2

       Ford

      “She’ll be here any day now.” The bastard sitting across from me at the gambling table clenched his teeth around a stub of a cigar. “My mail-order bride.”

      Logan and I, along with Evan, sat around the card table with the filthy old man playing poker. I caught his name when he and his two sons first sat down. Samuel Jenkins. With him were his two grown sons, Tad and Harry. The saloon was rowdy and crowded due to the afternoon’s cattle drive. The cattle arrived and brought with them a bunch of men who longed for cheap whiskey and loose women.

      Logan, Evan and I, along with nine other men, were just passing through this town on our way to the Bridgewater Ranch and were eager to see the town behind us. If these three Jenkins men were the kinds of folk who lived here, I didn’t want to meet any more. They’d been talking nonstop, not of their bride, the innocent woman scheduled to arrive from Omaha in two days’ time to marry Mr. Jenkins, Sr., but of the wedding night.

      “What if she won’t marry you, Pa?” The elder son looked close to my own age of thirty. He was missing his two front teeth and his lips were stained black with chewing tobacco. If possible, he smelled even worse than his father, who reeked of sweat and piss, his fingernails coated in unwashed black from working the mines.

      “She’ll marry me. She ain’t got no choice. Ain’t no going back.” Jenkins slammed back his fifth shot of whiskey and I cringed for the poor, unsuspecting woman traveling to marry him.

      “She’ll be wed to Pa, just like we planned,” the younger son said, his eyes wide with perverted glee. He had to be no older than twenty. “Come on, Tad, tell these soldier boys about the sweet pussy we’re going to get.”

      I arched my brow at the kid’s words. I wasn’t in uniform, and neither were my friends, but I knew from looking around the bar that we stood out, uniform or not. We were retired from the military, our service done for a country we would most likely never see again. I, for one, was ready to get to Bridgewater and settle down with a nice warm woman. So, I understood what the old man wanted, but knew my brow creased in confusion at the younger man’s words. I’d thought old man Jenkins was the one set to marry.

      “Shut up, Harry. Ain’t nobody’s business.” Tad tossed a few coins into the center of the table. “But I hope she’s got big titties.”

      Samuel Jenkins slapped the table and the coins jumped. “I get her first,” he clarified, waving his hand between his sons. “And I told you, after I’m done, we’ll be taking turns with her.” He glanced at me, then Logan, as if to gauge our reactions. “You men ever share a woman before?”

      I flicked my gaze to my friend Logan, quickly understanding the men’s intentions, but his expression was unreadable. I wasn’t about to tell these men anything. Logan called for another card and the old man dealt him one. Who was the poor woman arriving tomorrow? The need to warn her stirred to life inside me. No woman deserved what these men had planned for her. I needed to know the woman’s name and the best way to discover information was to let the men talk.

      Jenkins didn’t know who he was playing cards with, for if he did, he would know that we always shared a woman. It was the way of our group, the dozen of us in town, plus those already settled at Bridgewater. We’d all spent time enjoying the culture and customs in Mohamir—a small Middle Eastern country where our regiment had been stationed—and were now traveling to Bridgewater where we could live our way without bothering anyone.

      Our trusted friend, Whitmore Kane, had written telling us of the growing number of men settling on a ranch in the Montana Territory with their brides. He’d invited those from our regiment to join them. Two men—or more—marrying one woman, the custom of Mohamir, certainly didn’t follow the strict dictates of Victorian England. Puritanical America didn’t follow suit either, but based on what we’d seen of the Montana Territory, out here under the big sky, there was plenty of room to do as one wished. Even the Jenkinses believed that, but what they intended did not favor the bride in any way.

      The Mohamiran marriage custom put the woman’s needs first. The husbands loved her, honored her, cherished her, protected her. Possessed her body and took pride in the pleasure he gave her.

      Evan broke the silence. “I’m a one-woman man myself.”

      That was the truth, for he—along with Daniel—would claim only one woman. Logan and I would share a bride. The others in our group, all bachelors, had already agreed to the same and now they waited for that one special woman to come along and change everything. Our way of life was nothing like what these men had planned for their future bride and the stench of the idea—and them—reeked.

      Jenkins shook his head as if disappointed. “You don’t know what you’re missing. My boys here, they like a woman between them, but the whores upstairs—” he glanced up at the ceiling as if he could see through it to the working girls being fucked while we spoke, “—aren’t that eager anymore. It was over a long, cold winter night we came up with the idea for a mail-order bride.”

      I wanted confirmation of their intentions. “Am I to understand you hired an agency to find brides for all three of you?”

      “You talk funny,” the youngest one commented.

      “I’m not from the Montana Territory,” I replied, as if people spoke with British accents elsewhere in the country. We didn’t need to draw attention to ourselves and our accents were easily noticeable. We came halfway around the world for a quiet life. We’d all had enough trouble to last a lifetime. My closest friend, the man with whom I would share a bride with, was an orphan. Logan’s father passed from a bad flu when he was only nine years old. He’d run the streets of Manchester begging for food and money, trying to help his mother survive. But she had faded away right before his eyes. After she died, he’d joined the military to start over.

      When our regiment arrived in Mohamir, he’d been the first one of us to see the wisdom of their ways. Two husbands meant safety and comfort for a widow and her children. That was something Logan admired and respected about their society and I agreed.

      The drunken sot sitting across from me, Harry, seemed to accept my excuse and my strange accent. He turned away from me and nodded his head at his father, seemingly content with my response. Bloody idiot.

      Tad called for another card, stuck it into his hand, then said, “We didn’t use no agency. A newspaper advertisement was all it took.”

      “And it’s not three brides,” Jenkins clarified, then pointed to himself and his sons. “Only one. Why the hell do we want three noisy women in the house when we only need one?”

      I saw Logan’s eyebrows go up. He leaned forward, placed his forearms on the table. “You’re telling me you placed an advertisement for a bride to share? And you received a reply?”

      I shifted in my seat, eager to hear the answer. If a simple advertisement would bring a willing woman to us, a woman content to marry two men instead of one, our bride problem could be easily solved. Apparently, Logan also saw the possibilities. Was this how it was done in America? I was used to arranged marriages among the upper class in England, but those matches were meant to preserve genetic lineage and station. This country broke from king and country a century before to avoid such legacies.

      “She must be a hundred-year-old hag,” Evan said, rolling his eyes.

      Logan chuckled, but Jenkins held his hand in a fist, shaking it in Evan’s face as if my friend were an idiot. “Now hold on. Of course not! She’s a nice young virgin. Twenty and five. And I got her likeness right here.” Jenkins dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thick photograph with ripped edges for Logan to see. Both Evan and I leaned forward for a glimpse of the woman, but Tad had other ideas. He ripped the photograph from his father’s hand before any of us could take a look.