The Bridegroom

by Linda Lael Miller

  He shifted on the seat and took up the reins, but didn’t release the brake lever. Saying nothing, he simply waited to hear what she had to say.

  “Is Lark all right?” Lydia asked.

  “She’s a little poorly today,” Rowdy admitted. “I sent for Sarah to come and sit with her, in case her time is nigh.”

  Lydia waited out a rush of alarm. If Lark needed Sarah or anyone else to sit with her, she truly wasn’t well. She’d worn herself out helping to get the house ready to occupy the day before, and if any harm came to Lark because of that, Lydia knew she’d never forgive herself.

  “I’m coming with you,” she told Rowdy. “I’ll stay till Sarah comes.”

  “There’s no need of that,” Rowdy said. “That’s what Lark would tell you, anyhow. Helga offered to look after her, or at least ride herd on the kids, but Lark wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Lydia was already taking off her apron, smoothing her hair. “Please, wait for me,” she said quietly. “I’m just going to tell the aunts I’ll be out for a little while.”

  In spite of his earlier protest, Rowdy looked relieved. “I’ll wait,” he said gruffly. “And I’m obliged, Lydia.”

  Lydia dashed into the house, told Helga and the aunts she was going home with Rowdy and could not say when she’d be back, and returned, scrambling ably up into the wagon box before he could get down to help her.

  “Lark may need a doctor,” she ventured, once they were under way.

  “Doc Venable retired a couple of years ago,” Rowdy said, looking straight out over the backs of the two-horse team, but seeing, it seemed to Lydia, something she couldn’t, and slapping down the reins to hurry the animals up a little. “He still knows his business, but his eyesight isn’t what it used to be and he doesn’t make many house calls these days.”

  Lydia thought of her own father. He’d been a doctor, too, and a good one, though mostly ineffectual in every other area of his life. Although she hadn’t missed him in a very long time, she did then.

  “I see,” she said. “And there isn’t another physician in Stone Creek?”

  Rowdy shook his head. “Sam O’Ballivan’s been beating the brush for one, from here to San Francisco, but so far, no luck.”

  They reached the house quickly.

  The Yarbro children were sitting on the porch, in a solemn, tight little row, their shoulders touching.

  Lydia glanced at Rowdy, saw her own deepening concern reflected in his face.

  He’d barely brought the wagon to a stop when a long, shrill scream came from inside the house.

  The children flinched.

  “Christ!” Rowdy said, under his breath, bolting from the buckboard without setting the brake and running toward the house.

  The children didn’t move, except to break ranks momentarily so their father could dash between them. Their eyes were huge, and their faces were so pale, every freckle stood out.

  Lydia, following quickly behind Rowdy, paused to speak to them.

  “Hank,” she said, to the eldest boy, “do you know where Dr. Venable lives?”

  A tear streaked a crooked path down Hank’s cheek. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, stiffening when Lark screamed again.

  “You go and fetch him right now,” Lydia said.

  Hank launched himself off the step and ran hard for town.

  Lydia turned to Julia, who was shaking visibly, the two smaller children huddled against her sides.

  “Can you take Marietta and Joe and go to my—to Mrs. Porter’s house, Julia? Where we were yesterday?”

  The little girl nodded, dashed at her face with the back of one hand. “I know right where it is,” she said. “I’ve been there lots of times, with Mama.”

  “I want you to go straight there, then,” Lydia instructed, with a calmness she didn’t feel, especially after a third long, plaintive cry from Lark. “Helga and the aunts will look after you and Joe and Marietta until someone comes to bring you home.”

  Julia stood, taking her sister and brother by the hand. “Will you help my mama?” she asked. “She’s been carrying on like that since right after Papa left the house with the ladies and their things.”

  Lydia’s throat thickened, but she straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. “I’ll do everything I can to make your mama feel better, Julia,” she promised. “And I know it will ease her mind when I tell her you’ve been such a big, brave girl, and tended your brother and sister.”

  Mimicking Lydia’s actions, Julia squared her shoulders, and raised her chin. “You tell Mama that Joe and Marietta will be fine, because I mean to see to it.”

  Lydia managed a smile. Nodded. She was too choked up to speak again.

  She watched as Julia half dragged, half shooed the smaller children across the yard and onto the lane, where the puffs of dust Hank’s feet had raised as he ran were still settling.

  Neither Joe nor Marietta wanted to leave, which made Julia’s task that much harder.

  Joe shrieked for his mother, and Marietta was wailing at the top of her lungs, but Julia wouldn’t let them turn back.

  Lydia kept the three small children in sight until they’d rounded the bend and disappeared, then turned and hurried inside the house, up the front staircase, along the hallway.

  Finding Rowdy and Lark’s room wasn’t hard; a door stood open at the end of the corridor and, through that door, Lydia could see Lark writhing on a bed soaked red with blood.

  Lark’s skin glistened with perspiration, and she was deathly pale, due to the blood loss, no doubt, and the pain. Rowdy sat beside her, holding tightly to her hand, his face stony with fear.

  Seeing Lydia, Lark struggled to focus on her face. “The children?” she whispered raggedly. “Lydia—the children—”

  Lydia was already rolling up her sleeves, marveling at the strange and sudden strength rising within her. “They’re being looked after, Lark,” she said. “And Dr. Venable will be here soon—Hank’s gone to find him.”

  Lark sighed, closed her eyes, stiffening under another wave of pain.

  Lydia turned her attention to Rowdy. “I’ll need hot water,” she said. “And plenty of clean cloth.”

  Rowdy hesitated, torn between doing what he knew had to be done and staying at Lark’s side. Finally, after placing a kiss on Lark’s grayish, sweat-slickened forehead, he rose, gave Lydia one glance of mingled pleading and gratitude, and went to fetch the things she had asked for.

  Lark groped for Lydia’s hand, and Lydia gave it.

  “I can’t leave them,” Lark croaked, fairly crushing the bones in Lydia’s fingers. “The children—Rowdy—”

  “You’re not going to die, Lark,” Lydia said, again drawing on some heretofore unknown source of fortitude and certainty. “I won’t permit it.” She bent over Lark, so their faces were close together. “Do you hear me, Lark Yarbro? I will not permit you to die.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE BLUE GARTER SALOON, Gideon soon discovered, was at the tail end of Main Street, standing at a little distance from its larger competitors. It had never seen a lick of paint, nor did it boast the usual swinging doors. There weren’t any horse troughs and hitching rails out front, either.

  No need for Rowdy to count cayuses here, obviously.

  The shabby establishment was, in fact, hardly larger than the average woodshed, and surrounded on all sides by knee-high grass littered with old broken things of all types, empty bottles, weathered boards with rusty nails sticking out of them, the skeleton of a wheelbarrow.

  Searching his memory as he and O’Hanlon and the others approached the Blue Garter in a crowd—he doubted they’d all fit inside unless the place was empty except for the bartender, and he’d better be pretty small—Gideon finally recalled the saloon from his early days in Stone Creek.

  It had been a house back then, inhabited by a harried widow with a lot of kids.

  He and Rowdy had dropped by, on occasion, with a fifty-pound bag of dried beans, a mess of trout or the odd basket of eggs.


  He wondered, assessing the place, where that woman and her band of unkempt, perpetually hungry children had wound up.

  O’Hanlon jarred him loose from his reflections—this habit of letting his thoughts scatter every which way was getting out of hand—by slapping him on the back so hard that he nearly stumbled over the threshold of the Blue Garter Saloon.

  The fattest man Gideon had ever seen stood squeezed between the bar and the shelves of bottles and glasses, though there was no clientele in evidence. No piano player, either, since there was no piano.

  As the men straggled in, the bartender dunked an enormous hand into a crock amid a row of half-filled whiskey bottles and brought out three or four pickled eggs, shoved them into his mouth, and worked his jaw.

  The expression on his plate-size face was one of resignation, as he chewed and surveyed the new arrivals, rather than welcome.

  “Another half day, Paddy,” O’Hanlon announced. “And it’s thirsty we are.”

  Paddy chewed, swallowed, shoved his hand into the crock again, for another serving of pickled eggs.

  Gideon fought an urge to look away; watching the man eat took character.

  “No more credit, Mike,” Paddy said, after swallowing. His eyes were probably normal-size, but they looked small in the broad, copiously fleshy expanse of his face, and they tracked Gideon, marking him for a stranger. “And don’t give me any of your blarney about all of us being brothers and sons of the Old Sod, either. I’m not running this place for my health, you know.”

  From what Gideon could see, Paddy wasn’t doing much of anything for his health.

  “Our young friend, Yarbro, here,” O’Hanlon boomed, practically knocking Gideon over the bar with another slap on the back, “will stand good for a glass.”

  The fat man raised his eyebrows, strangely delicate in that face, feathery and smooth, like a woman’s. “Yarbro,” he repeated. “Any relation—?”

  “Rowdy and Wyatt are my brothers,” Gideon said, to get it out of the way. Other assignments, in other towns, had been easier in at least one way—he’d been able to use an alias, and no need to explain relationships.

  “Don’t see much of the marshal around here,” Paddy answered, replacing the lid of the crock and wiping his massive hand on the stained front of his shirt. “And before I pour a drop of whiskey, I’ll have to see your money.”

  Were it not for his long-standing habit of carrying a twenty-dollar gold piece in his right boot—one of the few bits of advice his pa had ever given him that he’d actually followed—Gideon would have been on the spot, since his pockets were empty.

  Grinning, he kicked off that boot, upended it over the bar, and watched the bartender’s face as the gold piece clunked solidly onto the scarred wooden surface, along with some dirt and a few pebbles.

  Paddy put out a paw and made the coin disappear, paying no mind to the red Arizona soil and the tiny rocks.

  “Belly up, then,” he said to the company in general, though his eyes lingered curiously on Gideon, who gazed steadily back at him. “Whiskey all around.”

  This brought a cheer from the assembly, and everybody shoved their way forward to hoist a glass.

  Mike O’Hanlon stood so close to Gideon, of necessity in that throng, that their shoulders were wedged together. It was like leaning against a stone wall. “Twenty dollars, then,” the Irishman remarked, attempting subtlety and going wide of the mark. “Quite a sum to walk around on.”

  Gideon sighed, eyed his portion of whiskey and wished he didn’t have to drink it. Between Paddy’s penchant for pickled eggs and the rank smell of so many sweating and seldom-bathed bodies in such close quarters, he felt a little on the queasy side.

  He leveled a sidelong glance at O’Hanlon, mostly so he wouldn’t have to look at Paddy, whose belly spilled over the top of that bar like a mud slide covering half a road.

  “Maybe you’d like to know where I got that money, O’Hanlon,” Gideon said. He’d explained the ham. He’d taken some guff about his sister-in-law owning a railroad. And that was all he meant to put up with.

  “Call me Mike,” O’Hanlon said, moving as if to slap Gideon on the back again, then apparently thinking better of it. His whiskey glass disappeared completely between his big hands. “Call me Mike, young Yarbro.”

  “My name,” Gideon said in response, “is Gideon.”

  “Good Bible name, Gideon,” Mike allowed, before taking a lusty gulp from his glass.

  Figuring the alcohol would kill most of the germs on his own glass, Gideon braced himself inwardly and took a slug himself. Managed not to wince as the rotgut burned its way to his belly and then did its damnedest to come right back up.

  “They do this often?” he asked, when he was fairly sure he could speak in a normal, offhand tone of voice. Paddy, busy pouring whiskey all the while, was still watching him. “The mine owners, I mean? Cut a shift in half?”

  Mike had emptied his glass, and shoved it forward for Paddy to refill.

  Twenty dollars would buy a lot of whiskey, but Gideon wasn’t expecting to get any change back.

  “Every once in a while,” Mike said, after a blissful shudder of appreciation. “It’s how they repay us for our hard work, isn’t it? We put them far enough ahead, they shove us backward a stride or two.”

  One of the other men spoke—the first time any member of the crew, besides Mike, had addressed Gideon with anything more than a glare or a grunt. “My youngest—Molly—she’s down with the croup. Half-starved on the wages I do bring home, and now I’ll be short half a day’s pay.”

  “If not more than that,” another man said glumly. “I say we give them back some of their own. Shut the place down. See how they like that.”

  Mike leaned around Gideon to glare. “O’Brien,” he growled, “mind your tongue.”

  A wave of grumbling moved through the group, but the men were all too busy bending their elbows, and trying to get into Paddy’s pickled-egg crock, to comment.

  Gideon forced himself to swallow the rest of his whiskey, and when Paddy passed over his glass on the next round, he felt appreciation, as well as an uneasy wondering.

  The whiskey fest lasted almost an hour, before they got to the end of Gideon’s twenty-dollar gold piece, but no more was said about a strike. Mike O’Hanlon made sure of that.

  And when there was no more whiskey—and no more pickled eggs, to Paddy’s visible irritation—there was no reason to stay, either. The men wandered out, by twos and threes, until only Mike and Gideon and the mountainous bartender remained.

  “O’Brien was just flappin’ his jaws,” Mike said casually, and at some length, sighing as he shoved his glass away knowing it wouldn’t be refilled this time. “About shutting down the mine, I mean.”

  Gideon shrugged. “Makes no difference to me,” he said, pushing away from the bar.

  Mike watched him with the usual intensity, and for a long time. “It ought to make a difference to you, young Yarbro,” he said. “You’ve got a new wife to look after, now, don’t you? Or are there a lot more gold pieces where that one came from?”

  Gideon set his jaw, refused to answer.

  “Show the man some gratitude, Mike,” Paddy scolded, surprising Gideon—until he noticed that the watchful glint was still there, in the big man’s pinhole eyes. “And a few more gold pieces wouldn’t go amiss, as far as I’m concerned. You and the boys, for all your pissing and moaning about what the wives and kids will be doing without, must have close to a hundred dollars on my books, owing for whiskey.”

  Paddy didn’t seem the sort to be concerned for the womenfolk and the wee-ones, not to Gideon, anyway. No, he was concerned about the money he had coming, and would probably never see.

  Still, his words brought a crimson flush rushing up Mike’s neck to pound bright in his face. For a moment, Gideon thought sure he was about to reach across that bar, take Paddy by the throat, and crush his windpipe.

  Instead, Mike ground out, “A man’s got to take his
comfort somewhere, now, doesn’t he?”

  Gideon watched Paddy’s reaction through his eyelashes, pretending to lament that his own glass was empty, and was interested to see a look of fear cross the man’s face.

  “I’ve got a wife and two babes of my own, Mike,” he said. “We’re barely holding on, just like you.”

  Mike, still standing closer to Gideon than he would have liked, had gone stiff with anger. Now, he let out a long breath, relaxed a little. “And your own dear wife would be my sister, wouldn’t she?” he sighed, and the sound carried all the suffering of all the Irish, from time immemorial. “How is Maureen? According to my Mary, saint that she is, Maureen hasn’t been around our place for a while.”

  Gideon might have made some excuse and gone home then, were it not for two things. One was his reluctance to face Lydia after what he’d told her that morning, about how he’d be leaving soon, and the other was the look he’d seen in Paddy’s eyes when Mike stood up to him.

  “Maureen’s gone to stay with that cousin of yours for a while,” Paddy said, fetching a filthy rag and beginning to wipe down the bar with it. “Took the kids with her, didn’t she?”

  Mike straightened, worked his broad shoulders as though they pained him. And maybe they did, because he’d probably been doing the work that, in a day and a half, had nearly killed Gideon, since he was younger than Rowdy’s Hank.

  “Ah, yes, Cousin Bridie,” Mike drawled, in a tone that sounded idle and clearly wasn’t. “Thinks highly of herself, our Bridie, with her easy life.”

  “She can put food in Maureen’s and the babes’ mouths,” Paddy replied, his courage at least partly restored, it seemed. “That’s more than I can do, Mike.”

  “Aye,” Mike agreed wearily. “Or me, either.”

  O’Hanlon was drunk—or at least, he wanted Gideon to think so. Sure, he’d had a few, but not enough to show on a man his size. It could be, of course, that Mike wasn’t so accustomed to swilling whiskey as he’d seemed, but with what he owed Paddy, that didn’t seem likely.

  “I’d send me own Mary to Bridie,” Mike went on, readying himself to leave, though he hadn’t moved far from the bar. “The little ones, too, if it weren’t for this damnable pride of mine.”