Sixteen Brides (7 page)

“You knew my father?”

“Not personally. But I read about him during the war. He was beloved by his men. I didn’t know he’d passed on until your mother told us at lunch yesterday. I am truly sorry about your father.”

“I don’t remember much about him.” He sounded wistful. “I wish I did. Mother talks about him all the time, but it’s not the same.”

The poor child. Caroline had been so wrapped up in herself for all this way she hadn’t given much thought to how it must feel to be the only boy in this bunch of women. The way he’d jumped up to bring her the peppermints took on a new poignancy as she thought about Jackson sitting in that huge dormitory all by himself listening to the women’s voices echo through the building. She nodded toward the kitchen. “When my brothers were about your age, we used to sneak peppermints out of the candy jar and melt them in hot water. We called it Sweet-mint Tea. Want to try it before your mother gets back from the necessary?”

“There’s something you all need to know before we go to supper,” Ruth said to the fifteen women crowded into the Immigrant House kitchen. “I was in the train station getting a drink of water when I heard Mr. Drake—” She repeated what Drake had said as he dispersed the group of men who’d gathered to meet their train.

Caroline stood up to add her part. “So when we realized Mr. Drake was sendin’ a telegram, we . . . well, I . . . managed to . . . borrow . . . a copy.”She read aloud. “ ‘Sixteen brides arrive eight p.m. Southern belle. General’s wife. Farm women. All lovely. Sixteen dance cards confirmed. First dance guaranteed. Cash due by noon Friday.’ ”

At first the women sat motionless staring at one another, their expressions ranging from disbelief to shock to anger. Sally Grant was the first to speak. “He didn’t say nothin’ about a dance or any of that other at the meetin’ I went to.”

“Nor at mine,” Ruth said.

Ella Barton spoke up. “It was all about the land. That’s what I’ve come for.”

“And I,” Ruth agreed. She glanced around the room. “We can speak freely, by the way. I’ve sent my son on an errand and told him to meet us at the dining hall.”

One of the sisters spoke up. She didn’t mind the idea so much, she said. “But I most certainly do mind it all being prearranged without our knowing about it.” She glanced at her sisters, who nodded agreement. “And the idea of his collecting money for dances?” She shook her head. “That’s not right.”

“Well, what are we gonna do about it?” Sally asked.

“Tar and feathers come to mind,” Mavis Morris said, and nervous laughter circled the table.

“What are
you
gonna do?” Sally asked Ruth.

“I only know what I’m not going to do.”

“Which is?”

“My son and I are
not
getting back on that train. I am
not
going to allow Mr. Hamilton Drake to earn so much as one cent from
my
dance card.” She glanced at Caroline. “Mrs. Jamison and I will be staying here in Plum Grove.”

“You going back east?” Sally asked.

Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know.”
There’s nothing back there for me.

“What about you?” Sally nodded at Caroline.

“I’ve got nothin’ to go back
to
,” the southerner said.

“Me neither,” Sally said. “But I got no interest in puttin’ myself under a roof owned by a man ever again.” She looked around the room. “You all probably got me figured for a whore ’cause I talk so rough. But I ain’t.” She cleared her throat. “I was married. It weren’t no fun. He beat on me one too many times. When he broke my arm I divorced the b—” She broke off. “Sorry.” She took a deep breath. “So. I’m divorced. But I ain’t no whore. Never was. Never will be. I’d die before I’d have to face my ma on Judgment Day with that on my account.” She smiled. “Guess a body’d think I’d be most worried ’bout facin’ Jesus with such as that on my account. But Jesus was way nicer to whores than my ma’d be if she was to catch me doin’ such.” She sniffed. “I’d-a never married old Ray Gosset if my ma’d stuck to this earth. But she just had to fly away when the angels took a notion to call her up.”

For a while no one said anything. Then Ella Barton spoke up. “You know anything about chickens, Mrs. Grant?”

Sally frowned. “What’s there to know? You get some hens and a rooster and keep the varmints out of the coop. Why?”

“Well,” Ella said, “when I get a homestead I will be busy with plowing and cattle and crops. Mama will be busy with cooking and sewing. We could use someone for chickens—and maybe the garden.”

A faint smile curled Sally’s mouth up at the corners. “Chickens, huh?” She nodded. “I could tend me some chickens.”

Ella Barton would always remember the look on Hamilton Drake’s face when, after he’d taken a big bite of Martha Haywood’s succulent roast beef, he was confronted by the reading of the telegram he’d sent. Mama actually giggled as the man’s face flushed. He stopped chewing. Took a sip of water. Chewed some more. And then, when the ladies leaned forward and began to ask questions, he barely managed to get that roast beef down.

“What’s this ‘bride business’ that rancher mentioned to Mrs. Dow?”

“Did you really arrange for a circuit rider to come through Cayote on Sunday?”

“You didn’t tell us about a dance. You
sold
the first dance?”

“Is
anything
you said about Nebraska true?”

“Can we even
get
free land?”

God forgive her, Ella enjoyed watching the beads of sweat collect on Drake’s brow. When he finally jumped to his feet, Ella thought he might be bent on fleeing, but the burly man leaning against the doorframe sipping coffee precluded that. And when she realized that Mrs. Haywood was standing in the kitchen doorway, her arms crossed, a butcher knife poised in one hand, Ella decided once and for all that Martha Haywood was a woman whose friendship would be worth earning.

“Ladies.
Please
, ladies.” Drake held his hands up, palms out. He cleared his throat. “No matter what you might have heard, there
is
free homestead land available in—”

“No. There isn’t. Not near Cayote.” The scrape of Ella’s chair legs across the bare wood floor was the only sound as she stood up to speak. “I paid a visit to the newspaper office just now. They have a copy of a very interesting map. It shows all the land the government gave the railroad. Land they can now sell to recover their costs for laying all that track. Millions of acres. As it happens,
all
of the acres around the town of Cayote are for sale.” Ella paused. “There is
no
free land near Cayote, Mr. Drake.”

Mama stood up beside her. “Shame on you. You must have known that. Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Well, now”—Drake reached up to loosen his collar—“ ‘near to town’ means something different out here than it does in St. Louis. Homesteaders out here think nothing of driving a dozen miles just to go to a dance.” He glanced Mrs. Haywood’s way. “Isn’t that true, Mrs. Haywood?”

“True or not,” Mrs. Haywood said, “we both know there isn’t any
free
land around Cayote, and these ladies seem fairly certain you said there was.”

Ella gestured around the table. “You promised
free
land
near
town. And you knew very well what we heard when you said that.”

“Eighteen dollars in filing fees,” Ruth Dow offered. “One hundred and sixty acres free and clear in five years’ time. That’s what I heard.”

“It’s what the law says,” Ella added.

Caroline spoke up. “But you never gave the law much thought, did you, Mr. Drake? You never expected the land to be a problem because you’ve assumed we’ll all get married right away. In fact, you’ve all but
promised
that to the men who received this telegram, haven’t you?” She waved the paper in the air.

Ruth’s voice wavered as she said, “And you shooed those men off the platform today for fear they’d give away the real meaning behind the Ladies Emigration Society before you had a chance to collect even more money on Friday.”

Drake’s eyes darted around the table. He swallowed. “You have misunderstood my intentions.”

Sally sat back and folded her arms. “I’m listening. You gonna explain?”

When Drake nodded and said he would “gladly” explain, Ella and Mama sat back down.

Drake cleared his throat. “The telegram was meant to provide a possible—and I emphasize that word ‘possible’—alternative for those of you who might have been somewhat . . . daunted, shall we say, by the landscape as we came west. I well remember the look on your faces when we crossed the burned prairie. Why, I half expected some of you to have turned back by now. And who would blame you? It seemed only reasonable that having some unmarried gentlemen meet the train in Cayote might provide yet another alternative. One that might be attractive—”

“To who? To someone with an idea to sell first dances?” Sally’s cheeks flushed red as she said, “I made it real clear at the meetin’ I attended that I don’t want no man, and you was wrong to bring me out here thinkin’ you could change my mind.” She paused. “And fer yer information, who I do and do not dance with is not up to any two-legged, low-down—”

Drake interruped. “I assure you, Mrs. Grant, that no one is going to force you to—”

“Well, at least you got one thing right,” Sally snapped. “I’m not takin’ one more step in any direction you got a thing to do with.”

Mavis Morris warbled, “I want that return ticket.”

“So do I.” Mrs. Smith and three others spoke in unison.

Drake closed his eyes in a pose that made Ella think of the minister at Milton’s church. She never had liked that man.

Taking a deep breath, he insisted, “You have misjudged both me and the fine citizens of Cayote. Especially considering that you haven’t so much as
seen
—”

“I’ve seen,” Mavis said. “Just like you said: burned prairie and flat land. I wouldn’t leave a
dog
I didn’t like out here.”

“Even St. Louis had its beginning, Mrs. Morris. A few years from now—”

But Mavis wasn’t having any of it. “St. Louis also had a navigable river and trees,” she retorted even as she stretched her arms wide and motioned around them. “There’s nothing outside these four walls but grass and sky.”

“Actually . . .” The one-armed stranger blocking the doorway spoke up, his voice a gentle rumble. “You may not have seen it yet, but there is plenty besides grass and sky out here.” When Ella looked his way, the stranger set his coffee mug down and took his hat off. He dipped his head in a half bow. “Jeb Cooper’s my name. I just bought a pre-emption. Good house, spring-fed watering hole, rich land. If a man—or a woman—has time and determination, Dawson County has a lot to offer.”

Mama thanked him “for filling that doorway at just the right time.”

“Glad to be of help.” Cooper put his hat back on and returned to lounging in the doorway.

One of the four sisters spoke up to ask Mr. Drake if he’d ever done anything like this before. When he said yes, she glanced at her siblings, who nodded back. “And did those ladies marry right away?”

“Some did. Yes.”

Another sister asked, “And were they . . . satisfied . . . with their decision? Are they still in the area?”

Ella could hardly believe her ears. Were they actually thinking of going on to Cayote? Entertaining the idea of instant marriages? She had her answer when one of them wondered aloud if the “tall man in the plaid shirt” she’d seen today would be at the dance in Cayote.

“I’m just trying to be practical,” she said, and glanced around the table with a little shrug.

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” another woman said. “Not all of us came to supper wanting to tar and feather Mr. Drake. At least not until after we see what Cayote has to offer.”

Ella shook her head. Mama patted her arm, then leaned close to whisper, “You cannot make the decision for them, Ella. They are grown women.”

Mama was right, of course. The same freedom that allowed her to come west allowed fools to follow the likes of Hamilton Drake, even after they had learned of his questionable integrity. It was none of her affair. She grabbed a biscuit and took a bite. But then Mr. Drake actually thanked Ruth and Caroline for “clearing the air,” and Ella decided that she had had enough.