Mail Order Clara Read online

  Curly, Billy, Ike, and several other friends and family members were a part of the Cowboys, a hoodlum gang that ran roughshod over the area doing what they wanted, when they wanted. James was the misfit of the bunch, and his stubbornness at taking part in their antics earned him the nickname ‘Mule’ long ago. Everyone in town called him Mule Clanton and treated him like he was incapable of being reasonable. The moniker stuck, and James used it to his advantage now.

  James glared at the circle of men laughing at him before walking off. He hated coming into Tombstone anymore. They treated him like he was a threat because of his name. His brothers were a plague and James knew it, causing him to be torn between embarrassment and anger. They were bound to get themselves in trouble at some point when eventually someone stood up and said ‘no’ to them. It certainly wouldn’t be the sheriff. He’d tried once before and cowed down, only feeding the monsters that were known as the Clantons.

  When James wouldn’t give them the time of day, his brothers usually left and found someone else to pick on. This time they wouldn’t let up.

  “Mule, why you gotta be such a stick in the mud?”

  “Yeah! Why ain’t you more like us?”

  “Obnoxious?”

  “Naaww… family! We are family, brother.”

  “You are acting like hoodlums, harassing people around here, and stealing from right under their noses,” James snapped. “You three have swiped cattle from under my nose and I’m family, remember?”

  “Oh yeah, we did, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah, Mule was pretty mad that day.”

  “I thought you were gonna shoot him, Ike.”

  “I might still, if he doesn’t quit blabbering on, calling us hoodlums.”

  “What kind of family threatens to shoot each other?” James smarted off, holding out his hands in disbelief. “You are proving my point exactly. I would never threaten to shoot any of you because I grew up with you but you can’t say the same.”

  “You’re insulting us Clantons.”

  “By calling it like it is?”

  “By inclinating that we… what?” Ike stopped talking as James rubbed a tired hand over his face in exhausted sheer dismay.

  “The word you are looking for in ‘insinuating’. By using the wrong word, you give others a reason to laugh and pick on you. Don’t get mad at them, get mad at yourself for not bothering to learn the correct terms.”

  “Shaddup, Mule, or you’ll regret it.”

  “Fine. Fine,” James said, holding up his hands good naturedly. “You win. I’m inclinating that you are indeed hoodlums in Tombstone and a threat to our family.”

  “Now you are making fun of me by twisting my words!” Ike roared, waving a pistol at him. James couldn’t help the smile that cracked his face. It was so easy to get Ike mad and just like usual, Billy sidled over and calmed him down. He drew Ike to his side as if to point out that James wasn’t on their side anymore. Who ever heard of a family taking sides like this? It was unspoken, but still evident in everything the gang did. They considered him an outsider and treated him as such.

  “Don’t shoot Mule, brother. There are ways to get the better of him,” Billy hissed in a lethal voice that made James’ eyes narrow shrewdly. He knew a threat when he heard one.

  “Yeah? You hear that? I’m gonna get you better,” Ike bit out arrogantly.

  “It’s ‘I’m going to get the better of you’ - not ‘get you better’,” James corrected straight-faced, knowing it would only anger his brother again.

  “Just shaddup!”

  “You shaddup.”

  “No, you!”

  “No, you,” James teased mockingly, repeating his brother.

  Ike’s face got bright red and a bit of foam speckled at the corner of his mouth. He knew Ike was about to explode like a volcano if he didn’t let up. He may not like what they did, or how they treated him, but having a large bunch of brothers could be fun sometimes.

  “Ike, stop,” Billy wheedled, “You gonna let Mule win? He’s goading you.”

  “Goating me? Ain’t no one goating me! Never!”

  James burst out laughing uproariously, bending at the waist and slapping his knee. He heard the click of a pistol being drawn back, straightening up in time to see his brothers dragging a wiggling, screaming Ike from the walkway as they snatched his gun from him.

  Someday things would go too far, and he knew that he’d regret it. He may not understand his brothers, but that didn’t change the fact they were family… the only one he had at least, until his new wife arrived.

  Heading back over to the post office, James shook his head, thinking of how much the area had changed in the last few years since The Tombstone Mine had struck silver. Goose Flats was now called Tombstone-after the mine. Truthfully, he liked the new town name much better than Goose Flats.

  It was bustling with activity that made him a little antsy, ready to head back to his ranch where things were calm and sedate. Homesteaders, prospectors, lawyers, gunmen, and characters from every walk of life seemed to make their way to the area.

  Even now, there were several bars, houses of ill-repute, a town hall, and a theater just opened not too long ago, making the town a little ‘cultured’. The Bird Cage was actually a bit too wild for his tastes. The ‘cages’ that housed the soiled doves wasn’t what he was looking for when it came to women… part of the reason he sent off for a bride. He hoped to find someone a little less wild and a bit more like him.

  Clara was arriving today.

  Chapter 3

  Nervous, James ran a shaking hand through his hair and slapped his hat back on his head. He said he didn’t care what his bride looked like, and he shouldn’t care, but he couldn’t help but wonder.

  With all the homesteaders, the looting, the wildness in town, and his own brothers, James was having a hard time maintaining his home and the ranch at the same time. The ranch was suffering, and he was having cattle stolen from him left and right, by taking time to feed himself or run into town for supplies. Every time he returned home; he would find someone had taken advantage of the moment.

  It was getting old… fast.

  A wife who could cook and clean would give him time to work on stringing the new barbed wire fencing he’d purchased to put a stop to the stealing. He was tired of having his fences knocked down or bushes cut away simple to get at his herd. The small wire fencing was supposedly the best to contain a herd and stop theft. Several farms in the panhandle of Texas were fenced already and with glowing results. He’d heard both good and bad about the fencing, that buffalo got stuck in it because they couldn’t see it, but there were no buffalo here.

  A wife would give him someone to talk to when he got lonely. He hated the evenings the most because he usually ended up sitting by the fireplace with a rifle across his lap. He never knew when someone would attempt to break into his home, raid his barn, or set a brush fire. That really made him angry when he’d caught his brothers doing that as a gag. The memory of it stuck with him.

  He’d just bought his acreage from his father, wanting to be independent and free, his own man. Father had been proud, eagerly selling him some land at below market price, and James had signed the deed happily.

  Looking back now, James realized it was jealousy that their father hadn’t sold land to them to start the fire…but they also didn’t ask for it! The first night in his small home, on his own property, had resulted in him digging a second well on the property immediately and wary ever since. He’d had to haul bucket-after-bucket up to put the small brush fire out. Thankfully, it hadn’t been more arid there, having just gone through the rainy season, or he might have been homeless.

  A wife would be a welcome change, possibly able to help in other ways he hadn’t even realized. Perhaps they could start a vegetable garden that could actually produce more than what he’d attempted to grow himself.

  A wife could can food, to help them through rough times, and canned foods would mean things other than just
beans for dinner. Maybe she could make a sugar cream pie or a chess pie like his grandmother used to make them when they were little. He barely remembered the taste, only that he loved it and the feelings the smell evoked in him.

  Now he was just getting soft, he thought, looking up at the sky to judge that it was late in the afternoon already. The stage should arrive soon with his new bride on it. They’d make quick work of things and hurry back to the ranch in order to get her settled. He’d already been away too long.

  Stepping into a nearby bar, James walked up, and ordered a whiskey. Throwing it back, he waved his hand and slapped a few coins onto the massive bar top that ran the length of the room. When his glass was refilled, he heard it.

  The horses running through town signifying that his bride’s arrival was imminent. His stomach flipped in his gut as he emptied his glass once again. The warm whiskey burned its way down and made him feel a little relaxed.

  … Until he heard the gunshots.

  Racing out into the street, James watched in stunned horror as his brothers were stopping the coach, in the middle of the road, at gunpoint. The bright red Wells Fargo coach looked a little dusty due to its travels but stuck out like a sore thumb against the western landscape. His brothers had remained mounted on their horses for a fast getaway and were circling the coach.

  “Whatcha got there, Joe?”

  “I hear my new little sister is hidden inside?”

  “What else ya got? Huh? A little money?”

  “You got anything else on ya?”

  Ike leaned forward and used his rifle to tap on the door of the coach noisily as the town came to a standstill that was eerily quiet. Even the piano music from inside of one of the nearby bars had stopped.

  “Ike! Stop…”

  James started forward, only to see his brother back away and raise his rifle into the air slowly. A delicate hand extended from the coach and he could see whoever it was meant business. A finger lay on the trigger and her wrist shook from under the sleeve of her cream-colored gown.

  “What’s all this?” Billy said loudly, getting down from his horse.

  “Billy. Ike. Curly, wait…” James began, heading out into the street towards the coach with his hands up. Whoever this frightened female was, he felt inclined to help just to keep her from shooting anyone else, or his mail-order bride, by mistake. Everyone froze as the door to the coach opened suddenly with a bang as the door hit the body of the carriage, with a second hand brandishing another pistol trained on another brother.

  The woman was the most beautiful creature James had ever seen.

  Vibrant bright red hair hung down her back a tangled mass of curls. Her bright green eyes had a hard glint to them that meant she would not accept any foolishness from anyone. Her skin had a dusting of freckles across her nose that he could see from here. Those pretty freckles he knew most women used lemon to try and make them fade, but they didn’t detract from her beauty in the slightest.

  A child with the same bright reddish hair was peering from the window of the coach, and he felt a pang of envy for the man that had managed to marry her. She was a firecracker! Who else would hold up his own brothers?

  “Now, I don’t know what is going on and you can have whatever funds I have on my person, but I won’t have you waving a gun in that young boy’s face. You wave a gun, you will get a gun, you hear me?”

  “You listen here, ya’ trollop…” Ike began and grew silent as she lowered the gun towards his pelvis.

  “Rethink your words, sir,” she said icily.

  “Ma’am!” James interrupted quickly and held up his hands once again. “Let me apologize on behalf of my brothers. I assure you they didn’t mean what they said.”

  “Oh, I meant it, Mule!” Ike said spitting out a large wad of tobacco juice onto the ground. “She’s plum crazy. She’s a danger to your pretty, little mail-order bride, too.”

  James saw the surprise on the woman’s expressive face and felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. The little boy leaned out the window at that moment.

  “Clara? I need to go potty.”

  “Just a few minutes, Jack.”

  “Is that your boy?” James asked quietly, trying to remain calm as his heart pounded hard in his chest with hope and fear, gesturing towards the coach.

  She was gorgeous… but had a son? She never mentioned a child and he could have kicked himself for not putting that as a stipulation in the ad…but then again, if he had, she wouldn’t be here.

  “No one is here to hurt you and this is all a big mistake.”

  “Are you…” she began fearfully, glancing back and forth. Her eyes quickly darted between James and his brothers. James was certain that Tombstone was wilder than anything she’d been around back from out east.

  “I am James Clanton,” he offered politely, extending his hand towards her. He felt like he was trying to soothe a wild animal that was about ready to attack. The thought had just crossed his mind when suddenly both pistols swung his direction and she aimed directly at him. There was no hesitation in her eyes, just a determination that proved she had a strong bit of gumption to her.

  Oh, he liked that!

  “Mr. Clanton, this obviously was a grand mistake on my part. I was under the false impression that I would marry someone who wouldn’t harm me. It appears we shall not be marrying either,” Clara said bluntly with no hesitation. “Come with me, Jack. Let’s find an outhouse before taking the coach back once again, this time departing from Tombstone.”

  His mail-order bride tucked the pistols into the pocket of her gown, under the apron that had kept them hidden from sight. She held out her hand to the toddler and swung him up with practiced grace like she’d done so a million times. Turning from the men, she stuck her nose into the air, marching towards the nearest building with all the grace and dignity of a queen, without a care in the world.

  James and his brothers stood staring at each other for several seconds before they carried on about their ways, his brothers pulling a gun on the stage driver. James took off running behind the fiery redhead that had him shaking in his boots for reasons he didn’t want to identify.

  Chapter 4

  This is an utter travesty, Clara thought wildly as she walked unknowingly towards a building and praying that Jack didn’t soil the hip he was sitting on. She could have let him down, but the last time she had, his little legs carried him faster than she ever realized, keeping her running behind him. He would be quite a handful to keep up with as he grew older.

  Was she to be cursed her whole life?

  The moment she’d glanced out the stagecoach window, she’d glimpsed the most handsome man she’d ever seen. He was ruggedly… pretty? Bright blue eyes and dark brown hair was hidden underneath a broad-rimmed hat that seemed to match the area. Those eyes seemed to gleam brightly with intelligence and knowledge that was almost out of place here in the wilds of Tombstone. There was something to him, an appeal that she’d never felt before.

  As they’d ridden into town on the stagecoach, she had wondered what she’d gotten herself into, only to become fascinated with the barren landscape before her. Tumbleweeds in the distance danced in the grasses. She saw short squatty trees that were foreign, compared to the tall sweeping pines back home in Kentucky. The wooden buildings were bleached grey in the sun, whereas back home, everything was dark and covered with moss, because of heavy rains.

  “Clara, potty now.”

  “I know, Jack. Just a moment.”

  “Noooowwww,” he wailed, squirming on her hip.

  “Come with me.”

  Clara heard from behind and saw that the man from the street, James, had followed her. Jack took that moment to slide down her dress in a panic, grasping his self indelicately as he danced on the walkway anxiously.

  “Jack! Stop that!” she said in horrified dismay and before her very eyes, the stranger she’d mistakenly replied to and agreed to marry, picked up the toddler. He walked Jack into the alleyway between the bu
ildings. Mortified, Clara turned away looking to see if anyone nearby was looking, hearing fluid hitting the ground behind her and high-pitched giggling.

  “He’s done.”

  “You are despicable.”

  “And you don’t realize that when a boy says he has to go, he has to go.”

  “There is no reason to be so uncouth as to urinate in the alley,” she whispered utterly scandalized.

  “Nor to speak of it, either, Miss Winslow,” he quickly reminded her with a smile. Clara felt her face flush as she realized that she was the one discussing the fact that her brother had just used the restroom in an alleyway like a drunkard.

  “Gentlemen should not say such things.”

  “I never claimed to be a gentleman.”

  “That much is obvious by my welcoming.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she began, grabbing Jack’s hand, “I’ve a stage to catch.”

  “Why are you leaving?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You’ve travelled all the way out here with your son obviously for a reason—and you didn’t mention him in your telegram. I would assume there was a reason you were leaving Louisville behind - I would also say that you have no place to go.”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “No, but I told you that I needed a bride who was smart and open to adventure. Traveling across country is proof of one. That you are standing here arguing with me, lends to proof of the other.”

  “So, I am smart by arguing with you?”

  “I would rather say you are obviously adventurous,” he said pertly with a sideways grin that made her heart skip a beat.

  “Now, I am back to my original proposal: I need help on my ranch and no one will bother you or your son there—including myself. Are you going to marry me or are you leaving on the coach?”

  “Be still my beating heart,” Clara replied with heavy sarcasm.

  “This isn’t a love match,” James shrugged, “I’m simply pointing out the obvious arrangement we had agreed upon prior to meeting.”