“How far out of Denver are we?” Alice asked the next morning. She looked around at the other passengers in the dining car as she flipped her napkin and laid it in her lap for breakfast.
“I really don’t know,” he admitted. “We can’t be too far away. We’ve been traveling all night.”
“I won’t be sorry if I never have another night like last night as long as I live,” she remarked. “My hips and legs are permanently damaged from rattling around on that hard seat all night.”
“We have another long trip from Denver to Portland yet to go,” Jesse reminded her. “And that trip has more mountains than this one. I expect it will be longer, too.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” she groaned.
Two women, both appearing about the same age as Alice, ate together at the table next to them. Between bites of her toast, the taller of the two leaned over toward Alice. “Did I hear you say how far out of Denver we are? We were just wondering the same thing.”
“I’m sorry,” Alice answered. “We don’t know, either. We were wondering ourselves. I wish I knew.”
“Thank you just the same,” the woman returned. “Are you disembarking in Denver?”
“We’re just changing trains,” Alice informed her. “We were just talking about our next train trip from Denver to Portland. It promises to be even longer and more mountainous than this one was.”
“I’m sorry for you for that,” the woman rejoined. “Melody and I are going by coach from here on out. We have days to travel by coach to get where we’re going. That should prove doubly and triply uncomfortable.”
“That sounds dreadful,” Alice exclaimed. “Where are you going?”
“Idaho,” she declared. “We’re going up to the Snake River Valley.”
“Oh!” Alice gasped. “I know someone else on this very train who is going there as well. She’s a mail-order bride, and she’s going up there to meet her fiancé.”
“We are, too!” both the women chimed together. “We’re mail-order brides, too!”
“So am I!” Alice cried out. “I’m going to Bend, Oregon.”
“How fortuitous!” The woman laughed merrily. “You must introduce us to your friend.”
“She isn’t a friend,” Alice corrected her. “Or, maybe she is. I don’t know. I only just met her in the Chicago train station about a half hour before we got onto the train. But if I find her again in this crowd, I will introduce you to her. You may be neighbors up there.”
“Yes,” the other agreed. “There can’t be very many people up there in such a remote place. Our future husbands are brothers living in the middle of a trackless wilderness. Their names are Paul Chapman and Prescott Chapman.”
“They wouldn’t happen to have another brother in the area, would they?” Alice suggested. “My friend is going to marry one Parker Chapman.”
“It does sound very similar, doesn’t it?” the woman concurred. “We will have to find out. Where is your friend now?”
“I don’t know where she is.” Alice glanced around the dining car. “We separated as soon as we boarded the train. Her name is Maggie Clement. I’ll find her and introduce you.”
“I am Marion Johnson,” the woman replied, extending her hand. “This is Melody Hanson.”
“My pleasure.” Alice shook their hands, one after the other.
Jesse watched this exchange with bemused interest. When Alice returned to the breakfast table, he grinned. “That is interesting. Do you really think there can be three brothers in one place, all getting mail-order brides?”
“Isn’t that what Mr. Tompkins told us about his cousin?” Alice recalled. “He said his cousin lived with two brothers on a ranch, and they all got mail-order brides together.”
“Your memory is better than mine,” Jesse remarked. “I don’t remember what Mr. Tompkins said.”
“He said the wives are like sisters to each other,” Alice related. “and I can imagine why. I would think having another woman or two around who’d gone through a similar upheaval would be very comforting.”
“I guess I’ll just have to stand in for your sister-wife,” Jesse teased.
“Because we won’t be living together the way they will,” Alice considered. “you’ll have to be happy with just being my friend and neighbor. Besides, I think in time you’ll find yourself a girl to marry. Maybe you’ll even get yourself a mail-order bride.”
“I doubt that,” Jesse growled. “I’m going out West to be with you. I don’t think I’ll find another girl.”
“You better,” Alice scolded. “I’ll be married to someone else. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to covet your neighbor’s wife?”
“I don’t have to covet,” he argued. “I’ll just admire from afar.”
“I don’t want you admiring me,” Alice shot back. “If you can’t let it go and think of me as your sister and your friend, then I don’t want you going out to Bend with me. I would rather not have to think about you pining over me.”
“You don’t have to think about it,” Jesse told her. “There’s a perfectly effective way for you to prevent me pining and you thinking.”
“And what is that?” she asked.
“It’s very simple,” Jesse informed her. “You marry me and not Mr. Emerson.”
“I can’t do that,” Alice replied. “I’ve already promised Mr. Emerson that I will marry him.”
“That’s okay,” Jesse returned. “You just meet him at the station in Bend and tell him the marriage is off. You tell him you’re going to marry me instead. What could be easier?”
“I can’t do that,” she insisted.
“Why not?” he pressed her. “And don’t give me that excuse about how you don’t love me. You know you love me a heck of a lot more than you could ever love a man like Arthur Emerson.”
“What are you saying is wrong with Arthur Emerson, that I couldn’t love him?” she demanded.
“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with him,” Jesse argued. “I’m just saying you already love me.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” she snorted.
“Of course you do,” he shot back. “You already told me that you did. You said you loved me as a brother and a friend. But don’t you see that that’s the perfect basis for a good marriage? You’d be lucky to have that with Mr. Emerson. You could live with him in holy wedlock for eighty years and never be able to love him in that way or in any other.”
“You’re beginning to sound like my dad,” she grumbled.
“Maybe he’s right,” Jesse suggested.
“And what about the romantic aspect of marriage?” she wanted to know. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“You won’t have that with Mr. Emerson,” Jesse declared. “If you changed the way you think about the situation, you might have it with me.”
“What?” she shouted. “You!?”
“Yes, me,” he responded evenly. “You love me. Admit it. You love me a lot more dearly than a brother or a friend. You love me romantically. You’re just too afraid to admit it, even to yourself.”
“I do, do I?” she sneered.
“Yes, you do,” he maintained. “We slept together last night. So we were sitting up on a hard bench in a train car, but would it have been so much different if we were lying down on a bed? Besides being a lot more comfortable, I mean?”
“I appreciate you letting me lean on your shoulder,” she conceded. “That was very kind of you.”
“I was just so grateful that you made it onto the train,” Jesse admitted. “I was almost hysterical when I thought I lost you at the station. I was willing to abandon everything on the train to go look for you. I had all sorts of horrible thoughts about what might have happened to you.”
“I wanted to kiss you when I first got onto the train,” Alice confessed. “I felt like I was having some kind of religious experience, where I saw an angel for the first time. I’ve never been so happy to see a person’s face as I was to see you.”
“I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you,” Jesse murmured. “Not after traveling all this way from Greensborough to keep you with me.”
Alice stared down at her plate. “It’s going to be terrible when we get to Bend. I’ll be going with Mr. Emerson and you’ll be going…somewhere else. I don’t want to separate from you, either.”
“Then don’t,” he commanded. “Don’t go with Mr. Emerson. Go with me. Let’s stay together no matter what. Let’s stay together for the rest of our lives. It’s the only way.”
“I don’t know,” she wavered. “I don’t know if I can think of you in that way. It would almost be easier to marry a stranger than to change the way I think about you.”
“Why?” he barked.
“Because I’ve thought of you in this way for so long,” she explained. “I can’t just change it overnight, like that.” She snapped her fingers. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“You insist on thinking of me as the boy you grew up with,” he accused.
“You are the boy I grew up with,” Alice declared.
“I’m not a boy,” he reminded her. “I’m a man. And you’re a woman. You’re not the girl I grew up with, either. When I look at you, I see the woman you are, not the girl you were.”
“I am the girl you grew up with,” Alice repeated.
“No.” Jesse shook his head and fingered his glass. “The girl I grew up with could never have left Greensborough the way you did.”
“And what way was that?” she inquired.
“The girl I grew up with would never sacrifice herself to help her father the way you did,” he explained. “The girl I grew up with could never throw herself out into the world alone. Only an independent woman could do that.”
At that moment, the door of the dining car swung open. The clatter of the train’s wheels over the rails crashed through the open door, momentarily obliterating all conversation. The next moment, Alice glanced up at the person closing the door behind her.
“Maggie!” she called out. She jumped up from her seat.
“Alice!” Maggie cried out. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
“I’ve been right there in the passenger car all night,” Alice informed her.
“Well, that explains why I didn’t find you,” Maggie told her. “I’ve been searching the sleeping car. I thought for certain you would be in one of the compartments.”
“Who can afford that?” Alice joked.
Maggie froze, staring at her. “Well, me, for one.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Alice stammered. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that I couldn’t have left my home town if my fiancé hadn’t sent me the train fare. As it is, Jesse’s helped me considerably. He’s bought me meals, and he put me up in a hotel room in Chicago. I would never have been able to afford a sleeping compartment. He’s even buying me this breakfast!”
“My fiancé sent me the train fare, too,” Maggie assented. “but it wasn’t enough. My parents gave me enough to cover the lay over in Chicago and to get a sleeping compartment on the train. It’s the only way to travel!”
“I wish I could have stayed in a compartment,” Alice sighed.
Maggie changed the subject, looking around at the diners at the tables in the car. “It’s no wonder I didn’t find you. This train is mobbed!”
“That reminds me!” Alice turned to the adjacent table. “This is Melody Hanson and Marion Johnson. They’re mail-order brides and they’re going up to the Snake River, too.”
“Really?” Maggie exclaimed. “That’s amazing!”
“The really amazing thing,” Alice continued. “is that they’re going to two brothers named Chapman.”
“Yes,” Marion chimed in. “We’re going to Paul and Prescott Chapman.”
“I’m going to Parker Chapman,” Maggie added. “I received several letters from him before I left Cincinnati. He told me he had two brothers, but he didn’t tell me they were getting brides, too.”
“I didn’t know there were three of them.” Marion exchanged glances with Melody across the table from her. “If you’ve had letters from him, you know more about the Chapman family than we do. Neither of us has corresponded with our fiancés at all. What did you say your fiancé’s name was?”
“I didn’t say,” Maggie corrected her. “His name is Parker Chapman. I wouldn’t travel halfway across the country to marry a man I hadn’t communicated with in some way.”
“The service I signed up for had a letter of introduction from Paul Chapman,” Marion related. “He’s the one I’m matched with. I was given the letter when they made the match. That’s all I received from him.”
“I received a letter of introduction, too,” Maggie concurred. “But that was just the beginning of our correspondence. My father wanted to bring him out to Cincinnati to give him the complete father-in-law third degree, but Parker wrote that he couldn’t leave his homestead in the middle of the spring thaw. He said he was going up the river with his brothers to fish and to hunt bears.”
“How exotic!” Marion breathed.
“What about you, Melody?” Alice interjected, addressing the willowy girl on the other side of the table. “Did you have any correspondence with your fiancé before you agreed to come out West?”
The girl hesitated to answer, and Marion jumped in instead, clipping her words closely. “Melody hasn’t had any communication with Prescott Chapman, either. Why don’t you join us, Maggie? We can travel the rest of the way together and get to know each other on the way.”
Maggie gladly took the seat next to Melody, and she and Marion fell into an easy conversation about their future home, their future husbands, and swapping information about their hometowns and their families. Alice returned to her own table, where Jesse observed the whole interaction with considerable attention.
“How fascinating it is that they wound up on the same train together.” He sipped his coffee, gazing back and forth between Alice and the three brides at the other table.
Maggie and Marion’s voices lilted up and down in a banter of friendly dialogue.
Alice shook her head in wonder. “I envy them.”
“Why is that?” Jesse scrutinized her.
“They’re going together into a strange and relentless wilderness,” Alice pointed out. “They’ll be living together in the same house, probably for the rest of their lives. They’ll be family to each other. I don’t have anything like that to look forward to. All I have waiting for me is Mr. Emerson.”
Jesse tapped his plate with his fork. “What do you make of that Melody? She seems a mystery to me.”
“I think she’s just shy.” Alice replied.
“Maybe,” Jesse murmured. “I sure would like to know what drives these women to become mail-order brides. You would think there were enough men back East for them to marry.”
“I’m sure each one has a different reason,” Alice grumbled.
“I’m sure they do,” he agreed. “I’m sure you could uncover a lot of skeletons in a lot of closets if you found out.”
Alice stiffened. “We’ll probably never know.”