The Mail Order Brides of Last Chance

by Lucille Chisum

  Her next concern was food, of course, but at the moment Hallie knew she could do little about that.

  She also knew she should look around, though, just to see if she could see where the trail led to and there might be any dangers they should know about.

  Hallie debated whether to do that alone or with the girls, and finally she decided it was time to get them up.

  She might as well weather the storm when it came to the tantrum they would throw, and Hallie also knew that the sooner she helped them deal with the fright that would come with their discovery of what had happened with the driver and the stage, the better off they would be.

  This time she wasn’t shy about entering the tent. Hallie opened the flap, and this time she ruffled it as she did, making a small amount of noise.

  “Time to get up,” she said, softly but firmly. “It’s nearly mid-day.”

  She heard a groan come from the other end of the tent, but Hallie couldn’t tell whether the source was Josie or Kayleen. They both had high-pitched voices that had grated on her at times during the trip, but the sound she heard now was more of a low moan.

  Hallie pushed at one of the two sleeping bags to see if she could get a reaction. Nothing. So she pushed at the other, and that definitely did the trick.

  “Unhhh . . .”

  “Come on, ladies,” Hallie said, upping the volume a little. “Time to rise and shine.”

  She heard another moan, and this one was louder. It at least allowed her to focus on which sleeping bag contained the girl who was making the noise, and Hallie kicked at that bag again, the one on the right, a little bit harder this time.

  That drew yet another moan, and Hallie saw the body inside the bag begin to twist and turn slightly.

  It’s a start, she thought, but not nearly enough.

  So she grabbed at the end of the bag, until finally Hallie found a foot. She took it and twisted it with both hands, not enough to hurt, but definitely hard enough to deliver a message.

  “Let’s go, ladies!” she said, upping the volume another level. “We have to get up!”

  That got things off the ground. Hallie heard another moan, and then another sharp yelp, and she let go of the foot to see if she’d done enough.

  “What’s happening?” one of the girls said, her voice a low moan. Hallie couldn’t tell which one it was, and she just smiled to herself.

  How in the world did the driver manage to get these two up? she thought, having brought a small separate tent for the trip.

  “We have a problem,” Hallie said, keeping her voice firm and strong. “You both have to get up . . . now.”

  She heard a couple of additional moans, and Hallie shook her head. I had no idea these girls were so spoiled, she thought.

  Then Hallie paused and realized she shouldn’t be so judgmental. We’ve been through so much, she thought. It’s not really all that surprising they were as tired as I was, or more.

  Still, Hallie knew she had to stick to her guns about getting them up. It took a good ten or fifteen minutes, but finally the girls managed to rouse themselves and get dressed.

  “Where’s the stagecoach?” Josie asked, blinking as she stepped out into the sunlight. “And where’s Emile?”

  Hallie grimaced when she mentioned the name of the driver, who’d apparently fleeced them for good. For a second she allowed herself to think of what she’d do to him, if he were here right now, balling her hands into fists.

  “He’s gone,” she said softly. “And so is the stage. Apparently he took off and left us here.”

  “What?” Kayleen said, her voice cracking slightly as tears appeared in the corners of her eyes. “How could that happen? And what about . . . our money? The money we paid for the trip?”

  Hallie shook her head, hating to be the bearer of bad news. “Gone, apparently,” she said. “And it doesn’t look like he’s coming back. Nor is our money, which means we’ll have to figure out a way to get to Denver on our own.”

  Josie’s jaw dropped. “But how?” she asked.

  She shook her head a second time, surprised that both girls weren’t wailing to beat the band. “I have no idea at the moment,” Hallie said. “But we have to get organized.”

  “Organized,” Kayleen said as she looked around, her expression crestfallen. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve just been trying to figure out our situation,” Hallie replied. “To get a handle on what we should do.”

  “Do,” Kayleen repeated. “We’re stranded out here. What can we do?”

  “Survive,” Hallie said simply. “That’s the most important thing to do right now. It will take a lot of work, and we have to figure out a way to do that.”

  With that, both girls fell silent, and suddenly the gravity of their situation became clear to all three girls. No food, no real shelter other than a pair of tents, and no horse or other form of transportation.

  Right now the stream looked like all they had, and it certainly didn’t seem like much.

  “So what do we do, exactly?” Josie asked, looking to Hallie to take the lead.

  Hallie took a deep breath. “Well, we need to prepare the campsite first, because it looks like we’ll need to stay here for at least a day or so until we can decide what to do.”

  “We can help with that,” Kayleen said, suddenly looking slightly more hopeful. “It will give us something to do instead of just sitting around worrying.”

  “Exactly,” Hallie said, nodding. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “What else?” Josie asked. “Tell us what else needs to be done.”

  “We should look around as well,” Hallie added, nodding at the prairie around them. “We’re near a trail, but it could be dangerous. So we need to understand the lay of the land, so to speak.”

  That seemed more threatening to both of them. Josie looked at Kayleen, and the girls exchanged glances nervously before looking back at Hallie.

  “All right. We can do that,” Kayleen said, sounding anything but certain about it.

  “Good,” Hallie said, trying to sound a lot more confident than she actually felt. “That should get us started.”

  Both girls nodded, and Hallie smiled, hoping her smile looked encouraging.

  Truth be told, I’m scared out of my wits, she thought. All of this will help a little, but only because it will keep us busy.

  The truth of the matter is that we’ll need a huge break just to get out of this alive. It really is in God’s hands now, and all we can do is do the best we can to avoid losing hope.

  “So how do we find these girls, exactly?” Caleb asked, staring out at the setting sun, which had almost vanished over the horizon.

  The ride to the campsite had gone quite smoothly. Jason was more than ready when Caleb arrived, and their pace had been swift and steady.

  They’d made it to the site just as they were about to run out of daylight, and as a result they’d had to set up for the night in a hurry.

  “I have almost no idea,” Jason said, shaking his head as he took a sip of coffee from the metal cup he’d brought along.

  They were both just staring at the campfire, prepared to turn in, but more than a little preoccupied with the task in front of them the next day.

  “Almost?” Caleb asked, wondering if that meant there wasn’t a ray of hope in all this.

  “Yeah, sort of,” Jason said, and he managed a slight smile. “The truth of it is, this is the only trail for miles around in this direction, so if they ended up east of Last Chance and Denver, the chances are they’re either somewhere out here or they came out this way.”

  Caleb cocked his head and considered his words. “That’s not much to go on,” he said. “There’s a lot of prairie out here.”

  Jason laughed, breaking some of the tension they were both feeling about how to proceed.

  “Yeah, no doubt about that,” he said. “But I’m a scout, and I’ve been doing this for a while now. And I’ve found people with less to go on than thi
s.”

  Caleb nodded, having heard a lot of the stories and not just from Jason. He’d talked to several other scouts as well, ones employed by Jason, and some of their stories were nearly as amazing.

  This was what he’d longed to do, to pull off the kinds of things these scouts did—rescue people, warn them of danger, all of it. It seemed like a life of adventure to Caleb, and he knew that even though he was young he still had the ability for it.

  But he also knew there was plenty of tedium that came with it. Long rides and endless days, and a kind of saddle soreness that never really went away, even off the trail.

  Throw in the danger from robbers and Apaches, and Caleb knew there were things that went with this life that were anything but romantic.

  Still, he’d had his bit of success. Caleb felt he’d done all right in helping Althea rescue Joseph, and Jason’s praise had meant the world to him, as sparse as it had been.

  Just give me another chance, he thought as they sat together watching the sun go down. And I’ll show that I have what it takes and then some.

  “So what are we looking for, then?” Caleb asked, knowing there probably wasn’t a good answer to this question.

  Jason took a deep breath. “Some little thing that will give us a clue,” he said, shrugging as he spoke. “You never really know what it will be. Every once in a while something will reach up and jump out at you, but that sure don’t happen very often.”

  Caleb nodded, and suddenly he remembered back to Joseph’s rescue. It had been just like that, a little thing that had allowed them to connect the dots and find him just in time.

  I sure hope we get that lucky again, he thought.

  “Think we’ll find it?” he asked when Jason remained silent.

  Once again, Jason shrugged. “Actually, I think we’ve got a better chance than it looks like we’ve got,” he said.

  Caleb frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it,” Jason explained. “There’s three girls, from what I’ve been told, although it wouldn’t surprise me if this had happened to more like them if it happened once.

  “So our chances of finding three people are a lot better than just finding one.”

  “True,” Caleb said, nodding. “I never thought of it that way. Then he smiled at Jason. “I guess it pays to look on the bright side sometimes, huh?”

  “Sometimes,” Jason replied, nodding slightly. Then he turned thoughtful. “But I’ve found it helps most to look at the situation as it is. It’s easy to find hope when you’re looking for it, just like it’s easy to see the worst when you start looking for that.

  “And both of those things will get you in a heap of trouble before you know what happened.”

  Caleb returned his nod, considering his words. He thought back once again to Joseph and the rescue, trying to remember if he’d been predisposed in either direction.

  The truth of the matter was that he was just in the moment for most of it, and perhaps that was what had allowed him and Althea to be successful.

  “Watcha thinkin’?” Jason asked as he watched Caleb turn pensive.

  “Nothing special,” the boy replied. “Just thinking back to the way I was when we found Joseph.” He laughed. “I really wasn’t thinking much at all.”

  Jason laughed and nodded. “Sometimes that works well, too,” he said. “There’s definitely times when it’s best not to think.”

  Then Caleb gave out a huge yawn, and Jason grinned at him.

  “And there’s definitely time to get some shuteye, too,” he said. “So we should turn in. We’re gonna have to be up with the sun tomorrow . . . maybe sooner.”

  “No doubt,” Caleb replied, nodding. “Guess we’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

  Jason’s grin grew. “You got that right,” he said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us. Without a shadow of a doubt.”

  The day proved fruitful for Hallie and the two girls. It took a couple of hours to get the campsite set up the way it needed to be, although they all knew that some of that was just busywork they were making up to keep themselves occupied.

  Once they were done with that, they walked. Their walk was long, but there really wasn’t much to see. They knew it wouldn’t be safe to wander very far off the trail, but the landscape was all the same.

  If there was something that would allow them to escape enemies or help them be discovered, it wasn’t readily apparent.

  Halfway through the walk, Hallie began to wonder if the length of their walk was truly wise. She was beginning to feel sharp hunger pangs, and she couldn’t imagine it being different for any of the other girls.

  “Perhaps we should head back to the campsite,” she said, noting that the sun was as high in the air as it was going to get. “We have no food, after all.”

  Then something odd happened. Josie and Kayleen looked at one another in a way that was decidedly conspiratorial, and Hallie looked from one to the other, with no idea of what was going on.

  Finally, Josie started to giggle, and Kayleen quickly followed suit. That was when Hallie realized there was something going on between them, and it piqued her curiosity more than a little.

  “Is there something I should know about?” she asked, trying to keep the annoyance from her voice.

  Josie blushed. “Well . . . yes, probably,” she said, looking down at the ground as she did. Kayleen suppressed yet another giggle, and Hallie found her annoyance with the two of them beginning to grow.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “We have a small amount of food,” Josie said, her voice small. “It might help for a little while.”

  “You do?” Hallie shook her head, trying to understand what the girl was saying. “How? What kind of food?”

  This time it was Kayleen who spoke. “It’s jerky,” she said, her tone less timid than the other girl’s. “We’ve saved small amounts from each meal, and from when Emile gave us some when we were out on the trail.”

  Josie nodded, seemingly finding courage in her friend’s explanation. “We kept it in a separate pouch.”

  Hallie blinked, feeling somewhat more hopeful. There was certainly nothing wrong with this, and it might turn out to be a godsend for them.

  Then she realized that this food didn’t belong to her. It belonged to the two other girls, silly though they were, and it was theirs to do with as they pleased.

  “Well then,” Hallie said, tamping down the initial surge of hope she’d felt. “That should certainly come in handy for both of you.”

  As soon as she spoke, the demeanor of the two girls changed completely. They looked at one another slightly alarmed, and for an instant Hallie thought they would both try to speak at once.

  Instead, though, it was Josie who took the lead this time.

  “Oh, you don’t understand,” she began, rushing her words. “We would never not share it with you. It’s for all of us.”

  Josie looked at Kayleen who nodded enthusiastically. Hallie smiled, suddenly understanding that these girls truly did have good hearts, even with their tendencies toward frivolity.

  “You don’t have to do that, you know,” she said.

  Kayleen shook her head vigorously. “But we have to,” she said. “You showed us how to organize the campsite, and you helped us to not panic.”

  “Yes,” Josie agreed. “If it wasn’t for that, we would have lost all hope by now.”

  “So it’s not an option, to do otherwise,” Kayleen said, the two girls beginning to finish each other’s thoughts and sentences. “We will make it through this together, and share what we have.”

  Hallie smiled gratefully. “Well, thank you, then,” she said. “And I agree about making it through this together. It is the only way we have a chance to survive.”

  Both girls nodded in agreement, and Josie pulled a small pouch from the pocket of her gingham dress. Sure enough, she extracted several bits of jerky, and Hallie could tell immediately that they were hard and stale.

  But it di
dn’t matter. It was food, and the sharp pain in the pit of Hallie’s stomach told her it was essential to eat it. Normally she wouldn’t have touched jerky, for it would sit in her belly and twist it into knots.

  Now, however, that didn’t matter. Hallie took a small bite of the jerky, and immediately she began to feel less faint, and slightly stronger as well. She only ate a couple of pieces, and Hallie watched as the girls ate slightly more.

  “Are you sure you don’t want more?” Josie asked. “There is enough for it.”

  Hallie shook her head. “I have had enough for now,” she replied, still worried about what the jerky would do to her stomach if she ate too much.

  “I want to make sure that what I have eaten sits well. I will have more when we get back to camp if it does,” she added.

  “All right,” Kayleen said, nodding at Josie. “We will save some of it, then. We have some back at camp, but it is still a small amount. It will only last for a couple of days, maybe three at most.”

  Hallie shrugged. “It’s enough,” she said. “It will have to be. Hopefully we can figure out something else by then, either move on or find something else to eat.”

  Even as she spoke, though, Hallie knew how unlikely this was. For all their efforts to make some sense of their situation and make progress as well, nothing had changed.

  Hallie looked down at the campsite as they approached. They’d been up on a small hill of sorts, which was one of the few distinguishing features of the area.

  Their walk had produced little worth mentioning; it had merely confirmed Hallie’s initial impression that they were stuck in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by endless prairie.

  And in a matter of moments, they would be back at the campsite. Their predicament would be the same; nothing had changed, really, other than the revelation that the girls had enough food to sustain them for another day or two.

  It would still take a miracle to save them. There was no doubt about that.

  Caleb and Jason rode hard the next day. The stage slowed them up, of course, but they still made good time, mostly because Jason knew the trail so well.