Merry's Mission

by Margaret Tanner

  A tremor shook her body as she thought of Zeke and the confession died on her lips. Forgive me God, I’m only doing this terrible thing to save my life.

  The preacher returned accompanied by a middle-age woman and an older man. Within a few minutes Nathanial Quinn was her husband. Fortunately, the ring fit perfectly. Her voice held a waver when she had given her vows, Nate’s voice had been strong and clear.

  She signed the church register as M. Baker, rather than Maryanne Baker, because it was only half a lie this way. They walked out of the church into the sunlight.

  “Well, Mrs. Quinn.” Nate grinned. “Let’s head for home.”

  She had hoped he might suggest they stop at the diner they had passed coming in and have a coffee. He made no such offer, obviously anxious to get back home.

  Chapter Five

  They drove along in silence and she surveyed the countryside with interest. It gave her a strange feeling to think her father might have passed this way before he was killed. Her mother had always said it was their mission to come here and find out what happened to him. No reason why she couldn’t make a few discrete enquiries herself. Ma wouldn’t bother now. All she cared about was Zeke.

  Distant mountains appeared somewhat hazy. “Is Laramie the nearest town to your place?”

  “Yeah.”

  Obviously, he wasn’t much of a talker.

  “What do you run on your ranch?”

  “Cattle mostly, a few horses. I’ve got pigs and chickens, makes me fairly self- sufficient.”

  “Do you grow vegetables?”

  “No, I don’t have the time.”

  “You don’t eat vegetables?” Merry was surprised as they had always grown vegetables at home. She corrected herself, Winslow wasn’t home anymore.

  “I could start a garden. We had one at home. M….My aunt and I liked gardening.” Be careful what you say, she warned herself.

  “You didn’t mention anything about gardening in your letters.” He slapped the horse’s rump to get it to speed up a little.

  She forced a laugh. “A woman has to keep a few secrets.”

  “Not from her husband.”

  Was he getting suspicious? She glanced sideways at him. He was staring straight ahead, his well-shaped lips slightly pursed. He hadn’t even kissed her after the preacher pronounced them husband and wife. At the weddings she had attended the groom always kissed his bride. Maybe the tradition was only for ceremonies conducted in a church.

  “There’s an old woman, Aggie, no-one knows what her other name is, who lives a couple of miles from me. She grows vegetables which she gives to me in exchange for some of my meat.”

  “Sounds like a good arrangement.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I don’t use many vegetables. I mainly eat tin beans, ham, eggs and occasionally fried potatoes.”

  “It doesn’t sound very wholesome.”

  “It’s quick and easy for me. When I go to town, I usually buy a meal at the diner. They do good beef steaks there.”

  “We should have gone to the diner after the preacher married us,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “As well, as a sort of celebration.”

  “If you wanted to go there you should have told me.”

  The man was obviously clueless when it came to woman, yet he’d once been married.

  “Tell me about your wife.”

  Silence.

  “It must have been awful for you.”

  “It was.” His reply was brief, straight to the point.

  “Were you married long?” It was hard getting anything much out of him.

  “About three years.”

  “You must have been young.”

  “Eighteen.”

  “That was young.”

  “There was a war going on. I got Lucille in the family way, so we had to get married in case I got killed. We were in Colorado.”

  “You were in the Union army?”

  “Yeah, the government wouldn’t be handing out free land to a Johnny Reb, now would they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “My service in the army helped me get my land grant.”

  “You mentioned about buying the place next door.”

  “Yeah, I did. Probably shouldn’t have as I couldn’t really afford it, but Eddie sold it to me cheap. He knew I could do with the extra acres and he didn’t want Vasey to get it.” His lips tightened.

  “Vasey?”

  “The biggest landholder in these parts. He drives small settlers out and gets hold of their places for practically nothing. He’s got people at the Land Agency on his payroll if you ask me.”

  “How terrible.”

  “He’s ruthless and greedy.”

  She was starting to get the picture about why he was so desperate to have a wife. It would stand him in good stead with the Land Agency people and he’d have help on his ranch. Not to mention the other wifely duties. Keeping house for him as well as doing some outside chores didn’t faze her. It was the other wifely duties, which worried her. Would it be horrible?

  Ma certainly hadn’t thought so the way she carried on with Zeke, but she had been married before and had birthed a child. Worry ate into her bones until they ached. She gritted her teeth to stop from asking him to have the marriage annulled. If he did, what would become of her?

  On and on they traveled with the countryside becoming more untamed looking.

  “I can get a job at the brickworks once I sign the papers for my land. I had to borrow from the bank to buy Eddie’s place.”

  “Oh?”

  “He already had title to his land. He got here before me. Someone else was supposed to have had my place, but something happened causing the deal to fall through. Guess I was in the right place at the right time, otherwise I would have had to take something even further out of town.”

  “Were you born in Colorado?” she asked.

  “No, Texas. My family moved around a lot, so I’ve lived in a few states.”

  “I’ve only ever lived in Wyoming. My father….” She pulled herself up before blurting out about him dying in Laramie. It was hard work being a liar.

  “What about your father?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Have we got far to go?” She heard the river before she saw it. “We have to cross the river?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry, there’s a bridge.”

  “Thank goodness, I don’t fancy a swim.”

  The wooden bridge, when they came to it, was flimsy looking to her, although neither Nate nor the horse seemed bothered as they clattered across it. On the other side, the reasonably good road of before, became rougher.

  Trees and bushes grew close to the steep riverbank although the further they got away from it, the flatter the land became. Hills on either side opened into a wide expanse of grassland scattered with trees.

  “Those cattle over there,” he pointed carry the NQ brand.”

  “Oh?”

  “They’re mine. It’s part of Eddie’s place, well mine now if I can keep up the bank payments.”

  “You will.” She touched his arm. “I can help.”

  About twenty minutes later, nestled behind the trees she spied a chimney, and as they drew closer spied a log cabin. Two windows were on either side of the front door, which was covered by a porch, and there was a small window in what would be the loft area.

  He followed her gaze. “I’m only using the loft for storage, but it would easily convert to a bedroom. I haven’t had the time or the need for it before.”

  Butterflies danced around in the pit of her stomach. Did he expect her to fill it with babies? She wanted babies, always had. It was the making of them that worried her. Would she be able to do it? Had Nate been with any woman other than his dead wife?

  “Well, here we are. What do you think?” Excitement edged his voice. He was obviously proud of his home.

  “Nice, did you build it?”

  “Yes, with a little help.”

  He took her han
d to help her alight from the buckboard and she stepped warily forward and onto the porch of her new home. After placing her carpet bags on the porch, he said. “Go inside, I’ll see to the horse. Won’t be long.”

  Nate Quinn obviously didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. Weren’t husbands supposed to carry their brides across the threshold of their new home? Tears pricked at her eyes. “Don’t be so foolish,” she muttered. “It’s not as if this is a love match.” It could be because she felt instantly drawn to him.

  She took a few tentative steps over to the unlocked door and entered a combined kitchen and sitting room. The door off to one side was probably the bedroom. A small cook stove sat in a large brick fireplace, which had been divided in two separate parts. By the looks of it, a fire could be set in the open section if the weather became cold and the stove didn’t throw out enough heat.

  There was a small wooden table and chairs. A shabby leather sofa had a matching armchair. A large kitchen dresser took up almost one wall. The place was tidy with nothing left lying around. It was obvious Nate had cleaned it up in preparation for her arrival.

  A vase, well a glass jar full of flowers stood on the mantel. As she stepped over to see if they had any perfume, she was amazed to find no water in the jar. It was obvious he didn’t have any idea. It was sweet of him to try. Disappointingly, there was no perfume coming from the yellow and white daisies.

  Taking off Maryanne’s bonnet, she decided to put coffee on for them. The fire in the stove had burned down to a bed of glowing embers so she grabbed a couple of logs to feed it. After checking the coffee pot, she set it on to heat.

  The next place to investigate was the bedroom. Dubiously she peeked around the corner. Like the other room in the cabin, the bare boards were covered by tanned cowhides.

  Her eyes became riveted on the large double bed in the center of the room. Her heart slammed against her rib cage and her mouth dried up. Ma had never mentioned anything about what to expect in the marital bed. All she knew was her woman’s time came every month, and if it stopped after she had relations with a man, it meant a baby was on the way.

  Glancing through the bare window she spotted Nate striding toward the cabin. Turning sharply on her heel she scurried back into the other room.

  Chapter Six

  Nate entered the cabin and removed his hat. “Ah, there you are. I’ll put your bags in the bedroom. I made space for you in my closet.”

  “Thank you, I’ve put the coffee on. If you tell me what food you have, I can organize something for supper.”

  “I should have brought bread from the bakery in town. Sorry, I didn’t think of it.”

  She shrugged. “If you’ve got flour and eggs, I could make pancakes.”

  “I’ve got plenty of flour and sugar in the kitchen dresser. My chickens lay well, too. There’s a root cellar under the mat near the door, it’s got a bit of stuff in it as well.”

  “Where do you get your water from?”

  There’s a creek behind that line of trees. It comes from higher up in the mountains and is nice and clean. I fill a couple of barrels up at a time and use a little hand cart I made to bring them to the back porch. I was going to sink a well but bought Eddie’s place instead.”

  Nate wondered why he was gabbling like this. Merry made him nervous. She sure was a pretty gal with her copper colored hair, well, that’s what he would call it, although she’d mentioned in her letter it was brown. Her soft lips looked extremely kissable and he couldn’t wait to taste them. Tonight, he would, when he made her his wife, he would probably just about devour them. The wedding ring she wore on her left hand gave him the right, and no power on earth would stop him from exercising it. He was tempted to kiss her right now but might get his face slapped for his trouble.

  She was skittish he could see and was it shy? He guessed it would be an ordeal marrying a man you didn’t know and wondering what to expect from him in their marital bed. He didn’t have much experience with women having been young when he married Lucinda. They hadn’t spent much time together because of the war. By the time it was over, and he came home it was already too late, her and their baby daughter, who he had only ever seen a couple of times, were dead.

  “Do you want to see my chickens?”

  She nodded.

  “Um, looking after them can be one of your chores.”

  “All right.”

  “Can you milk a cow?”

  “Yes. I can hitch up a buckboard, saddle and ride a horse, too.”

  He wondered whether she was being sarcastic. This getting himself a bride wasn’t as easy as he had thought it would be. Those big blue eyes of hers held a wariness and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Furtive maybe? No, that wasn’t the word he was looking for. Was she hiding something from him?

  He held the back door open so she could step onto the porch ahead of him. Surely that wasn’t disappointment he felt because she hadn’t mentioned how good the cabin looked after all his hard work to try and make it presentable?

  “I liked the flowers.” She touched his hand, a fleeting encounter of bare flesh against bare flesh, yet it sent a fiery shard up his arm. “They need water,” she said softly, “otherwise they will quickly wilt and die.”

  “I didn’t know, I just wanted to pretty the place up for you.”

  “You did, everything looks nice. You must have worked hard on it.”

  “Yeah, I did. I put sheets on the bed, too.” He didn’t know why he blurted that out.

  “You don’t usually have sheet?” Her eyes twinkled, causing him to go weak at the knees.

  “Only sometimes. When I get home after working all day, I cook a bit of supper and tumble into bed. I’m too exhausted to worry about it.”

  They walked in silence for a moment. “Why did you choose to become a Mail Order Bride?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t live with my aunt any longer, and I couldn’t think of anything else to get away from Winslow.”

  “I thought you lived in Raeburn.”

  “Winslow was the name of our place.” Red tinged her cheeks.

  He was missing something here but wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Ooh, that’s a nice big barn. Did you build it?”

  “I built everything on this place. There was nothing here when I first came. I lived in a tent for a while. Luckily it was summer.”

  “Did you get all the timber from here?” She gathered eggs from the laying boxes as she spoke. Six wasn’t a bad number.

  “I cut most of the timber from here, the bricks came from the brickworks in Laramie. I was thinking, the day after tomorrow the people from the Land Agency are coming, so maybe the next day we could go into Laramie for supplies. You’ll know what you need by then.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “I’ll go and see them at the brickworks, I know someone who works there, and they might be able to get me a job.”

  “You’ve got a ranch to run.”

  “I know, but I need extra money to pay the bank back. I don’t like owing money to people.”

  They headed back to the cabin, by this time the sun was beginning to sink behind the mountains, staining them red.

  “I should have done it before, but I better go and milk Tilly. She’s a cantankerous old thing, but not a bad milking cow.”

  “Tilly?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “She answers to her name, too.”

  “I could do it.”

  “Thanks, better for you to get supper started. I’m looking forward to a decent meal.”

  “How do you know I can cook?”

  “You told me in your letter.”

  “Oh, so I did. For a moment I forgot.”

  “The outhouse is down there.” He jerked his thumb over his right shoulder.

  “Thanks, I saw it. Do you want coffee before you start milking?”

  “No, I may as well wait for supper, thanks.” Striding off he headed toward the milking shed which was next t
o the barn. He glanced back at Merry who was now standing on the porch staring after him.

  He got half a bucket of milk from Tilly, about the usual amount and carried it back to the cabin. Normally, he fed most of the milk to his pigs, but wasn’t sure how much Merry might need for cooking.

  Mixing up the mush for the pigs was another chore she could do. He wouldn’t allow his wife to perform heavy manual work, even though he knew a lot of small ranchers did.

  His grandparents had been English, and they had spent their later years with them. Pa had been an only child who sure made up for it by having fifteen kids, with eleven living to adulthood. What was left of his family after the war, was scattered all over the West and he had lost contact with them.

  His eldest sister lived in Virginia. He was the fourth youngest, and as she had been forced to help their mother bring up the rest of the brood, they were never close. After he had got Lucinda in the family way his mother had virtually disowned him. She was a devout church goer and it went against everything she believed in to have a son who impregnated a gal outside of marriage.

  Lucinda’s mother had been just as pious, so they were glad to move away and start up a place of their own. If they hadn’t moved, she might still be alive. If he hadn’t joined the army, she might still be alive. All the ifs. He would drive himself crazy if he kept thinking like this.

  As he stepped on to the porch, he smelled ham and eggs and his mouth watered. Merry had obviously been down in the root cellar. “I’m back,” he called out before entering the kitchen.

  Plates and cutlery had been set out on the table. The jar with the flowers now had water in it.

  Merry was leaning over the stove and he was tempted to sidle up and kiss the soft white skin at the back of her neck. He hadn’t made a sound, having always been soft footed. Ma had always insisted they not clomp around inside the house with their boots on in case they woke one or other of the babies. Treading softly had been an asset in the army, also.

  “You didn’t take long.”

  “Tilly is easy to milk. Use as much of the milk as you need, what you don’t want I’ll feed to the pigs.”