“Oh!” The blood rushed to Violet’s cheeks. For a moment, she floundered in confusion. Then she burst out laughing. Chuck stared at her as if she’d lost her senses. Finally she composed herself enough to extend her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last, Mr. Ahern. I’m Violet Kilburn.”
“Oh!” Chuck went beet red, opened his mouth and closed it again, glanced around, and opened his mouth again. Finally, he burst out laughing, too. He took her hand. “Call me Chuck. If you call me Mr. Ahern, I probably won’t know who you’re talking about.”
He and Violet shook hands, still laughing at themselves. When they eventually let go of one another’s hands, they stepped back and regarded each other. Chuck stood as tall as Violet, and his square shoulders filled out his clean cotton shirt. His wore a gun belt around the hips of his denim pants, and the unmistakable band of spur straps marked the tops of his boots. A thick mustache covered his upper lip, but the rest of his face was clean-shaven and smooth.
His light brown eyes cut through Violet’s embarrassment. She didn’t look around to see if Iris evaluated Chuck the same way she had, but she knew this man was exactly what Rocking Horse Ranch needed. Everything about him screamed cowboy.
“Did you have a pleasant journey?” Violet asked.
“Good enough,” Chuck replied. “It’s pretty boring, you know, but you can’t complain. The only other way to travel is to ride a horse, and I wouldn’t want to do that all the way up here from Santa Fe.”
“You must be tired.” Violet wrenched her eyes away from him and peered around at her sisters. “We’ll find the others and get you back to the ranch. As I told you, we have a spare house you men will stay in until the wedding service on Friday. You can rest up there and get your bearings. I hope that arrangement still suits you.”
“Suits me fine,” Chuck replied. “I won’t be sorry to stop traveling for a while.”
“Well, then, we’ll just find the others….” Violet trailed off. She and her sisters glanced around at the other passengers on the platform.
How should they go about finding the other two men? Nothing remained but to ask the nearest person, as they did with Chuck, and hope for luck.
But Chuck cut them off. “Mick McAllister’s inside the station, talking to the station master.” The three sisters jumped with surprise. “And Jake Hamilton is over there, in the hotel saloon.”
“How do you know?” Iris cried. “We didn’t think you three knew each other.”
“We didn’t,” Chuck told her. “We got talkin’ on the train. You know how it is. We’re all in the same business of punchin’ cattle, so you fall in with others like you. There’s nothin’ else to do on the train for days at a time. That, and after a while, you begin to notice which people are going the same direction as you. Anyway, we got talkin’, and we figured it out. Took a while, but we figured it out.”
“Well, that makes it easier for us, doesn’t it?” Violet remarked. “Thank you very much….Chuck.” She broke into another fit of giggling. His name sounded so strange in her mouth. Even after months of corresponding with him by mail, saying his name out loud gave her a queer little tingle. “Now we won’t have to go hunting for them.”
The noise of a scuffle drew their attention toward the station. The door flew open, and two men locked in a tight embrace exploded out of the station and bowled over into the dirt at their feet. As soon as they hit the ground, they fell into a mighty struggle to drive each other to the ground. Violet cried out in horror at the conflict, but Chuck and the other bystanders simply watched the two men fighting in the dirt.
Just when one man got the better of the other, the man on the bottom rallied and flipped his opponent over to regain the upper hand. They reversed positions two or three times before the larger of the two fought his way onto the top of the other. He delivered a decisive blow to his rival’s midsection, which knocked the wind out of him, and then another to the side of his jaw. This last blow dazed the other man enough to give the victor time to consolidate his advantage by sitting on top of his opponent.
He straddled his fallen enemy on his knees and punched him repeatedly in the face. Sweat and saliva flew from both men’s faces, and before very long, the man on the bottom lay motionless with blood leaking out of his nose.
The victor stopped hitting his victim and stared at his senseless form, panting and sweating. At last, he dragged himself to his feet and loomed over the body, his fists still clenched at his sides. He glared around him at the onlookers, his teeth bared between curled lips. “He stole my wallet,” he growled.
So saying, he bent down and ransacked the fallen man’s pockets until he pulled out a folded leather wallet. He waved it at the spectators and stuffed it into his own trouser pocket.
Most of the people standing around the train station turned back to their own business then, and the man relaxed his posture somewhat. Violet stared in horror at the ogre, but her horror reached a peak of dismay when Chuck announced, “This is Mick McAllister.”
Now that he stood upright in front of them, Violet saw him clearly for the first time. She saw a very tall, sturdy man with sharp, angular features and a sun-bleached Stetson hat over his close-cut blonde hair. He walked away from his victim and toward the Kilburn sisters. His clear blue eyes surveyed the platform to the right and to the left with the quick superiority of command before he turned toward Chuck Ahern.
One more glance showed him who the women were. “These them?” he asked Chuck. Without waiting for a reply, he stuck out his hand to Violet. “I’m Mick McAllister.”
Violet shook off her shock and returned his handshake. Sweat squeezed out between her fingers when Mick gripped her hand. “I’m Violet Kilburn. This,” she nodded toward her sister “This is Iris.”
Iris extended her gloved hand to Mick. “Good afternoon.” Mick shook her hand with a curt nod, but both he and Iris blushed and stole shy peeks at each other. Iris couldn’t approve of this street-brawling brute as her mail-order cowboy, could she?
Violet took charge. “Now if we can find Mr. Hamilton, we can get on our way. Hopefully we can get home before dark.”
“Why don’t you ladies walk over to the hotel and find him?” Chuck suggested. “Mick and me will load our luggage onto your…is this your buggy?”
“Yes,” Violet replied. “You can put everything on the rack in the back. And there will be room next to Rose in the back seat, too. Are you men happy to ride back to the ranch? It’s a long way but there just isn’t room in the buggy for all of us.”
“That’ll be fine with me,” Chuck told her.
“Me, too,” Mick chimed in. “It’ll be good to get back in the saddle after being on the train all this time.” He glanced back at Iris, and she blushed and smiled again.
“Good, then,” Violet declared. “We’ll head over to the hotel and bring Jacob back. We’ll meet back here at the buggy.”
The sisters started across the street toward the hotel, and Violet fell in step next to Rose. “Are you all right, darling? You’re not too concerned about meeting your groom, are you?”
“I’m not concerned at all,” Rose replied. “Why would I be concerned?”
“I just thought you might think the worst,” Violet explained. “When they told us he was over in the hotel saloon. I thought you might worry that he was….” Violet faltered.
“Was what?” Rose asked.
Rose’s big limpid eyes threw Violet into confusion, and she lost the sense of what she wanted to say. She flapped her hand. “Oh, I don’t know. He might be drinking or carousing or gambling. You know!”
“I don’t think there’s much likelihood of that,” Rose replied.
“I just didn’t want you to be worried,” Violet repeated. “After all, he could be fighting in there like….” Violet stopped herself in time.
“You mean, like Mick?” Rose asked. “No, I’m not worried.”
Violet let the matter drop, but she couldn’t banish her first glimpse of Mick McAllister from he
r mind.
The sisters walked around the corner to the hotel and peeked into the saloon. About ten men occupied the big room, some leaning against the bar, some playing billiards, and some just chatting with each other. All but two wore the typical uniform of the Western cowboy, with heavy canvas pants, wide-brimmed hats, and boots. Nothing distinguished one from another enough to determine which man they sought.
Chapter 8