The Cowboy's Mail Order Bride

by Carolyn Brown

  The coffee table sported a long white table runner and was covered with crystal plates of finger foods: cheese and summer sausage on long toothpicks with cute little green paper fans on the ends, cookies, and crackers spread with a cream cheese mixture and topped with an olive or a tiny pickle.

  A pitcher of lemonade and one of sweet tea and eight glasses waited on top of one of those antique pushcarts with three shelves. A pretty crystal ice bucket took up the middle shelf with extra paper plates and napkins on the bottom one.

  Seven ladies each claimed a rocking chair, set a colorful tote bag at their feet, and pulled out their craft for the day. Emily folded her hands in her lap and watched Clarice and Dotty’s crochet hooks working in a blur as the ball of white cotton thread bounced around in their bags.

  Rose was knitting just as fast as Dotty and Clarice crocheted, but evidently it did not affect her ability to talk. “Clarice, have you explained this to Emily?”

  “We have our bazaar the last Saturday in February every year. We make crafts all year, meeting here at Rose’s on Saturday afternoons when we can. It’s not set in stone and sometimes all of us can’t be here, but we try, and ‘I don’t want to’ is not an acceptable excuse. We use the money we make to put into our fund for the ladies’ auxiliary to give a scholarship to one senior girl from Ravenna. Sometimes we can give a five-hundred-dollar scholarship; sometimes we can only do half that much. But it all adds up.”

  Rose chimed in when Clarice stopped. “The economy isn’t what it used to be. One year we gave a girl a thousand-dollar-scholarship, but folks don’t come out to a bazaar and bean supper like they used to. I’d love to see the day when we could offer one of our country girls at least a two-year ride.”

  “Then make it a bigger affair,” Emily said.

  “How?” Dotty asked. “Our mommas did the bazaar before us and probably our grandmas before them. If it could be crocheted, stitched, sewn, or knitted the months comin’ up to the bazaar or baked on the day before, we’ve done it. Folks just ain’t interested in little church bazaars like they used to be.”

  “Offer something that people will get all excited about even during a bad economy. Ever thought about an auction in addition to all the things you make?”

  Dotty looked up. “What would we auction off?”

  Emily’s first thought was a million dollars’ worth of knickknacks from Rose’s house, but she asked, “How much trouble would it be to clean up the sale barn?”

  “What are we going to auction? Tractors or cattle?” Clarice asked.

  “Cowboys,” Emily said.

  All seven rockers stopped moving and she had their undivided attention.

  She took a deep breath and went on, “We did this in Happy one time to raise money for a local family when their house burned. Only we did it at the town park because it was in the hot summertime. Cowboys volunteered their time, and at that auction folks bid on the cowboys to work for them for an eight-hour day, and all the money went to the family. Raised enough for a down payment on a really nice double-wide trailer. The next week they were living in it and most of the cowboys had already worked off their debt.”

  Clarice clapped her hands. “I love it.”

  “We’ve only got two weeks,” Dotty said.

  “We could move mountains in two weeks,” Clarice said. “Tell us more, Emily.”

  “You could have barbecue sandwiches and chips, and all the ladies could bring desserts. Charge five dollars at the door and the price includes the supper. Then anyone who wants to bid on a cowboy has to buy a ten-dollar fan. You can make those out of card stock and ice cream sticks that you get at the craft store. Put a cowboy’s picture on one side of the fan and a number on the other. That makes even more money. I can print them off the computer. Most of the cowboys will have a usable picture from their ranch websites. Then put out your bazaar stuff for people to buy while they are waiting on the auction. You need a dozen or so cowboys, an auctioneer, and a bunch of tables so people can sit around and talk while they’re eating and waiting and, of course, buying all your beautiful handcrafted items. More folks would be there, so more would get sold, right?”

  “And the cowboys? Do they work for eight hours?” Rose asked.

  “I saw a movie once where they were auctioning off really rich men in Louisiana.”

  “You could make the cowboy go on a date with the lady who buys him, or work eight hours if it’s a rancher who wins. We could make a few posters in the office at the ranch and put them up in all the surrounding areas to draw in the single women,” Emily suggested.

  Clarice’s smile got bigger. “I like it.”

  Madge raised her hand and waved it around like a little girl in first grade who knew the answer to the question the teacher had asked. “Oh, oh! I’ve got a cousin in Dallas who went to one of those date auctions a few years ago. This famous painter was there and she gave a painting to be auctioned, but then they auctioned the men at the party off and they had to spend the evening with whoever bought them. They could have dinner with them right there and leave with them or whatever. She said it was really a lot of fun, and it brought a lot of money.”

  Dotty was nodding furiously and getting into the idea now. “Only instead of a date auction, it could be a cowboy auction and we could tell… well, shit, Clarice, we’re going to have to tell Emily since she’s going to be a part of this. Hell, maybe she could even fill in for Prissy when we get in a jam.”

  “Tell me what?” Emily asked.

  Clarice nodded at Dotty, and the four ladies exchanged a long look. The air was pregnant with tension while they decided what they were going to do, and then finally Dotty smiled.

  “It’s like this,” Dotty said. “We tried to fix Greg up with Prissy when he first came to live on the ranch, but it didn’t work. So we hired her to help us out and we’ve been lookin’ for the right wife for him for more than a year. We’ve got her under one of them gag order things so she can’t tell him.”

  Rose took up the conversation. “He’s real busy and he don’t have a lot of time to socialize, so we’re helping him out. Prissy told us to tell him about these dating sites, and he laughed at Dotty when she mentioned it, so we just took things in our own hands. I’ve got the Western Match dating site. It’s my job to be Greg an hour a day and meet all the women who think his profile is wonderful. Prissy helped me set it up, and we made a little book with all that OMG and WTF in it. I about died when I found out what some of them stand for, but God ain’t zapped me dead for writing it yet. I figure it’s not such a big sin if you just use the letters, and in my mind, I always say what the fizzle instead of that naughty word.”

  Emily gulped half a glass of tea before she came up for air. Greg would just die if he knew what they were up to.

  “And I’m in charge of Christian Mingle,” Clarice said. “Rose put on her profile that Greg is a rancher who is available to single women ages twenty-five to thirty-four. I put on mine that he’s a good Christian man lookin’ for a good woman who loves the land.”

  Emily felt her eyes popping dangerously open. Could eyeballs be put back in her head if they fell out in her lap?

  “It’s secret and nobody can know. We call each other every day and report on the women who look good to us,” Rose said. “If you tell, Clarice will fire you on the spot.”

  “She won’t tell. She’s one of us now,” Clarice said.

  “Well, we could make her raise her right hand and put the other one on the Bible and swear to God,” Dotty said.

  “It isn’t necessary. What is said at bazaar meetings stays at bazaar meetings, and anyone who tells, God just strikes them dead on the spot,” Madge said. “I’m in charge of Farmers Only. The women who throw up their profiles when I’m Greg are supposed to know about farmin’, but some of them are just flat-out lyin’. It ain’t very many who I’d bring out here to meet him.”

&
nbsp; Emily was still speechless when she looked at Dotty.

  “I got Plenty of Fish. Hell, I don’t care if they are ranchers or Christian. We can bring them to Jesus and make them ranchin’ women. I just want to have a bunch of them so I can choose which one might work as a wife.”

  Rose nodded toward the tea and lemonade. “Emily, would you be bartender and bring us something to drink? Now, whoever buys the cowboy gets him for the evening, right? So we’d need to have the auction at, say, six o’clock? And are we going to tell about it on our dating sites so Greg can have lots and lots of women bidding on him?”

  Emily filled seven glasses and handed one to each of the ladies. Then she picked up the lemonade in one hand and the sweet tea in the other. Her hands were shaking so bad that she gripped the pitchers until her knuckles turned white.

  Clarice pointed at the lemonade when Emily crossed the floor toward her. “Let’s each invite our top four ladies and open the doors at four for the bazaar. Serve barbecue at five and then have the auction at six. How much do you think Greg will go for?”

  “Or Mason? I can talk him into it for sure. Hey, if we find Greg a wife, then we should get Prissy or Emily to help us make a profile for Mason. We could be the marriage angels of Fannin County,” Rose said.

  The next lady pointed at the tea. “Oh, my nephew, Carson, has been trying to outrun one lady over in Savoy for months. I bet she’d pay big bucks to own him for the whole evening. This is a great idea, Clarice, and if we find a wife for Greg, I’d sure be tossing Carson’s name in the hat for y’all four to work on next year,” another said. “We’ll all come about noon and help set up things, and we’ll stay and help clean up afterward. I bet we can offer a two-year scholarship this year, and more folks will turn out if it’s on Lightning Ridge rather than in the fellowship hall at the church.”

  “Hmmph!” Madge went back to her knitting. “Folks think if they walk into a church religion is going to jump out from the corners and attack them.”

  “Ain’t it the truth.” Rose nodded.

  Clarice set her glass on a cute little paper coaster on the table beside her. “I love this idea. And y’all can help set up, but the hired hands can clean out the barn and tear it all down afterward. We’re too old to be hustlin’ folding tables and sweeping down cobwebs. And Max can be our auctioneer—that way we won’t have to be out any money paying one. He does that for our cattle sale in the fall. Doors open at four with our wares on display, and that includes the cowboys for sale. They can all be sitting in a chair in the middle of the sale ring. We won’t make them stay in stalls. At five the auction starts and whoever buys that cowboy has to buy his supper. She owns him for the night. What do y’all think of that?”

  “Great idea, Clarice,” Emily said.

  Lemonade lady followed Clarice’s lead and set her glass to the side and picked up her embroidery. “Hey, y’all want to have a dance too? I got a niece I can get to play for free. She and her band gear up on Saturday night just to practice when they don’t have a real job. They can practice for a crowd as well as in her barn. And Emily, let me introduce the rest of us to you. I’m sorry I didn’t think to do it before now. We’ve all heard so much about you that we felt like we knew you, but I forgot you didn’t know us. I’m Ivy. That lady working with the pink baby yarn is Edna, and the one beside her is June. We’re glad you are working for Clarice. If you stay around these parts we’ll have to entice you into the auxiliary. We need new blood and new ideas.”

  Dotty talked as she worked. “Is there some way we could make the cowboy give us money for the dances?”

  “How about we don’t have the auction until the end of the evening and the ladies with the fans have to pay a dollar a song to dance with them all evening?” Madge said.

  “I like that. It’ll make even more money.” Clarice’s eyes twinkled. “The auction will close out the bazaar. The cowboys all sit in the sale ring when the band starts playing and they only dance with the ladies who pay their dollar. Only the women with a bidding fan can dance with them.”

  “Kind of like one of them speed dating things on television, only it’ll be speed dancin’.” Madge nodded.

  Emily returned the pitchers and sat back down. By the end of the afternoon, they’d have it all worked out and some lucky high school senior girl would wind up with a full scholarship from the ladies’ auxiliary that year.

  “And what does the lucky girl get who wins the bid on her cowboy? It will be too late for a date with them at that time of night,” Emily asked.

  “A date the next Friday night. She gets to plan it and he has to pay for it,” Edna said.

  Emily figured it out in her head. If the bazaar was held on the last Saturday night in the month, then the cowboy dates would be on the last day of February. She’d told Taylor when she drove away from her ranch that she’d be home by the first day of March. If she had enough money to outbid at least sixteen dating site women plus all the other ladies in the area would be the billion-dollar question.

  ***

  Clarice was rereading one of the letters she’d written to Marvin when she heard a familiar knock on her door. Two short raps followed by three speedy ones.

  “Come in, Dotty,” she called out.

  Dotty carried two cups of coffee on a tray into the room and set them down on the end table beside Clarice’s rocker. “Reading them again, are you?”

  “Thank you. After all that nibbling at Rose’s place, I’m ready for coffee. And yes, I’m reading again. It’s a good thing that I didn’t buy a bus ticket to go see him. I was so young and naive, and he was so romantic. He could have sweet-talked me into believing anything.”

  Dotty settled into the corner of the sofa with a cup of coffee in her hand. “You were both young. You would have grown up and grown old together, but that wasn’t what your destiny was. Mine and Rose’s and Madge’s was to come to Texas so we could grow old together after we lost our husbands. Yours was to marry Lester and have a wonderful son with him. Which reminds me, have you told Bart about all this?”

  Clarice shook her head. “Not yet. He calls on Sunday afternoon, which is tomorrow. I’ll tell him then, but only because I have to explain why Emily is here. Dotty, do you really think that everything happens for a reason?”

  “Damn straight tootin’ I do. It might not work out between Emily and Greg, but it was their destiny to meet to see if it would. We can like it or not like it, but when it comes down to the final period on the letter, the choice is theirs,” Dotty answered.

  “But Marvin and I didn’t have a choice,” Clarice said.

  “Sure you did. You could have hunted him down in person when the letters kept coming back to you. He could have swallowed his pride and come looking for you. He had your address and knew exactly how to find you. Ravenna isn’t Dallas, darlin’.”

  Clarice dropped the letter back into the boot box in her lap. “Kind of like two paths in the forest, right?”

  Dotty nodded. “That’s right, only a big oak tree had fallen across one path and you didn’t want to climb over it and ruin your stockings. They were expensive in those days, remember?”

  Clarice giggled like a little girl. “You always make it easy to understand.”

  Dotty changed the subject. “Do you remember those stockings and the garters?”

  “Of course I do, and the garter belts and those little fasteners that felt like we were sitting on rocks during Sunday morning church services,” Clarice said.

  “I thought God had sent us a miracle when the first panty hose came out.”

  “He did! And now down deep in my heart I think he’s sent us another one and her name is Emily.”

  Dotty leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t say that out loud. If Greg hears you, he’ll run like a scalded hound.”

  “It’s time. He’s thirty,” Clarice said.

  “The banister is
getting dusty,” Dotty said with a wink.

  “Needs some kids to slide down it. We’re workin’ on it. Do you think Emily was jealous today?” Clarice’s eyes twinkled.

  Dotty slapped a hand over her mouth to keep the laughter from exploding. When she had it under control she asked, “Oh, hell, yeah, she was jealous. You got your four candidates picked out?”

  Clarice shook her head. “But I’m going to decide before the end of the week. And I’m going to pick out the wildest ones of the lot just so they’ll go after Greg and make her more jealous.”

  “You tell Greg yet that he’s going to be auctioned off like a prize bull?”

  “You can tell him. I’ve got to figure out how in the devil I’m going to tell this whole story to Bart,” Clarice said.

  “The hell I will! I’d rather tell Bart about Marvin as that.”

  ***

  The walls of the bedroom closed in around Emily. Dusk was settling early with clouds rolling down from the north. Greg had disappeared after supper. Dotty and Clarice had gone to their rooms, most likely to pretend to be Greg on their dating sites. The weather site on her laptop said that there was a cold front coming from Oklahoma and that it could dump up to two inches of snow on them. More than likely north Texas would get a layer of ice and sleet instead of pretty snow. If she’d made a different decision at the first of the week, she’d be sitting on the beach. True, it wouldn’t be hot and sunny, but it wouldn’t have a coat of ice on the sand.

  She pulled back the curtain and looked out. Were the horses out there in the stable so far, that she couldn’t see them, as restless as she was?

  Gramps always said that when something was troubling the soul, even when a person had no idea what was doing the troubling, that good old hard work would bring it to surface. She’d mucked out stables at midnight, stacked hay in the barns in the middle of the night, even scrubbed the kitchen floor lots and lots of times, trying to make sense of the antsy feeling.