"Three Barkleys and A Wedding"

by
HelenB


Logline: The Barkley brothers are forced into a shotgun wedding

  In the small rowdy town of Salesville, Nick is seen running out of the hotel and across the street to the livery stables where Jarrod and Heath are saddling the horses.

Nick hurled in and slammed the barn door shut. “You haven’t seen me!” he said to his muddled brothers as he whizzed past them to climb up the ladder to the hayloft.

Heath and Jarrod looked at each other and shrugged off their brother’s odd behavior. Seconds later, three young beguiling maidens entered the stables. Both Heath and Jarrod’s eyes widened at their enthralling beauty and tipped their hats.

“Howdy ma’ams. Sumpthin’ we can do fer ya?” Heath asked with a fetching smile and glinting blue eyes.

“We’re looking for a man named Nicholas Barkley. Do you know him?” asked Amelia, the eldest of the three sisters, tall, amber-haired with azure-blue eyes.

Heath hemmed and hawed, turning to Jarrod for guidance as to the best way to handle the sticky situation.

“No we don’t,” Jarrod promptly replied. “Why do you want him for?”

“He promised to marry me,” Amelia asserted with a voice dripping with anger

“You? He promised to marry ME!” barked the middle sister, Katherine.

Youngest blond, green-eyed sister Becky strutted over to Heath with her hands folded in the back and a sultry smile on her lips. “You’re wrong sisters. He said I was going to be his bride, but now that I see this fine gentleman here,” she ran a flirtatious hand on Heath’s arm, “you can have him.”

Nervous twitches spread across Heath’s face and his skin began to crawl at the girl’s suggestive touch. He risked a glimpse at her, long enough to realize that she had definitely set her sights on him. She draped her arm around his, clinging to him with a vice-like grip. Heath contrived a smile and turned to Jarrod who appeared to have landed in a similar predicament with Katherine.

Amelia’s keen sense of perception led her to the loft where she tweaked Nick’s ear and pulled him out from under the hay “You’re mine Nicholas Barkley.”

“Damn woman, let go of my ear! That hurts!” he growled.

“That’s nothing compared to what I’ll do if you don’t come down this instant!” the headstrong girl railed on a domineering tone.

“Alright, alright!”

Amelia’s temper matched Nick’s wit for wit. She’s was a fiery little number who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Now, turn around all of you!” she ordered the three Barkley brothers who obeyed without batting an eye. She bent over and pulled up her skirt to reach her hand pistol neatly tucked inside her garter. “Okay now, all of us are going to march down to the church where our father and a preacher are waiting for us.”

“Now wait a minute, ladies,” Jarrod started to protest. “Can we discuss this calmly?”

“Don’t you like me?” Katherine purred seductively as she brushed her finger against Jarrod’s cheek.

He gripped her lecherous hand and lowered it. “I don’t even know you.”

“You will, once we’re married.”

“Married!?” Heath exclaimed with a giggle. His laugh soon dwindled into a strained smile and a flushed expression after catching the girls’ squinting glare, one that told him they were dead serious.

“Throw down your guns, NOW!” Amelia commanded.

Each jolted at the shout and unsheathed their guns obediently, dropping them at their feet. Katherine and Becky bend down and picked them up.

“Come on! Let’s move!” Amelia ordered with her gun trained on the boys.

Halfway down the street, a middle-aged couple stopped to watch the Simpson girls steer they preys down to the church.

“Looks like the gals finally found their mates,” the man remarked.

“Amen! I reckon it’ll be safe for our Harold to come into town. Them wildcats won’t be tryin’ to get ‘em paws on ‘im anymore.” the woman commented.

Amelia wagged her gun in front of the peeved brothers. “Get inside!” she ordered.

They all stepped inside the church and walked up to the altar where the Simpson patriarch and the town’s reverend were waiting. The girls stood next to their respective partners as the clergyman began the wedding ceremony.

“Now hold on just a second here!” Nick griped, wrenching his arm free from Amelia’s grip. “We ain’t gonna marry anyone.” He stepped up to the girls’ father. “Look I don’t know who you are or what game you’re playing but me and my brothers won’t be part of it,” Nick blasted, standing defiantly with fists on hips and teeth gritted.

Carl Simpson pulled out his gun and thrust it at Nick’s nose. “Either you marry my daughters or you die. Take your pick,” he challenged with a composed poise.

Nick’s eyes crossed as he looked down at the barrel of the gun. He sheepishly turned to Amelia who wrapped her arm around his.

Within minutes, they were married. The wives kissed their dumbstruck husbands and lured them away to their hotel rooms.

Nick started out of sleep. He turned to his right and was relieved to see Heath and Jarrod sleeping soundly by the campfire. It had been a silly dream. Nick wiped the sweat off his face and laid back on the blanket. He let out a muffled chuckle before he went back to sleep.

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At dawn’s early light, the boys rode out to reach their destination, the town of Medosa, where they had business transactions to discuss with a cattle rancher named Peterson, the owner of Twin-Trees Ranch.

The family butler invited the Barkleys to wait by the horse paddock while Peterson was getting ready. Each brother marvelled at the beautiful stallions, making it hard to settle on just three. Heath’s keen eye for horses won him the right to make the final decision. Once the deal was clenched, the bill of sales sighed and copies given to both parties, the Barkleys were invited back to the house for supper.

As soon as they stepped through the front door, Peterson’s daughters waltzed down the grand staircase. Nick was flabbergasted. Without a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed his brothers, yanked them out of the house and dragged them to the stables where he urged them to mount their horses. The three girls were the mirror images of the ones in his dream.

“Run for you life, boys.”

“What in tarnation’s the matter with ya, Nick?” Heath asked, somewhat flustered by his brother’s conduct.

“Can’t explain now. Get on your horses. We’ve got to get the heck out of this place, NOW!” he blared to spur his brothers into action.

“What about the stallions we bought?” Jarrod asked as he mounted Jingo.

“We’ll send someone to pick them up. Let’s go!” He spurred Coco and raced away at full tilt, followed by his two muddled brothers.

Peterson and his daughters watched them ride away in a cloud of billowing dust.

“What was that all about, Father?” Becky asked.

“I don’t rightly know, daughter.”

“They were handsome,” Katherine mused.

“They would have made great husbands,” Amelia added with a sly smile.

Peterson turned to his daughters and proposed that they take a ride into Stockton to bring the stallions to the Barkley Ranch themselves.


THE END



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