Historical Cowboy Romance Two Book Box Set - Mail Order Brides (17 page)

The three sisters alighted from the buggy. A
few stray passengers milled around the station porch. “The three of
them must have gotten off here. Didn’t we all tell them we’d be
here to pick them up? Let’s ask around. Maybe someone knows where
they are.”

“But,” Violet pointed out. “They aren’t
likely to know each other. They aren’t likely to be together,
wherever they are.”

“We can only ask,” Iris replied. “I’m sure
we’ll find them somewhere.” She turned to the nearest man, who
leaned against the station door, watching the three women and
listening to their conversation. “Excuse me. We’re looking for some
people who got off the train from Salt Lake City.”

The man cocked his head. “Well, that’s just
about all the people you see here. Every one of us got off the
train an hour and a half ago. Don’t you see the people you’re
looking for?”

Iris flushed, and Violet stepped in. “The men
we’re meeting are strangers to us. I mean, we don’t exactly know
what they look like. One of them is named Chuck Ahern, and one of
them is named Mick McAllister, and the other is Jacob
Hamilton.”

“Well, then, you’re in luck,” the man
returned. “I’m Chuck Ahern.”

“Oh!” The blood rushed to Violet’s cheeks.
For a moment, she floundered in confusion. Then she burst out
laughing. Chuck stared at her as if she’d lost her senses. Finally
she composed herself enough to extend her hand. “It’s a pleasure to
meet you at last, Mr. Ahern. I’m Violet Kilburn.”

“Oh!” Chuck went beet red, opened his mouth
and closed it again, glanced around, and opened his mouth again.
Finally, he burst out laughing, too. He took her hand. “Call me
Chuck. If you call me Mr. Ahern, I probably won’t know who you’re
talking about.”

He and Violet shook hands, still laughing at
themselves. When they eventually let go of one another’s hands,
they stepped back and regarded each other. Chuck stood as tall as
Violet, and his square shoulders filled out his clean cotton shirt.
His wore a gun belt around the hips of his denim pants, and the
unmistakable band of spur straps marked the tops of his boots. A
thick mustache covered his upper lip, but the rest of his face was
clean-shaven and smooth.

His light brown eyes cut through Violet’s
embarrassment. She didn’t look around to see if Iris evaluated
Chuck the same way she had, but she knew this man was exactly what
Rocking Horse Ranch needed. Everything about him screamed
cowboy.

“Did you have a pleasant journey?” Violet
asked.

“Good enough,” Chuck replied. “It’s pretty
boring, you know, but you can’t complain. The only other way to
travel is to ride a horse, and I wouldn’t want to do that all the
way up here from Santa Fe.”

“You must be tired.” Violet wrenched her eyes
away from him and peered around at her sisters. “We’ll find the
others and get you back to the ranch. As I told you, we have a
spare house you men will stay in until the wedding service on
Friday. You can rest up there and get your bearings. I hope that
arrangement still suits you.”

“Suits me fine,” Chuck replied. “I won’t be
sorry to stop traveling for a while.”

“Well, then, we’ll just find the others….”
Violet trailed off. She and her sisters glanced around at the other
passengers on the platform.

How should they go about finding the other
two men? Nothing remained but to ask the nearest person, as they
did with Chuck, and hope for luck.

But Chuck cut them off. “Mick McAllister’s
inside the station, talking to the station master.” The three
sisters jumped with surprise. “And Jake Hamilton is over there, in
the hotel saloon.”

“How do you know?” Iris cried. “We didn’t
think you three knew each other.”

“We didn’t,” Chuck told her. “We got talkin’
on the train. You know how it is. We’re all in the same business of
punchin’ cattle, so you fall in with others like you. There’s
nothin’ else to do on the train for days at a time. That, and after
a while, you begin to notice which people are going the same
direction as you. Anyway, we got talkin’, and we figured it out.
Took a while, but we figured it out.”

“Well, that makes it easier for us, doesn’t
it?” Violet remarked. “Thank you very much….Chuck.” She broke into
another fit of giggling. His name sounded so strange in her mouth.
Even after months of corresponding with him by mail, saying his
name out loud gave her a queer little tingle. “Now we won’t have to
go hunting for them.”

The noise of a scuffle drew their attention
toward the station. The door flew open, and two men locked in a
tight embrace exploded out of the station and bowled over into the
dirt at their feet. As soon as they hit the ground, they fell into
a mighty struggle to drive each other to the ground. Violet cried
out in horror at the conflict, but Chuck and the other bystanders
simply watched the two men fighting in the dirt.

Just when one man got the better of the
other, the man on the bottom rallied and flipped his opponent over
to regain the upper hand. They reversed positions two or three
times before the larger of the two fought his way onto the top of
the other. He delivered a decisive blow to his rival’s midsection,
which knocked the wind out of him, and then another to the side of
his jaw. This last blow dazed the other man enough to give the
victor time to consolidate his advantage by sitting on top of his
opponent.

He straddled his fallen enemy on his knees
and punched him repeatedly in the face. Sweat and saliva flew from
both men’s faces, and before very long, the man on the bottom lay
motionless with blood leaking out of his nose.

The victor stopped hitting his victim and
stared at his senseless form, panting and sweating. At last, he
dragged himself to his feet and loomed over the body, his fists
still clenched at his sides. He glared around him at the onlookers,
his teeth bared between curled lips. “He stole my wallet,” he
growled.

So saying, he bent down and ransacked the
fallen man’s pockets until he pulled out a folded leather wallet.
He waved it at the spectators and stuffed it into his own trouser
pocket.

Most of the people standing around the train
station turned back to their own business then, and the man relaxed
his posture somewhat. Violet stared in horror at the ogre, but her
horror reached a peak of dismay when Chuck announced, “This is Mick
McAllister.”

Now that he stood upright in front of them,
Violet saw him clearly for the first time. She saw a very tall,
sturdy man with sharp, angular features and a sun-bleached Stetson
hat over his close-cut blonde hair. He walked away from his victim
and toward the Kilburn sisters. His clear blue eyes surveyed the
platform to the right and to the left with the quick superiority of
command before he turned toward Chuck Ahern.

One more glance showed him who the women
were. “These them?” he asked Chuck. Without waiting for a reply, he
stuck out his hand to Violet. “I’m Mick McAllister.”

Violet shook off her shock and returned his
handshake. Sweat squeezed out between her fingers when Mick gripped
her hand. “I’m Violet Kilburn. This,” she nodded toward her sister
“This is Iris.”

Iris extended her gloved hand to Mick. “Good
afternoon.” Mick shook her hand with a curt nod, but both he and
Iris blushed and stole shy peeks at each other. Iris couldn’t
approve of this street-brawling brute as her mail-order cowboy,
could she?

Violet took charge. “Now if we can find Mr.
Hamilton, we can get on our way. Hopefully we can get home before
dark.”

“Why don’t you ladies walk over to the hotel
and find him?” Chuck suggested. “Mick and me will load our luggage
onto your…is this your buggy?”

“Yes,” Violet replied. “You can put
everything on the rack in the back. And there will be room next to
Rose in the back seat, too. Are you men happy to ride back to the
ranch? It’s a long way but there just isn’t room in the buggy for
all of us.”

“That’ll be fine with me,” Chuck told
her.

“Me, too,” Mick chimed in. “It’ll be good to
get back in the saddle after being on the train all this time.” He
glanced back at Iris, and she blushed and smiled again.

“Good, then,” Violet declared. “We’ll head
over to the hotel and bring Jacob back. We’ll meet back here at the
buggy.”

The sisters started across the street toward
the hotel, and Violet fell in step next to Rose. “Are you all
right, darling? You’re not too concerned about meeting your groom,
are you?”

“I’m not concerned at all,” Rose replied.
“Why would I be concerned?”

“I just thought you might think the worst,”
Violet explained. “When they told us he was over in the hotel
saloon. I thought you might worry that he was….” Violet
faltered.

“Was what?” Rose asked.

Rose’s big limpid eyes threw Violet into
confusion, and she lost the sense of what she wanted to say. She
flapped her hand. “Oh, I don’t know. He might be drinking or
carousing or gambling. You know!”

“I don’t think there’s much likelihood of
that,” Rose replied.

“I just didn’t want you to be worried,”
Violet repeated. “After all, he could be fighting in there like….”
Violet stopped herself in time.

“You mean, like Mick?” Rose asked. “No, I’m
not worried.”

Violet let the matter drop, but she couldn’t
banish her first glimpse of Mick McAllister from her mind.

The sisters walked around the corner to the
hotel and peeked into the saloon. About ten men occupied the big
room, some leaning against the bar, some playing billiards, and
some just chatting with each other. All but two wore the typical
uniform of the Western cowboy, with heavy canvas pants,
wide-brimmed hats, and boots. Nothing distinguished one from
another enough to determine which man they sought.

Violet hesitated at the swinging doors. “What
do you want to do?”

“We’ll just have to go in and find him,” Rose
declared.

“Go in….in
there
?” Violet shuddered.
“I don’t think I want to do that.”

“How else are we going to find him?” Rose
asked.

“I’ll go in with you,” Iris told Rose.

“You’re not going in
there
, are you?”
Violet gasped.

“Why not?” Iris looked into the saloon over
the tops of the doors. “What’s wrong?”

“The place is full of men,” Violet explained.
“There could be trouble.”

“What’s wrong?” Iris asked again. “They’re
only cowboys. They won’t hurt us. Come on, Rose.” The two younger
sisters pushed the doors aside and strode inside.

Violet hesitated just a moment longer, and
then she hurried after her sisters.

Rose and Iris walked up to the bar. Several
of the men eyed them as they passed, and when they arrived at the
front of the room, the bartender laughed out loud. “What can I do
for you ladies?”

“We’re looking for a man who just got off the
train from Salt Lake City,” Rose told him. “We were told he was
here. His name is Jacob Hamilton.”

“Don’t know him,” the bartender shot back.
“Can’t help ya.”

“I’m Jacob Hamilton.” The voice came from
behind them, but it sounded soft and timid.

The sisters turned around, and only a mighty
effort prevented Violet from gasping in surprise at what she
saw.

The man facing them was small and slight,
almost as small as Rose herself. Far from the hard-wearing work
clothes the cowboys wore, Jacob Hamilton wore a tailored black
suit, snakeskin boots, and a dark red velvet waistcoat under his
jacket. His brand-new black velvet hat covered dark hair combed
back over his ears and curling up at the back of his neck. His
black mustache swept away from his lips and pointed out toward the
side of his face.

His black eyes twinkled across the faces of
the sisters until they finally rested on Rose. He smiled at her.
“You can call me Jake. Everyone does.”

Rose blinked her wide eyes and smiled back.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I hope the journey wasn’t too
trying.”

“Not at all,” Jake replied. “I enjoy travel.
It’s good to see other parts of the country.”

He and Rose kept smiling at each other as
Violet struggled to hide her distress. This wasn’t the cowboy they
hoped for. Jake Hamilton looked more like a professional gambler or
bank employee. He didn’t even look old enough to be in this saloon.
He looked all of fifteen at the most. Why, he didn’t even wear a
gun belt! What good would this tiny, innocent dandy be to them on
the ranch?

Violet exchanged looks with Iris but from the
very first moment, Rose and Jake only had eyes for each other. They
took no notice at all when Violet said, “Shall we get back to the
buggy and head home? Jake, I hope you don’t mind riding a horse
with the others. There’s only room for four in the buggy.”

Jake didn’t take his eyes off Rose’s face.
“In that case, I’ll ride next to Rose.”

Violet spun into a flurry of confusion. She
couldn’t stop her mouth from working of its own accord. “Oh, that’s
just fine! I didn’t think of that, but it makes so much sense. I’m
sure the others won’t mind.”

“I’m sure they won’t,” Jake replied.

Jake waved his hand toward the door to usher
the sisters out of the saloon, but a gnarled, callused hand clapped
him on the back and a harsh male voice bellowed from behind him,
“Hey, Mister Fancy Pants, I’m talkin’ to you!”

Jake turned around and faced an enormous man
nearly twice his size. Jake's head barely reached as high as the
big man’s chest. The two looked comical standing next to each
other. Jake’s crisp clean suit made a striking contrast with the
other man’s dusty worn work clothes. Even standing at a distance
from him, Violet noticed the bulging knuckles on the big man’s
hands and the polished leather of his gun belt. His hair stuck out
in tufts around his hat, and black dirt encrusted his
fingernails.