A Place Called Harmony (5 page)

“Is there anything else you need?” he asked without looking at her.

She shook her head as the clerk fitted all they’d bought in the bag. She had no idea how much money Clint carried, but he’d been generous, even adding an extra blanket for the baby.

“There’s room for a few more things,” the clerk said, obviously trying to run up the bill.

Karrisa looked up at the man she’d married, and he nodded once. She turned to the basket at the edge of the counter and picked up two skeins of yarn and a pair of knitting needles.

“That’s good wool, miss,” the clerk said. “Spun by a lady right here in town.”

“It’s Missus. Mrs. Truman,” Clint corrected as he shoved the gun belt and Colt that he’d been looking at across the counter. His words had seemed so cold they froze the room.

The clerk suddenly seemed nervous. “I’m sorry, sir and missus.” He wrapped the gun and belt in brown paper. “Will you be wanting bullets for this?”

“Yes, two boxes,” Clint said as he paid for everything.

He picked up her carpetbag, now completely full, and the brown paper package. He walked out. She had no choice but to follow. The man had asked her to marry him, yet mentioning her being his wife seemed to have made him angry. Maybe he was having as much trouble as she was realizing what they’d done with less thought than they’d put into their purchases.

When he got to the wagon, he put her bag next to his in the back of the wagon and unwrapped the gun belt. While she watched, he strapped the belt on and loaded the Colt.

“How long has it been since you wore a gun, Truman?” the sheriff asked as he watched from the wagon bench.

“Since the war,” Clint answered, but the skill he showed told her that he hadn’t forgotten the feel of a weapon in his hand.

She couldn’t help but wonder if this cold man would hold to his word to be kind.

F
EBRUARY
G
ALVESTON
, T
EXAS

A rustler’s moon seemed to follow Patrick McAllen and his brother as he moved silently down the shoreline road toward the Spencers’ place.

“Seems as good a night as any to kidnap a bride.” Patrick’s voice carried in the midnight breeze off the gulf.

Shelly, who hadn’t spoken a word since birth, bumped his brother’s knee.

Patrick laughed. “I know it’s not exactly kidnapping when she walks half a mile to meet me, but you can bet Solomon and Brother Spencer will think so. I wouldn’t be surprised if our old man doesn’t come after me and bring half the congregation along to watch. He’ll have murder in his eyes again and a death grip on that bullwhip of his.”

Just enough light shone on Shelly’s face for Patrick to see worry lines forming as his brother’s hands tightened on the reins.

“I’ll make it this time.” Patrick tried to sound as if he believed his words, but the sound of his father’s whip ripping into his back and the smell of his own blood made his voice shake. “I’ll make it or die trying. I swear.”

His brother nodded. Shelly might never speak, but Patrick knew he could read his thoughts. They had until dawn for Patrick to escape and Shelly to make it back to the farm. Solomon McAllen would never know where his youngest son had disappeared to, but by Sunday Patrick had no doubt that Solomon would be telling everyone that his son had gone to the devil.

As they moved slowly, Patrick’s thoughts were racing with plans and full of fears. When he’d applied for a job as carpenter to help build a town way up in West Texas, he knew his father wouldn’t allow him to go. He knew what would happen if he tried to leave home. But this was his one chance to be his own man. To live free from Solomon McAllen’s constant threats and demands to control.

He glanced at his silent brother and wondered if the last time he’d tried to leave was on Shelly’s mind as well.

Patrick had been fifteen when he’d signed on for a cattle drive leaving Galveston. He’d thought it would be a grand adventure and hadn’t listened to his father’s rant. Only, the day the drive pulled out his father found him and dragged him back home. Solomon had strung Patrick up in the barn and almost beat him to death while preaching all the while about how a son should obey his father.

Shelly had been almost seventeen then and tried to stop the beating. Their father had blacked his eye and broken two of his ribs before he yelled for the women to hold the dummy down or he’d kill him.

Shelly had struggled against his four older sisters, but they’d held him until Patrick’s back and legs were raw and Solomon’s youngest son was more dead than alive. After weeks of nursing him back, Patrick’s stepmother had simply said he should have listened. As Solomon’s favorite target, she probably thought she knew best, but from that day to this Patrick had planned his next escape. Now, at twenty, he was making it happen.

Since he’d talked to Spencer’s oldest daughter and she’d agreed to marry him, everything had gone as planned. Shelly and he had loaded the extra wagon with the bare necessities he’d need on the trip and left it in the north pasture until tonight.

Patrick took his bath and laid out his Sunday clothes as he’d done every Saturday night since he could remember. But tonight he’d also packed a grain sack with his other clothes and waited by the window until everyone in the house was asleep.

All had gone smoothly during the week. Their father accepted Shelly taking over the weekly mail pickup but didn’t speak to him when Shelly brought it in. To Solomon, Shelly was less than a son because he couldn’t talk. Their father didn’t seem to think that he could hear either. He’d blamed their mother for the birth defect and chose to ignore his own son.

Patrick had tried to tell their father that it was Shelly, not him, who was the gifted carpenter, but Solomon didn’t listen. They’d gone as boys to help their big brothers build houses and churches in the area. When their two oldest brothers died in the war, and the middle two, only five years older than Shelly, ran away, Solomon told everyone in his small congregation that they’d gone to the devil, and he’d kill his own flesh and blood before he’d lose another son to Satan.

Patrick smiled, remembering his father’s words. Come morning Solomon would lose another son, and there was nothing he could do about it. He took a deep breath of the humid Galveston air, thinking that tonight he could smell freedom, and at twenty it was about time.

The old buckboard was too light to leave noticeable tracks. Once they made Houston tonight, their trail would mix with a hundred others and no one would be able to track them.

“You don’t have to go with me to the ferry,” Patrick said to his brother. “I know what you’re thinking. I need a best man. But we’ll be lucky to find a preacher still awake in Galveston.”

Shelly simply nodded. He’d obviously made up his mind. He would guard his brother until Patrick was off the island.

“It’ll take you half the night to walk back home.” Patrick did what he always did when nervous: He talked. “Did I tell you about how Annie Spencer came out to the barn after I delivered the firewood to her place? She’s got it worse than we do stuck in the house with her stepmother. The old lady treats her bad. They don’t even give her time off to go to church with the rest of the family. I told her once when I was delivering eggs that I wished I could leave Galveston ’cause Solomon gets crazier every year. She told me if I did, she wanted to run away with me.”

Patrick was silent a moment as if listening to Shelly’s answer, then added, “I know what you’re thinking. I don’t love her and I doubt she loves me and she ain’t very pretty, not like those two stepsisters of hers. Those girls downright sparkle. Too bad they don’t have a full brain between them.”

Patrick drove the team, plotting out his life aloud. “I’m going to marry Annie. It’s only right if she’s agreed to go with me. Harmon Ely said I’d need a wife if I take the job, and she’ll be a good one.” He noticed Shelly’s grin and added, “I know what you’re thinking: Annie’s older than me by a year so she’s probably smarter.”

Shelly nodded.

Patrick pulled the wagon up to the crossroads. No light shone from the direction of the Spencer house. If Annie was coming she’d be walking the path in almost total darkness.

“I hope she comes,” he said to his silent brother. “She’s got the prettiest eyes, and did I tell you she can cook?” He tried to relax, but the fear that she’d changed her mind weighed on his thoughts. “I’m going to be good to her. Better than Solomon was to either of his wives. And I’ll listen to what she has to say, ’cause I have a feeling she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” A whisper came out of the darkness.

He looked down and saw Annie standing only a few feet away. “You came,” was all he could think of to say.

She held up a pillowcase full of her things and then another long, feather-light pillow. “I came.”

He swung off the wagon bench and put his hands gently around her waist. She was a tiny thing, barely five feet and less than a hundred pounds. Her long honey-colored braid hung down so long she could easily sit on it.

Awkwardly, he bent to kiss her cheek but missed and touched her ear.

She laughed and he lifted her up, saying, “Shelly wanted to come along as best man. Hope you don’t mind.”

To his surprise, she hugged Shelly. “I don’t mind at all.”

Then, as if she’d done so a hundred times, she scooted next to Patrick and circled her arm around his. “No one will miss me or my sister’s new pillow until they wake without the smell of breakfast cooking in the morning.”

She looked toward Shelly. “Don’t look at me like that. I collected the feathers and made the pillow. Even if she claimed it, I figure I’d consider it a wedding gift she forgot to offer.”

Both men laughed and Annie settled her small rounded frame between the two tall, thin McAllen brothers.

An hour later they drove the wagon onto the ferry and locked the wheels. Patrick hugged his brother but didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. Shelly knew his thoughts. As they moved away Shelly stood on the dock, the only one watching them go. He raised his hand and held it high. Patrick did the same until the night separated them completely.

A young priest who worked at the hospital in town married them between helping with injured drunks. No flowers or well-wishers. No rings. Just simple words and a hurried blessing. The marriage didn’t seem real, but now, as they left the last of their family behind, the truth of what they’d done seemed to weigh on them both.

“Do you think your brother will join us one day?” Annie asked, still waving at a man she could no longer see.

Patrick shook his head. “He doesn’t like strangers, and after tonight he’d have to cross hundreds of miles of strangers to get to us.”

As they moved over the water between Galveston and the rest of the state, Patrick told Annie all he knew of where they were going. “Not even a train passing near the place,” he said. “Right now it’s only a trading post, but the man who owns it wants to start a town. I’ll work for two years at a fair wage to help build it, and then he says he’ll give me land.”

Patrick brushed the money packed away at the bottom of his sack of clothes. “I have money saved for more land. I’ll build us a nice house and a proper barn. I’d like to run cattle on our land. A few at first, but eventually a huge herd.”

He put his arm lightly across her shoulders. “What do you want, Annie?”

“I already have it,” she answered. “I’m away.” She moved her fingers over his hand resting on her shoulder and pressed hard, as if wanting to know that this was real and not a dream.

“Are we crazy?” he whispered.

“Probably,” she answered. “But I’m not going back.”

“Me either. Not ever.” The sound of the whip still snapped in the back of his mind. Solomon had sworn that day that he’d never beat Patrick again. As he’d dropped the whip across his bloody back, he’d said simply,
Next time I’ll kill you
.

That promise had haunted Patrick for five years, but it all ended tonight. Now he was free.

He didn’t have to ask what problems Annie was leaving. He’d seen just a blink and that was enough. When he’d held her hand during the ceremony, he’d felt calluses. When he’d kissed her lightly in front of the priest, tears flowed down her face. She wanted this dream as much as he did. He’d seen it in her eyes for a year. Every time their paths crossed in town, he knew they were both thinking of the time he’d told her he wanted to run and she’d asked him to take her with him.

He’d never even walked out with a girl and now he had a wife. The only blessing seemed to be that she probably didn’t know any more than he did about what marriage was all about.

He leaned down and kissed her gently, thinking he liked doing so far better than he’d thought he might. When she didn’t pull away, he pressed his lips against hers and felt her sigh pass between them, and the kiss turned into something different. Something warm and welcoming.

When he finally moved away, he whispered, “I could get used to this, Annie.”

“I think I feel the same. Do you think you might kiss me every night?”

He pulled her gently against him. “I’d like nothing better.” They probably had a million things that were more important to talk about in this marriage, but kissing every night seemed a good place to start.

He’d heard Spencer say once that his oldest daughter never shone like his other two did, but there was a beauty about Annie that Patrick knew most folks didn’t see. “In fact, if you’ve no objection I think we should set some rules down to this marriage, and the first one should be that I kiss you good morning every morning and good night every night.”

“That’s a lot of kissing.” She giggled.

Patrick straightened. “I’m up for the task. Now you get to set the next rule.”

“Fair enough. You have to promise never to lie to me. Not ever. Not about anything, big or small.”

He agreed, thinking that an easy promise to keep.

About three in the morning, they docked. They followed the wide moonlit road, passing dark farmhouses and closed stores. Finally, after dawn, he let her off at the first mercantile they passed and went down to the livery to trade horses. By the time he got back she’d placed all they needed for the trip north on the bench by the store’s door: pots, blankets, canned goods, dried beans, and coffee.