Badlands Bride

“I’m afraid that’s so,” she said.

“Well, let’s go in, and the couples gettin’ hitched should line up,” he ordered.

Hallie joined the gathering inside the station. The rough log walls looked like the inside of every other stopover she’d been in since crossing the Missouri, but at least she was out of the wind and sun for a few blissful moments. The three couples took their places and the justice quickly performed the ceremony. Hallie’s pencil scratched across the paper as she tried to take note of every last detail.

“You’re the witnesses,” the justice said, indicating Hallie and DeWitt. She signed three papers and handed the quill to DeWitt. He accepted it, carefully avoiding contact with her fingers, and turned his broad back to her.

Hallie stared at it only briefly before turning to George Gaston. “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride into town?”

He gave her a puzzled glance. “There ain’t no town.”

“To the trading post, then,” she clarified.

“I only have the one horse, miss. Don’t seem it would be proper.” He glanced behind her. “Coop’s the one with the rig.”

Her body ached from the ride, and she was so tired she could have curled up right here and gone to sleep. She sighed in frustration.

“I’ll give you a ride,” DeWitt offered from beside her.

She slanted a glance up in surprise.

“Come.”

“I need to post a letter to my father first.” She scribbled on a piece of paper. “Do you have an envelope?” she asked the station manager.

“Nope.”

Hallie looked at her letter in consternation.

“Just fold it and write the name and address on the back,” he told her.

She followed his direction and handed the letter over.

“That’s three bits, miss,” Mr. Hallstrom informed her.

Distressed, she glanced over her shoulder.

DeWitt drew the change from a leather pouch and laid it on the wooden counter.

“I’ll pay you back,” she promised.

Hallie congratulated the women, promising to see them soon, and followed DeWitt outdoors.

“I’ll pull the team over,” he suggested. “You show me which bag is yours.”

Though newly married, Angus jumped to the boot and performed his job, unbuckling the trunks and cases. DeWitt raised a brow at the sight of her trunk, but lifted it to the back of the wagon effortlessly, situating her valise beside it. She accepted his assistance and climbed up onto the seat.

Back aching, eyelids drooping, she rode beside him, desperately wanting to be able to eat and fall asleep. The man next to her made her feel even more helpless than her brothers did. If he believed her to be Tess, then he thought her a liar. If he took her word for who she was, he thought her a fool. Both assumptions got under her skin. “I’m a good reporter,” she said at last.

From beneath the brim of his hat he cast her a sideways glance. She read neither skepticism nor belief.

“There have been plenty of women writers, you know,” she said. “Mary Wollstonecraft wrote before the turn of the century. And there was Fanny Wright.”

His expression didn’t change.

“Anne Royall, too, but then she’s not a very good example, with all that Washington gossip. And of course there’s Lydia Maria Child’s antislavery book. So you see it’s not all that unheard of.”

Hallie reached into her satchel and pulled out her clippings about the brides. “Here’s one of my articles.”

She unfolded a column and held it up for him to look at.

His attention flicked over the scrap of newspaper dismissively.

The wind caught it and tugged it from her fingers. Her only copy disappeared into the vast countryside. Quickly, Hallie tucked the others safely back into her bag. “Those articles prove who I am, don’t they?”

“Anyone could have cut them from a paper.”

“You should have asked one of the other women who came. They could have backed up my story.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I could have shown you my silver bracelet with my initials engraved on it, but by now some thief has probably given it to his... Do thieves have wives?”

He only glanced at her in silence.

“Well, he’s melted it down for bullets, then,” she said.

He turned his face away and watched the horses’ rumps and the rutted dirt road.

Finally a few buildings came into sight, and the animals picked up their pace, heading for a long log structure with grass blowing atop the slanted roof. Hallie had never seen anything so strange.

“Is that your house?” she asked.

“The freight building. You can’t see the house yet.”

“You’ve planted grass on top!”

He cast her a cunous look. “It’s a sod roof.”

An enormous barn sat beside it. Sectioned corrals holding horses and mules bordered the east side and the back.

He led the team through an opening wide enough to accommodate the horses and wagon, and stopped. Inside were rows of wagons, a wall of tools and the permeating smell of dung and hay. DeWitt unhitched his horses and whacked each on the rump. Placidly, they made their way through a doorway, where a short man wearing suspenders over his shirt met them.

“Hey, Coop! That the bride?”

Cooper hung tack on the wall. “No, Jack. She didn’t come. This is Miss Wainwright. A reporter from Boston.”

“Oh? Looks like this ’un would do.” He tottered off behind the horses.

Hallie lowered her eyes and stretched her legs. Cooper had called her by her name and identified her as a reporter. Did he believe her now? Her stomach growled, loud in the open room. “Why didn’t you introduce me properly?”

His brows lowered. “Don’t expect parlor manners out here, lady.” He beckoned with an arm that sent fringe swaying.