Mail Order Bride: The Master: A Historical Mail Order Bride Story (Mail Order Brides) (6 page)

The Master followed Noah outside and the rest of the congregation flooded after them. Matthew and the other boys weaseled their way through the crowd to the edge of the street to get the best view of the confrontation. But they didn’t shout and run around in excited explosions of energy like they usually did. They crouched down on the verge of the street to be out of the way, and they kept silent so as not to distract the combatants.

Polly came out last and stood at the top of the church steps. She looked like an angel on top of a Christmas tree in her white gown and her veil still covering her face. She watched the drama in the street from the distance of the clouds.

Matthew stared at the Master even more intently than he usually did. The Master had worn a gun belt—to church! Not only that, but he’d disarmed Bartlett and pulled his own gun instead. These events elevated the Master to something approaching a luminary in Matthew’s estimation.

And now, here he was, facing Noah in open combat in the middle of the street. For all his refined bearing and erect stature, Matthew barely recognized the Master now. He gave the friends and neighbors clustered around the church steps no acknowledgment whatever. His face wore a fixed expression of stony hatred.

Noah Bartlett jammed his gun into his belt and stalked off down the street, where he assumed a martial posture facing the Master. The Master pushed the flaps of his coat back behind the pistols on his hips so that the skirts of his coat hung down behind him.

The two men confronted each other over a distance of several paces. An awful hush fell over the crowd. Matthew cast a single glance to his right and left. There was Felix Bartlett squatted at the edge of the street with the other boys, awaiting the outcome of this contest between the town’s two rival gladiators.

What would Noah do if he killed the Master? Would he kill Polly next? What would he, Matthew Burke, do, if Noah killed the Master? Would Noah kill him, too? What would there be left for him to live for, with the Master dead? What would there be left to live for, with Noah Bartlett ruling the town as its conquering lord?

Had the Master ever really fired a gun before? Matthew couldn’t imagine him even owning guns, let alone wearing them or using one to kill someone. Even considering the heinous provocation he’d suffered from Noah over the last few days, Matthew couldn’t conceive of him resorting to violence even now. He knew the rest of the town was witnessing the ultimate contradiction of all their preconceptions about the Master. He wasn’t the man they thought he was.

They thought he was a mild-mannered bookworm with a flair for making a spectacle of himself. Instead, he was this iron-fisted gunfighter they now saw making his stand in the middle of the street. He was reserved and remote in his self-appointed objective to wipe the scourge of Noah Bartlett from the face of the Earth or die in the attempt.

Matthew would have liked to run to him, to help him in any way he could. But he knew the best way to help him now—the
only
way to help him—was to keep quiet. So he bit his lip and clenched his fingers together in dreadful anticipation of the first shot.

How would it start? How did two gunfighters signal each other to draw their guns and fire on each other? He was just wondering these and other logistical considerations when it happened.

He didn’t even know they’d started until it was all over. Matthew had never seen the Master move so fast. He leapt with his feet set wide apart and his arms cocked out from the side of his body. His coat flew outward from his sides like the wings of a black bird.

An ear-splitting crack rent the stillness and a cloud of smoke obscured the street. The next thing Matthew knew, both men had their pistols out, pointed at each other, with smoke drifting from their muzzles. Matthew looked from one man to the other, confused and frightened.

The aftermath seemed to take forever, with both men standing motionless, facing each other as if nothing had happened. Yet there were their guns, drawn and smoking, their legs planted in deathly defiance.

And then, falling silently in the greater silence and making no sound when he hit the ground, Noah toppled. His gun fell out of his hand. His arms and legs fluttered and bounced on the ground. And finally, his whole ghastly frame settled into a heap at the other end of the street.

No one moved. The Master still held the heap at gun point against any trick to lure him into lowering his guard. But the heap didn’t move.

In the end, the crowd on the steps of the church streamed into the streets, surrounding the Master and blocking him from Matthew’s view. Only then did the Master holster his weapon and soften his stance.

The people of the town murmured congratulations to the Master, but they barely raised their voices. No one clapped him on the shoulder or laughed with glee at his victory. No one cast so much as a glance at the heap up the street.

The boys milled around in the crowd, but the oppressive silence still weighed them down. No one dared hardly to speak. In the end, the Master himself put an end to the confusion. He turned back toward the church and saw Polly standing at the top of the steps.

The crowd parted before him as he strode back up the steps, past Polly, down the aisle to his place in front of the altar. There, he turned around again and stared back toward the door exactly the same way he had when Polly first came to him.

The rest of the congregation followed his lead, and before long, they packed the pews again and everyone craned their necks for Polly’s entrance.

Only Matthew hung back. At the door of the church, he paused. Everyone inside the church seemed to be staring directly at him. They seemed to recognize him as the architect of this whole situation. They seemed to read his involvement with the incident from its beginning. Should he just walk over to his parents’ pew as casually as the Master took his place at the altar, as if nothing in the world had happened?

A soft rustling noise made him look over his shoulder. Then he realized they weren’t staring at him at all. They were looking at Polly, about to walk down the aisle to her groom.

But her face looked different underneath her veil. She had changed along with the Master and everyone else in this drama. She looked even more like an angel than she had on the steps of the church. Her face glowed, and tears glistened on her cheeks. She gazed through her veil at Matthew.

Polly laid her hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “Walk me down the aisle, Matthew Burke,” she told him.

Matthew couldn’t feel his feet moving over the floor. He and Polly floated side by side down the aisle to the altar, where the Master waited for them with a beatific smile on his face. Only a slight shudder in Polly’s arm, translating down through the hand that still rested on his shoulder, told Matthew she was weeping for joy under her veil.

None of the usual sighs and exclamations at the bride’s beauty rose from the congregation. The church hung in silent awe at the magnificence of the couple. Matthew didn’t even wonder if they knew his honored place in this service. He knew and the Master knew. Nothing else mattered.

He and Polly reached the altar. The Master smiled at him. He laid his hand on Matthew’s shoulder and patted it. Then he took Polly’s hand off Matthew’s shoulder and turned his back on Matthew, back toward the altar.

The End

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This is a work of fiction. All characters, names,
places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.