Instant
Bride
Chapter
One
David
Andrew Dalery swung his team into the rutted road that wound its way five miles
from his parent's farm into Willcox. The
jostling of the wagon scarcely registered in his angry mind.
He was always upset after a visit with his mother and sisters but today
he was furious.
"It's
just too much," he muttered through clinched jaws. "Try to pay a
friendly visit to my folks and all I get is that hogwash about marryin’!
You'd think that was all Ma wanted of me—to get married and produce a
son to carry on the Dalery name!"
Inside
his head he could still see the snapping dark eyes of his mother and hear her
strident voice, "David Andrew (everyone but his mother called him Dave) how
can you be so absolutely selfish? Your
father isn't getting any younger and you aren't even married yet!
Are you forgetting that you are the sole remaining male Dalery?
If you don't give us a man child, the Dalery name will vanish from off
the face of this earth!"
Cracking
through his brain now was the condemning voice of his younger sister, Vernie,
"It isn't as if you couldn't find a girl, Dave! Julie Sue would give her eye teeth to marry you and you know
it!"
Didn't
he know it? He would be blind and
deaf if he didn't! Vernie had been
pushing him at her best friend, Julie Sue, for three years, ever since the girl
had turned fourteen years old! And
Julie Sue had been smirking and making eyes at him ever since she was twelve!
It
wasn't that Vernie's best friend wasn't pretty. With long blond hair like silkweed and gray-blue eyes fringed
in long golden eyelashes, she would probably have caught him in her matrimonial
snare long ago if it hadn't been for all the infernal finagling that everyone
had been doing to get them hitched-up!
And
for the fact that even at twenty-three, Dave still savored his freedom!
All his life he had been ordered around by females!
His mother was a natural-born nagger and his two sisters were almost as
bad. Pity the poor men they had
married!
Florence,
two years his senior, had been married seven years and had borne five children,
three still living. Vernie,
eighteen, had been married for better than a year and was in a family way—due
in a few months. It's a good thing their husbands are both wild about them or
they couldn't stand their nagging, he thought darkly. Vernie's husband Luke had
been hired to help Pa with his farm when David had moved to the old Oliver
homestead, and he and Vernie still lived there.
"If
you keep dragging your feet Julie Sue will marry someone else like that Kemper
boy that's been making eyes at her lately," Vernie had warned.
“A girl won't wait forever, you know!"
Losing
patience, David remembered that he had shouted, "I never asked her to wait!
I never even asked her to marry me!"
"Then
why have you taken her to pie suppers and to church for the past several months,
if you weren't serious about her?" his mother had demanded.
"Because
I was pushed into it," he had muttered as he grabbed his hat and headed for
the door. The next thing he knew he
would be shouting at his mother, too, and then he would be in trouble with his
quiet, ever-patient father. One
thing Pa always insisted on was that his children show absolute respect to their
ma.
"Maybe
it would be easier to just marry Julie Sue and get it over with," he said
aloud. "Or even the new school
marm that's teachin' over to the new school.
She showed me a lot of attention at the church picnic a while back."
Although Julie Sue was the first choice of his family, he knew they would
resign themselves to any respectable girl—if he would only just get married!
"But
I like bein' my own boss," he spoke over the clatter of the wagon wheels.
Besides, it went against the grain to be forced into marriage.
Even his pa had voiced his quiet opinion lately a couple of times that it
was high time he settled down, married a good girl and started himself a family.
Dave knew his father was getting a little anxious about his lack of
enthusiasm for getting married. Having
a boy to carry on the family name was equally as important to him, though he
wasn't as vociferous about it as the women folk were.
Dave
thought back over the past three years since he had bought his rundown old
homestead with money borrowed from his dad.
He had worked practically night and day but his hard labor had paid off.
The farm was now debt-free, his small house tight and snug against cold
and rain, his barn and fences in good repair.
His
thriving garden grew potatoes, turnips, cabbages, and tomatoes. He’d been
eating greens, fresh radishes and onions since early spring, and in his
smokehouse hung pungent smoked bacon and ham.
He
thrilled with pride at his accomplishments but he knew that the most precious
thing he hugged to himself was his independence. There was no one to boss him around! If he married—unless he got someone like that spineless
Gessie girl, Gertrude, and he could never marry someone that didn't have a mind
of her own—all of that would change. Wouldn't
it?
It
was true there were times he was a little lonesome, he admitted to himself.
When the wind howled around the chimney mournful-like, it would be nice
to have a female person to talk to and to snuggle up to in bed.
It was a bit lonesome to plan for the future with no one in mind to share
it with. But to give up a fellow's
independence was a powerful big step, too.
Suddenly
Dave realized that he was nearing town. He
slowed the team with a few softly spoken commands and swung down the rutted main
street. I'd better go to the store
first to get some salve to doctor that cut on the red steer's
hind
leg, he thought. Then his quick
gray eyes noticed for the first time the small crowd gathered down the street in
front of the saloon.
"Wonder
what's going on?" he said aloud. Maybe
I do need to get hitched. I keep
talking to myself more all the time.”
Easing
his team down the street, he pulled up near the edge of the crowd, pulled on the
brake, wrapped the reins around it and jumped down.
He stepped up on the board sidewalk and could see into the small crowd
that had gathered about the wagon of old man Alders.
The man stood up—weaving a bit—and began to wave his hands about for
silence.
He's
drunk, Dave thought, as the voices hushed and the high-pitched voice could be
heard.
"Well,
good neighbors, I've come to town to do my dooty."
The only sound now was the squeak of the leather as Alders' horses
shuffled their feet impatiently. "The good book says that if a young woman
shall be found wicked in her father's house that she shall be stoned to death!
Is that not the word of God?"
The
voice rose shrill and harsh and the fierce, bloodshot eyes raked the faces of
the men and women standing about his wagon. For a moment stunned silence
prevailed. Then a dry, stern voice
spoke from the edge of the crowd and Dave recognized it as Sheriff Flander's.
"I don't know what you're gettin' at, Alders, but there'll be no
stonin' in my town for anything! It
ain't legal."
Old
man Alders lifted his hand and silenced the murmur of voices that had begun,
"I didn't expect that our good sheriff would allow the Bible law to be
fulfilled so I'm doin' the only thing I know to do under the circumstances.
I brung in my dorter to show to the good people of this town that I ain't
approvin' of her trifling ways."
The
old man reached down and pulled the figure, huddled beside him, to her feet.
A faded brown dress shrouded her slight figure but the man shoved the
shabby bonnet back to reveal the face of a girl of about fifteen.
Long glistening black hair framed her face and tumbled down her back.
Dave
felt gall push up into his throat as his horrified eyes took in the livid bruise
on one side of the white face and the eye that was nearly swelled shut.
A slight gasp as of pain had escaped the girl's pinched, bloodless lips
as she was dragged to her feet, then she stood swaying until she reached back to
steady herself with a slim brown hand on the back of the wagon seat. Her other
hand clutched her side.
The
low voice of Ada Templeton, the Willcox Community Church pastor's wife reached
Dave's ears from the group between him and the Alders wagon. "Do something,
George! That monster has beaten
that poor child."
The
hushed voice of the pastor answered, "What can I do, Ada?
The law gives a man the right to discipline his child."
"But
not to beat her nearly to death," his wife argued.
The
acrimonious voice of the girl's father shrilled again, silencing the mutterings
that were beginning, "You all know how my two-timin' wife run off with that
travelin' peddler four years ago. I've
been afraid her dorter would follow in her iniquitous footsteps and hev kept her
home—out of temptations path."
His
voice rose virtuously to almost a scream of righteous fury,
"But look at her!" He
shook the small form beside him and a single faint cry escaped her before she
clamped her lips together until they were a pale slash in her white oval face.
"All
my efforts has been wasted." His voice trembled with rage.
"Her mother disgraced me and now my dorter does worse. She's goin'
ta bear a child and her not wed!"
Long
black eyelashes had hidden the girl's eyes but now she lifted dark anguished
eyes toward her father, "Please—Pa. . . .
The
shrill voice rose again, "I want you all to know that Samuel Alders did the
best he could with this gurl. Tried
to teach her right."
"Right—you
old hypocrite," Dave heard someone mutter and realized that it was himself
who had spoken. He felt the heat
rise in his face as he became aware of several faces turning toward him to
stare.
The
bloodshot hawk eyes of the infuriated father swept the crowd again and the voice
rose challenging, "Someone brought this disgrace on my gurl.
If you're a real man, you'll come forward and right the wrong by marryin'
my dorter
ta
give her pore fatherless child a name. If
you will do it now, I'll call ya a man. How about it? Are you a man, or are ya a dirty coward?"
Silence,
except for shifting feet greeted this challenge. A few mutterings began but were cut short by the savage voice
of the girl's father. "Just
what I thought! No one has the
gumption to admit to it and this fool gurl of mine won't give me his name.
He
sat down heavily and roughly pulled the girl down to the seat beside him.
"Come on, gurl, I'll get the name of that gutless coward from you,
if it's the last thing I ever do!"
"Now
see here, Alders," the sheriff said severely, "You hurt
that
girl any more, and I'll see if I can't find some charges to bring against
you."
The
old man turned on the sheriff savagely, "Keep your nose out a my business!
What I do with my gurl ain't none of yer affair!"
He picked up the reins to his team.
"Do
something, George," the pastor's wife's voice was urgent and tinged with
fear. "That old man will kill
that girl."
The
pastor hesitated and then pushed forward to look up into the face of the old
man, "Mr. Alders, let your girl come home with us and we'll take care of
her and of her baby when it comes."
The
grizzled gray head swung toward the pastor and the small, mean eyes measured the
minister for a full moment while the crowd stood hushed and waiting.
"I guess you would like to get my gurl in your clutches," he
said
suspiciously.
"She's a right good hand ta work, and you could get a servant fer
free to scrub yer floors and do yore cookin'."
"We
don't want to make a servant out of your daughter, Mr. Alders," Mrs.
Foster's pleading voice broke in. "We
would treat her like our own child. And she needs the care of a woman right now."
Alder's
eyes held scorn as he answered, "We don't need none of yer sanctimonious
concern, Ma'am. What my no-account
gurl needs is a husband and I don't think you can give her thet!
Now, if you'll excuse me, Ma'am," he said with sarcastic politeness,
"I'm takin' this wicked dorter of mine home and I'll see that she stays
there!"
The crowd began to move back, some of the women whispering, but the men were grimly silent. Suddenly David's voice rose above the murmuring voices, "I'll marry your daughter, Mr. Alders."