Chapter 2
Hunter Marks was not good with women. It was a failing, according to his mother, that he just couldn’t seem to get the hang of being around them.
So, when Grace crumpled like a paper doll in an unforgiving fist, his mind instantly went into a panic.
It was only lucky that his muscles were somewhat smarter in such a moment, acted of their own accord, and reached out to catch her.
Hunter looked around, hoping someone would help, but no one seemed interested in his plight. He stared helplessly down at the beautiful, limp rag doll of a woman in his arms.
“What happened?” Jeff came loping up the steps, eyebrows rising as he took in the scene.
“She nearly stood on a rattler. It was too much for her, I think, and she fainted,” Hunter said, eyeing his fiancée worriedly.
Oh dear. Delicate women didn’t fare well in these parts.
Come to think of it, neither did delicate men.
The west required a certain amount of steel spine for survival. “Help me get her to the cart.”
Together the two friends took Grace and her luggage to the cart and loaded them all in the back. They tried to make her comfortable, but there was only so much that could be done with a load of copper in the back.
Hunter rubbed his jaw thoughtfully and frowned as he contemplated his still-unconscious bride-to-be. “She look okay to you? Do you think we need to find a doctor or something?”
Jeff shrugged his broad shoulders. “Let’s get Julie to look at her when we get back to town.”
Hunter nodded. What else could they do? Maybe Grace would wake up on the way. How long did women stay unconscious when they fainted?
“I’ll be quick at Mr. Fry’s,” Jeff said as he climbed onto the driver’s seat of the cart and waited for Hunter to join him. “This should be a straight, simple sale.”
Hunter climbed in and sat down. He had a horrible feeling that it might look like they were kidnapping Grace, unconscious as she was.
He looked around to see if there were any accusing glances, but there were none.
No one seemed to care that a woman had been unceremoniously loaded in the back of the cart and driven off.
That was almost as disturbing as a possible accusation.
As they drove down the street, Hunter began to relax.
He’d been looking forward to this day for months.
From her letters, he knew that Grace was a kind but forthright lady who knew what she wanted out of life.
And what she wanted more than anything was a place to call her own.
He had similar desires; being the youngest of six brothers, he also had had limited choices, and it was by God’s grace that he had found his way into mining when his whole family was involved with sheep farming.
At least working with Jeff and his brother Andrew and the others, Hunter had the chance to do something monumental.
Starting a town and a mine from scratch was an adventure that he had thought he would only ever read about in magazines, journals, or history books.
And yet here he was, living the adventure daily.
“Do you think she faints every time she gets a fright?” Hunter asked. “Only, that might mean that she’ll be unconscious more often than not. You know, considering what goes on in our little town.”
Jeff shrugged, but he chuckled at the same time.
“Well, that is a possibility,” he said. “Look, maybe it was just all a little overwhelming for her. The excitement of arriving in a new town, meeting a handsome man like yourself, and then a rattler … That’d make a lot of women wobbly kneed.
You told me she sounded plenty strong and brave in her letters to you, so give her a chance. ”
“Oh, I intend to,” Hunter assured him. “It was just … unexpected.”
They drove on in silence for a while, Hunter glancing back periodically to check on a still unconscious Grace, until they finally reached the broker’s office.
Mr. Fry was a large man, all muscle, and he came out to the cart when they pulled up.
He was in his late forties or early fifties and had a friendly smile.
His eyes were sharp though, and Hunter knew not to take his friendly demeanor as anything but courteous business sense.
“Well, now,” Mr. Fry said. “I wasn’t expecting you boys until tomorrow.”
“We had to come to town today,” Jeff said. “We were picking up Hunter’s lady friend at the train station. Thought we might as well kill two birds with one stone and stop by.”
Mr. Fry looked at the cart and, only after a moment, spotted where Grace was lying in the back. “The heat too much for her, was it?”
“Something like that,” Hunter admitted.
“Don’t worry, my wife used to faint at the drop of a hat,” Mr. Fry said with a shake of his head. “She soon toughened up. There’s no place around here for that sort of thing. People learn to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or go under.”
The thought of Grace going under anything—water or land—made Hunter queasy. He’d come to care for her through their letters, and though it was a far cry from love yet, he had hopes that someday it might be.
“True,” Jeff said. “Should we go on in and talk?”
“After you,” Mr. Fry said, gesturing for Jeff to head into the office ahead of him.
Left alone on the cart with the unconscious Grace, Hunter felt awkward. Should he try to wake her or leave her to come around on her own? Was fainting like sleepwalking where one should never wake the sufferer? He wasn’t sure. He turned on the seat and watched her lying there.
She was really very pretty, even prettier than he had hoped she would be.
Grace had nicely rounded curves, her hair was honey blonde, and wisps of it framed her face.
Her eyes, when they were open, were a lovely deep blue, like the ocean.
They had flashed like lightning back at the station, and he chuckled at the memory of her mistaking the stranger for him.
With a spirit like that, she’d do just fine out here.
She began to stir. Her eyelids fluttered, and before Hunter could decide what to do, they opened. For a moment she stared up at him with unfocused eyes and then blinked and groaned. Her hand went to her forehead, followed by her other hand, which went to one of her cheeks.
“Did I faint again?” she asked in a whispery voice. “I don’t remember how I got here.”
Again? What did she mean again? Was fainting a habit of hers?
“You almost stood on a snake, and yes, you fainted,” Hunter said nervously. “I caught you before you hit the ground though.”
“Oh?” she asked, patting her red cheeks. “Mmm, that would explain why nothing hurts. Thank you.”
Hunter smiled.
“Do you have some water nearby?” Grace asked, sitting up gingerly. She took in the copper bars around her, eyeing them quizzically.
“I do,” Hunter said. Reaching under the seat, he found the water skin that he and Jeff had brought and handed it to her.
She took a couple of sips and dabbed a little of the water on the back of her neck. Then she smiled at him, and his heart skipped several beats. It was such a friendly, warm smile, a look that made him want to get to know her much better so that he could work out how to make her smile all the time.
Hunter found he didn’t want to look away. She was mesmerizing, holding his gaze, just looking right back at him with odd serenity for a woman who’d been just seconds from lying crumpled in the scorching Texas dust.
“All right,” Mr. Fry called from the doorway to his office, just his head poking out. “You can offload!”
The voice broke the spell, and Hunter and Grace both looked away. She hurriedly handed him the waterskin and climbed out of the back of the cart. Hunter scrambled to help, getting there just in time to take her hand.
“Thank you,” she said with a faint blush. “That’s most gentlemanly of you.”
Hunter smiled, feeling awkward. He helped her onto the driver’s seat and then joined Mr. Fry’s men in the offloading.
It gave him time to gather his thoughts and pull himself together.
Not that the smirks Mr. Fry’s men wore on their faces helped.
They all seemed to be mocking him for some reason, and Hunter tried his best to ignore them.
The physical work of offloading the copper was enough to get Hunter on an even keel again and when the work was done, he climbed up onto the driver’s seat beside Grace without feeling odd about it.
“I take it all of that was from your mine?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yes, we make deliveries like this to Mr. Fry about twice a month.”
“Goodness. Is it worth a lot?” she asked.
Hunter nodded again. “I hear they’re using the wire in things to do with electricity and the telephone, so more folks are looking for good copper of late. We found a pretty fine seam.”
“Oh right,” Grace said. “My father was talking about having the house electrified or something to that effect. My mother wants a telephone installed. I mean, they live up in the mountains, and everyone she knows except me lives just about on her doorstep. Who would she telephone?”
Hunter had to admit he had no idea. “I like sending letters. There’s something special about words you have to think about and use ink to pin to a page.
I mean, if you could talk to someone just like we’re talking now over large distances, can you imagine the rubbish you might say?
You wouldn’t have to think, not seriously, about what you wanted to say to them. ”
Grace sighed. “You know, I think that’s half the appeal to some people. Just being able to reach their loved ones and say hello and hear their voice.”
“Next they’ll be wanting to fly like birds to avoid having to travel long distances on a train or cart or on horseback,” Hunter said, thinking how much his mother would like that.
She always wrote to say how much she missed him.
If people could magically transport themselves back and forth through the air, he was sure she’d be at his house more often than not.