CHAPTER 6
Christmas morning, they opened gifts. Jan cried when she opened an envelope from his mother.
“What does it say?” Long asked her.
“She said she’d help me fix up the house we choose.” She dabbed at her wet eyes with the kerchief he handed her. “And I thought I’d be pushed aside for marrying her son.”
Both women in the room ran to her aid.
“Why would you think that?” his mother asked.
“I didn’t know you—”
“That is not the case, Jan. We’re so glad he found you. You are one of us,” Katy said.
“I know. But I have lived among spiteful people who resented anyone intruding in their world. I can’t believe everyone’s acceptance. I could not believe all the concern you have shown me. My deceased husband’s own cousin came and told me, at his funeral, that he and his family would be taking over my ranch. He demanded I give them the ranch.”
“Oh, Jan, you never told me about that,” Long said.
“I was so ashamed of them demanding it that I didn’t share it with anyone, but a lawyer told me they couldn’t do that. I knew they’d try something before it was over. Long did enough for me, insuring I wasn’t taken as a slave. He didn’t need to know my sack of problems with Rory’s family. I worried they’d do something when I sold the ranch. But we sold it so fast they had no time to stop it. I think they planned to take my ranch by claiming in court that I was mentally unfit to run it.”
His mother began hugging and rocking her. “Jan, we will all stand with you. You are one of us now and always will be.”
“Hey. This is no time to be sad,” Hiram said. “This is your wedding day, me girl. That worthless lot up there will never realize what a treasure they’ve lost.”
“See? You are in a safe place,” Long said.
She agreed with a nod.
Hiram asked her if she knew where her parents were.
“My father is dead. I lived with an aunt from my tenth year on. She died last year.”
“You don’t know where your mother is at?” Katy asked her.
“I don’t think about her. When she left me with my father she never even said good-bye.”
“Who did she leave with?”
“I never knew his name. I never tried to find her.” She shook her head, and the nice hairdo that they’d fixed for her event later that day swung loose.
“I heard once she worked in a house of ill repute, but I never looked into it. My aunt, my father’s sister, was a ship for me to survive with. I attended school. I never had any nice clothes, but she tried her best. I attended school in overalls most of the time. Between my height that I hated and my sorry wardrobe I struck back to survive. My husband, God bless him, Long has heard my story about my life with him. He lifted me up from being the poor too tall girl who wore hand-me-down clothes and very used shoes.”
Hiram said, “Don’t shrink. The O’Malley men appreciate your height, me lassie.”
They all laughed.
* * *
The noon meal at the ranch had been like old reunion days as Long met all the men who made the first run north with Harp and him to Sedalia. He laughed at the sight of Chaw, recalling the guy in a tattered confederate uniform, who on this day wore a big Boss of the Plains Stetson, white shirt, tan pants, and a businesslike jacket. The rest looked nice, but that Johnny Rebel sure turned respectable looking in Long’s book that day.
Hiram had told her earlier he’d be real proud to give her away. The three women drove one buckboard. Baby boy Lee was left home with a nanny. Hiram drove Long in another one. Their ranch foreman, Red, rode to town with Harp. All the crew plus their families were either on horseback, in buggies, or in rigs headed for the ceremony in town.
On the way into town Long asked his dad, “Mom said you rented a fancy coach and team to take her to the dance where you two got married?”
Hiram flicked the horses to pick up their pace. “I did for a fact. Your mother was so upset about being pregnant with you and your father dead she almost wouldn’t go with me. I insisted. When I proposed she told me to look at her body—that she was ugly.”
“She never was, was she?”
“Hell, no, she was a regal princess. M’wife had drowned six weeks earlier. I never thought I’d find a lovelier woman in this world. I didn’t care about her being pregnant. You would be my son when you came into this world. Period.”
“I never doubted that you were my dad, either.”
“Good. I planned it that way. Your mom was a great educator. You boys have shown it well. Why, I’d have gone to see those Rockies just like you did, but I had her and you, and then Harp to support. When Harp told me where you’d gone I said to myself—I’d have done the very same thing. Good luck to you and Jan. You know she cried when I said I’d give her away?”
“She has a big heart. But she’s willing and strong.”
“You two will have a great life.”
“Thanks, Dad, I sure missed you all out there fighting Indians and no one to talk to.”
“Oh, you even missed talking? How did that happen? You don’t say two words sometimes.”
“Well I missed Harp talking for me instead.”
They both laughed. It turned into a grand warm Christmas day.
The newlyweds, after the wedding, went off on the night stagecoach to honeymoon in San Antonio, Janet smiling and talking all the way about how she never figured anything like this would ever happen to her, especially after burying a husband and how proud she was to be an O’Malley.
He felt the same. Immersed in their love.
He took her to an opera in San Antonio. Though it brought back his memory of Rose and her impression of the show, Jan warmed his heart singing a verse or two in the taxi going back to the hotel.
“Only you would think to take me to an opera. My first husband was kind, but he’d never done that. Thanks, Long.”
He kissed her and deep in his mind he realized how fortunate he was to have her. In his search for a mate he could have done a lot worse, possibly finding an ungrateful one, a dumb one, or a nagger.
She was none of the above.