Chapter 2 #2
Jeff came bounding out of the office door. He shook Mr. Fry’s hand on the way and climbed up onto the driver’s seat. With a flick of the reins, he had the cart moving.
“Grace, this is my good friend Jeff Carter,” Hunter said, realizing that Grace and Jeff hadn’t officially met.
“Good to meet you,” Jeff said, nodding at her.
“Likewise,” she said.
“I’m glad you woke up,” he said. “You gave Hunter here quite a scare.”
“I’m so sorry,” Grace said with a shy smile. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just … Sometimes I faint. Especially when I haven’t been able to keep anything down for the whole trip out.”
“What happened?” Hunter asked, concerned. Was she ill?
Grace’s cheeks turned a dark shade of pink almost instantly, as though someone had flipped a switch inside her.
“I don’t make a regular habit of fainting, so don’t worry.
It did happen every now and then back home, but only when my stomach was very upset.
It turns out that trains are not good for my constitution,” she said.
“It’s something to do with them moving and rocking and …
” She shivered. “I felt sick the whole way.”
“I had no idea,” Hunter said. “I’m so sorry.”
She waved his words away. “It’s nothing, really. Don’t worry about it. Just never make me set foot on a train again.”
“I promise,” Hunter said earnestly.
“Do you want to stop at the chapel on the way out?” Jeff asked.
Hunter froze. He and Grace hadn’t discussed anything beyond his proposal for her to come west. It had been assumed that they would be married, of course, but never made explicit. So, he wasn’t at all surprised when she turned an uncertain look on him.
“Ah, we’re still building the church,” Hunter explained. “So, we use this little chapel on the way from San Antonio to the town. It’s just convenient.”
“Convenient,” she said and bit her lip. “But we only just met in the flesh. I thought we could have a month or two to get to know each other.”
“That’s fine, if you don’t mind living under the same roof as me without being wed,” Hunter said, trying to choose his words carefully. He didn’t want to make it seem like he was being pushy. “We don’t have a hotel or an inn yet either. So, there’s really nowhere to stay except my house.”
Grace seemed to digest that for a moment. “Is this how everyone in your town does it? We all arrive and are raced off to the chapel to say our I dos, and then we dive into married life while hardly knowing each other?”
“I know it sounds terrible,” Jeff said, interjecting himself once more into the conversation. “But it really doesn’t stay that way for long. No one has had too much of a complaint about it.”
Grace pressed her lips together and looked down at her hands.
She was clearly thinking. Hunter waited, not wanting to push her into anything she wasn’t comfortable with.
Heaven knew he was uncertain about getting married to someone whom he’d just met.
She had to be equally worried about it. How did she know if he was anything like his letters?
“Really, Grace,” he began. “We might be able to find you a separate tent to live in while you and I get to know?—”
“All right,” she interrupted. “We can get married today in this little chapel just because it seems to be the only option. I do understand that my venturing out here was a tacit commitment to marriage, though I hadn’t expected it to be so speedy.
However, I would appreciate some time to become more, er, familiar with you before …
” Her cheeks turned apple red, so bright you could’ve guided a stagecoach by their light in the dark. “Before …”
Catching on, Hunter blushed equally red. “Er, yes. Yes, of course. We can take all the time we need to get to know one another before?—”
Jeff’s amused snort interrupted their mutual shy stammering. “Right. To the chapel we go,” he declared, and turned the horse in that direction.
“That had to be a new record,” Jeff said as they climbed back onto the driver’s seat of the cart a little while later. “I don’t think Father Sumner even bothered to breathe between sentences.”
“He did rattle it all off rather quickly,” Grace said, looking unhappy. “I thought it would at least be something happily memorable. A girl only gets married once, you know. I’d like to have had at least a minute or two to enjoy the whole thing.”
“I’m sorry,” Hunter said, fiddling with the little gold band that now encircled his ring finger on his left hand. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“How?” she asked.
Hunter had no idea. He shrugged. “What would you like? A new wedding?”
“Oh heavens, no!” Grace said. She looked thoughtful for a moment and then grinned slyly. “Help me start a bakery.”
Relieved that she was turning out to be a practical woman, Hunter nodded. “I would be delighted to help you.”
“That’s great,” Jeff said, flicking the reins of the horse and starting down the trail, “but we need to get a move on. There’s a storm rolling in.”
Hunter looked up at the sky and noticed for the first time the black smudge. “Ah, and we’re heading right for it.”
Jeff nodded. “You got a raincoat in that trunk? If you do, you might want to get it out.”
“Why? It’s still miles away,” Grace said.
Hunter sighed. He had glossed over the bandit activity in the area, making it sound much less intense than it was. Mind you, he had mentioned it. He hadn’t lied to his new bride. He’d just … omitted quite a few details.
“There are bandits in this area who wait for travelers to get stuck in the mud,” Jeff said. “And then they steal everything you have. So we’re going to have to travel right through that storm at a fast clip … And you might get mighty wet if you’re not prepared.”
“Oh,” Grace said. She turned to Hunter. “You didn’t mention this in your letters.”
“I did … sort of. I told you we had some troublemakers in the area. I just didn’t give you too many details. I didn’t want to worry you,” he said. “And it’s not always that bad. The bandits aren’t constantly lying in wait, are they, Jeff?”
Jeff frowned at him. “Sure,” he said.
Thankfully, Grace didn’t seem unduly perturbed. She rummaged in her trunk, soon producing a hat and coat made of oilskin. “Well, I can share this with you,” she offered Hunter. “Sorry, Jeff. There’s not enough fabric for all three of us.”
“Oh, we have our own?—”
A crash of thunder cut off the rest of Hunter’s reply, and the horse moved a little faster.
The sky was darkening rapidly. The wind began to pick up, and Hunter and Jeff donned their own raincoats as the first of the fat drops began to fall around them. Lightning danced above their heads in the clouds as the wind picked up leaves, dust, and twigs and hurled them through the air.
“This is a bad one,” Jeff cried, hunching against the weather. “We should look for shelter and wait it out.”
“You know that’s a terrible idea. What about the bandits?” Hunter retorted.
“There is the old mill,” Jeff said. “We could barricade ourselves in there and be fairly safe, I think.”
Hunter stared at him. “You can’t be serious. That’s far out of our way!”
“I know, but do you want to be struck by lightning? We’re the only tall things on this prairie, and this is an electrical storm!” Jeff cried.
To her credit, Grace didn’t seem to panic, merely hunched lower and pulled her oilskin closer yet.
Jeff steered the horses to the right down a little track. After a good while, they spotted the mill. It was beside a dried-up creek bed, and although it had seen a lot of storms, and bits of it had fallen in and down, it was better than being out in the open grassland in a storm.
Jeff drove the cart right inside the crumbling structure and drew a halt. They were already all dripping wet.
“Let’s build a fire,” Jeff suggested as he jumped down from the driver’s seat, almost disappearing into the thick darkness now surrounding them.
“What a wonderful idea,” Grace agreed, and Hunter winced as he heard her teeth chattering. What an introduction he’d given her to Texas life!
Jeff gave a sudden yell and crumpled to the ground—or at least Hunter assumed that’s what happened since he couldn’t see much beyond a few inches in front of him.
Before Hunter could so much as blink, suddenly there was the silhouette of a pistol pointed right at him and Grace.
Pointed so close it had to be less than an inch away.
A match flared … and Hunter’s heart dropped.
It seemed they had wandered right into a bandit den.