Despite their worn clothes and poor complexions, Lorraine noticed that many of her fellow passengers wore an air of confidence. She imagined that these people had already found work out west, had secured jobs and made arrangements so that someone would be waiting for them when they arrived in California, or Utah, or Wyoming, or wherever their final destination might be.
Other passengers didn’t appear so confident. Rather, their eyes were lacquered with the uncertainty that awaited them at the end of the train tracks. These people, Lorraine was certain, were driven by nothing but sheer hope, hope that whatever awaited out west, it’d be better than what they had here. And it was with these people that Lorraine felt the strongest kinship of all.
The train departed the station, and Brandon, for once acting like a boy of his age, climbed over Lorraine’s lap and pressed his nose against the glass window so he could watch the city of Baltimore pass by.
It had started to snow a thick, heavy snow that fell to the earth with a sense of urgency. The snowflakes were big and square and looked like fragments of white sky, as if the atmosphere around them were crumbling down and melting in the hot black smoke that puttered from the smokestack on the locomotive’s engine.
After Baltimore had disappeared behind them and Brandon had grown bored of the expanse of barren land outside the train car window, the little boy settled into a deep sleep against his mother’s leg. And once she was certain that her son was fast asleep, Lorraine reached into the carpetbag and withdrew a single letter, enclosed in a crisp white envelope.
It was that very letter that had delivered the pair of train tickets that were now bringing Lorraine and Brandon out west. And it was that same letter that had contained the proposal that, Lorraine believed, would forever change their lives.
She unfolded the letter carefully in her lap, her eyes tracing the neatly printed words even though she had already committed them to memory from reading the letter over and over so many times before.
Dear Miss Lorraine Hayes,
When I was ten years old, which feels like a lifetime ago, I met a young girl with hair the color of gold and eyes that were as blue as the sky. I’d lived my whole life in Arizona, and in all my ten years, I’d only known eyes that were rocky brown like the desert and hair that was the color of earth. I was mesmerized, Miss Hayes, and I did what any young boy would do upon discovering a beautiful girl: I found a scorpion and I put it on the sleeve of her dress. She saw it and screamed something awful, and then she picked it up and threw it right back at me.
I never saw that girl again. She was only visiting Arizona for a short while, and I suppose the scorpion didn’t help to make her feel welcome. But I always did miss the sight of her gold hair and sky blue eyes.
Lorraine knew what was coming next, and she felt her cheeks blush in anticipation of the words she was about to read.
Miss Hayes, that girl was you. It’s been recently brought to my attention by a mutual acquaintance, Miss Camille Rogers, that you’ve found yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of being without a husband, and for that reason I’d like to propose a solution that would appease both of our dire straits. You, Miss Hayes, would once again have a husband and a father for your child. And I would finally get the girl with the golden hair.
Lorraine felt a rush of embarrassment burn hot across her cheeks, and she had to stop reading and glance out the window to calm her nerves. She was aware, of course, that her physical features were well regarded by men. Her golden curls, her bright blue eyes, and the gentle curves that had come after carrying a child were all features that afforded her a beauty that was often recognized with lingering stares and flustered, overly polite pleasantries.
Still, Lorraine was far too modest to feel comfortable receiving such unabashed flattery. Especially from a man who, besides a fleeting encounter in her childhood, she had barely met. Besides being brazen and bold—traits that, according to Camille, were common amongst men born in the west—the praise felt disingenuous. How could he possibly speak with such affection, when he didn’t even know her?
The letter’s only redemption was found in the closing paragraph:
I pray that you’ll consider my proposal and meet me in Arizona.
In Christ,
Jace McCoy
Lorraine had found some ounce of comfort in knowing that, if not humble or modest, Jace McCoy was at least a man of God. A man of God who, by his own account, was willing to accept the responsibility of a bride and another man’s child.
She carefully refolded the letter and slid it into the envelope, then held it beneath her tucked hands as she shifted her gaze to the passing trees outside the railcar window.
It had only been a month after Matthew’s passing when Camille first wrote to Lorraine to suggest a courtship with Jace McCoy. Camille was a distant relative—a cousin of a cousin, or something like that—who Lorraine had met when she traveled to Arizona as a child. The trip had been her father’s last-ditch effort to end a streak of bad decisions and even worse luck that had landed the family in squalor. The promise of gold and immeasurable wealth out west was alluring to her poverty-stricken parents, and they had spent the last bit of money they had on a wagon and pair of horses that would carry them west.
By the time they reached Arizona, their supplies were depleted and their enthusiasm had waned. They arrived in Tombstone and called on the only family they knew out west, and by the grace of God, Camille’s parents had come forward and accepted them with open arms.
They were only in Arizona for a week, but during that week Lorraine and Camille forged a bond that would endure throughout the years, sustained by the letters they exchanged back and forth. Though their friendship was geographically distant, the girls were closer than sisters.
So when Camille wrote to Lorraine about the boy with the scorpion that she had met in Arizona all those years ago, Lorraine had relied solely on her trust for Camille’s judgment. She trusted that her friend wouldn’t lead her astray, wouldn’t encourage her to move across the country to court a man of poor character or impure intention.
Still, try as she might, Lorraine’s confidence and faith in the man that would be waiting for her at the end of the train ride was shaky at best. She had indeed remembered the boy with the scorpion. She remembered him because he was the first boy to ever make her cry.
Lorraine moved her eyes away from the window and found herself once more studying the other passengers in the train car. Much like the confident passengers who held their heads high and wore promise on their faces, Lorraine knew that someone would be waiting to greet her when she arrived in Tombstone, Arizona. But much like the nervous passengers facing a fate unknown, Lorraine felt little confidence in the uncertainty that awaited her.
THREE
The railroad tracks stopped short of the Arizona Territory, and Jace McCoy had arranged for Lorraine to make the remainder of the journey in a covered wagon. He had provided Lorraine with instructions in his letter, but he had failed to mention that the covered wagon was, in fact, chartered for the sole purpose of transporting mail order brides to their western grooms.
It wasn’t until Lorraine found herself surrounded by bleak-faced, sullen women that she realized she was, for all intents and purposes, a mail-order bride herself. Up until that point, Lorraine had considered Jace McCoy’s proposition of courtship and marriage one of unique circumstance and chance, the result of a dear friend playing matchmaker, and reuniting childhood acquaintances.
But once she was seated in the covered wagon with her carpetbag tucked under her legs and Brandon alert and curious in her lap, she realized that being summoned for marriage by pony express did indeed make her Jace McCoy’s mail-order bride.
She wasn’t quite sure how to handle the revelation, but in the interest of maintaining her composure in front of the other stone-faced women, she decided that it would be best not to dwell on such thoughts. What was the point? She had come too far now to turn around. She had made her decision, f
or better or worse, when she accepted the pair of one-way tickets to Arizona.
Now she could only hope for the best. Besides, she was doing this for Brandon. She had managed to scrape together a paltry income after Matthew’s death, mostly through the odd job as a seamstress. But that was barely enough to pay for the roof over their heads and the stale bread that they ate.
She had known all along that Arizona—that Jace McCoy—was a decision of last resort. As she studied the other women in the wagon, she wondered what motivated them, if not the dire circumstances of raising a child alone.
***
The sun was shining bright in the brilliant blue sky when the wagon arrived in Tombstone and pulled up to a hitching post at the center of town. For a moment Lorraine forgot all about her anxiety and doubt as she hopped down from the wagon and felt the warm air blow gently over her skin and rustle through her hair.
In that instant, she felt renewed as a sort of peace and tranquility washed over her, replacing all the tension that had built up over the impossibly long and painful journey.
Perhaps everything will be all right, she thought, drinking in the smell of warm earth, so different than the stench of Baltimore.
She had remembered being in awe of Arizona as a child, being transfixed by the rugged red landscape, the rock formations that were striped with vivid shades of vermillion. She remembered staring up at the sky and wondering why it was so vast and empty, like a sea of blue. She remembered thinking, with childlike naïveté, that perhaps if she climbed the tall rocks and mountains that dotted the landscape, then maybe she could jump up and land in the ocean of sky, swim in its blue waves and look down at the dusty desert below.
Lorraine gave Brandon’s hand a squeeze, holding it tight in her own. When she glanced down at her son, she saw in his eyes the same look of wonder and amazement as he stared up at the sky, the bright luscious blue reflecting in his glassy eyes.
Unfortunately, the newfound feelings of peace and awe for her surroundings were short lived when Lorraine realized, for the first time since she had left Baltimore, that she had no recollection of what Jace McCoy, her soon-to-be groom, looked like.
She watched as the other brides from the wagon paired up with the men awaiting their arrival. One bride, a lanky girl who looked no older than sixteen, was approached by a rotund rancher who was at least three times her age. The bride’s sullen expression turned to dismay as she processed the man’s toothless grin and the wispy white strands of hair that clung to his mostly bald head.
Lorraine felt her own heart start to hammer in her chest as her eyes scanned over the remaining men who had crowded around the wagon to claim their brides. A couple of the men had already turned to inspect her, their eyes appraising her slowly in a way that filled Lorraine with a sense of imminent danger.
Try as she might to conjure the memory from her childhood encounter with Jace McCoy, Lorraine couldn’t recall a single detail, not the shape of his nose, the curve of his lips, the point of his chin. She felt a wave of horrified revulsion as she realized that any of the men standing before her could be the man to whom she had promised her hand in marriage.
Her heart was hammering in her chest and pulsing in her veins, and the warm wind that seconds earlier felt comforting now collected in a feverish sweat on her brow. The men surrounding her seemed menacing, their eyes dark and gleaming with impure thoughts as they closed in on her greedily.
She felt Brandon’s hand squeeze hers, but she was powerless now. She was too weak from the journey, too weak from the sleepless nights spent on the train, keeping a watchful eye on Brandon. She was too weak from the hunger, from too often giving Brandon her portion of food so that he wouldn’t go hungry.
She felt her body grow faint, succumbing all at once to the hunger and sleep deprivation and panic of finding herself surrounded by strange men.
“Mother!” she heard Brandon’s voice cry out as she fell to her knees on the dusty desert ground. The sound of fear in her son’s voice pierced her heart like a shard of ice, but there was nothing she could do. The world was spinning around her, a roulette of strange faces wearing expressions of concern, shock, and curiosity.
Then she found him.
His eyes were soft and kind, a dark gray that reminded her of the Atlantic Ocean in winter. And even though she didn’t recognize his face, she found comfort in the familiarity of his eyes.
And that was the last thing she saw before everything went bright white.
FOUR
Lorraine awoke in a blur, unsure of where she was or how she had gotten there. She blinked several times, her eyes trying to discern shapes or objects from the blurry fog of her surroundings. She hadn’t realized that she was on her back until she sat up slowly and immediately felt a sharp pain throb through her head, shooting down her neck and over her face in a hot torrent of hurt.
She clenched her brow in pain, but that only made the searing ache worse.
“Easy now,” a gentle voice said. “Don’t sit up too fast, take your time.”
Lorraine blinked again, and this time a pair of familiar eyes came into focus. “Where am I?” she asked, blinking again, trying to identify the eyes, and to whom they belonged. She had seen them before, she knew she had.
“You’re in Hartley’s General Merchandise Store,” the voice said, still gentle and slow. “In Tombstone, Arizona.”
“Arizona,” Lorraine mumbled, and then her memories returned. Her head throbbed in pain as her mind worked to reassemble the fragments of the last few weeks that were floating in her consciousness—winter in Baltimore, saying goodbye to Matthew’s grave, the railroad journey west, the covered wagon…
She blinked again, staring straight into the deep gray eyes that were staring back at her. And then, all at once, it made sense. The man with the familiar eyes must be Jace McCoy.
“You arrived by covered wagon,” he explained gently. “You must have been overpowered by the heat, because shortly after you stepped out, you fainted.”
“How terribly embarrassing,” Lorraine said, heat filling her cheeks. “I don’t know what came over me—”
“It’s not uncommon,” he assured her, and there was something friendly about the gentle upturn at the corner of his lips, the creases that defined his face, the remnants of a smile. “Especially if you’re not yet accustomed to the desert climate.”
Lorraine’s headache was slowly fading, but her rapidly beating heart hadn’t stopped fluttering. She supposed that had more to do with the presence of her future husband than with her fainting spell.
Lorraine wasn’t the sort of woman who made a practice of allowing her gaze to linger on a man, but she felt that, in the presence of the man she was engaged to marry, she could make an exception.
His face wasn’t just kind, she decided, he was handsome. His face was masculine, yet soft. He had a flat square chin that dimpled slightly, and his lips seemed to rest in a faint smile. His eyes were that deep familiar gray, stormy yet perfectly clear at the same time. His hair was a deep black streaked with gray, a detail that, rather than making him appear old, somehow just made him seem wise and complex.
She felt a flutter of excitement stir in her chest, and with great restraint she pulled her eyes away from him. She had admired him long enough, she decided, and if they were to marry, then she’d certainly have plenty of time to study the face that made her heart beat twice as fast as it was meant to.
As soon as she had forced her eyes to drift to her surroundings, she felt a clench of terror.
“Where is Brandon?” she asked.
“Your boy?”
Lorraine nodded desperately.
“I sat him down when I brought him in, and he fell right asleep,” he said, pointing to a long wooden bench by the general store’s front glass window. Sure enough, the little boy had curled himself up like a kitten and fallen asleep, his tiny arms holding his knees tight to his chest.
“Why did you bring us here?” Lorraine asked, glancing aro
und the shop and deciding that it was a strange place for a man to bring his future wife.
“Smelling salts,” he explained, raising a small glass bottle full of amber-hued rocks. “To revive you.”
“But also,” he added, “to get you away from all those men.” His voice was darker, and for the first time his lips abandoned their natural smile in favor of a disgusted grimace. “I don’t like to speak ill of others, but I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t warn you to keep your distance from certain men in this town.”
Lorraine listened intently, again allowing her eyes to trace the lines of his face, to attempt to decipher the complexities of his expressions.
“The people you’ll meet in Tombstone are, for the most part, modest and simple. The majority are ranchers and grew up tending the land. You might notice that a certain—” he paused, searching for the right word, “etiquette or refinement hasn’t reached the western frontier yet. But nonetheless, Tombstone is a town of good and honest people.”
“But…”
“But,” he said reluctantly, wearing that same tight grimace on his lips again. “You may find a select few that lack the discernment or honor that you’d expect from a man.”
“I see,” Lorraine nodded. She thought of the fishermen she’d encounter near the docks in Baltimore, the way they didn’t hide the sin in their eyes, the way they spoke in low, taunting voices. She understood exactly the type of men that he was referring to, and she understood that the men who had been waiting around the covered wagon had been cut from the same cloth as the ones who preyed on unsuspecting women in Baltimore.
Lorraine’s heart was swelling in her chest, but it wasn’t because of his handsome face or deep gray eyes. Now it was because of the strength of his character that she saw shining through him. She felt a rush of relief; he was a good man. Jace McCoy was a good man, and everything was going to be all right.
New Beginnings Spring 20 Book Box Set Page 70
