The Preacher's Mail Order Bride

Wives of the Wild West

Sadie forced her trembling legs to bend. The rough hem of the filthy nightgown scraped against the fresh welts on her thighs as she lowered herself stiffly onto the cold floorboards beside the bucket. The movement sent jolts of agony through her bruised ribs and wrenched shoulders. The stench intensified immediately, a suffocating wave of mildewed potato skins, bitter carrot greens, and the unmistakable, cloying musk of soured milk. Flies buzzed lazily upwards, disturbed from their feast. Beneath the surface scum, Sadie glimpsed fragments of unrecognizable vegetable matter floating in a grey, viscous liquid. A thick strand of saliva escaped her tightly sealed lips as her stomach clenched violently again. She swallowed hard, the bile burning her throat. Her eyes, gritty and swollen, lifted from the slop to Mordecai’s plate. Golden yolks bled into fluffy biscuits piled high beside glistening slices of ham. The disparity was absolute, a brutal map of power.

Mordecai drained his coffee cup slowly, deliberately. The china clinked softly against the saucer. The silence stretched, taut and abrasive, punctuated only by the sizzle of fat in the skillet cooling on the stove behind him and Sadie’s shallow, ragged breaths. She dared not move, her gaze pinned to the grime-encrusted grooves between the floorboards. Woodsmoke and bacon grease hung heavy in the air, a deceptive veil over the acrid tang of her own terror-sweat and the bucket’s vile aroma. Her stomach roiled in violent protest. Minutes crawled. Each tick of the mantel clock overhead echoed like a hammer blow.

Her voice, shredded from last night’s screams, scraped out raw and paper-thin. A whisper lost beneath his looming presence. “Why?” It wasn’t defiance. It was the bewildered plea of an animal caught in a trap it couldn’t comprehend, a desperate grasping for reason in cruelty’s void. The word hung between them, fragile as dust motes caught in the harsh morning light slicing through the window. Her shoulders trembled, the stained nightgown shifting against whip-wealed skin.

Mordecai didn’t look up from his plate, his jaw working methodically as he chewed a piece of bacon. Crisp fat glistened on his lips. “You eastern women, desperate beggars,” he said, his tone flat, devoid of fire or fury. It was colder, emptier. “You want too much, too soon.” His words landed like a slap, echoing the phantom sting of the horsehair switch across her belly. “This,” he gestured dismissively towards her crouched figure beside the putrid bucket, “the good life you want here, it has to be earned.” His fork scraped loudly against china. The implication was clear: her worth, her place, her food, was measured in pain and submission. The steam rising from his plate curled like smoke from a branding iron. A fly landed on the rim of Sadie’s bucket, dipped its proboscis into the grey slop. The buzzing intensified in her ears.

Sadie stared at him, the anger simmering beneath his detached gaze a brutal contrast to the gentle promises inked across weathered paper. “Dear Miss Mirren, your devotion to family shines bright… A man finds purpose in caring…” The letters painted a man who cherished loyalty. This stranger devoured it. Her throat felt like sandpaper. “I… came from nothing,” she choked out, the words scraping raw, “just to find a better life for me… and my little sister and brother?” She didn’t dare mention Annie and Billy’s names aloud. Their faces swam before her, Annie’s trusting smile, Billy’s wide, curious eyes. Had she traded their starvation for this? Her knuckles whitened against the filthy nightgown covering her knees. “You promised…” The whisper died unfinished. Promises were parchment illusions, easily torn.