Love of a Cowboy 1 Page 14

  Buckle Bunnies Volume One

  The Badge Bunnies Volume One

  Ride Along: The Badge Bunnies Series

  The Friends Series

  Mail-Order Mama

  By

  Courage Knight

  ©2010 by Blushing Books® and Courage Knight

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Blushing Books®,

  a subsidiary of

  ABCD Graphics and Design

  977 Seminole Trail #233

  Charlottesville, VA 22901

  The trademark Blushing Books® is registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.

  Knight, Courage

  Mail-Order Mama

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-60968-155-5

  Cover Design: by ABCD Graphics

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books’ or the author’s advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

  Chapter 1

  Morgan felt a sense of panic threaten to overwhelm her as the dusty town came into view. It was so small and shabby. The main street was nothing more than a wide, dirt path, with less than a dozen clapboard buildings leaning on either side of it, and nothing had seen a coat of paint once in all its long, long life. She’d traveled all the way from Pennsylvania to this?

  Montana had sounded like an exotic adventure. Perhaps even a little romantic. That was it. Coming out west to marry a widower with five children had allowed her girlish fantasies to resurface, dreams she’d buried long ago. She would finally have a home of her own.

  The journey had been an adventure. First, the buggy ride from her cousins’ farm near Lancaster, to a coach, to a train, to the stagecoach. She had passed through large cities and endless prairies. She had seen small towns, coal towns, farm towns and boomtowns. She had seen immigrants in their foreign clothes, listened to them chatter in a language she could not understand. She’d even seen her first Indians. However, nothing had prepared her for the smallness, the shabbiness, of this godforsaken hole on the very edge of civilization.

  She blinked back tears and forced her shoulders back. It seemed God was not through tormenting her yet. If suffering made one strong, then by now she should be invincible.

  The driver shouted a string of profanity. The team of horses responded, slowing down as they pulled up alongside a tacky storefront. A bald, clean-shaven man stepped forward to help with the reins. For a moment, Morgan was terrified that he might be her new husband, and she rebuked herself for placing importance on hair. As long as he had the necessary body parts to call himself a man, he was more than an old maid like she had a right to expect. Then the bald man scowled in her direction.

  “Didn’t know you’s bringing nobody,” he accused the driver.

  The driver unlashed the remaining boxes from the top of the stagecoach - her few suitcases and the supplies this bald man must have been waiting for. He wasn’t her new husband after all. The letters she’d received from John Patrick O’Shea said he was a homesteader, not a shopkeeper.

  The driver tossed down her bags. She winced as she watched them bump and roll. No amount of packing was going to protect her belongings from such abuse. Luckily, she owned nothing of value. Her cousins and little brother had inherited everything. Her most treasured possession, the small jar of starter, was carefully packed in her purse. She’d nursed it along the entire trip, adding bits of flour and milk when she could to keep it from spoiling. Morgan dreamed of making loaves of sourdough bread, or muffins, or pancakes for the man she would soon call husband.

  “She’s here for O’Shea,” the driver snorted.

  The shopkeeper stood there speechless for a full minute, then he guffawed uproariously. “You had me there for a minute, Sam! That was a good one! Jackie O’Shea! That’ll be the day.”

  Morgan patted her skirts, trying not to cough at the cloud of dust she stirred up. “He speaks the truth. Mr. O’Shea was to meet me here. Will you be so kind as to tell me who he is?”

  The bald man gulped, glancing up at the driver, who gave him a nod.

  “O’Shea? Ma’am, I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you the best advice ya ever heard, and it’s even free. You get yourself back on that buggy and head east at once! And forget you ever heard of Jack O’Shea.”

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” she said indignantly. She was tired of being treated like an ignorant child. At thirty-one, she had long since left naïve and gullible behind and could honestly call herself matronly. At the least she deserved his respect, if not his assistance. “Something must have happened to prevent him from meeting me here, as we had agreed. I will require someone to take me to our homestead.”

  The bald man shook his head. “It’s your skin, ma’am. But I ain’t gonna be the one to see it shot full a’ holes. I got me work to do.” With that, he hefted a box that looked far too heavy for such a small-boned man to carry, and stomped inside.

  The driver shook his head before she even had a chance to ask him. “I tol’ you, ma’am. I got a schedule to keep and I’m already a half-day behind. I can take you back to Glasgow, or you takes your chances here.”

  “I’m not leaving,” she said. “I promised Mr. O’Shea I was coming. I will keep that promise.”

  The driver unhitched his team and led them into a livery around back. Morgan followed, asking everyone she met for a ride, but no one seemed willing to lift a finger to help. She felt uncomfortable though, as she realized she was one of the only women of any age anywhere. There was a gray-haired, toothless woman doing wash, and a pimple-faced one in a tight-black dress, but the majority of the tiny prairie town was male. Adult male. Her Mr. O’Shea with his five children was definitely unique. Perhaps that made the others uncomfortable around him. Being different was never good. People who were different were shunned. New England Protestants had taught her that well.

  The afternoon sun was high. The air was still and dry. A mosquito buzzed by, but a half-hearted swat brought him to an untimely death. Morgan heaved a sigh, wishing for nothing more than a hot bath and a long nap. She ached in places she didn’t even know could ache, but Hell could freeze over before she returned east.

  “I’ll need to rent a buggy,” she told the livery boy.

  “Yes’m,” he said, nodding agreeably, while his eyes shifted nervously about. He ducked out and returned promptly with his boss, an unpleasant mountain of a man with as much body hair as a black bear. She knew, for he wore no shirt.

  “I don’t rent to women folk,” he said blandly.

  “My money is just as good,” she insisted. “I need to get to Mr. O’Shea’s.”

  “Go home, lady,” he snapped. He turned around and left.

  Morgan was mad enough to scream. Being angry only made her more determined. She hiked up her skirt to step over the brown horse plops, and made her way to the tavern where she was certain she’d hire help, even if it were less than savory.

  “I need a ride to the O’Shea homestead,” she announced, once inside. “I’ll pay. But I must be there before sunset.”

  The tavern was sparsely populated, she noted. But then, it was the middle of the day. She’d have been worried if it had been crowded. So the town was short on women and children, but it was also short on drunken vagrants. There was no church, no school, no public building of any kind. Just several taverns, a mercantile, a hotel and a laundry. A town built for dusty, thirsty, single cowmen just passing through. It was a sorry place to raise a family.

  “I got nothin’ better t’do,” one aging fellow volunteered. “But, I ain’t takin’ ya to the door, ma’am. Don’t wanna be shot, you know.�
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  “I assure you, sir, Mr. O’Shea is expecting me.”

  The old man simply laughed. He laughed while hitching up his miserable-looking nag to a wagon, and while he tossed her luggage in the back. He laughed for the first six miles out of town. Then he turned sober.

  “O’Shea isn’t what you might call civilized, ma’am,” he hedged. “He ain’t no catch. Iffen you go to visit, you get a .22 for a welcome. He’s not right in the head. Believe you me, ma’am, you should head on back.”

  “I don’t put much stock in idle gossip, sir,” she said, mustering as much pride as she could. If one more person told her something uncomplimentary about the man she had come to marry, she might just lose her courage.

  It didn’t matter that she’d left nothing behind. Her cousins didn’t ever want to see her again. Of course, in a few years when all their children were old enough to start schooling, she might be welcome to teach them, but if they were as unruly as their fathers, she’d sooner set sail for a leprosy colony in the south pacific. Only her little brother had urged her not to leave. He would have taken her in, seen that she had a place to stay and food to eat, but he couldn’t understand her desire to be independent. And his young wife was not at all interested in sharing their modest dwelling with her. No, there was nothing to which she could return. She had to make a home here.

  The old man fell silent, periodically spitting a stream of foul-smelling black juice off to the side of the rutted path. He didn’t speak again until a shot ripped through the air, splintering the silence. The horses whinnied nervously, prancing in their harness. The old man cursed, hauling back on the reins. “This is as fer as I kin’ go, ma’am,” he said apologetically. “Yer on yer own.”

  She stepped down, waiting for him to unload her luggage. “I’ll be fine,” she said primly.

  “Jus’ in case ya change yer mind, I’ll hidey-hole around the corner a half mi’. You kin catch up, if ya want to.”

  She forced a polite smile as she watched him turn his rig around. Then slowly she started towards the modest little cabin.

  Another shot rang out, whizzing past her skirts to spit up a cloud of dust where it buried in the dirt path. She winced, but held her ground. She put her arms out, palms up, showing she was unarmed. “Hello? Mr. O’Shea? It’s me, Morgan! Your wife,” she said, trying to calm the anxious quaver in her voice. What if he hadn’t sent the letters at all? What if someone else were playing an elaborate hoax, summoning her to marry a crazed backwoodsman? Well, if they did, then the joke would be on them. They could have a great laugh while they buried her.

  “Mr. O’Shea! I’m coming inside. I’ve traveled a long way to meet you. If you don’t want me here, you’re going to have to drive me back yourself.”

  No more shots were fired. She walked cautiously. Her heart pounded a rapid tattoo in her chest. She felt slightly dizzy and more than a little nauseated. Still she moved. One foot in front of the other. No more shots. The hot, still air was silent. It was unseasonably hot, a small part of her brain mused while most of her was just worried about taking the next breath. This late in the season she should have needed to wear at least a shawl, shouldn’t she?

  And then the door was in front of her. Although no one opened it to welcome her, she took the fact that she had arrived without any holes being shot through her dress as a positive sign. After a timid knock, she lifted the latch and stepped inside.

  The smell nearly knocked her flat.

  It wasn’t a dirty smell. It smelled of sickness. It was thick and foul. And somewhere she thought she heard a child cry, but it was so dark she could hardly see.

  “Mr. O’Shea?” she called timidly. No one answered.

  Light spilled in through the door. She paused a moment while her eyes adjusted, then she could see a lamp on the table and a box of matches. She lit the lamp and two more over the hearth. Scanning the room quickly, she identified it as the main living quarters. The table was large and sturdy, with benches on either side and a chair on one end. Dirty dishes remained on it, bowls with a cold, congealed chicken soup still in them. Ants were busy helping themselves to the remains.

  A huge fireplace filled one wall. A pot hung over the ashes, but the fire had long since gone out. A dry sink and cupboard was tucked in one corner. A narrow cot extended beneath the window in the long wall next to the door, and a rifle leaned precariously against the ledge. It was, no doubt, the same weapon used to try to scare her off. Next to it lay a small boy, unconscious. She did not know if he had stopped firing by choice or because he had simply passed out, for the child was burning with fever.

  All her questions and fears were swept away in an instant. Here was a sick child and she was an expert at nursing. Ten years of caring for her dying uncle had taught her almost enough to pass herself off as a doctor, if anyone would have believed a woman could practice medicine.

  She felt the boy’s forehead, judging his fever to be near critical level. His shirt was drenched and stuck to his skin, revealing a too-thin frame. She spied a hand pump in the kitchen and quickly gave it a few good pumps to bring up cold water into a basin. Snatching a kitchen towel, she hastened back to the narrow bed.

  She placed the loaded rifle on the table, then tried to straighten the child. He was appallingly light. As she worked, she realized that while his arms and chest were that of a boy of nearly nine or ten, his legs were far too small to support him. They were ugly and misshapen, bony legs with twisted, shriveled feet. He had a handsome face, though. His hair was straight and wispy blonde, like the hair of a winsome waif or angel child.

  Quickly she took the kitchen towel and drenched it, wringing out the cold water, then began to wipe his hot, sweaty face. Wet the rag and wash, over and over, in slow, methodic movements, to bring down the fever. The boy tossed a few times, mumbling incoherently something about keeping them safe. Morgan assured him that he was safe now. She hoped he could understand.

  She wondered where Mr. O’Shea was. Could he have run in to town to meet her, and leave such a sick child behind? It seemed unlikely, for she should have passed his wagon on the narrow road. And his short letter had said there were five children. Were the others with him?

  There were other noises in the tiny cabin. At first she’d ignored them, trying not to imagine what kind of rodent it could be, but curiosity forced her to climb the narrow ladder to the loft. There she found the other four, all girls, the youngest no more than four. They were also burning with fever and delirious. They were rank with sweat and sickness. She threw open a window just so she could breathe, and nearly gagged when she saw that one of them had thrown up in her bed and was sleeping fitfully in it. Efficient and methodical went out the window. Morgan turned almost frantic. She stripped the two beds and the thin flannel gowns from the girls. She couldn’t find a clean change for any of them, but let them lay on the bare tic mattress with only a thin sheet to cover them, while she threw their soiled linens below.

  There wasn’t time to worry about Mr. O’Shea, or to wonder why he wasn’t here taking care of his children. Or to ask why none of his children bore any family resemblance to each other. Had he taken five different wives? Or five different concubines? It was an ugly thought, but given the uncivilized conditions, she couldn’t completely rule it out.

  The eldest child looked to be Indian. Her complexion was a golden brown, with long, straight black hair and black, black eyelashes. When she opened her eyes in a fever-induced nightmare, Morgan saw that they were nearly as black. She didn’t look that different, though. Then Morgan realized that the child would have been labeled a half-breed, despised by both whites and Indians. She was an outcast.

  The next girl was close in size, but her face was softer, less defined, implying she was a year or two younger. She was a thin girl, with plain, straight hair of a mousy-brown shade.

  The third girl was maybe six years old, with waves of curly hair in an envious shade of golden blonde. She was missing a front tooth. When she opened her eyes, the
y were a luminous, sky blue shade, but one eye was turned almost completely inward.

  The smallest girl had straight, red-brown hair. She was tiny, curling into a tiny little ball, and sucking her thumb hard enough to cause a blister to form below the knuckle. Morgan felt pity for all of them. Sick, motherless waifs, abandoned by everyone, including their father, in their time of need.

  Morgan climbed down the ladder that was nailed right against the wall and wondered how the littlest one managed it at all. She built a fire, pumped water and heated it, washing all the bed linens and nightgowns. She hung them out on a line beside the cabin, gazing at the setting sun and wondering again what had happened to their father.

  Had she traveled this far only to become a widow even before she was a wife? Was this her mission - to mother these orphaned waifs, or to bury them?

  She’d seen sickness. Fever and delirium were common to a host of illnesses, from Typhoid Fever to the flu. She did a second, more thorough exam of the crippled boy. He didn’t have the skin rash indicative of typhus or measles. No swollen glands, so she could rule out mumps. As she mentally ran down the list of possibilities she knew of, she decided that it was most likely the tail end of an influenza outbreak. Although the secondary infections could be dangerous, it was far less frightening.

  Morgan brought in the fresh sheets just before the dew fell. Quickly she made up their beds and helped the girls into clean gowns, noting how the flannel was nearly threadbare, and the seams were a little crooked, but everything had been meticulously mended over the years.

  Dressing the boy should not have bothered her as much as it did. She’d nursed all three of her cousins, her little brother, the hired hands and the servants before she’d nursed her uncle. She’d seen the male anatomy often enough that it didn’t even cause her to blush, but his twisted little legs stabbed at her heart. Her happiest memories were of the times before her parents died, of running through the meadow behind their farm, chasing fireflies at dusk, climbing trees or catching turtles. All that had been denied Mr. O’Shea’s only son.