Historical Cowboy Romance Two Book Box Set - Mail Order Brides (18 page)

He had to stoop to get into Jake’s face. “I
was talkin’ to you, Mister. Don’t you turn your back on me!”

“I’m engaged with these ladies here, if you
don’t mind,” Jake returned. “We’re just about to leave, so if
you’ll excuse me, I’ll bid you good day.” He touched the brim of
his hat and moved to turn away again.

“I don’t think so,” the big man thundered. “I
was in the middle of telling you I could lick you any day of the
week for insulting my brother over there.”

Jake’s eyes flashed and he shifted his
shoulders inside his jacket. “You were in the middle of telling me
that, but you can’t lick me and I have more important business to
attend to. So unless you have some idea of stopping me, I’ll go
now.” He nodded once and looked away toward the door.

The big man jabbed Jake in the chest with his
thick sausage of a finger. “You’re not goin’ anywhere until I’ve
had my say, Mister. If you don’t apologize to my brother over
there, you’ll answer to me and suffer the consequences.”

Jake narrowed his eyes. “I won’t apologize to
him or to you or to anyone, other than these ladies here for your
wretched manners. What do you propose to do to me? You think you
can lick a man half your weight? You’re a bully and a coward, but I
invite you to try. You think you can beat me in a gun fight? As you
can see, I’m unarmed. But if you wait until I get my guns strapped
on, they’ll be hauling your rotten carcass to the graveyard in a
quarter of an hour. Now which would you prefer?”

The giant stooped even lower, and the puffs
of breath from his ragged mouth ruffled the hair on the side of
Jake’s face. “You’ll be sorry for this, you fancy-pants….”

He didn’t finish his sentence. With one swift
movement, Jake brought his fist up hard under the large man’s chin.
His teeth clacked together and his head whipped back on his neck.
His eyes fluttered in his skull, and he crashed to the ground in a
cloud of dust.

The other patrons of the saloon turned around
to see the commotion, but it ended as soon as it started. Jake
studied the remains of his opponent at his feet, dusted off his
hands, and turned back to the Kilburn sisters. “Ladies?” He waved
toward the door again.

Violet whirled away to hide her
embarrassment. So Jake Hamilton wasn’t innocent after all. He was
as much of a brute as Mick McAllister. Was her own mail-order
husband the only one of the three worth taking home?

What if Cornell was right? What if this whole
enterprise exploded in their faces and they lived to regret getting
these men to come live on the ranch? After Friday, they’d be
married to these men, two of whom appeared to be violent
scoundrels. In addition to being violent, Jake could be anything
from a drunken dissipate or a dangerous villain. Chuck Ahern was
the only one of the three Violet wanted around the ranch.

Iris fell in at her side on the way back to
the train station, and Rose and Jake walked after them, side by
side. Violet kept her ear tuned to hear their conversation but to
her amazement, they didn’t speak to each other at all. Once they
reached the street outside, she stole a glance over her shoulder
and found them still gazing into one another’s eyes, but without
speaking. The same shy smile played across both their faces.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Violet
recognized even then a fundamental similarity between Rose and
Jake. Violet never met anyone quite like Rose before she met Jake
Hamilton. When they gazed into each other’s faces, they seemed to
Violet almost as though they were looking at mirror images of
themselves. Yet they didn’t fall into effortless and intimate
conversation with each other. Violet couldn’t understand them at
all.

When they returned to the buggy, they found
Chuck and Mick already mounted on two of the horses the sisters
brought and three trunks stacked on the rack in back of the buggy.
Jake and Rose settled into the back seat, and Violet and Iris got
into their places in front.

Mick raised an eyebrow when Iris took the
reins. “Would you like one of us to drive you home?”

“I can drive.” Iris adjusted the reins in her
hands. Then she cracked a smile. “Who do you think drove here to
get you?”

“I just thought you might like one of us to
drive,” Mick muttered.

“Besides,” Iris went on. “If you drive, Jake
will have to ride, and I wouldn’t want to disturb the
lovebirds.”

“I guess not.” Mick wheeled his horse away.
Iris clucked to the horses, and the buggy rolled up the street and
out of Butte.

Chuck and Mick rode alongside.

“You mentioned you have an extra house you
plan to put us in,” Chuck began. “Isn’t anyone living in it?”

“We call it the Fort House,” Violet told him.
“It belonged to my father’s brother. They built the ranch when they
were young, and my uncle built the house when he married. But his
wife died soon after, and my uncle abandoned the house. We’ve used
it as a guest house ever since.”

“So the three of us will stay there when we
get to the ranch,” Mick asked. “Where will we live after we get
married?”

“Funny you should ask,” Violet answered. “We
were just discussing that very topic on the way down to Butte. You
see, the ranch has three houses, the Fort House, the main house,
where we live now, and what we call the Bird House, which is
another small guest cottage.”

“That sounds perfect,” Chuck replied. “So we
can each have our own house.”

Violet flushed. “It would be. There’s only
one problem. Our guardian, the executor of our estate, lives in the
Bird House at present.”

“You mentioned him in your letter,” Chuck
told her. “Pollard, I think you said his name was.”

“That’s right,” Violet replied. “Cornell
Pollard. And he’s not just our guardian and our executor, he’s our
great uncle on my father’s side, so he’s family. He’s lived in the
Bird House ever since our parents died and he became our
guardian.”

“But after you get married,” Chuck pointed
out. “He won’t be your guardian anymore. Then what will
happen?”

“That’s just what we were discussing,” Violet
replied.

“I think,” Iris put in. “That Cornell should
find another place to live. If he isn’t acting as our guardian and
executor anymore, we won’t have any use for him around the ranch
anymore. He’ll only get in the way.”

“That sounds about right to me,” Mick
added.

“I can’t believe you would be so unkind to a
man who’s dedicated so many years to our well-being,” Violet
exclaimed. “We can’t just turn him out into the street like an
unwanted dog. He’s earned the right to a comfortable home.”

“If you ask me,” Iris declared. “I think he’s
earned the right to be turned out on account of the way he’s run
the ranch into the ground these last couple of years.” She turned
to Mick, who rode at her side. “You’ll be shocked when you see the
state of the place. We’ve been running bare bones for years, and
the place is on the ragged edge of collapse. And all because he
wouldn’t listen to me when I told him something had to be done
about it.”

“You told him?” Mick’s eyebrows went up
again.

The color mounted into Iris’s cheeks, and she
brought her eyes back to her driving. “That’s right. You might
think it’s a little out of the ordinary for a woman to take an
interest in the workings of a cattle ranch but it’s our legacy. Do
you understand? Once I realized how desperate the situation was, I
had no choice but to get involved, to salvage it in any way I
could.”

“I understand,” Mick replied.

“You’ll see when you get there,” Iris
continued. “You’ll see why I had to do something—anything. And
everything I’ve tried to do, Cornell has worked against me. I
almost think he’s gone out of his way to thwart me, just to drive
the ranch into the ground.”

“But why would he do that?” Violet broke in.
“He has no reason to do it. He has financial control of the whole
enterprise. It’s to his advantage to make it a thriving
concern.”

“Not if we get married, he doesn’t,” Iris
shot back. “He knew all along that, one day, we would grow up and
control of the ranch would pass out of his hands. Once that
happened, he no longer had any reason to make the ranch work.”

“But he has nothing to gain by ruining the
ranch,” Violet protested.

“There is one thing he could gain by it,”
Iris replied. “He could use the ranch to prevent us from getting
married. He probably counted on the fact that, as women, we
wouldn’t be able to run the ranch ourselves. He probably wanted to
put himself in a position where we would have to rely on him to run
our enterprise for us.”

“I can’t understand why you would hold such a
vindictive opinion of Cornell,” Violet exclaimed.

Iris turned to Mick. “You see? We’ve had this
conversation morning, noon, and night for months, and we never come
to any agreement about it. But you’ll see when you get there.
You’ll see why we had to get you men out there to help us. We’d
lose our entire legacy if we didn’t.”

“This Cornell sounds like a scoundrel,” Mick
growled.

“He is,” Iris replied.

“He is not!” Violet cried. “He’s our closest
relative and our guardian. I refuse to listen to anyone saying a
bad word against him.”

“You tell her, Chuck,” Iris called across the
buggy. “You’re the only one who can talk sense into her.”

“But didn’t you mention,” Chuck replied.
“That this mail-order marriage was your idea? It sounds like you’re
going along with Iris on this.”

“It
was
her idea,” Iris told him.
“When I told her how the ranch was suffering from lack of cowboys,
she came up with the plan that we should marry some. You would all
gain a share in the operation through marriage to the three of
us.”

“It sounds like a pretty good deal to me,”
Mick replied.

“Of course it wasn’t all about business, you
understand,” Iris went on. “Just about anyone we married would be
enticed by a share of the ranch. So we might as well marry cowboys
who could help us manage it properly, if you see what I mean.”

“Oh, I understand your point,” Mick replied.
“I think it makes good sense. And I’m happy to be on board. If we
do decide to give this Cornell rascal the boot, I’ll be right there
to lend a hand.”

“No one is giving Cornell the boot!” Violet
yelled. “And that’s final!”

“You have to admit, it might come to that,”
Chuck put in.

“Over my dead body!” Violet snapped. “He’s
already distraught about us getting mail-order husbands—and
cowboys, too. He wanted us to marry up, you know, into wealthy
families with prosperous, educated sons. We’ve dashed all his hopes
to the ground by getting you men out here. The least we can do is
smooth the way for him by leaving him comfortably situated in the
Bird House until he dies—which won’t be too much longer, I
imagine.”

“He could make things very difficult for us
in the meantime,” Iris pointed out. “He’ll make a point of sticking
his nose into everything, meddling in all our affairs, and arguing
with us over every business decision, even when the business no
longer concerns him. You know perfectly well he will, Violet.
You’re only defending him because you feel guilty about flouting
his wishes. You’ve never done it before, and you feel bad for doing
it now.”

Violet crossed her arms over her chest. “I do
not!”

“But that still leaves the question,” Chuck
added. “Where are we all going to live?”

“Mick and I will take the Fort House,” Iris
declared. “I’ve already told Violet and Rose this, and I’m putting
my foot down on it. If Violet absolutely refuses to send Cornell
packing, then you and Rose can wrestle over the main house. I don’t
care. I’ve told you what I think we should do. If you won’t do it,
I’m not going to put myself out to accommodate Cornell.”

“Good for you, Iris,” Mick exclaimed. “That’s
my kind of thinking.”

Violet snuck a glance over her shoulder and
saw Rose and Jake still staring at each other in silence. Neither
made any move to join the conversation. If anyone but Rose sat in
that back seat, Violet would have invited her into the discussion
on Cornell and the Bird House. After all, hadn’t Rose mentioned the
Bird House on the way to town? Come to think of it, Rose was the
first one to mention getting rid of Cornell so she and Jake could
live in the Bird House.

Violet jerked around again and directed her
eyes toward the road ahead of them. In the distance, the sign over
the entrance gate to Rocking Horse Ranch peeked up between two
hummocks of land. It gave her the perfect opportunity to change the
subject. “There it is. Rocking Horse Ranch. You can just see the
front gate from here.”

The two riders gazed out over the range
stretching toward the far horizon. “Nice piece of country you have
here,” Mick remarked. “How much land do you have?”

“We have fifteen thousand acres of our own,”
Iris told him. “Plus we have the use of another ten thousand acres
of unclaimed land adjacent to our southern boundary.”

Mick whistled through his teeth. “That’s a
good parcel. And how much stock?”

“Five thousand head,” Iris replied. “About a
third of that should go to the sale yards at the end of the summer.
We haven’t had a decent cattle drive in a few years, what with
being so short-handed. We should cut our numbers and build up again
next year with higher quality stock.”

Mick squinted at her out of the corner of his
eye. “You really know your stuff, don’t you? I never heard that
kinda talk comin’ outta the mouth of a woman before.”

Violet laughed. “That’s our Iris. She gets
into everything that doesn’t concern her. Do you know, Mick, she
even orders the cowboys around? Pete Kershaw and Wade
Jackson—they’re our ranch hands—they take all their orders from
Iris.”