Chapter 7

Finally, the telegram arrived to announce the arrival of Aggie by stagecoach at noontime on Saturday next. Stewart was overjoyed and he rode each of the McGregor women right in the middle of the day like some sex-crazed cowboy looking for the tiger.

While they were at the telegraph office in town waiting for the noon stage, another telegram came in that informed them that Gloria the last of the mail-order brides would be on the same stage as Aggie. That was a bit of a shock because it had not been that long since they had made the final arrangements on Gloria's travel expenses.

By sheer coincidence, both Shawn and Stewart were with Sheila and Eve to shield them from any bandits or other evil-intended yahoos with time on their hands. Fortunately, the two brothers were mounted and not riding the buckboard and it would allow them room for both of the new brides to sit in the back of the buckboard. This time, they had hooked up a pair of horses in harness to make the journey less tiring for the horse and that was quite timely because most of the return trip was slightly uphill as they approached the foothills.

The presence of Eve was because she wanted to see how her older sister Ruth was getting along at the laundry. Poor Ruth was a real plain thing in her mid-thirties with a discernable limp from some affliction suffered whilst still a tiny tot in her crib. Eve had hated to leave her behind but the elder sister had insisted she take advantage of the chance to better herself when the opportunity arose with Clementine's addition to the ranks of McGregor brides.

When the two females stepped off the stage, Shawn ran over to who he assumed was Gloria because she was packing a mite more baby fat than an eighteen year old girl would normally carry around. Not that it detracted in any way from the overall attractiveness of her beautiful facial features and her young nubile body. As it turned out, that pretty girl was actually Aggie, Stewart's intended. Poor Stewart was mortified because he had already kissed Gloria, the intended bride for Shawn.

Sheila got it all quickly straightened out and got the correct brothers kissing the right mail-order brides. It was a minor error but one that caused a bit of problems later on because Aggie immediately acquired a deep-seated obsession for the handsome Shawn that haunted her every waking hour.

Both of the girls were on the hefty side, but neither Shawn nor Stewart seemed to be complaining. Sheila knew for a fact that Stewart definitely favored a little meat on the bones and he was never happier than when he was pounding Conchita's wide bottom in one of the big beds. It looked like all the McGregor brothers would be welcoming Aggie and Gloria to the family in a way that would wear away their excess pounds in a big hurry. Judging from the gleam in both their eyes, it would be a process that they looked forward to with great anticipation. Gloria wanted to swing up in the saddle with Shawn but they decided against it because of the uphill nature of the return trip.

With the added transport of Eve's older sister Ruth, they now had five females in the buckboard.

When they drove past the saloon, the girls on the second floor veranda were shouting in good-natured jest.

"Are you figuring to open up another cathouse outside of town limits, girls? We have plenty of spare rooms for you to make your fortune right here."

The boys were embarrassed but the womenfolk were a bit perturbed at being thought no better than common whores to be ridiculed for their marital arrangements. The one most affected was the religious minded Aggie who was willing to offer any use of her physical body to a higher service and in accord with decent behavior. She knew that the family expected her to be part of their "close family relations" activities but saw that as nothing more than family loyalty and a generous giving of love inside the family. It was far better to be a McGregor woman and part of a close-knit clan than to fall victim to the sinning ways of infidelity and promiscuous looseness with strange men and unrelated neighbors.

Sheila sat next to Ruth, who was uncommonly tight-lipped for a female and she did her best to feel the plain-looking mature female out about her attitudes toward being part of a close-knit family. She discovered that despite her age, Ruth was pretty much a novice in matters of physical intimacy and that she was a bit immature in almost every area of sexual relations except for the basic "missionary" position which she had be "subjected to" on several occasions by males who paid attention to her body. In fact, she was reasonably certain the poor woman had never experienced an orgasm in her entire life.

It really seemed strange considering how well-versed her younger sister Eve was in every facet of kinky sex and even knew things that Sheila had only read about in books.

When Sheila looked into the back of the buckboard, she saw that the sly Eve was pumping Gloria and Aggie for any and all tidbits of information about their backgrounds that she might be able to use later in her constant game of "one-upmanship" that she practiced as part of her normal persona. Sheila could understand her wariness because she was not a bona-fide McGregor woman but merely a support person who was close to the family. It seemed likely that her sister Ruth would fall into the same role, but Eve knew in her heart that her older sister was much better suited to that role than she.

The unattached males along the route had more than a normal level of interest in the sight of five females all together at one time in a region that was predominantly male with the females few and far between. Well, the McGregor clan had paid for their womenfolk to travel out to the frontier to be at their side and there was no chance that any of them would tolerate any foolishness with "bucks" from outside the family.

The parson was tied up in a multi-funeral due to a mine cave-in at an ore-producing mine up the American River in an area where the soil was not as stable as a miner would prefer. The constant mini vibrations of earthquakes did little to stabilize the soil and the miners that did go underground were desperate to get a stake to find the gold on the surface which was a lot safer to gather and a lot more productive in terms of personal income. The parson promised to be down the following weekend to tie the knot in a double ceremony at the big house. That ceremony would complete the McGregor clan mission of finding suitable spouses for every McGregor male and would mean they could devote their full attention to the collection of gold dust and nuggets while enjoying the pleasurable companionship of decent womenfolk to ease away the stress of everyday existence.