“Hey, Willis. No, you sure don’t. Wonder where they’re headed?”
Squinting fine hazel eyes against the sunlight, Ben removed his hat long enough to brush back a thatch of wheat-colored hair (a gesture often employed when life momentarily held him in thrall) before replacing the headgear. When was the last time he had seen a get-up like this making its way into Turnabout? Well, just about never, actually.
Dust from the dry earth underfoot roiled up into small clouds as the train of six wagons moved ponderously along toward the stable at the corner of Fifth and Main.
Stable! To ask for directions, maybe. Where did the fool driver expect to leave six teams of tired animals to recuperate, for however long the group was staying? Did they think this was a cow town, like Abilene or Dodge?
A tall, broad-shouldered man, dressed neatly but practically in a worn blue chambray shirt and light wool trousers, Ben had been about to return to his ample two-story mercantile down the street but decided on a brief delay. Curiosity was tugging at every fiber of his whiskers, and he wanted to satisfy the itch.
He was not alone. As he ambled in the direction of this phenomenon, several others, including the aforementioned Willis, were ambling right along with him. It was an ambling crowd of interested males, in fact, that reached the first wagon just as its occupants began fumbling their way out.
The driver was helping down a woman so enveloped in black mourning and so covered in dust that it was almost impossible for anyone to ascertain her appearance. She had managed to get to the ground and take a few steps away before, with a stifled moan, she suddenly began to slump.
As luck would have it, Ben was conveniently right there.
Before she could finish the fall, he had snatched her up, swiftly moved her to a bench in the shade of Turnabout Saddlery’s awning, and yanked off the hat with its miles of veiling.
“Here, ma’am, you just need to get your land legs back. Kinda like bein’ on a ship, y’ know, and findin’ yourself safe on good dry land again. How long you been travelin’?”
Brilliant blue eyes, the color of flame, looked without expression or interest at this solicitous man squatting on his heels beside her. “An eternity,” she replied faintly.
A grin burst forth on his craggy but pleasant face. Not handsome, not with that stubble of beard glinting gold, and the nose that might have been broken at one time, and lines that hinted at age past thirty rather than near twenty; but with personality edged in. “Yeah, I reckon it must seem that way. Your party just passin’ through town, then, or plannin’ to stop here?”
>
“Excuse me, ma’am, but I had a few words with the livery owner.” Their driver, sombrero pulled off in deference, had approached to respectfully interrupt. “He says he has plentya space in his corral for the bullocks and horses. We just need to unload the wagons and settle in somewheres before I can leave the stock.”
“Oh, dear.” The lady lifted one thin hand to her cheek, also thin, and pale under the noonday sun, as if she might be in pain. “Well, Mr. Buchanan, I’m afraid I hadn’t thought that far ahead. We have so many household goods...”
“Don’t I know it!” vehemently expostulated the driver. “Been fightin’ all that stuff every turn of the wheel.”
A chorus of agreement came from the assembled crowd, along with various whistles of surprise and awed comments. “They got a whole goldanged pianner in onea them wagons.” “D’joo see the trunks they stacked up near t’ the canvas top of that there Conestoga?”
“Perhaps there’s some sort of storage building nearby—?” She sent a questioning look upward to the man who had now risen and was balanced on one foot, ready to make an escape from all this fuss.
Thus entailed, he was forced to pause. “Well, I don’t exactly know who—”
“Oh, Cam, we’ve been waiting so patiently to find out what’s going on, but we just had to get down from those awful high seats in those awful big conveyances!” Another young lady appeared, also dressed from head to toe in smothering black. She was followed by two others, to surround the bench-sitter; all were flitting about like a cluster of agitated butterflies.
For a few minutes, the flutter of feminine voices, in a dither, asking questions and making remarks, created such a minor spectacle that Ben’s uneasy, “Cam? Your name is Cam?” was completely routed. No one heard him, no one responded.
“What are we doing?” one wanted to know. “Can we at least walk around?” another demanded. “I’m so hungry and thirsty!” the third’s thready voice sounded positively plaintive.
“Girls, just give me a minute, please. We must get organized. There are the animals to see to, and all our possessions, and—”
“Cam?” Ben Forrester had swiveled back, frowning, almost in confrontational mode.
“Yes, I’m Camellia Burton, and I’ve come a great distance to meet my prospective husband.”
“Huh,” said he flatly, his face suddenly dark as a thundercloud. “Well, lady, you’ve done met him, right here and now. And just who is the rest of this troop?”
The rest of the troop, all three of them, had almost flattened themselves against the building’s exterior in anticipation of, judging by the man’s apparent belligerence, something most unpleasant ensuing from this point onward.
“Oh, my goodness, I am so sorry, Mr. Forrester!” Rising, she reached out one hand in a pretty, well-mannered gesture that he would have been a complete lout to ignore. “Do forgive me for being so discourteous! It’s just we’ve been on the road such a very long time, with so many difficulties, and—”
“You wanna keep them bullocks tied up for the next week or so?” dryly inquired Jesse Buchanan just then. “You’d oughta decide what’s goin’ on, ma’am, so’s we can get ’em set loose, and watered and fed.”
The black-clad visitor was slowly turning her gaze from one speaker to the next: the driver, her chattering sisters, the surrounding group of happy spectators and hangers-on, and the imperious man who purported to be her bridegroom. Overwhelmed, overcome, without another word she simply allowed her eyes to roll back in her head; and, in a very quiet and ladylike manner that indicated every bone in her body had dissolved into mush, fainted dead away.