Alma's Mail Order Husband (Texas Brides Book 1) (5 page)

“Sure.” Allegra followed her back to the
cloak room and took the comb out. “You go ahead and get changed.
I’ll help Amelia get Papa loaded up. That way, as soon as you’re
finished, we can hit the road.”

“Okay,” Alma agreed.

Allegra disappeared, leaving Alma alone in
the dusty shadows of the cloak room.

Alma laid her head piece inside the sheet she
used to bundle up her wedding clothes. She hesitated to take her
dress off and she looked down at the white skirts ruffling away
from her body. If only she could see it in the looking glass just
once. If only she could carry that image of herself back to the
distant reaches of the ranch. Her womanly beauty never saw the
light of day there.

At least Jude would carry the image. He would
remember it when he saw her with mud and grime all over her face,
when he saw her smeared with soot from the branding iron, and when
she cracked a whip to round up her stock.

He would always carry the memory of his first
sight of her. He would know the woman who lurked under her chaps
and hat, even when she didn’t know it herself. She dropped the
dress off her shoulders and stepped out of it. As soon as it left
her body, it took its magic with it, leaving her once more the
cowgirl she was when she came into the cloak room the first
time.

When she put her pants on again and buckled
her belt, the heavy, dirt-encrusted canvas scraped her skin. She
always thought they were soft and comfortable. Now they felt like
alien armor or a tortoise shell that stopped her from moving the
way she wanted to. Would she ever get rid of it? When she looked
into her future, she didn’t see any way she could. She would be
working the ranch until she was old and grey, wearing the same hard
clothes. She would never be soft or fine or female the way she was
in that dress.

She laid the dress inside the sheet and
folded up the corners. How long had she worn it? Ten minutes? It
would go back to the bottom of the trunk and rot there. Someone
would find it in another forty or fifty years and wonder who wore
it to get married. They wouldn’t know her skin touched its delicate
folds. They wouldn’t smell her in its sleeves and waist band.

She tied the corners of the sheet, braided
her hair into its usual rope down her back, and put her hat on her
head. When she opened the door, the outfit of the cattle puncher
she wore into the cloak room felt like a disguise, a masquerade
designed to prevent people from seeing the real Alma
underneath.

The church stood deserted. Her father,
sisters, and husband must be outside. That word sounded so strange
in her mind—
husband
. It didn’t sound like anything having
anything to do with Alma Goodkind.

Local people knew the Goodkind sisters as
tough, hard-riding gunslingers who worked their ranch in all
weather, all year round, and drove a hard bargain at the auction
yards in the fall. They didn’t have any use for men. Their father,
the only man in their lives, was a cripple. They never gave the
local boys a second glance, and Allegra, the youngest, laughed at
them.

But she wasn’t Alma Goodkind anymore. She was
Alma McCann, wife of one Jude McCann of Amarillo. She could make
herself over as anything she pleased.

In front of the church, Alma found her father
on his throne between stacks of flour sacks and Amelia in the wagon
seat. Jude stood near the church door to meet her.

He raised his eyebrows at her clothes. Then
he smiled. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you like
this. You told me you and your sisters worked your ranch by
yourselves, and after meeting them, I should have expected you to
dress the same way. It’s just a shock to see you like this after
that dress you were wearing in the church just now.”

Alma dropped her eyes, but she couldn’t bring
herself to look at her clothes. “I’m sorry. I just don’t have
anything else to wear home. I should have planned to make another
dress to wear, but I didn’t even think of it until after we already
got here. I’ll work on that when we get home. I understand you
don’t want your wife wearing a man’s clothes.”

“If you’re going to keep working the ranch,”
Jude pointed out. “You may as well keep wearing these. It’s the
most sensible thing you could wear.”

“I’m not sure I want to keep working the
ranch if it means dressing like this,” Alma told him. “That dress…”
She glanced back over her shoulder toward the church door. “I think
that dress did something to me. I don’t think I want to go back to
the way I was before.”

Jude raised his eyebrows again. “You
don’t?”

Alma cast around for something. “This…..” She
looked down at her clothes. “This doesn’t really fit me anymore. I
didn’t know it before, but I think getting married changed me
somehow. I don’t want to be….
this
…anymore.”

Jude shrugged. “You be whatever you want to
be. Be what you’re most comfortable being. But after the way the
three of you have kept the ranch going all these years, you might
find it a little more difficult than you think to walk away from
it. Anyway, your sisters—and me—we might need your help.”

Alma brightened up. “I’ll be happy to help
any way I can, and I’m not really ready to walk away from the
ranch. I just think I’ll start making a slow shift away from
it.”

“Toward what?” he asked.

“Toward being your wife, of course!” Alma
laughed. “What else?”

Jude chuckled. “Well, then, that’s just fine
with me.” He tipped his hat to her. “I’ll meet you there.”

Alma laughed again. “Come on. Let’s get out
of here.”

She put her foot into the spokes of the wagon
wheel to climb up into the driver’s seat. But Amelia turned around
and pointed back toward the wagon box. “Why don’t you and Jude ride
in the back and let me and Allegra drive home? That will give you a
chance to get to know each other a little bit better.”

“Oh!” Alma exclaimed. “I didn’t think of
that.” She caught Jude’s eye. “Is that all right with you?”

Jude looked at his new father-in-law
enthroned on his mountain of blankets. “It’s fine with me. I had
planned to ride my own horse, but we can tie him onto the back of
the wagon. I’m happy to ride with you if….if everyone else is
agreeable.”

Clarence Goodkind didn’t even blink in his
direction. Allegra climbed up the other side of the wagon into the
seat, and Alma got into the wagon box as Jude tied his horse by the
reins to the back of the wagon. Then he joined Alma.

She looked around inside the wagon box.
“Where’s your luggage?”

“What luggage?” he asked.

“Don’t you have a trunk or something?” she
asked. “Don’t tell me you didn’t bring anything.”

Jude jerked his thumb over his shoulder
toward his horse. “I brought my bedroll, and a few odds and ends in
my saddlebags. I brought my rifle, and a shotgun, and a few letters
from home. What else is there?”

“Aren’t you coming out to our place to live?”
Alma asked. “I thought you’d want to bring more than that.”

“I don’t have more than that,” he told her.
“That’s all I’ve had while I’ve been workin’ on the range, and
that’s what I brought. What more is there?”

Alma shook her head. “Alright. I’m just
surprised. That’s all. If you don’t think you need any more, that’s
fine with me.”

“I’m sure if I need anything, I can get it,”
Jude replied.

They settled themselves in the wagon. They
sat in the two far back corners of the wagon, as far away from
Alma’s father as they could sit. Jude smiled at Alma, stole a peek
at the old man, and turned his attention for good to his new
wife.

“So,” he began. “We’re married.”

“Yes,” Alma replied.

Amelia slapped the reins on the horses’ backs
and shouted to them, and the wagon started forward. Jude inspected
the town as they passed. “And this is Eagle Pass.”

“Yes,” Alma replied. “Didn’t you see any of
it before?”

Jude shook his head. “I just arrived. I just
rode into town and went straight to the church.” He frowned. “Isn’t
there any more of it than this?”

Alma chuckled. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss
it. There, you see? We’re out of town already. That’s all there is
to it. A couple of houses, a church, and a store. And we don’t come
into town more than once a year, twice at the most. It’s a pretty
sparse life we have out here.”

“I’ll say.” Jude watched the last house out
of sight, which was sooner than expected, considering the adobe
walls blended perfectly with the red earth. Once the wagon passed
the first clump of bushes, nothing remained to be seen of the
little town.

“How far out of town are you?” Jude
asked.

Alma didn’t answer. Her eyes roamed the spare
landscape behind the wagon. She listened to the gentle thump of the
horse’s feet in the dust. A gentle wind blew the stray hair out of
her face and made a hollow howling noise in her ears. She listened
to it and drifted away.

“Alma?” Jude called.

Her head swung around. “Huh?”

“I asked you how far out of town you are,”
Jude repeated. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“Sorry,” she muttered. “Riding in the wagon
sort of puts me to sleep. If you just keep talking to me, I’ll pay
more attention. As soon as we stop talking, I go into some kind of
trance. I do it automatically. It helps the time pass.”

“All right,” Jude replied. “I’ll remember
that. So how far out of town are you?”

“About eighteen miles,” Alma answered. “We’ll
get home just on dark.”

“Tell me what you have going on out on the
ranch,” Jude told her. “I’d like to get out with you tomorrow and
see your operation.”

“You know how it is,” Alma replied.” The
cattle are just summer grazing. We’re pretty busy protecting them
from coyotes and wild cats and wolves, keeping them moving between
grazing areas, down to the river each day for water, and then back.
There’s not a lot to see at this time of year. There’s not a lot
going on.”

“I still want to see it for myself,” he
returned. “I want to know what I’m getting myself into. And if you
are thinking of handing over some or all of your work, I’ll need to
be familiar with the ranch if I’m going to be taking on the
responsibility.”

“I think I explained to you in my letters,”
Alma remarked. “That neither Amelia nor Allegra has any intention
of giving up any control over the running of the ranch. They both
want me to make it clear to you that they don’t want you coming in
and taking over.”

“I understand that,” Jude replied. “I
understand you three have managed this ranch by yourselves for a
long time and it’s going to take some time to get used to doing
things a different way.”

Alma glanced toward the driver’s seat just
long enough to see both her sisters stiffen, but neither of them
turned around. “We don’t want to do things a different way,” Alma
insisted. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you. We don’t
want to become used to doing things your way, and we don’t want to
become used to you making decisions and running things. We want to
keep running things the same way we always have. That’s what I’m
telling you.”

“I understand,” Jude repeated. “You don’t
have to stop running things. I’m just saying it’s going to take
some time before you get used to having another person around. It
always takes time when a new person comes onto a ranch with a fresh
perspective and new ideas. There’s always a breaking-in period.
I’ve seen it a dozen times on ranches I’ve worked.”

“Have you worked on many?” Alma asked. “You
make it sound like you’ve moved around a lot.”

Jude flushed and turned away. He watched his
horse plod along behind the wagon. “You know how it is. You start
working somewhere, everything’s going great guns, then you start to
butt heads with someone, and the next minute, you’re buttin’ heads
with the boss, and then you’re movin’ on to the next place.”

“What did you butt heads over?” Alma
asked.

“Just what we were talking about,” Jude
replied. “Some people don’t like having a new man on the job with a
different set of ideas on how to do things. Some people want
everyone to do things their way. It doesn’t always make for the
most successful working relationship.”

“But if that person is the boss,” Alma
pointed out. “Then he would have the right to demand you do it his
way. Wouldn’t he?”

Jude shrugged. “I never said he didn’t. I
just have my own way of doing things that works for me. That’s the
way I am. And then I have my way of talkin’ to people and jokin’
around and havin’ fun. Not everyone likes that, either. Rubs some
people the wrong way, if you know what I mean.”

“I see,” Alma muttered. “Well, I think you’ll
find us more than reasonable. We have our own way of doing things,
but we never demand that other people do them that way. Just so
long as you understand that we don’t plan to change our methods,
and we aren’t looking for you to take over our operation.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I get that.”

“Good,” Alma exclaimed. “Then let’s talk
about something else.”

“Yes. Let’s.” Jude snuck a glance toward the
tented throne and brought his eyes back to Alma. He smiled at
her.

Alma followed his gaze toward her father and
found Clarence staring at Jude through narrowed eyes. She tried to
catch his eye by smiling at him, but he never took his eyes off
Jude. What was he thinking? What was he seeing? Could he see at
all? Was he just listening casually to their conversation?

Alma returned her attention to her husband
and smiled back at him. “So what about you? Tell me what you’ve
been up to this last season. Where have you been before you came
down here?”

“I worked for a few months up near Amarillo,”
Jude told her. “I visited my family while I worked on a neighboring
ranch. After that, I rode on a round-up out of New Braunfels. That
ended about a month ago. Then I made my way down here. I made a few
stops along the way, but I came here after that.”