An Unconventional Bride For The Rancher (Historical Western Romance)

by Cassidy Hanton

  Thunder cracked close by, lightning lighting up the darkness. It did indeed rain, but not hard enough to flood the stream over its banks. Water dripped from Aaron’s hat despite the sheltering willows, yet he found the wet quite refreshing after the day’s fierce heat.

  The storm passed quickly, leaving behind a sweet-smelling breeze and a much cooler night. Checking on Elmer, he found his brother weak, but awake. Aaron grinned. “Hey, good to see you. You had us plenty worried.”

  “Water, please.”

  “Sure.”

  Aaron crouched under the shelter to hold a canteen to his brother’s dry lips, letting him swallow until Elmer finally shook his head, having drunk enough. Setting the canteen aside, Aaron said, “George made a soup for dinner. You need to eat some of it. Keep your strength up.”

  George brought over the soup he kept warm beside the fire, offering Elmer a wry grin. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

  After Aaron spoon-fed Elmer the last of the soup, he brushed his fingers over his brother’s brow. “Fever is still there, just not as bad.”

  Closing his eyes, Elmer rested his head back against the saddlebag George placed there as a pillow and went back to sleep. George smacked Aaron on the shoulder. “Told you. He’s gonna be fine.”

  * * *

  Four days later, Elmer’s wounds had healed enough to continue travel, and Aaron set an easy pace with frequent stops for rest. Skirting around towns, they lived off their supplies and whatever game they killed. George’s quick gun brought down a lean jackrabbit, which he later turned into a stew. Still, their supplies dwindled, and Aaron knew they needed to venture into a town for more.

  In their camp that night, Aaron handed George some cash from their latest robbery. “You’re the least known among us,” he said. “San Antone is only a few miles away. In the morning, you ride into town and get us salt, flour, beans, coffee, whiskey and whatever else we need. Elmer and I will stay here. He needs the rest, anyway.”

  George nodded. “Will do.”

  Shortly after dawn the next morning, George rode toward San Antonio, leaving Aaron and Elmer to nap in the shade of a group of cedar trees. Elmer, still unable to use his right arm, slept soundly all morning, woke long enough to eat and slept through the afternoon. Aaron, however, dozed through the morning and kept a watch for George. As the afternoon passed the hottest part of the day, he grew increasingly uneasy.

  Pacing their small camp, he muttered, “He should have been back by now.”

  Riding to the town might have taken two hours at most. Getting supplies less than an hour, then two riding back. George had now been gone for going on seven hours. Aaron, still paced, sweating and fretting about what was keeping him. “If he stopped to gamble in a saloon, I’m going to kill him.”

  “George wouldn’t do that,” Elmer said.

  Aaron spun around, finding Elmer awake and sitting beside the dying fire Aaron hadn’t kept fed with wood. “You sure about that?”

  His arm still in its makeshift sling, Elmer nodded. “He’s not that irresponsible, Aaron. He knows that to linger in a town is dangerous after what happened to Franklin.”

  “You don’t think he got caught, do you?” Aaron’s mouth went dry at the thought. “No, I can’t lose any more brothers,” he muttered, pacing. “He couldn’t have gotten caught. He’s the least known among us.”

  “We have to consider that possibility,” Elmer said, his tone soft. “Or he was killed.”

  “No, no, no.” Aaron shook his head fiercely. “No, he can’t be dead. He’s alive, he has to be.”

  “Then we need to ride into town and find him.”

  His feelings of rage and helplessness rising, Aaron paced in furious circles. “If they caught him, we’ll bust him out,” he declared. “I’ll kill anyone who gets between me and him. I swear it, I’ll kill anyone.”

  “You need to calm down, Aaron.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Aaron screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Do you hear me? I am the leader here, I am the oldest, and you don’t tell me what to do.”

  His nerves frazzled, Aaron felt himself coming apart. His rage at Franklin and Benji’s deaths had increased to such levels he hardly recognized himself anymore. When Elmer got shot, Aaron suspected that had Elmer died, he would have gone completely and utterly insane. His fear of losing either one of his surviving brothers sent him perilously close to the edge.

  “We’re going after him,” Aaron snapped, heading to the horses to saddle them.

  “Best we wait until after dark,” Elmer advised, his tone calm.

  Aaron stopped short. If they rode now, it would still be full light when they reached San Antonio. Elmer was correct. They needed to wait. “Fine,” he retorted, spinning around. “We wait.”

  Though he couldn’t sit at his ease, Aaron continued to pace restlessly, watching the dark hills around them for any sign of George returning. He might still come back. He might. When he did, Aaron planned to yell himself hoarse at George for scaring him so badly. George didn’t come. Aaron paced with increasing energy and fury, pausing to watch the hills every few minutes or so.

  He noticed that Elmer didn’t try to calm him down or console him with reassuring words he didn’t truly mean. That’s smart of him. Aaron knew he would not be able to control his fury, and would lash out at Elmer, potentially saying something they both would regret.

  “Saddle the horses, Aaron.”

  Aaron tossed him a glare for daring to tell Aaron what to do but stalked across the camp to where the horses were tethered and started to saddle them. The occupation soothed his rage to a small degree, and by the time all four were ready, he had begun to think clearly again.

  Without the use of his right arm, Elmer needed help to mount. Aaron held his horse near a tall stump Elmer used to climb on and swing into the saddle. He nodded his thanks to Aaron, then started toward San Antonio at a walk, leaving Aaron to lead both spare horses.

  When Aaron caught up to him, Elmer pushed his horse into a lope, then caught Aaron’s eye. “I’ll never be able to use this arm again,” he said.

  The last of Aaron’s anger drained away in shock. “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. My wounds are healing, but the bullet did too much damage inside. I can only lift it a few inches.”

  “But you’re not even halfway healed yet.”

  “I know what I know, Aaron,” Elmer snapped. “I’m useless now, a cripple. I should have died. I wish I had.”

  The words you don’t know for sure rose to Aaron’s lips and hovered there. In the end, he didn’t say them. “I’ll take care of you,” he said simply. “No matter what it takes, I’ll look after you.”

  Elmer didn’t answer but stared straight through his horse’s ears.

  San Antonio was a lively town after dark. Music and dancing filled many of the side streets, saloons spilling their customers out to drink and laugh on the sidewalks. Ladies of the night took customers up the stairs to the rooms above. Lamps lit the night, making it harder for Aaron and Elmer to hide their faces.

  “There’s a jail just up yonder,” Elmer muttered from the side of his mouth. “If I remember right, federal marshals and Texas Rangers spend time there.”

  Aaron bit off a few choice words. “If he’s inside, how will we get him out?”

  “Don’t know until we see it for ourselves.”

  A block from the jail, Aaron and Elmer reined in at the hitching post in front of a hotel, then dismounted to tie all four horses up to it. Keeping away from the lamps on the posts, they walked in single file up the street and ducked down an alley that ran between the jail and another structure. In the dark, they sped up, their boots making almost no sound on the packed dirt.

  Holding his hand up in front of Elmer’s face to stop him, Aaron then held his forefinger to his lips. Leaving Elmer to stand silent, waiting, Aaron crept toward a lit window in the jail. It was almost over his head. Exploring the ground in the alley, he found a couple
of old bricks, set them under the window, then stood on them.

  He found the window opened onto a long single jail cell. A few men lay on the bunks within them, two others sat on them, their heads in their hands. One of the prisoners had bright red hair and rubbed his face wearily.

  It was George.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Aaron hustled Elmer away from the jail. “He’s in there,” he hissed when they were clear from any potential eavesdroppers or lawmen.

  “Is he all right?” Elmer asked.

  “Yeah, he looked like it. How are we going to get him out?”

  Elmer rubbed his chin. “Were there others in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see any marshals or deputies?”

  “No. The window just looked in on the cells.”

  “We have to find out how many marshals are in there,” Elmer said. “Let’s get back to the horses.”

  They left the alley as quietly as they went in and stopped in front of the hotel, untying their horses’ reins. Aaron grabbed Elmer’s healthy arm and turned him, making a few steps toward the hotel door as though about to enter.

  “What?” Elmer whispered.

  “Two marshals just rode by.”

  When they were gone, Aaron and Elmer stepped back to their mounts. “This place is crawling with them,” Aaron muttered.

  “That’ll make it harder to get him out,” Elmer commented.

  Lacing his fingers together, Aaron boosted Elmer into his saddle. Mounting his own and leading the spares, Aaron walked down the street, Elmer riding behind him. Not wanting to attract attention by going faster, despite the nervous itch that crawled up and down his spine, Aaron craved to gallop and get out of this town.

  “Psst. Aaron. Stop.”

  Obeying Elmer, Aaron halted the horses and turned in his saddle, impatient. “What?”

  Elmer pointed to a drunk lying passed out on the sidewalk not far from the edge of town – and safety. “Grab his hat and his clothes.”

  “What for?” Aaron demanded in a loud whisper.

  “I have an idea. Just do it.”

  Dismounting, leaving the horses in a dark area away from the lights and the noise, Aaron grabbed the man’s broad-brimmed straw hat and handed it up to Elmer. “Now his clothes.”

  Aaron took a whiff and wrinkled his nose. “They reek.”

  Elmer’s grin flashed in the faint light. “Exactly.”

  Rolling the drunk back and forth, trying to hold his breath, Aaron stripped him of his overalls and his shirt, and left him laying on the sidewalk in his stained long underwear. “I hope you have a good reason for this,” Aaron grumbled, stuffing the foul-smelling clothes in his saddlebags.

  “I do. Mount up, let’s go.”

  Riding a short way out of town, Aaron and Elmer reined in at a small creek and dismounted. “It’ll work,” Elmer said after another of Aaron’s protests, sliding down, wincing, from his saddle.

  “You better hope it does, or you’re next to get tossed in there,” Aaron replied crossly. “I can’t get you both out by myself.”

  “Just do what I say, all right?”

  In the deepest hours of the night, when the world slept, Aaron and Elmer rode back into San Antonio. The lamps had burned down into nothing, the saloons stood silent, houses lay dark as their occupants dreamed. Aaron tried to cover his nose with his sleeve, turned his face away from Elmer, who rode upwind of him. He dared not speak, even in a whisper, to demand Elmer ride back a few steps.

  Dismounting in an alley, they left the horses to stand, then strode quietly down toward the jail. It took them a few wrong turns, but they eventually found the barn where the federal marshals stabled their horses. Nearly a dozen mounts stirred restlessly, eyeing the strangers, but none of them whinnied or kicked the wall of a stall.

  Locating the saddle and bridles by feel, Aaron held each bridle up for Elmer to cut with his knife. Leaving them to fall into a pile, they cut the latigo straps on each saddle, then removed each cinch to toss in the pile of damaged tack.

  “Now out the window,” Aaron whispered, gathering as much as he could into his arms. Throwing it all out into the muck heap behind the barn. “It’ll take them hours to get new tack,” he muttered with a grin.

  “Now we hit the livery stable,” Elmer hissed, leading the way out of the barn.

  Once again, they slashed bridles and latigos, cut cinches to pieces, leaving the marshals no way to ride on the chase. “They might commandeer citizens’ horses,” Aaron said as they left the livery, “but even then they have to face argument if the owner doesn’t let them take their animals.”

  “Now to find a poster with our faces on it,” Elmer replied.

  They found one on the wall outside the jail where George slept oblivious of their rescue plans, and they quickly hid in the shadows as they hurried back to where they left their own horses. Finding a small dilapidated barn off the main street that appeared to have been abandoned, they hid their mounts inside it. Aaron took a stick of dynamite from Elmer’s saddlebags, stuck a fuse in it, then put it in an inner pocket of his coat.

  “Now we wait,” he said.

  Dawn tinged the eastern horizon pink and purple, long rays from the coming sun striking the distant clouds. Elmer took the bottle of whiskey from his stolen overalls and poured a little down the front of his shirt. “Do I still stink?” he asked with a grin.

  Aaron eyed him sidelong and edged away from him. “Like a dead skunk.”

  “Good.”

  Life in San Antonio started early, and within an hour of the sun rising, the streets were busy, people hurrying on their business, women rushing to markets before others got there first. Elmer stuck out his hand. “Good luck. See you soon.”

  Aaron shook it. “You, too.”

  Taking the back alleys, Elmer headed back to the jail while Aaron crossed the street and walked more sedately down the side. He found his target – a wide open-air market with fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices that tended to attract women. It was also located not far from the jail, and Aaron could see everything clearly. Standing back from it, he watched people ignore him as they passed by.

  With satisfaction, he watched as several women gathered around it to inspect the goods and waited for Elmer to start.

  He didn’t wait long. Elmer staggered out from behind the jail, the bottle of whiskey in one hand, the wanted poster in the other. Dirt and dust concealed his red hair, his unshaven face hid who he was. His potent odor prevented anyone from getting too close. Waving both in the air, he stumbled into the path of a federal marshal.

  “I seen him!” Elmer yelled, his voice high pitched and piercing. “I seen him! Go get him.”

  People paused to look, to stare, to point. The marshal turned his face away as Elmer tried to get closer. “Aaron Dawson!” he shrieked, waving the poster and pointing at it. “Down that way, I just seen him!”

  The marshal went on point like a hound dog. “Where, old man?”

  “That way! I seen him! I get the reward, don’t I? I seen him, I did. Where’s my reward?”

  The marshal opened the jail and yelled something to those inside, but Aaron couldn’t hear what it was. Instantly, lawmen roiled out of the jail, guns in hand and ran in the direction Elmer pointed. That was Aaron’s cue. Stepping behind the women, he said loudly, “If Aaron Dawson is in town, he’s gonna attack women. He does that, he creeps into town and finds women in the night.”

  Between the proclaimed Aaron Dawson sighting and his words, the women began to shriek. Like sheep before a storm, they scattered, running in all directions, yelling at the top of their lungs. Even as Elmer continued to yell that he saw Aaron Dawson, Aaron himself told people that the man, and his murdering brothers, had come to kill and slay. Men, as well as women, panicked, creating mass hysteria in the street.

  Ducking amid them, Aaron ran across to the jail and found the door open. No marshal remained inside to guard the prisoners. Running to the cells, pullin
g out his dynamite and a match, Aaron yelled, “George!”

  “Aaron?”

  “Get back, cover yourselves,” Aaron barked, lighting the stick of dynamite.

  George rolled under his cot, pulling his mattress down to shield him from the blast. Many others did the same as Aaron set the sizzling stick into the gate, then bolted from the room. The detonation hurtled pieces of metal, and wood and flames into the main office, smoke poured through the opening in the roof, the windows.

  “George!” Aaron yelled, coughing as he ran back into the cell area. “Come on! We got to go!”