South of Ft. Meade, Florida on
the Peace River
January
1st 1916
“Please, tell me that you don’t
have feeling for this man.” She turned her face away from the face of her lover
and she met the eyes of a man that she could hate. “You didn’t think I would
find you? You’re my wife, Mignon. I would move this earth to have you.
With your value, I’d go into hell to find you.” She saw the man that she could
hate look up and away from where she lay in the dirt as he turned in his saddle
to look all around where they were before he turned his eyes back onto her
face. “Oh wait, maybe this place is hell.”
She heard the sarcastic tone of
his voice. She felt as though his words were a slap in her face. This place
where she’d run to, this place far away from him – her husband, the very dirt that she was laying in was
heaven on earth. No hell here. She looked away from the man that she could hate
with the reality that she didn’t want to hate anyone. And she didn’t want
anyone to hate her. Neither did she want to leave here. She never wanted to go
back to the life that she’d lead before coming here.
Her eyes were held captive by his
eyes. The windows to her husband’s soul revealed more than anger, for Mignon
could see his fury. The cruel smile that was on his face caused a cold knot of
fear to consume her as she realized that she was going to have to leave here,
she would have to go with him back to their home because he was her husband.
She would have to leave her lover and the peace that she’d found in this place
never to return because she didn’t belong to her lover. She belonged to the man
with the cruel smile on his face and this cruel man meant to keep her.
“Don’t hurt him, Harold,” her
voice was weak and pathetic when she heard herself speak. She held perfectly
still and she looked only at the man that was looking at her, afraid that if
she made one single move her lover would die.
“I won’t hurt him, if you obey me
as you promised to do when we married,” Harold Bellville spoke to the woman
lying in the dirt beneath the hooves of his horse, the woman that was his wife.
“What I’ve done here,” he waved his hand toward her lover. “I’ve done to show
you what I’m capable of doing if you ever think to leave me again.”
“I won’t. I won’t leave you
again,” she spoke to the man that was her husband glancing quickly to where her
lover was and knowing that her lover’s life depended on her words and her vow
to her husband.
“You come home with me, and he
lives. And Mignon, if you even think of this man ever again, I’ll see his life
ends.”
“I’ll do whatever you want me to
do, Harold. Please, let him go.” She saw Harold nod his head. She recognized
the satisfied look on his face. She had
said words that her husband wanted to hear. She had spoken words that she had no
other choice but to say.
“You’ve committed bigamy with
this man,” Harold nodded his head toward his wife, a confident look in his
eyes. “You could go to jail for what you’ve done.” He saw her head shaking, the
look of concern that touched her brow. And he smiled. Harold smiled because he
knew that as of this moment and onward, he would have complete control over his
wife. She would do whatever he told her to do, and he’d have what he wanted as
her husband. “But I think, seeing him like this and knowing what I’m capable of
doing to him that you’ll be no more trouble to me, will you, Mignon?”
“No, Harold, I’ll be no more
trouble,” she spoke in a meek and mild voice knowing that her husband knew what
she’d done. But him - her lover, Cole Collier, all Cole knew of her was lies.
She looked back to where her lover was and she saw him sitting slumped over on
his horse only a few yards away from her with a rope around his neck. And that
rope was tied to a tree branch. His life depended on her. His life depended on
the words that she said to her rightful husband, words that would see her lover
safe. Or words that would see him hang.
“Get up out of the dirt, Mignon,”
Harold ordered his wife as he motioned for one of the two men that worked for
him to go to his wife, that man holding the reins of a horse that was meant for
her. “Mount the horse.” She watched her husband motion to the second man and
that man moved his horse closer to where Cole was. Looking over her shoulder,
Mignon took a hold of the saddle horn and with her foot in the stirrup of that
saddle she pulled herself up and onto the horse.
“He’s coming around,” the man
that was close to Cole spoke to Harold as Mignon heard her lover moan as though
in pain, her husband moving his horse closer to her.
“If you want him to live, you’ll
convince this man that you want to be with me. I don’t care what you have to
say. But in the next few minutes you will earn his hatred forever. Neither you
nor I will ever see this man again. And Mignon, I know what a good actress you
are. The world has been your stage as you’ve manipulated everyone around you
all of your life. If you fail me in this, he will die.”
This was the end of her freedom.
What she’d known these past weeks was slipping away from her. What she’d known
with him, this man that was her lover, would soon be lost. When he learned even
a fraction of the truth about her, he’d never want her near him again. And she
wouldn’t blame him. She had lied to him. She had thought that here, in this
place in the middle of nowhere that she could start her life over again. That
with him, her lover, she might be someone that she could like, she might be
someone that he could love. She had meant to put her past behind her and never
be known as Mignon Bellville again. Here she had been known by the name of
Mignon Walker when she first arrived. She was not known as the wife of Harold
Bellville, nor was she known as the daughter of Henry Butler. She was Mignon
Collier, the wife of Cole Collier. But the wife of Cole Collier, she could be
no more. Her past had caught up to her, and her past was now her present. And
worse, her past would again be her future.
“I’ll do as you ask,” Mignon
spoke to her husband. “Please, let him live, Harold. I’ll spend the rest of my
life making up to you for having runaway.” She turned in the saddle and she saw
Cole was lying forward on his horse, he wasn’t moving. And because he wasn’t
moving, she thought that she had time to plead for his life before she
destroyed herself in his life. “I’ll go anywhere with you,” she spoke further
to her husband. “I’ll stay forever with you. But please, take that rope off
from around his neck. Let him go. He’s blameless.”
“You’ll go anywhere with me and
stay forever with me no matter what I do with that rope,” Harold spoke in a
savagely barbaric tone of voice to his wife. “You lay with that man as his wife
when you’re my wife. You’re lucky I don’t have a rope around your neck as
well.”
“No, I was never with him the way
I was with you,” Mignon spoke the truth knowing that even though she’d never
laid with Cole, Cole Collier was her lover. He was the only man that ever would
be her lover.
Harold stared hard into his
wife’s eyes knowing that she was a charmer, knowing too that she was full of
pretense. He knew her best, this woman that was his wife. She could sweet talk
a bird into a cat’s mouth. She could lie while looking someone straight in the
eyes and smiling with the lie that she told. But right now, Harold thought, she
looked different. He thought he saw a sincere look about her that he’d never
seen before. One thing he knew for certain, that stupid, silly, ridiculous
smile that he’d often seen wasn’t on her face.
“I almost believe you,” he spoke
to his wife aware that he was a fool to believe anything that she might say to
him. “For the first time in our marriage, my dear, you and I will be on the
same page of the same book in seeing that this man knows he has no future with
you. Don’t turn the page of this book on me Mignon, or I will kill him.”
“I won’t,” her husband heard her
vow and he knew that this vow she would not break. As manipulative and spoiled
as his wife was, Harold knew that she wouldn’t want to see anyone harmed. “He
doesn’t know my real name. He knows nothing of me, Harold. When he learns the
truth, that I’m really married to you, he won’t even not look for me, he’ll
never see me again. He’ll hate me. And I’ll never see him again. Please, just
let him go.”
“He doesn’t know anything about
you?” Harold asked his wife in a voice that held his disbelief of what she was
saying to him.
“I took on my maid’s name,” she
told her husband something of the truth of what she’d done. “I took on my
maid’s life. He has no idea who I really am.” The last few words she spoke
while looking at the man on horseback that was nearest to her lover and she
knew that man, he was Sam and he’d worked in her father’s stable.
“He knows nothing of the money,”
“Nothing. As God as my witness,
he knows nothing beyond that of my maid,” Mignon interrupted her husband to say
this in a strong, firm and certain voice that she prayed he would believe as
her words were the truth.
“And he married you anyway?”
Harold’s voice still held disbelief though not of his wife’s words to him, but
of the fact that any man would want her without her money. “Imagine that.”
His face was against his horse’s
neck. His forehead was resting on his horse’s mane, that mane was as soft as a
feather down pillow. But despite the softness, Cole felt the pain in his head.
For a moment he thought that he’d been thrown from his horse and he had hit his
head on the ground hard. But the moment passed as he realized that he was
sitting on his horse. He wasn’t on the ground. There had to be another
explanation for the pain that he was in.
Cole had to force his eyes to
open, and the force of opening his eyes was not easy. He fought for a full
minute at least to look beyond the pain that he was in. His head felt
broken in half and he moaned as he grabbed a deep breath thankful that he could
see the ground below where he sat on his horse. And seeing the ground, Cole
grabbed another deep breath and he moaned again as he sat up straight becoming
aware that his hands were tied behind his back and there was something tight
around his neck.
“You,” Cole heard a man speak in
a loud voice. “Untie him and take the noose from around his neck.” Harold
Bellville motioned with his hand to his hired man that was closest to Cole
Collier. “My wife has convinced me that she’s lied to this man as she lied to
me. There will be no hanging today.”
“What?” Cole gasped this word as
he became aware that he was sitting on his horse with his hands tied behind his
back. He looked up and right away he realized there was a rope made into a
noose around his neck and that rope was also around a tree branch. One wrong
move and Cole knew that he would die and he would die hanging from a tree
within a mile from his own house.
Mignon saw her husband give her a hard fast
look as one of the men that worked for her husband pulled the noose from around
her lover’s neck, a lover that believed her to be someone that she wasn’t. A
lover that believed her to be his wife when she was the wife of Harold
Bellville.
“Cole,” she cried as she spoke
his name. The time had come for her to tell him the truth and in telling Cole
the truth of what she’d done, she knew that she would lose him forever. God
help me, she thought these words as she lowered her head, the truth of what she
had done should see her hanging from that tree.
“Who are you?” Cole focused his
gaze on the man that sat on a horse next to his wife. “And why was I tied up
with a noose around my neck?” He reached down and absently Cole rubbed his now
free wrists as he continued to look at the man and not his wife.
“My name doesn’t matter to you.
Nothing about me will ever matter to you.” Harold words were sharp and hard
when spoken. “I thought that you’d stolen my wife away from me. As it’s a
hanging offense in this part of the country to steal a man’s cattle, I thought
you should hang for having stolen my wife.”
“I didn’t steal anything from
anyone, Mister.” A look of anger came over Cole’s face as he looked away from
the man speaking to him, his eyes crashing into the eyes of the beautiful young
woman that he believed to be his wife.
“I’m not who I said I was,” Mignon spoke to
Cole, her lover, a man that knew her as his own wife when she couldn’t be his
wife because she was already married to Harold Bellville and she had been
married to Harold for almost a year. “He’s telling you the truth. He’s my
husband. We had a disagreement and I wanted to run away from home. So I took on
my maid’s name of Mignon Walker and I wrote to you pretending to be her. I even
sent you my photograph. You were just a game I was playing, Cole. I didn’t mean
to run away and leave my husband for good. I just wanted to have some fun.” She
thought to say these words to him knowing that in his eyes she had to tear
herself down. She had to make him hate her so that Harold would never harm him.
No one must harm Cole. “And you were so
sweet, nothing like a real man. Only a boy for me to tempt and tease.” And
saying this, Mignon cringed and she cringed inwardly where no one would see. “I
was just playing with you. Nothing that happened between us was supposed to be
real. You were getting to close to me and I didn’t know how to tell you the
truth without hurting you. Honestly, I never meant to hurt you. Who would have
guessed any man would fall in love with a woman that wrote him silly little
letters? So yesterday, while we were in Ft. Meade and you were getting
supplies, I sent my husband a telegram begging him to forgive me our argument
and telling him where he could find me. And he’s come for me, haven’t you
darling?” And with the last three words, she turned and met Harold’s eyes with
her own.
Cole heard her words and he knew
that she was a cheat. He saw her turn away from him and look at the man that
was her true husband. Her hand reaching out and taking hold of that man’s hand
as they now sat side by side of one another on their horses. He should have known that no woman would be
with a man like him without some sort of a reason. And her, the way that she
came to be here with him, writing him letters and agreeing to marry him in the
post. He was certain now this that had gone on between them had been a game to
her. She had been playing with him from the start. She had acted nervous and
jittery and he had expected her to bolt at any given moment and now he knew why
she’d been the way that she’d been with him. She was married and it wasn’t him
she wanted. It was her husband that she wanted. She’d fooled him. No, he
amended his thoughts. She had made a fool of him. She had him trusting her to
be frightened of the act between a man and a wife. From the minute he’d met
her, she had him believing that she was someone she was not. And now, seeing
her for who she really was, all Cole wanted was to get away from her.
He saw her look away from her
husband and when she did, his eyes slammed into her eyes as he remembered the
day before. He’d been breaking the Reverend’s horse while she’d been sending a
telegram to her husband to come get her. She wasn’t afraid of the marriage bed,
Cole realized. She hadn’t wanted to be with him in the marriage bed. She wanted
to be with her husband.
“Everything was a game to you,”
Cole didn’t ask this of the woman that he’d believed was his wife. He made his
words a statement of fact as he knew beyond question that was what he had been
to her – a game. Cole saw her physically flinch and for a moment he thought
maybe, just maybe, she was ashamed of what she’d done. He felt a knot in his
throat as he reached for the reins of his horse feeling sick with this headache
and feeling more sick for being a fool for having fallen in love with another
woman that trampled all over his heart. “I hope you had fun,” his words were
broken as he nudged his horse closer to where she was.
“I did,” Mignon nearly burst into
tears as she made this reply holding her head up high as though her words were
sincere, but her head was held high for only a matter of second.
“Go to hell.” And following these words, Cole
spit in her face. His horse reared back as Cole kicked the animal hard, the
horse lunging forward fast and running away with the rider leaning low over the
horse’s neck.
“Well,” Harold Bellville laughed in his wife’s
face, “you certainly won’t run to him again. And you won’t run from me again
either, will you?”
“I want my money,” the man named
Sam that worked for him said to Harold while the other man lit a rolled
cigarette.
“She’s what I came here for and
I’ve got her,” Harold nodded his head toward his wife seeing her give her horse
a gentle nudge of her knee and go under the branch where the rope hung from the
tree. “You can have your money now.”
Mignon looked at the man that was
her husband and she shuddered in horror that she was his wife. She would have
to go home with him. She would have to be with him again. Harold would own her
again and her life would become pretend with nothing real about her life or
even about herself. “Oh God,” she cried in a prayer like way as she lowered her
head feeling sick over what she had done. She had seen that Cole would hate her
for all eternity. And she would hate herself for all eternity. The only man
that she had ever loved was leaving her with the belief that she was some sort
of person that she wasn’t. She was the sort of person that she had become
because he was her lover.
“He changed my life,” she spoke
within her mind to no one other than herself. Cole had saved her from Harold.
If only she’d told him the truth from the start, this regret she’d live and die
with. A sigh of agony escaped her as she rode under the tree branch and she
reached for the noose that had been around his neck. He was safe from this, she
thought as the hot tears flooded her face. Harold wouldn’t hurt him now. Harold
would only hurt her now.
“What are you doing?” Mignon
heard one of the men that was here with her husband ask her this question and
she looked up seeing the man had turned in his saddle smoking a cigarette and
facing her. The man was rugged looking, big certainly, but his eyes, there was
a kindness that she could see there in his eyes.
“Take that rope from around your
neck right this minute, Mignon.” She heard her husband, Harold give her this
order knowing that the rope was right where the rope belonged. Cole was safe.
She was not. But she soon would be.
Suicide was a sin against God and
mankind, and Mignon knew that to be true. But what she was doing wasn’t
suicide. She was already dead. The minute that Cole had ridden away from her
she had died. “Stop playing games.” Harold turned his horse around and he
nudged the animal forward intent on taking the noose that she’d slipped around
her neck off of her.
No more games to play. Nor more
hurt or pain or horror over what was being done to her. Not even heaven would
welcome her. She hadn’t been real. She wasn’t real. He had never been real.
Cole. Only Cole had been all that was real in her life.
“I can’t have him,” she spoke in
a voice that didn’t sound like her own to Harold as her husband moved closer to
her. “And I don’t want you.” And with these final words, Mignon Bellville
kicked her horse hard, the animal bolting out from under her lightening
fast and her, she felt herself falling and that was all that she felt.
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