Chapter 3 - The Marriage Contract in His Pocket
Gideon did not sleep.
He sat downstairs beside the dying fire until dawn with a shotgun across his knees and one eye on the windows.
The lantern never reached the cabin.
At least not where he could see it.
By sunrise the storm had erased every distant track.
Clara came downstairs shortly after seven.
She had washed her face.
Without the mud, Gideon could see how young she really was.
Twenty-four did not seem impossible now.
The bruise beneath her eye did.
She paused when she saw the shotgun.
Gideon immediately leaned it against the far wall.
“Someone rode the lower road last night.”
Her hand tightened around the stair railing.
“Who?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did they come here?”
“No.”
Her relief was too strong.
Gideon stood.
“I’m going to ask you something.”
Fear returned.
“Who was the man in town?”
“I don’t know.”
He waited.
She looked toward the window.
“I’m not lying.”
“You recognized him.”
“I recognized what he was.”
“What was he?”
Clara whispered, “Someone sent to watch.”
“By whom?”
Her silence answered more loudly than words.
Gideon could have pushed.
He didn’t.
Instead he walked to the table and placed the folded contract on it.
Clara stared.
There it was.
The thing between them.
The fifty dollars.
The obligation.
The reason she had crossed the country.
Gideon flattened the paper.
“I think we need to discuss this.”
She remained near the stairs.
“You changed your mind?”
“No.”
That answer surprised both of them.
Gideon corrected himself.
“I mean I haven’t decided anything. Neither have you.”
“I signed.”
He looked at the bottom.
There was her name.
Clara Wynn.
Written in careful cursive.
“You want to tell me you signed freely?”
She did not answer.
Gideon folded the contract once.
Then tore it down the middle.
Clara gasped.
He tore it again.
And again.
Four pieces.
Eight.
He dropped them into the fire.
“What did you do?”
“Removed the part making you think you can’t leave.”
She stared at the flames consuming the agreement.
“That cost you fifty dollars.”
“Yes.”
“You just burned it.”
“Yes.”
Her voice rose.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t buy people.”
“You bought a bride.”
“I paid an agency to introduce me to a woman who wanted a husband.”
“That isn’t what they sold.”
The room went still.
Gideon looked at her.
Clara’s face had changed.
Not merely frightened now.
Furious.
She walked to the table.
“They didn’t sell introductions.”
“Then what did they sell?”
Her jaw tightened.
“Promises.”
“To whom?”
“Men.”
“What kind?”
“The kind who ask less about whether a woman wants marriage and more about what happens if she refuses.”
Gideon’s hands slowly closed.
Clara saw.
She stepped back.
He immediately opened them.
“Sorry.”
She watched his face.
“You’re angry.”
“Yes.”
“At me?”
“No.”
That seemed difficult for her to understand.
Gideon poured coffee.
He put a cup in front of her but did not force it into her hands.
“Start anywhere.”
For a long moment, Clara said nothing.
Then she sat.
“The agency was called Western Household Correspondence Bureau.”
Gideon knew the name.
It was printed across the letters he had received.
“Run by a man named Calvin Rusk.”
“Never met him.”
“Most men don’t. His clerks handle the letters.”
“What does Rusk do?”
Clara swallowed.
“He finds women who need somewhere to go.”
“That sounds legitimate.”
“It would be if needing somewhere to go didn’t make us easy to threaten.”
Gideon said nothing.
Clara wrapped her hands around the coffee.
“I worked at a laundry in St. Louis. Twelve hours a day. Sometimes fourteen. My mother died last spring. My landlord raised the rent two months later.”
Gideon listened.
“I answered an advertisement. The bureau said there were respectable men in the West looking for wives. Farmers. Merchants. Widowers.”
“That’s what they told us too.”
Her eyes flicked toward him.
“They photographed us. Asked about skills. Education. Religion.”
“Then?”
“They charged fees.”
“To you?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Too much.”
“And if you couldn’t pay?”
“They called it an advance.”
Gideon understood immediately.
“Debt.”
She nodded.
“Travel. Clothing. Photographs. Lodging. They wrote numbers in a book, and every week the number got larger.”
“Did they tell the men?”
“No.”
Gideon leaned back.
“What happened to your shoes?”
Clara’s face closed.
“We don’t have to talk about that.”
“You’re right.”
Her eyes lifted.
He meant it.
The answer seemed to hurt her more than pressure would have.
She looked into the fire.
“There were six women when I left St. Louis.”
“Going west?”
“Yes.”
“Together?”
“For the first part.”
“What happened?”
“Different towns. Different men.”
She paused.
“One changed his mind before the woman arrived. The bureau agent traveling with us said she still owed the fare.”
“What happened to her?”
Clara’s lips pressed together.
“I don’t know.”
Gideon felt something cold move through his chest.
“And you?”
“The agent said Mr. Cobb had paid promptly.”
“I did.”
“He said that meant you would be expecting full obedience.”
Gideon cursed under his breath.
Clara flinched.
He stopped.
“Not at you.”
“I know.”
It was the first time she had said that.
Something shifted between them.
Small.
Fragile.
But real.
After breakfast Gideon showed her the cabin.
Pantry.
Root cellar.
Woodpile.
Barn.
Well pump.
He gave her no chores.
That appeared to make her nervous.
By noon she was sweeping.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because your floor is dirty.”
Gideon looked at the floor.
“It survived three years.”
“It shouldn’t have.”
He almost smiled.
Clara noticed.
For the first time, she smiled back.
Then someone knocked on the door.
Three slow knocks.
Clara dropped the broom.
All the color left her face.
Gideon moved between her and the entrance.
“Upstairs.”
“No.”
He looked at her.
She whispered, “I’m tired of hiding.”
The knock came again.
Gideon opened the door.
A man stood on the porch.
Not the stranger from town.
Older.
Gray beard.
Sheriff’s star.
“Morning, Gideon.”
“Sheriff Bell.”
The sheriff removed his hat.
“Sorry to bother you.”
His eyes moved past Gideon.
Toward Clara.
“Miss Wynn?”
Clara stood frozen.
The sheriff looked uncomfortable.
“There’s a gentleman in Bitter Creek asking after you.”
Gideon’s expression hardened.
“What gentleman?”
“Calvin Rusk.”
Clara’s cup slipped from her hand.
It struck the floor and shattered.
The name hung in the cabin.
The man who had arranged the marriage.
The man who kept the ledger.
The man Clara had crossed more than a thousand miles to escape.
Sheriff Bell continued.
“He says Miss Wynn stole money from his bureau.”
Gideon turned slowly toward Clara.
She was shaking.
“He also says,” the sheriff added carefully, “that she belongs under contract to his company until the debt is repaid.”
Gideon looked back at him.
“People don’t belong under contract.”
Sheriff Bell sighed.
“I know what I think. Judge might think different.”
Clara whispered, “He found me.”
Gideon stepped aside.
“Sheriff, come in.”
But Clara backed toward the wall.
“No.”
Gideon turned.
Her eyes were no longer frightened.
They were desperate.
“You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.”
“If Rusk came himself, this isn’t about money.”
“What’s it about?”
Clara looked from Gideon to the sheriff.
Then toward the fire where the last corner of the destroyed marriage contract had turned to ash.
Her voice was almost inaudible.
“He thinks I have something that can put him in prison.”
And suddenly Gideon understood that the woman standing in his cabin had not run west merely to survive.
She had brought a secret with her.
May you like
A secret powerful enough to make a dangerous man follow her into the Wyoming mountains.
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