I can get it,” Jude replied.
They settled themselves in the wagon. They sat in the two far back corners of th
e wagon, as far away from Alma’s father as they could sit. Jude smiled at Alma, stole a peek at the old man, and turned his attention for good to his new wife.
“So,” he began. “We’re married.”
“Yes,” Alma replied.
Amelia slapped the reins on the horses’ backs and shouted to them, and the wagon started forward. Jude inspected the town as they passed. “And this is Eagle Pass.”
“Yes,” Alma replied. “Didn’t you see any of it before?”
Jude shook his head. “I just arrived. I just rode into town and went straight to the church.” He frowned. “Isn’t there any more of it than this?”
Alma chuckled. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it. There, you see? We’re out of town already. That’s all there is to it. A couple of houses, a church, and a store. And we don’t come into town more than once a year, twice at the most. It’s a pretty sparse life we have out here.”
“I’ll say.” Jude watched the last house out of sight, which was sooner than expected, considering the adobe walls blended perfectly with the red earth. Once the wagon passed the first clump of bushes, nothing remained to be seen of the little town.
Chapter 10
