Chapter 4 On With the Ceremony

He had to get going or else stay for the wedding—it was already planned for this Saturday! First, he had to find a horse. A horse, because taking a boat was not wise. Boats were stoppable and searchable. He left by the doctor's hedge gate and found himself on a leafy side street.

He knew where the livery was, but wishing to avoid the open main street, he took the back way behind the square, false-fronted buildings. He had to slip over a few backyard fences and run past a chained dog once. The barking the dog sent up screamed upon his nerves.

No one was at the livery. Not at first, then he heard the light tread of a boy coming from the saddle room. He was wrong. It was a fair-haired girl in jean overalls and a button-down plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves.

"What you need, mister?" she asked him, raising her chin defiantly.

"Do you run the livery?"

"When pa's not around, I do. Need a horse?"

"I need a couple of things. A shirt, for one. Does your pa have an extra one?"

She nodded. Maverick went on. "Then a horse and some grub in a sack. A filled-up canteen. Can you get me those things while I wait here?"

"You the man they said watch out for?" When Maverick said nothing, she went on, "If you are, I was to run to pa and fetch 'im quick."

"Look, miss—"

"Delia!"

"Delia. I need your help. You see I've been shot. That's what this bandage is for." He showed her, under his coat. "I can't go out and get those things for myself. If you help me, I'll give you a couple of silver dollars."

"And pa'd give me a right good whuppin', mister!"

"Then help me because I'm asking you to. I need a friend in town. You be it, okay?"

"That's better. Lie over there on the straw pile. I'll get those things for you."

Maverick sat down against the wall, but in no time, even before Delia had a chance to go out, two or three men came in. He was far enough back in the shadows that no one saw him. She gave each of them a horse, then came back over.

"Pile some of that straw over top you, mister. There, I'll help."

She helped by half-suffocating him, but buried to the gills he appreciated the kindness.

"What you done that they want you so? 'nd why'd they shoot you?" she asked when she had hidden as much of the 'evidence' as she could.

A shaft of light from a crack in the roof boards shown through. It was a bright day, with a high, menacing sun. It'd be no picnic to attack the plains even with a canteen of water and a fresh horse under him. Especially as he had some fever to reckon with.

"Long story, Delia. Go on, please. Remember, the shirt? And the canteen?"

"I won't forget."

After about an hour, she brought back a scratchy cotton shirt that smelled of horse barn, along with the other things. A grub bag and a canteen.

She brought up the horse, already saddled. "You buyin' him?" she asked.

Maverick nodded. "How much?" His voice had a strain in it. This 'escape' was getting to be a bit too much for his depleted strength, and already he was weakening. He hadn't checked, not even when he put the shirt over the bandage, but he thought he was bleeding again.

"You're bleedin', mister."

"I know. How much, Delia?"

"Twenty-five for him. He's not the best in the lot."

"As long as he's rideable."

"He is. No charge for the other things. Pa's shirt was already thrown out. He did it hisself this mornin'."

"I'm grateful. I truly am, Delia." Maverick extended his hand. It was shyly taken, with a giggle. "You keep quiet about this for a while?"

She nodded, then retreated to the outside, standing guard there while Maverick led the horse out. It was broad day, but he saddled up and rode off down the dirt road leading to the grassy plains.

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Two days later, they found him. Passed out near a group of boulders, he had hardly touched the food in the grub bag, biscuits, an earthenware pot of gooseberry jam with a tied down lid, and some oatmeal cookies. Just what a fourteen-year-old would pack. He woke as Harbinger's two sons manhandled him up from the rock he had lain against since yesterday. He fought them off, or tried to, but Charlie gripped his arms tightly behind him.

"Get off me!" Bret shouted, though he hadn't much voice.

"You're comin' back to town with us!" yelled the enraged man in his ear. "Let the Doc see you. Can't have the weddin' if you're dead."

Old Mr. Charles wasn't with them, so it was Clancy this time who tried some moderation. Observing the struggle, he said, "Remember, he's wounded, Charlie. The way you're holdin' him, he might start bleedin' again."

Maverick had lost a lot of blood ever since riding out of town. But though his coat and bandage and horse barn shirt were stiff with it, the bleeding had stopped. As he was sinking to his knees, Charlie gave him a final hoist and dragged him to a waiting horse. With Clancy's help, he threw Maverick on.

Bret gripped the saddle pommel with both hands and leaned over it. Clancy followed, swinging a leg up and over and sitting behind Bret. Charlie led Bret's livery stable nag, and the three men rode off towards town, Omaha being closer than the ranch.

"Got 'im, pa!" announced Charlie once they had stopped before the old man standing in the shadow of the doctor's overhang, from which his sign hung.

"Good, bring him in," said Flagler, going in before the others and stopping at his desk. He shook his head, observing the other men toiling in with their angry burden. "A runaway patient. I must be losing my bedside manner."

"I'll get away again, Doc. Unless you lock everything up tight."

"Mr. Maverick, that will do. Boys, the back bedroom again where I keep my patients. Take 'im in there."

Once the 'boys' had Bret ensconced on the flock mattress, Flagler cleaned up the wound, changed the bandage, and gave the patient some water to drink. He helped him lie flat and Maverick slept for hours. After that time, Old Mr. C. came back with Clancy. Pushing his way into the bedroom, he was talking up a blue streak.

"Good thing the preacher's been notified of the weddin'," said Old Mr. C. "It'll have to be soon."

"He's not dyin', is he pa?"

"Naw, guess not. But he's determined to make tracks. And Corrie needs a name for that baby!"

Maverick cracked one eye open, saw the two men and raised his voice. "She won't get mine!"

"Bound an' determined," muttered the old rancher, before grabbing Clancy by the arm and both going off to supper at Emma's.

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A ranch hand brought word to Corrie that Maverick had been retaken. Now that she could worry about him, she was momentarily relieved of her own troubles. The next day she insisted on driving in with Hang Wan. When it came to a stop before the doctor's, she flew out of the rig, and once inside the shady office, she began inquiring about Bret. Flagler was napping on his arms at the desk, so he looked up like the house was afire.

"What is it? What is it?" he sputtered. Seeing the eager girl, he said, "Corrie, you feelin' better?" At her nod, and realizing who she wanted to see, he got up and motioned for her to follow. "Come this way. But you'll have to wait outside, while I see if he's decent."

"I will."

Bret was drowsing, but after hearing the doctor's explanation of who his visitor was, he readily assented to being 'decent' so that he'd have a chance of talking with Corrie. He had shaved, at any rate, so he looked more presentable, though he lay in just his long johns again. His coat with its wallet, his boots and his pair of black jeans had all disappeared.

He hoped they'd been stowed away in the doctor's house and not at the hotel with the Harbingers who true to their word had stayed the night in town.

She came in. She was rather shy after all of her previous excitement in getting there. She had left Hang Wan in the doctor's office talking pidgin with Flagler, who had turned back in the hall from the infirmary door, shaking his head again.

"Corrie, it's good to see you," said Bret, and he meant it. "It's been a few months."

"You probably don't like me the way I am," she said, rubbing her high stomach.

"On the contrary," he said dryly, "I'm overwhelmed by the way you are."

"You're making fun of me, Bret."

"Corrie, I like you. That's the reason I'm not shoutin'. But you have to see, dear girl, I'm not the man for you. You must tell your pa the truth. He won't hate you or turn you out.

"No, he's not like that, but I don't want to hurt him, Bret."

She came over and took his hand lying on top of the covers.

"Tellin' him it was me, a shiftless slacker who never knows where he's going to lay his head, didn't that hurt him to some degree, Corrie?"

"The other man—he was worse. A drifter. He came to the ranch, worked a few months, and went." She sighed.

"Leaving only his calling card," Bret mused.

"You mustn't be hostile. We'll have a good life together. Pa has a fortune in land and cattle. You'll be set up proper." She tossed her blond-brown hair back.

"I don't want to run cattle, Corrie," Bret said, trying not to notice the slim neck, the dainty ear half-hidden by strands of near-gold, gold the burnished shade of amber.

He blinked, for all his hurt desiring her anyway, if only for a ramble in the woods again. He cleared his throat and went on, stiffly, "I want to get on with my life. Corrie girl, understand me. I'm a card player, a gambler, if you will, though I don't call it that. But your pa does. And so do your brothers. They'd rather see you with the lowliest cowherd than saddled with the likes of me."

"Don't take on so, Bret. Pa likes you, or he will."

"What about Charlie? He's already put a bullet in me. And I can see how he feels, every time he looks my way. He'd like to see me bit by a rattler. Or strung up."

"Clancy likes you."

"I'm not marryin' him."

"Then I like you, or I wouldn't have—"

"Wouldn't have lied about my getting close to you on one of our picnics together?"

"Yes!" She bent down and scraped Bret's cheek with her lips and left the room, chuckling softly to herself. She had found her Prince Charming and had three men, plus a ranch full of others, all good hands loyal to her pa, to help him get to the church. She couldn't be happier. All that power at her fingertips, just because of the baby she was carrying.

She could have had any man she'd have chosen, but she picked Bret. And now he was hers. He'd have to be. That was the way things were done on the prairie.

It was especially so for a decent girl. No one who knew she was pregnant, and this included most of Omaha, had ever doubted she was a lady, born and bred. If they had, if any man had called her anything other than a 'good girl, just made a mistake,' they'd have come up against Charlie's six-gun, as Bret did. They'd have other children, too, to seal his fate, that is, the marriage bond. She'd see to that.

But would life with a gambler really be what she wanted? Would he not have the drifting urge, himself? Some glorious spring day, would she awake and find that the man at her side had vamoosed, hightailed it to other parts? If so, then so be it. She'd always have his name.

But Bret was working on a plan to deprive her of even that. Had she known he was planning his next escape, and even had it in mind to send a telegram to his brother Bart in Abilene, she wouldn't have been so sanguine, so complacent about the future.