by Martha Hix
“I always knowed the stage to be late, but I never knowed it to be this late,” Brother Frederick Inman of the Heaven’s Gate Missionary Church put in. From his seat on a bench that had been nailed to the depot wall, lest some heathen steal the damn thing for wooden building materials, he added, “I don’t do weddin’s after three p.m. Mrs. Inman and I always carve out that hour for a little siesta.”
“Good for you,” Sam muttered.
“’Course, I might be talked into going ahead with the weddin’s even after three. For another five bucks.”
It was this type of greed that annoyed Sam when it came to the preacher who had shown up last summer, straight from the main mission in Shreveport. He’d replaced Brother Theodore Alington—father to Lubbock’s sheriff—after Brother Ted tipped over, dead as a doornail, from trying to stop his missus from taking a hatchet to the mahogany bar inside Scarlet Garter Jenny’s Saloon.
Not too happy that he and Charlie were already paying this man of the cloth extra to work on Saturday, Sam said dryly, “That’s what I like about you, Brother Inman. You not only teach the kindness of Jesus, you also live by the Golden Rule.”
Apparently irked, Brother Inman said, “Nature calls, gentlemen.” His bulbous nose and rubbery cheeks red as a fire wagon, he added, “Think I’ll make a trot out back.”
“Do that, Brother Inman,” Charlie allowed. Not five seconds after the preacher took off for the outbuildings, he sidled up to his nephew. “You think the girls will be mad when they find out we exaggerated a bit about our houses . . . the cattle . . . the cotton patch . . . ?”
“Of course they’ll be mad.”
“What will we do?”
“Charlie, what the hell’s the matter with you? Have you gone addled, now that you’ve reached thirty-five? We discussed this several times. The ladies won’t be able to say much. We’ll all be married by the time we get back to the High Hopes.”
“I don’t like being devious.”
“I don’t like it, either, but we don’t have much choice. Not if we’re gonna get ourselves some women who don’t expect to be paid in the morning.”
“Hmmm,” his uncle mulled. “Well, okay.”
Truth to tell, Sam Kincaid hoped for the best in Miss Ermentrude Flanders. Being from Natchez, he had seen some of the prettiest ladies in the world. No place grew them better than the Mississippi Delta. He prayed Miss Flanders would look just a little bit better than the way her name sounded, rolling off the tongue.
Nevertheless, he did understand that a man had to take what he could get, when he had to resort to sending off for a bride.
“I’m hoping mine ain’t too skinny,” Charlie said. “All I want is some good cookin’ and a hefty gal to keep me warm in the winter and shaded in summer.”
Every day for the past six months, since the first time Brother Inman told Sam and Charlie about Heaven’s Gate having a finishing school in Shreveport that taught the domestic arts and the proper way to treat a husband, Charlie had said, All I want is some good cookin’ and a hefty gal to keep me warm in the winter and shaded in summer.
And Sam always had the same answer. Which he delivered now, one more time. “Yes, Uncle, that will be nice for you. That’s why you asked for a spinster of at least twenty-five.”
“Wonder what’s keepin’ Brother Inman?”
“Who knows? We’ll find him, I’m certain, as soon as the brides get here.”
Not five seconds later, the stage from Fort Worth rounded the corner, two streets away, and began to rumble toward the depot.
“Hallelujah, praise the Lord,” Charlie shouted, tossing his hat in the air and catching it handily.
The driver pulled the coach to a dirt-spinning stop and the shotgun rider jumped down to do the honors with the door.
Oh, God, no!
“Gawd damn,” Charlie muttered. “Well, there’s yours.”
A stick-thin woman adjusted her rumpled dress that had a skewed, sparkly cameo fastened to its bodice, then took Shotgun’s hand to step down to the street.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” She smiled toothily.
Swallowing yet another groan, Sam couldn’t help but think, She could eat corn through a picket fence.
She looked like her name: Ermentrude Flanders. Sam prayed that a rattler had gotten the preacher.
Then a vision of heaven took Shotgun’s hand. Carrying a small velvet handbag, she wore a rather faded emerald traveling suit that nicely fit her well-curved body, and a matching hat that complemented her upswept auburn hair.
Everything else but this vision fell away for Sam.
Cameo earbobs—not unlike the pin the homely one wore—sparkled at this shapely one’s earlobes. With no interest in baubles, Sam allowed himself to feast his eyes on the green-eyed redhead. He vaguely recognized she might be a hair less than Mississippi beautiful, but she looked like Scotland, bonny Scotland, although he had never visited the homeland claimed by three of his grandparents. No lady on the Texas Llano Estacado had ever looked better to him.
His eyes telegraphed a message to the green of hers. You’re mine. If I have to fight Charlie to the death for you, I’ll do it.
Feeling determined, yet apprehensive to the point of an elevated heartbeat, he moved forward. But his uncle stepped in front of him and said, “Charles Craig at your service, Miss Bellingham.”
The skinny one waved her hand, and piped up shrilly. “Oh, that would be me!”
Thank you, Jesus!
Sam, his heart now racing with joy, met his own bride. “I never dreamed you’d be so beautiful.”
She blushed, as any maiden of eighteen would do. “You must be Mr. Kincaid.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She’d been blessed with the most splendid, clear green eyes he’d ever seen. And Sam noticed she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, such as the ladies of Natchez would have covered with powder. Nonetheless, she looked damned good to him. He found he liked those freckles and wondered if she had any on her bosom or thighs.
Sam had no idea how Uncle Charlie was handling the skinny one, nor did he care. He said to his fiancée, “Welcome to Texas, Miz Ermentrude.”
“Thank you, sir. I am so glad to be here.”
“You must be thirsty and hungry after that long ride. I think Brother Inman’s missus has some canned tuna-fish sandwiches waiting. Matter of fact, the stagecoach being so late, those sandwiches have been waiting all afternoon.”
Ermentrude’s face went pale. “No, no. Heavens—they are surely spoiled. Thanks but no thanks on the sandwiches.”
“Would you prefer to have a drink before the—”
“Here they are!” Brother Inman had returned. “Hello, hello, ladies. You probably know my name—Fred Inman. I’m with the Heaven’s Gate Missionary Church. We’re all set up in the sanctuary. We’re just a block away. Come along, come along. It’s marrying time!”
Ermentrude Flanders’s eyes grew big. Very big. “Marrying today? We’ve just met!”
“We’re all set up,” the preacher repeated.
She looked to Sam. “Don’t we need some time to get to know each other?”
“We’ve been writing the boys for months,” Jewel Bellingham piped up in obvious delight.
Miss Ermentrude looked even more troubled than by her fear of exotic sandwiches. “We can’t marry right away.”
“Oh, yes, we can,” Jewel Bellingham again piped up.
“Tell me, Miss Bellingham,” said Charlie, his voice hoarse; he appeared stricken as he turned a gimlet eye to her. “How’s your cookin’?”
“Excellent!”
“Well, okay, let’s go.” Charlie slapped his hat on his head. “I’m ready to get hitched . . . I suppose.”
“Aren’t we being awfully hasty?” asked Miz Ermentrude. “Myself, I’d like to have an evening or a week to recover from the arduous trip from Louisiana. We passed a hotel, coming into town. It looked quite respectable and nice. The Antlers, it’s called.”
However, if he spent money on hotels, he and Charlie might run low on paying for the cotton seed they had ordered from a factor who sold high-quality seeds. Such quality being necessary, Sam believed. And they still needed to buy seed for a truck garden. “We all agreed to marry as soon as you got here. Preacher Inman’s in a hurry, so let us make haste to the church. We newlyweds will all need to be home before dark.”
To Sam’s relief the skinny woman spoke up. “There’s no need for us to stay in town. We’ll get all married up, and spend the night in our rightful homes.”
Miss Flanders appeared pale beneath the freckles that dotted her finely formed nose, which he found he liked. A lot.
Already, Charlie’s bride followed the preacher. Her husband-to-be lagged back a couple of steps to gawk at the narrow shadow she left in the street dust.
Sam? He felt terrible for scheming to get the ladies here, but there was no turning back. He took Miss Ermentrude’s small, cool hand between his roughened, thorny paws and brought those sweet fingers to his lips. Damn, she tasted good! He placed a tender kiss on each knuckle, lifting his gaze to hers again.
He had found the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. He hoped she would one day feel the same. “It’ll work out, honey. I promise. You’ll never regret becoming my wife.”
Somehow, some way, he would do the right thing by the Louisiana girl and bring out the sweetness that came across from her letters. It might take a while, but he would.
And so it was that at three thirty in the afternoon on April Fools’ Day, Charlie Craig took a bride who could neither warm nor shade him, and his thirty-year-old nephew pledged his troth to the reluctant redhead. Sam tried not to make too much of the tears that rolled down her cheeks as he slipped a simple band of gold on her ring finger, then touched his mouth to her trembling lips, sealing their vows.
Chapter 3
So much for “if this doesn’t work out.”
Linnea Powell, the new Mrs. Kincaid, glanced at her husband, once they exited Heaven’s Gate. He slapped his wide-brimmed Stetson back on his dark head before taking her elbow as they descended the church steps. She could have kicked herself for getting into this crazed scheme. She didn’t really know this man. Ermentrude had handed her his letters, of course, but she didn’t recall his writing anything about a hasty wedding.
Trouble was, she kept thinking about the way his lips had felt on her fingers, and how their kiss to seal the bonds of matrimony had, well, stirred her insides. She knew what it was like to be loved on by a man. She had always enjoyed the marital bed with her late husband.
She glanced at Samson Kincaid. He was so good-looking that he nearly took her breath away. His eyes were the purest of blue—enthralling and expressive—and were framed with heavy, dark lashes. A thick shock of dark brown hair below the brim of his hat swept over his tanned brow, and he grew the type of mustache that tickled the senses, like it had done when he kissed her fingers, then her lips. The mustache didn’t hide his well-formed lips and she did like the looks of his cleft chin. As well, he had wide shoulders and a narrow behind, all encased in denim that bulged in the front . . . where most men showed a bit of what God had given them.
Gads! Her maybe husband did appear like he could be a real stallion between the sheets.
Dammit, girl, stop! She couldn’t just fall into bed with this fellow, even though she had promised to in the eyes of the Lord and the great State of Texas. Was it legal, given her false name?
There was only one way she could deal with this situation:
Make a solemn vow to keep out of his bed, one way or another, until she could decide whether to cut bait and make a run for Clovis, New Mexico. She might be headed to another scandal, but at least she would know she hadn’t defiled her body or his bed with the shame of this sham.
Once they left the churchyard, the two pairs of newlyweds headed for two surreys that had been parked near the depot. With little conversation they split up, which gave Linnea a moment to study her surroundings.
Milk and honey? she wondered. The past several days, the scenery outside her stagecoach window had been bleak. She’d made excuses, one after another, telling herself that everything would be green and inviting once she and Jewel reached the High Hopes. Why had she not noticed that “piss and vinegar” was more accurate than the promised “milk and honey”?
If anything, Lubbock looked worse than the endless miles and miles of terrain she’d seen for the past several days. Flat. It was all flat. On the trail here, she had searched for beauty in what she had chosen as a new home. She didn’t have a problem with flat, actually. Shreveport was flat as a pancake. But the Louisiana air always held moisture, and stands of tall pines and stately oaks were sprinkled with colorful dogwoods and azaleas. Miz Myrtie had even grown camellias and gardenias in flowerbeds outside her sunroom windows.
Lubbock, being in the southern reaches of the Llano Estacado, didn’t appear all that promising, but Sam Kincaid’s letters to Ermentrude had mentioned the richness of the land, when rain or irrigation got to it. Since he hailed from a Mississippi cotton farm, he knew how to raise cotton.
That was something good to think about, amid this disaster.
Disaster. She prayed it would be one-sided, with her benefactor finding the doors open at the Fort Worth Medical College.
When the other surrey pulled away from the curb, Linnea felt quite relieved to be rid of Jewel Bellingham, now Jewel Bellingham Craig, for the first time in weeks.
Linnea also took some comfort from his highfalutin conveyance, a nice whitewashed surrey with a top of canvas decked by fringe. There was even a pitcher of lemonade waiting under a heavy throw, and it certainly did go down nicely, even though it tasted like it had been spiked with moonshine.
She did wonder about the looks of Mr. Samson Kincaid’s home. It wasn’t large, she knew, but he had plans to build a mansion—once he knew what kind of place and furnishings she would prefer. He had said that in one of his letters. She had it in writing.
Mr. Kincaid touched a crop to the backside of the surrey horse, and began to speak as they started away. “I figured we’d stop at the general store and pick up a few sacks of seeds, to save another trip into town.”
“Seeds? That would be lovely,” she said truthfully. In the beginning days of her marriage to Percival, before it became obvious they would never settle down, she’d dreamed of planting flowers around a cozy cottage. There, she would also nourish peach trees, and why not have a magnolia? She so loved their deep green, waxy leaves and the heavenly scent of their lush white flowers. The trees could wait. But not the flowers.
A riot of colorful blossoms dancing in her head, she almost leapt from the surrey as Mr. Kincaid parked in front of a wooden sign that read Jones Feed & General.
Once inside, she rushed to the barrels that held seeds. Corn and wheat. Wheat and corn. That was it for the larger barrels.
Her new husband spoke. “Miz Ermentrude . . . I-I mean, Mrs. Kincaid. The squash and potatoes are over there in those smaller pots.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Surely your field hands picked those up already. Me, I would prefer sweet Williams. And petunias are so nice. It’s probably not too late to plant them.”
She couldn’t stop admiring that cleft in his chin . . . not to mention the smooth, rich baritone of his voice, although what he said didn’t exactly thrill her. He was saying, “We don’t have many flowers around Lubbock. No, ma’am, we sure don’t. Smart folks save water for the cash crops and for what we need to grow to eat. Charlie and I have about finished branding the new calves, but we’re not there yet. So if you don’t mind startin’ the planting, that would be nice.”
He turned away, leaving her momentarily as he added, “We might want to pick up another sack of pinto beans, too.”
When they met at the coun
ter, her with the seeds, him with the beans, she asked, “You and your uncle do all the branding?”
“Why, yes, we do.”
“What about those two fellows you talked about in your letters?”
After their purchases were paid for and gathered up, he ushered her toward the exit before answering. “The lads got in a fight over a saloon girl a couple weeks ago. The sheriff ran them out of town. You see, there’s a large faction around here that doesn’t cotton to joints where women serve alcohol and men gamble at poker. Scarlet Garter Jenny’s is the worst of them. I told and told those boys to stay away from the place, but they wouldn’t listen. Had to learn the hard way not to mess with Sheriff Wes Alington.”
She did understand how it went with sheriffs.
“Wes Alington doesn’t put up with any sass from the locals,” Mr. Kincaid imparted. “He’s a good Christian. Devoted to the Good Word and to his mama. Attends church, just like Charlie and I do . . . when we get a chance.”
“Which is how often?”
By now they had reached the surrey. Samson slipped their purchases onto the backseat next to the small valise that held her clothing and her most prized possession: her Bible. “We never miss Easter or Christmas.”
Great. Just great.
“By gosh and by golly, there’s Sam Kincaid!”
The bridegroom swiveled on one boot toward the sound coming from down the boardwalk, while Linnea glanced over her shoulder at an approaching figure—a tall, wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped fellow with dark curly hair and a fine-looking visage, including a cleft chin that looked a lot like her husband’s. Oddly, he much resembled Samson, so much in fact that they might have been taken for brothers. This one lacked a mustache and wore a finely tailored suit of clothes, though.
The men exchanged handshakes, then Samson took her arm to say, “Mrs. Kincaid, may I present my cousin, Grant Kincaid? He’s an attorney.”
He has a lawyer cousin?
“He practices his fine profession here in Lubbock,” her mister was explaining. “Set up his legal practice just a month ago. He’s from Brighton, Alabama, up on the Tennessee River, near Muscle Shoals and La Grange. Cousin Grant, meet my new wife, the former Ermentrude Flanders. Mrs. Kincaid to you,” he added, evidently using a familiar sort of teasing that Linnea had heard on occasion with this family or that, at boardinghouses where she and Percival had stayed.
