Alma's Mail Order Husband (Texas Brides Book 1) (4 page)

More than anything else, Alma longed for a
husband to have someone to talk to, someone all her own, someone to
share her experiences with. With every passing year, her sisters
slipped farther away from her. Now, they didn’t share experiences
with each other at all, even though they spent every waking moment
of their lives together.

When something happened, when they saved
their herd from flash floods or shot wild cats stealing newborn
calves, the sisters never shared their thoughts. Each sister kept
her experience of the event to herself. If the three women hadn’t
been present together when it happened, Alma would wonder if Amelia
and Allegra experienced the same event at all.

The endless jiggling and squeaking of the
wagon lulled them all into a dreamy doze in which the hours passed
unnoticed. Alma closed her eyes for a second to rest them from the
sun, and the next thing she knew, the wagon rattled into the dusty
streets of Eagle Pass.

The town consisted almost entirely of low
adobe hovels like their own house. All of them looked as though the
next good rain would wash them into the nearest mud puddle. No one
would guess they’d stood torrential downpours and floods for more
than two hundred years. The adobe houses of the Texas-Mexico border
were among the oldest permanent structures on the North American
continent.

Alma took a firmer hold on the horses’ reins
as they entered the town and steered the wagon to the church. Only
the curved portico on the church’s roof, topped with a handmade
wooden cross, distinguished the church from every other building in
town. It sat on a corner of what would have been, in a larger town,
the central plaza. In Eagle Pass, the plaza—what the townspeople
referred to as the plaza—was nothing more than a big square of
beaten dust with the church on one side and the General Store on
the other.

Alma stopped the wagon in front of the church
and looked around. A few men slept against the wall underneath
their sombreros while others examined the family with interest.

Allegra jumped down from the wagon and cast a
glance toward the General Store. “How are you supposed to find this
husband of yours?”

Alma looked around again. “You would think a
stranger in town would stand out like a sore thumb. If he’s here
waiting for me, half the men in town should be shoving him toward
me right now. That’s how weddings usually happen in this town.”

“Maybe he isn’t here,” Amelia suggested.

“If he isn’t here,” Alma replied, “we’ll just
get our supplies and go home. Nothing lost.”

“Except a day of work,” Allegra told
them.

“What do you want to do?” Amelia asked.

“Maybe we should ask around town,” Allegra
suggested. “I’m sure everyone knows if a strange man came into town
recently. Benito over at the store is the resident town crier
house. I could go and ask him.”

“Why don’t you take your dress into the
church and change your clothes?” Amelia added. “There’s the cloak
room off to the side of the pulpit. Allegra can go over to the
store and ask Benito if he knows about Jude, and I’ll wait here,
just in case he shows up asking about you.”

Alma breathed a sigh of relief. “Good
idea.”  She took her bundle out of the wagon and headed for
the door of the church. As she swung it open, she saw Amelia
helping her father out of the wagon.

The cool darkness of the church hit Alma in
the face as soon as the door closed behind her. She shivered after
the pounding heat outside. She waited for a minute in the doorway
until her eyes adjusted to the gloomy interior. Then she made her
way down the aisle to the cloak room.

What people called the cloak room looked more
like a shed, and no one kept their coats or cloaks or anything else
in there. Even in driving rain, local people kept their coats on in
church. In all her life, Alma knew of only one instance when
someone used the cloak room, and that was when Hidalgo Hernandez
bought a dog from Alberto Rodriguez in front of the church on a
Sunday and tied the animal up in the cloak room until the end of
service before he took it home.

Alma halted in the door of the cloak room,
looking for a place to put her dress down. Cobwebs and piles of
dust decorated the little enclosure. Only a few streams of daylight
peeked through the loose boards on the side of the room. Not a
single shelf or hook adorned its walls or rafters.

In the end, she hung the dress on the remnant
of a tree branch sticking out of one of the peeled beams in the
ceiling. She sighed once. How many women in this country got
married like this?

She heard about high society women Back East
with attendants to dress them and fix up their hair before they
took a coach to the church. When they arrived there, they found it
decorated with flowers and filled with gaily-dressed friends and
relatives.

In south Texas, nearly everyone got married
this way. Only local girls could change their clothes at home
instead of in the cloak room of the church. Most of them didn’t
even change their clothes. They met their men at the altar in their
regular everyday dresses, got married, and went home to cook supper
without so much as a ten minute break.

Alma slipped out of her clothes. She dropped
her pants and shirt onto the floor along with her boots and hat
before she realized she hadn’t brought anything else to wear home.
After the service, Jude McCann would see her for the first time in
her work clothes. What would he think about his new wife wearing
pants and a gun belt?

Alma didn’t even own a dress. Neither of her
sisters did, either. They’d worked the ranch for so long that they
no longer bothered keeping any clothing other than their work
clothes. Maybe that would change with a man around.

But she couldn’t think about it now. She
pulled her mother’s wedding dress over her head and straightened
the skirts. It really was a magnificent dress. Then Alma realized
she hadn’t brought anything to wear on her feet. She should have
some silk slippers to match the dress. She had no choice but to put
her boots back on or go barefoot to the altar. Alma pulled her
boots back on. The ruffled hem of the dress just brushed the red
clay of the floor, hiding the boots from view.

“Alma, he’s here!” Allegra voice hissed
through the crack in the door. “Jude McCann’s out here.”

“Did you find him in town?” she asked.

“No,” Allegra answered. “He can up to Amelia
outside the church and asked her if she knew where to find Alma
Goodkind. He’s out here with the priest now. He’s waiting for you
whenever you’re ready.”

“Hey, Allegra,” Alma called. “Would you come
in here for a minute, please?”

The door cracked open and Allegra stuck her
head in. “What do you need?”

Alma held up the long, white head piece.
“Would you pin this into my hair? I can’t do it myself.”

Allegra stepped into the cloak room and
narrowed her eyes at the train of lace hanging nearly to the floor.
“I can give it a try. It’s not really my specialty, you know.”

Alma chuckled. “It’s not exactly higher
mathematics. Just hold it while I put my hair up.”

Allegra held the head piece up off the floor
as Alma shook out her long black hair. She swept it up to the top
of her head and coiled it into a bunch on top of her head.

“Now,” she instructed Allegra, “put the comb
in here to hold it.”

She pointed with her finger and Allegra
slotted the bone comb into her hair. A stiff fan of white lace
stuck up above the stark black twists of hair.

Allegra spread the lace across Alma’s back
and admired the result. She shook her head with wide eyes. “It’s
amazing. I never would have believed it.”

Alma smiled at her expression. “Do I look
okay?”

Allegra gulped. “You wouldn’t recognize
yourself. You look like one of those Spanish ladies at the
Festival. You look like a princess.”

Alma blushed. “I guess that’s good.”

“No one would ever know you’re a cattle
puncher in your free time,” Allegra continued.

“Let’s just hope Jude is as impressed as you
are,” Alma remarked.

“Let’s find out,” Allegra replied. “Are you
ready?”

Alma nodded and opened the door. Allegra
followed her out into the church.

Alma stopped next to the pulpit. Her father
and Amelia sat in the front pew with their hats resting on their
knees. Alma smiled at them, but the only thing she could think was
how different Amelia looked with her hat off. With her looped
braids hanging around the back of her neck and her bright eyes
visible, she looked like any other beautiful Mexican girl. Only her
pants and riding boots gave her away.

Allegra took off her hat and sat down in the
pew next to Amelia. With her short hair, she looked like a young
boy of the Jicarilla Apache tribe. Unlike Amelia, nothing in her
appearance indicated she was a woman, and it wasn’t only her hair
or her clothes. Her face wore a hardened expression from long years
of hiding her tender side behind an indifferent demeanor. No one
outside her immediate family knew Allegra’s secret pain.

A voice clearing its throat drew Alma’s
attention back to the pulpit.  A man with sandy hair, green
eyes, and the last vestige of freckles stood in front of the first
pew. He wore the plain clothes of a Texas cowboy around his lean,
muscular frame—no fancy suit or silk tie—and he wore his gun belt
slung low around his hips. He smiled at Alma. “Alma Goodkind?”

Alma nodded and smiled back, but her eyes
smarted with tears. “You must be Jude McCann.”

Jude answered with a stiff nod. “In the
flesh.” He waved his hand toward the pulpit. “What do you say we
get married? If you’re ready, that is.”

Alma laughed, but she couldn’t see more than
a watery outline through her tears. “I’m ready.”

Jude glanced down at her dress and snorted.
“I guess that was a stupid thing to say. You look beautiful.”

Jude took off his hat and tucked it under his
arm. He crooked his other elbow at her, and Alma slid her hand
around his arm. They turned and faced the pulpit.

Alma didn’t hear much of the service. Her
mind swirled with the excitement and impressions of her first
meeting with Jude. She knew he was a cowboy from their letters, but
she never realized meeting him in the flesh would affect her this
way.

She knew him. She knew the man who wore that
uniform. She knew how he thought and how he spent his days and
nights. She knew the people he must necessarily keep company with.
She knew what made him happy and what sent him into a tempest of
rage. She knew everything about him.

And the best part was that they were all the
same things she knew about herself and her family. What made her
and her sisters and her father happy would make him happy. They
spent their time the same way and spoke the same language. They
were cut from the same cloth, and they would get along just fine
together. Her heart soared in her chest, and she looked forward to
the end of the service with new eagerness.

Somehow, they got through the part where they
both said “I do,” and Alma turned back to find her family in a mess
of tears in the front pew. Even Allegra dabbed her eyes with the
cuff of her shirt sleeve. Amelia returned Alma’s smile this time,
and she rose to embrace her sister.

“You look so beautiful,” she murmured into
Alma’s ear. “I never thought a simple dress could make so much
difference.”

Alma squeezed her hands. “Thank you. I can’t
tell you how much it means to me to hear you say that. I guess none
of us realized what wearing men’s clothes and doing men’s work all
these years has done to us. None of us realized how much we really
want to be women.”

Amelia touched the corner of her eye with her
sleeve. “I’m so grateful to you for starting this process. We had
to give up our independence sometime to become the women we want to
be. It took a lot of courage for you to make the first move toward
changing all our lives. If any of us ever gave you any reason to
worry that you’d done the right thing, I’m sorry for that, because
you
did
do the right thing. You did the best thing for all
of us, and I’m grateful to you for it.”

Alma burst into a flood of tears. “Oh, thank
you! You don’t know what that means. I’ve been so worried—for all
of us. I’m so relieved that it’s all over, and that it worked out
for everyone.”

They embraced each other again, and Allegra
joined them. Then Alma kissed the tears from her father’s cheeks
and embraced him, too. She brought Jude over.

“Have you two been properly introduced?” she
asked. “Jude McCann, this is my father, Clarence Goodkind. I
suppose you’ve met my sisters, Amelia and Allegra.”

Jude shook hands with Clarence. “It’s a
pleasure to meet you at last, sir. Alma’s told me so much about all
of you. I think we’re going to be very happy together.”

Clarence opened his mouth, but Alma
interrupted. “Of course we are.”

Jude glanced around the church. “Well, what
do you want to do next? Do you have business in Eagle Pass, or do
you want to get going? I understand it’s a fair hike back to your
place.”

“We should get going in time to get home
before dark,” Alma told him. “But we have some supplies to get from
the store before we leave.”

“It’s already done,” Allegra told them. “I
got the stuff when I went over there to look for Jude. All the
supplies are loaded into the wagon. We can go home any time you
want.”

“Then there’s nothing left to do but change
out of my dress,” Alma remarked. “Allegra, would you help me get my
comb out the same way you put it in? I would appreciate it.”