The Bride Lottery

by Tatiana March

  The mere idea had made rage flare up inside him. He never wanted to ask anything from them again. The only thing he felt for his grandfather was a bitter, black hatred. He didn’t know if the old man was still living or had died years ago, and he didn’t care.

  He might have been able to overcome his resentment if the doctors believed something could be done for Nora, that having limitless funds might make a difference. But over the years, he’d been assured time and again that medical science held no miracle cure. Not unless someone knew how to cut open a human chest, take out a defective heart and put another one in its place.

  After his initial flash of anger, Jamie had come to his senses. He knew for certain there was nothing in Nora’s belongings from which Miranda could have discovered the Baltimore address. Everything was in his saddlebags—including the thick letter that had come more than a month ago. He’d never opened it, but he’d not had the determination to burn it, the way he and Louise had burned the two other letters that had come before.

  However, the question remained unanswered. How could Miranda buy back Alfie and pay for all those things? It occurred to Jamie that the alternative answer—the only one he could think of—might be even worse than his initial thoughts. Out of habit, his fingers felt for the guns at his hip. Startled, he realized he’d left his weapons in the room and was only armed with the spare knife hidden in his boot.

  He shifted on his feet. “I need to know. Where did you get the money?”

  Blue eyes met his. “It’s none of your business.”

  “I think it is.”

  When Miranda didn’t reply, Jamie hesitated. He knew he could bully the answer out of her, or get to the truth by going downstairs and talking to the people in the saloon. Instead, he spoke in a low voice.

  “It is clear to me you love Nora. And I’ve seen how women can be when they love. They give everything, no matter how high the price. I saw it in my mother, and I saw it in my sister. And now I fear you may have felt compelled to use any means to ease Nora’s final days.”

  Miranda’s brow puckered. “What are you talking about?”

  “Those men...down in the saloon... You haven’t...?”

  He could see the shock register on her face. He heard her sigh, saw her shoulders droop as she let go of the resentment that had risen between them. “No! Dear Lord, no,” she blurted out. “My sister sent me money. My sister Charlotte.”

  Attentive and silent, Jamie listened while Miranda explained how their parents had died in a boating accident, and Charlotte, the eldest, had become an heiress. Jamie learned how their unscrupulous cousin had tried to get his hands on the money, and how Miranda had fled into the night, trying to reach Charlotte, who had already gone into hiding in a played-out mining town called Gold Crossing. He’d never heard of the place, but Colorado and Wyoming had dozens of mining towns that vanished almost as quickly as they sprang up.

  “So,” he said, digesting it all. “Your sister sent you a thousand dollars?”

  Miranda nodded, and Jamie didn’t press for details. Easy enough to check at the bank. Because they were married, he could find out anything about her business he might wish to know. “And your sister is in Gold Crossing now?” he added. “And everything is fine? Your cousin is no longer a threat? And you’ll have someplace to go when you leave here?”

  Again, she nodded, but the gesture seemed reluctant.

  “Good,” he said. “I have things to do. Bank. Livery stable. Marshal’s office. I’ll be back in the afternoon and we can take Nora out.”

  “Wait,” Miranda said as Jamie turned to go back into the room to fetch his knife and his pair of guns. “When you said you’ll stay, did you mean it?”

  She’d been speaking with her face downcast but now she lifted her chin. Jamie could see tears glistening in her eyes as she went on. “I didn’t know if you would mind me talking to Nora about dying. She senses the time is near, and I believe it makes things frightening and confusing for a child if adults deny the truth. I wanted to make things less scary for her. Help her accept the inevitable.”

  “You’ve done well.”

  The plates and cups rattled as Miranda adjusted the load across her arm. “I don’t think I’ll be able to handle things alone...not in the end... I need you here...need someone to lean on... Need your strength to carry me through... Will you stay?”

  Jamie blinked. He’d been doing a lot of blinking since he arrived last night. It must be the dust in the air. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “I meant it. I’ll stay.”

  In front of him, Miranda’s face crumpled. Her eyes pinched tightly shut. Jamie could see the dampness between her eyelids but the tears didn’t fall. Her head was moving in the tiniest of nods, up and down, up and down, and she appeared to be holding her breath.

  “Thank you.” The words were soundless, a mere movement of her lips.

  Jamie wanted to pull her close, bundle her into his arms, but somehow the kiss they’d shared last night stood between them, warning him to stay away. In his mind, he could hear Nora’s words. Say you’ll love her. Promise you’ll love her.

  He’d told her that he would.

  God help him if it turned out to be true.

  Chapter Twelve

  Miranda had discovered that summer days in Wyoming often dawned bright but clouds could gather by midday and the afternoons might bring squalls. Today the weather remained mild and sunny, and the promised outing could go ahead.

  They rode out of town, away from the mine workings. Nora, dressed in her denim trousers and boots and fringed leather coat, sat in front of Jamie on Sirius. Miranda, dressed alike, rode on Alfie, leading the way to their favorite picnic spot beneath a massive oak that offered shelter from the sun and the wind.

  She dismounted, and Jamie handed Nora down to her, and then he vaulted off, untied the rolled-up blankets behind his saddle and spread them out on the ground. Miranda’s silver-studded saddlebags contained the picnic—cold chicken and ham and creamed potatoes. While Miranda set out the food, Nora kept craning her neck, surveying their surroundings, as if in search of something.

  “What are you looking for, Skylark?” Miranda heard Jamie ask.

  “I’m looking for the hummingbird that will guide me to Mama.”

  Grateful she had her back turned Miranda dabbed the corner of her eye. How great would the pain be later, when she could barely withstand it now? How hollow the emptiness? How deep the longing? She tried to find something to feel positive about.

  At least now she knew that she wanted to be a mother one day, wanted children of her own. After her encounter with the Summerton children, she had shied away from the thought, but the brief taste of motherhood with Nora had changed her mind.

  Her emotions under control again, Miranda finished spreading out the picnic. Jamie produced an orange out of his pocket, something that must have been transported from California at great expense.

  “This is for the hummingbird.” He pulled a knife from his belt, sliced the orange in two. Then he took out a piece of metal wire, uncoiled it and stuck one end through the orange half and suspended the wire from a branch on the tree. He did the same with the other half. “The hummingbird has a long, narrow beak it uses to drink the nectar from the fruit,” he explained.

  Nora smiled. “I’ll wait for it to come.”

  They ate, and soon the afternoon sunshine lulled the child to sleep. Miranda watched Jamie from beneath her lashes. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back on his elbows, one leg folded at the knee. The breeze stirred his hair beneath the brim of his hat.

  His silhouette blended against the landscape as though he were a part of it—part of the green grass and the mountains on the horizon and the rustle of the wind in the tree above, and the scents of parched earth and the gurgling of the small stream nearby, even the clunking of the machiner
y from the mine across the valley.

  Once again, it struck Miranda how limited her world had been up to now. Apart from an occasional trip into Boston, she only knew Merlin’s Leap and the countryside around the estate. Since their parents died and Cousin Gareth took over, her life had been restricted to the confines of the house.

  She wanted more. She wanted to see the world, find her place in it.

  She spoke quietly, her attention on Jamie. “What did you mean when you said that you’ve seen how women can give everything when they love, no matter how high the price? What did your mother give? And your sister?”

  Jamie let his eyes rest on the horizon, as if he hadn’t heard her question.

  “Talk to me, James Fast Elk Blackburn,” Miranda said with a touch of impatience.

  “I don’t find it easy to talk. Not about my family anyway.”

  “That’s what people do, when they want to be friends. They lift the veil of privacy from their lives and let others see inside.”

  He glanced at her. “Is that what you want me to do? Lift my veil?”

  Miranda picked up a twig from the ground and tossed it at him in mock anger.

  “You’ve seen my veil lifted aplenty.”

  The corners of his mouth tugged up.

  Heat crept into Miranda’s cheeks. Her mind made a little spontaneous leap, and her gaze fell on Jamie’s mouth. He’d kissed her. And she’d kissed him back. An odd spinning sensation had invaded her stomach then, and now, as she kept watching him and remembering that kiss, the same sensation radiated all through her, as if the heat from the sun had suddenly intensified a hundredfold.

  “Has any woman ever loved you like that?” she asked softly.

  His reaction was not what she had expected. Instead of telling her to mind her own business, the bounty hunter threw his head back and burst into a roar of laughter.

  Miranda’s eyes narrowed. “What’s so funny?”

  “No woman has ever loved me. Not in that way or in any other way.” He rocked on his elbow for a moment, as if she had just come up with the funniest thing ever uttered west of the Mississippi. Then he pulled his hat deeper over his head and started talking.

  “My mother came from Baltimore. A fine family, like yours. She was on her way to Colorado, to marry the garrison commander in one of the forts. He was a little older, but their families were good friends and she was fond of him. My father was a soldier. Not a scout, but a soldier. He was half-Cheyenne, but he lived like a white man. Cut his hair short, went to church on Sundays. He was part of the escort that took the stagecoach to the fort. By the time my mother got off the stage, she knew she wouldn’t marry the man she was engaged to. She’d not spoken a single word to my father, but she had been watching him. She broke off her engagement on the first day and then she told my father that she wanted to marry him.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He was horrified. He had no intention of stealing his commanding officer’s fiancée. He told her that, in clear and absolute terms. So my mother went to the nearest town and got a job as a schoolteacher. It took her a year to convince my father they should be together.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “My father died in an Indian massacre, in a place called Sand Creek. Seven hundred white militiamen killed a hundred and fifty Indians, mostly women and children. My father tried to stop the slaughter, and one of the militiamen pierced his chest with a bayonet.

  “He’d left his army post by then. Dishonorable discharge. The garrison commander my mother had jilted brought trumped-up charges of misconduct against him. It was payback for stealing his fiancée. My father was working as a scout for another army unit when he was killed. It was an accident of fate he happened to be at Sand Creek when the militiamen struck. My mother hoped to get an army pension, but they withheld payment, saying that by trying to protect the Indian women and children my father had deserted his duty.”

  “They punished him for trying to protect women and children? And used it as an excuse to leave your mother penniless?” Aghast, Miranda suppressed a shudder. “How could they do something so cruel?”

  “The garrison commander used his influence. I think he still wanted my mother, and he was plotting for her to be destitute, in need of a man to provide for her. She wouldn’t marry him, though. We went to Baltimore. I was five. Louise was seven. I don’t remember much of it. Only that the journey was long. We only stayed a single day. In the evening, my mother came to get us from the small room where we were waiting. She put our coats on us and we left. I remember that her face was very white and her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t button up my coat.”

  “Did she tell you what took place?”

  “Never. She never spoke about it. Never spoke of her family again. She behaved as if Baltimore had vanished from the map. Louise claims she heard the servants talk and our grandparents had offered to take her back if she put us into an orphanage and pretended we didn’t exist.”

  “What became of your mother?”

  “We went back to Colorado and she opened a dress shop. Worked day and night, sewing dresses. About ten years later, she died. Just passed away in her sleep. Worn-out, I guess. Because of us—having two kids with Indian blood—the rich ladies in town didn’t buy from her. She didn’t make much money. Not like someone with her skill and good taste could have done, if it hadn’t been for me and my sister.”

  Miranda felt a twinge of shame. She and her sisters had thought they had suffered, losing their parents and then being hounded by Cousin Gareth. In truth they had been blessed, for they had grown up in a happy, secure home until they were on the verge of adulthood.

  “Is your mother the one who educated you?” she asked quietly.

  “Until she died. I was twelve. Then I went on the road, bounty hunting.”

  Startled, Miranda sat up straighter, dry leaves rustling under her. “You became a bounty hunter when you were twelve years old?”

  Jamie nodded. “Bounty hunting had just been made legal, and it seemed a good way to make a living. I only went after men who were worth as much dead as they were alive. I knew I’d struggle to arrest a grown man and haul him in. But an outlaw destined for a rope is unlikely to surrender, and in a gunfight my youth didn’t matter.”

  “Gunfight... You have to shoot it out?”

  “A bounty hunter can only kill in self-defense. Otherwise it’s murder. I practiced with a gun until I knew I was good enough to stay alive and then I went out on the road. I earned my first bounty a week after my thirteenth birthday. An outlaw had robbed the mercantile and killed the owner’s wife. The owner put up the bounty, and all he wanted was to see the man’s dead body brought back to him.”

  It sounded so violent, so hard and cold. And yet Miranda could detect no cruelty in Jamie. He was simply doing a job. And a bounty hunter was on the side of the law, helping sheriffs and marshals to deliver justice.

  In his own way, Papa had been a hard man, too. He’d had to be, to maintain discipline among the ships’ crews. And despite that touch of hardness, Papa had been an honorable man, gentle with his wife and daughters and fair with his seamen and business associates.

  “What if an outlaw surrenders?” she asked. “What will you do then?”

  “If the bounty is big enough, I’ll take him in. Sometimes I might let him go. Either the bounty isn’t worth the aggravation of hauling him in, or something about the man convinces me he doesn’t deserve to die or go to prison. Some men become outlaws not by choice, but by force of circumstance.”

  Miranda searched Jamie’s face. He was in profile to her, and what she could see of his features gave nothing away, and yet his last comment had revealed compassion and sympathy for men less fortunate than him.

  “Do you like it? The life of a bounty hunter?”

  “It’s
the only life I know.”

  Jamie turned toward her, tilting back his head to peer at her from beneath the brim of his hat. The wind stirred the leaves in the tree above them. The sun broke through and made dappled shadows on the harsh angles and planes of his face. Again, Miranda could see the light in his clear gray eyes, as if a fire burned somewhere deep within.

  An odd sinking sensation seized her, and she spoke quickly, in an effort to shake off the strange mood. “I would never have thought that we have something in common, but we do. I was just thinking a moment ago that I only know one life. The easy, comfortable life at my family home in Merlin’s Leap.”

  “You know more, Princess. You know this life now.” Jamie snagged a long blade of grass from the ground beside him and used it to point at Devil’s Hall. “You’ve fitted right in. Made friends. Taken care of Nora. I’m proud of you. And grateful.”

  No words of praise had ever given Miranda the same sense of achievement, the same warm glow of pleasure. That heady, dizzy feeling engulfed her again. Confused, even a little frightened by it, she focused on the conversation.

  “What about your sister? What did she sacrifice for love?”

  “Louise married an Indian. Half-blood Northern Cheyenne, one who lived like an Indian, on the reservation. Initially, the Cheyenne kept most of their ancestral lands in a treaty with the US government. Later, when gold was found, ninety percent of the reservation was taken away again. That happened before I was born.

  “The man my sister married wanted to make a life in the traditional ways, hunting buffalo, but the animals were too scarce by then, and there was always the threat that white militants might attack them if they saw Indians in possession of rifles.