Badlands Bride

The assignment filled Hallie with a new sense of importance. The Daily was always trying to get the jump on the bigger papers, and even though the other newspapers always managed to edge them out, the Wainwrights had increased circulation over the past year. Any newsworthy story that first appeared in The Daily was a feather in their journalistic cap.

“I’ll work on it right away.” She kissed her father on the cheek and smugly tilted her chin on her way past Turner.

Samuel and Turner exchanged conspiratory grins. “How long do you think that will keep her out of our hair?” Turner asked.

Samuel ran a hand over his balding pate. “Let’s hope until Evan has a foot in the door. It’s hard enough being a cub, without having to deal with Hallie when she’s got her hackles up.”

“Well, then, we’ll just have to keep her busy.”

“Isn’t it just the most romantic thing you’ve ever heard?” The young woman with golden hair and ivory skin ignored the cake and tea on the tiny table and stared vacantly across the front of the lace-decorated establishment where the ladies of Boston came to socialize over afternoon tea.

Hallie thought traveling to God-only-knew-where to marry a man she’d never laid eyes on was the most asinine thing she’d ever heard, but she politely refrained from saying so.

“Where are the northern Dakotas, anyway?” Tess Cordell asked, coming out of her dreamy-eyed trance. “One of the girls said up by the North Pole.”

“I don’t think it’s quite that far.” Hallie tried to recall her geography lessons. “It’s far to the west and up north. Quite remote, I’m sure.”

Tess took an envelope from her reticule and carefully removed and unfolded a letter. “His name is Cooper DeWitt. He has a stage line and a freight company, so he must be very wealthy.” Her pale blue eyes took on that dreamy quality again. “The only thing he requested in a wife was that she be able to read and write. I think that’s good, don’t you? He doesn’t sound like a demanding sort of fellow.”

“Or discriminating,” Hallie added.

“Right,” Tess agreed, the comment apparently sailing over her head. “He’s not superficial like most young men who care only that a woman be from a good family.”

Hallie heard the resentment in her voice. Obviously Tess was not from a well-to-do family, or she wouldn’t have responded to an ad from a desperate frontier man. “Does he say how old he is?”

Tess frowned at the paper momentarily. “No.” Her expression brightened. “But he does mention that he’s never had a wife, so he must be young.”

Or uglier than a buck-too!hed mule, Hallie thought more realistically. What was this poor girl getting herself into? She almost wanted to offer her assistance if the girl needed someone to provide for her so badly she was willing to do this. But she held her tongue. Her family had told her often enough that her thinking was not that of a typical twenty-year-old woman. Tess was obviously delighted with her plan. “What else does he say?”

“Only that the country is beautiful and that I would have everything that I need.”

“How romantic.” Hallie made a few notes on her tablet. “Are you worried about being so far from anyone you know?”

“Well...” Tess chewed her lower lip. “I don’t have family, but a couple of the other girls have accepted positions in the same community, so we’ll be traveling together. I’m sure Mr. DeWitt will see that I can visit from time to time.”

Hallie noted the term accepted positions for later reference. “Are the other girls as excited as you?”

“Oh, yes!” Her pale eyes sparkled. “This is an adventure of a lifetime!”

“I want to speak with the others, too. Can you give me their names?” Hallie scribbled a list and thanked Tess for the interview.

Hallie met the other young women, then hurried home to write her article. The enormous, masculinely furnished house was quiet, as usual. She slipped into her father’s study and seated herself in his oversize chair, arranging paper, pen and ink on the desk top. She loved the room, did her best thinking among the familiar heavy pieces with the Seth Thomas mantel clock chiming on the half hour.

Nearly three hours passed before Hallie noticed the time. Double-checking the information, wording and neat printing, she blotted the pages. Her father would undoubtedly cut it in half, but, pleased with her work, she delivered it to his office.

He read the pages while she waited. “This is just what we wanted, Precious,” he commended her.

Gladdened at the acknowledgment, she ignored the patronizing nickname.

“Keep on this,” he said.

“You mean...?”

“I mean follow up. Go with them when they shop for the trip, watch them pack, all that. We’ll run a series on the brides, right up until you wave them off at the stage station.”

Surprised and more than a little pleased, Hallie nodded. “All right.” She patted the edge of the desk in satisfaction. “All right.”

Hallie read her articles in print each day, delighting in the fact that her father hadn’t cut more than a sentence or two. She was so delighted, she didn’t allow the fact that her father’s new apprentice was covering the boxing championships and making headlines nearly every other day upset her—too much.

The day before her subjects were due to leave, she stepped into the office early. On the other side of the partially open mahogany door her brothers’ voices rose.

“I’ll take this sentencing piece,” Charles said. “I’ll be at the courthouse this morning, anyway.”

“Right,” Samuel said. “Evan?”

“I still have the lawyer to interview and, of course, the matches tonight. I’ll try not to take a punch myself this time.”

Male laughter echoed.

“That’s some shiner!” Charles said.

“Great coverage, son.” Samuel added. “You’ll do anything to get an unusual angle. That’s the stuff good reporters are made of.” The aromatic scent of his morning cigar reached Hallie’s nostrils, and she paused, a hollow, jealous ache opening in her chest at her father’s casual praise of Evan Hunter. “How many more matches?”

“Another week,” Evan replied.

Hallie reached for the door.

“What’re we gonna do with Hallie?” Turner’s voice carried through the gap beside the door. “Her brides leave tomorrow.”

Hallie stopped and listened.

“That turned out to be an excellent piece,” Charles commented. “We’ve had good response.”

“Plus we got the jump on the Journal,” Samuel agreed.

“Who’d have thought that when you came up with something to keep her off Evan’s back during the matches, we’d actually get a good piece of journalism?” She recognized Turner’s voice.

They laughed again.

A heavy weight pressed upon Hallie’s chest. Hurt and self-doubt squeezed a bitter lump of disappointment into her throat. Of all the patronizing, condescending, imperious—

They’d handed her the story like presenting a cookie to a toddler they didn’t want underfoot! And now they gloated over their own superiority. Hallie had never felt so wretched...so cheated...so unimportant.

“Do we have any sources in the Dakotas?” Charles asked.

“Why?”

“The real story is on the other end of that stage line.”