Matthew’s eyes grew wide again, but his mother was not concerned.
“And this fellow has placed an ad specifically looking for a wife who is advanced in years as his children are already grown. He merely needs a companion who can help tend his farm and cook for the passengers who spend the night when the stagecoach stops there.”
Mrs. Miller patted Matthew’s hand and gestured to the pile of advertisements. “You see? It’s quite honorable and done by even the best of ranchers and farmers. Even shop proprietors and hotel owners have placed ads, seeking a bride now that they’ve made something of themselves out here. And you could do the same!”
“Mother! You’re in such a hurry to see me married that you’d take a stranger into our home and welcome her like a daughter? I cannot imagine!” he replied, still aghast at what he’d just learned.
“My son, you’re putting far too much emphasis on how you think things should be properly done. Why, your ranch is the ideal place for a willing bride to arrive! There are plenty of people here to ensure her honor and help her feel less beholden. There are even several women—oh, we should mention that in your ad!—to provide companionship and protection of her modesty while the two of you come to a decision.”
“A decision? What decision, I would have thought the decision was already made once she agreed to come to a strange man’s home and bed!” Matthew said indignantly, still reeling from this development.
“Oh no, that’s not at all how it’s done,” Genevieve explained. “The man who places the ad sends her travel fare and provides for her meals and lodging while she is here but not yet his wife. Only if both parties find each other agreeable is there to be a marriage. Both the man and the woman are free to decide this is not the proper match for them, and it is the man’s responsibility to pay the cost for her return home.”
“Oh, how very convenient!” he replied with a soft snort of skepticism. “Some strange woman is invited into my home—and at my expense—and can cast me aside like yesterday’s wash water then demand accommodations and travel expenses? What a great risk men must be taking!”
“Never forget this, son,” his mother said very sternly, her withering gaze forcing Matthew to cower slightly, “it is the woman who takes every risk. We cannot own property, we cannot seek our own fortunes, we cannot even bear and raise our own children without the permission of a man! Do not be mistaken in thinking that a woman would answer an advertisement such as this without truly thinking it over!”
“Yes, Mother. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make light of it in that way,” Matthew said, ducking his head and looking very apologetic. “I promise you I will think on it.”
“Will you?” she asked, her face lighting up with hope. “Will you truly?”
“Yes. But only because you asked it of me. I still find it somewhat disagreeable, two strangers meeting in such a way and pledging to be married. But if you say it is commonly done and that even the best of people have found their match in this way, I will consider it for you.”
Matthew smiled and kissed his mother on the cheek, then bade her goodnight. He was still troubled by his mother’s suggestion as he readied himself for bed. He lay there in the darkness, pondering his options. It was not as though he had a great many choices, regardless of how many people came and went through the good-sized town in the vicinity.
While Tuckerrise might seem like barely more than an outpost to someone from back east, in these parts, it was considerably larger than most small stops along the stagecoach route. He’d seen a handful of ladies in town when he went to conduct business, but many of them were not… not the kind of lady he envisioned for his wife.
There had been talk once of a new schoolteacher arriving, and this one a woman rather than the string of schoolmasters who’d been posted in Tuckerrise for as long as Matthew could remember. Far from being enticed by this arrival, Matthew happened to only be in town when the coach that bore her came through. He’d have thought the president himself was coming through by horse, what with the way the men of the town had slicked themselves up and stood waiting at the depot.
He still laughed when he recalled the looks on their faces. A soft murmur of heartfelt disappointment rose up from the crowd when a woman—eighty years old if she was a day—was helped down from the coach. She frowned upon being greeted by such an eager bunch of preening roosters as the group who awaited her arrival, and promptly turned on her heel and walked up the steps to the schoolhouse, closing the door behind her.
There were, of course, the other ranchers’ families, and from time to time, someone hosted a barn dance that gave everyone a chance to meet and speak. It was nearly impossible to talk to someone with the screeching sounds of a lively fiddle and the stomping of so many feet, but Matthew had seen one or two beauties he wouldn’t have minded speaking to.
But as always, he was stopped by what it would mean to align himself with one of the families in this part of Utah. Out here, so many people struggled to survive the season in hopes of having a better go of it the next year. What would he do if he married a girl whose father came upon hard times? Obviously, he would be expected to take in that family, or to make a loan that saved their property. He couldn’t keep a wife from her family if their fortunes failed—like so many others—and they had to leave.
Those were risky dealings, and Matthew knew it. No, if he did find a wife, his mother’s words were sounding wiser and wiser: find a girl from elsewhere who’s looking for the very adventure Matthew could provide, one who has no connection to these parts. If she finds him disagreeable—or likewise, the other way around—then no harm was done.
As he drifted off to sleep, Matthew was already crafting an advertisement in his mind. Wanted: A Bride. Beautiful and smart, kind and endearing, but with a spirit that can tame a land such as this. Must love animals and people, and have no qualms around a barnyard. Serious inquiries only, fancy women need not apply.
He laughed as the weight of sleep fell on him, wondering what kind of woman would answer such an ad as that.
Chapter Five
John Miller stood on the low porch of his one-room house and looked out at the land, burning with a familiar ache as he thought about how much it meant to him. He’d come fairly close to missing out on this—the sweeping, open plains beneath a sky that reached endlessly in every direction—but had finally gotten right with the world when he made his way out to Utah.
It had been his brother’s idea, God rest his soul. Despite being several years younger, John’s brother Jacob had been the one to see the notice offering land claims to anyone who could fulfill the homesteading requirements. At the time, John had wanted nothing to do with it.
“What do we know about farming?” he’d asked all those years ago, laughing at Jacob’s dreamy-eyed sense of urgency. “We’re city people, we have been since our grandpa came to this country and built a factory.”
“It’s not farming, it’s ranching,” Jacob had said. “Cattle ranching. This country could nearly starve to death, what with all the beef gobbled up during the War. It doesn’t matter a hill of beans who won if neither side can feed their people! And with Reconstruction going on and the farmland down south half-burned, there’s more of a need than ever. The government is just about giving parcels of land away, trying to encourage folks to settle out west and raise livestock again.”
“You head on out that way if you want to, but I aim to do something else with my meager savings,” John had said, scoffing at the notion of his brother living in a log cabin and wearing overalls as he plowed his claim.
John could scarcely believe it, but that conversation had been nearly thirty years ago now. Jacob was long gone, and John need only saddle up his horse and ride for a piece to reach Jacob’s legacy, the vast cattle ranch he’d worked ever since seeing that advertisement. John, on the other hand, had come out west, but had lost everything he had before eventually finding his place at his little brother’s side and helping him tend this land.
When Jacob passed away, it had been John who’d proven to be the steadfast worker Jacob had always envisioned his big brother to be. John hated to admit it, but if he’d only taken Jacob up on his offer all those years ago instead of squandering his money and his life on useless endeavors, he could have owned a ranch of his own, one that was nearly this large, too.
John pushed the thought from his mind as he set about doing his chores. He finished the last of the chicory coffee in his tin mug, then fed and watered his horse. He had to string his own washing out on the line since he had no wife or serving girl to do it for him. Then it was time to pull the bedclothes back to air out, giving the hay tick mattress time to freshen. Last, he set a ham bone from his meager smokehouse in the large iron pot, poured in a plentiful measure of dried beans, and covered all of it with water to soak.
He’d let it simmer that night when he returned from seeing to things at the ranch, and he’d have his breakfast for the whole week.
As he walked out through the low, rough-hewn timber doorway of the one-room cabin and into the pink sky of sunrise, John Miller looked out over the rolling grassland that surrounded his humble home and smiled again. He might not have everything that most folks dream about, but he had plenty. Plenty of open sky, plenty of fresh game to hunt, plenty of peace as he laid his head down each night, and plenty of work to do on his brother’s ranch.
No, not anymore. It was his nephew’s ranch now, and had been for almost ten years. When John arrived at the ranch house on his horse a short time later, he was greeted by his nephew, Matthew.
“Good morning, Uncle John! Glad you’re up and about. I wasn’t sure if the rain would have gotten you last night, but I’m glad to see it didn’t wash you away,” Matthew said, smiling.
“It’ll take more than that measly cloudburst to send me down the gulley,” John answered, clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “It was barely enough to knock the dust down, let alone provide any real water. Still, it filled the rain barrel some, which is a blessing.”
“I’ll say! That means there may be a bath in all our futures!” Matthew teased.
“A bath? Whatever for? You goin’ somewhere fancy?” John said with a laugh as he turned to head towards the barn.
John shook his head, still wondering how his nephew could be so chipper when he’d endured so much. Losing his pa when he was barely more than a boy himself and having to commit to working this ranch would have broken a lesser man, or at the very least turned him bitter. Instead, his nephew seemed to face all adversity head-on, much to John’s surprise.
“Don’t pay no mind now,” one of the ranch hands muttered to the others when John entered the barn, “but it’s the old man.”
John heard the words that were clearly meant to be observed, and he flinched. In his younger days, he would have called the other man out for the insult, possibly demanded a fair fist fight. Now, old thought he may be, he could still have whipped the younger man but found he simply didn’t care to.
Instead, he called him out on it.
“Why yes, in fact, it is the old man, Seaborn. Is there something you’d like to say about it?” John asked without looking in the man’s direction.
“Oh, no, sir. Sorry, I didn’t know you was standing there,” Seaborn stammered. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Well, nothing you’d be willing to admit to, seeing as how you’re cowardly enough to say it quiet like that. Never you mind, let’s get to work. We’re moving one hundred head to the north acres today, and I don’t need your sass while I’m trying to listen for coyotes. Get a move on, all of you.”
The men begrudgingly shuffled out of the barn and led their horses around to the gated fence that separated the home plot from the rest of the ranch. Climbing up in the saddle, they walked their horses for a time. They passed by the enormous garden that provided food for the ranch and then followed the gentle slope of the homestead towards the open ranch where some eight hundred head of cattle grazed.
Soon, Matthew, John, and the hands whipped the cows into a gentle kind of frenzy, rounding them up and moving some of their number to a different pasture. Those that remained nearer the barn would be sold in the coming weeks, while those that moved onward were too young to take to market this year.
All in all, it was hot, sweaty, and even dangerous work. One misstep could lead to harm; one wrong call could lead to a stampede. Thankfully, the men knew their jobs and did them well, all under Matthew’s watchful eye.
After a hard day’s work, the men returned to the house. This was the men’s favorite part of the day, most likely the women too. All the men had bathed in the line of metal tubs behind the barn and changed into a second pair of clothes. Then, at the clang of Gertie’s dinner bell, they found themselves sitting around at the long wooden table beside the house and feeling the cool breeze swirl in every direction as they ate and talked and laughed.
“Then there was this time when my pa found out we’d left the cabin to go skating at the pond!” Paul recounted while the others wiped at tears of laughter. “We didn’t have no money for skates or a sled, of course, so we’d taken my ma’s rocking chair from beside the fireplace and were using it like a horse cart, holding onto the arms as best we could while skidding along the ice!” He turned serious for a moment, and added, “Well now, this part’s no laughing matter, because the ice had formed too thin closer to where the spring fed into the lake.
“Now, I was the one riding in the rocking chair and my brother James was pushing as hard as he could. He took off running across that ice, gave me a mighty shove, then let go so’s I could slide a good long ways. Next thing I knew, that ice just broke right under that old chair, and I went plopping right under the water!”
The men gasped, but fortunately, they saw Paul was still smiling. “Oh, it was terrible cold, to be sure, but can you just imagine my brother’s face when I just went pop! And was gone! But that wasn’t the worst of it. James managed to save me by pulling down a long tree branch and holding it out for me to grab on to, then he took off all his own clothes—right down to his naked bare skin, pardon me for saying, Mrs. Miller—and wrapped me up good to walk me home.
“We weren’t home but a minute and Ma was screaming her head off and Pa came running from the barn… and don’t ya know, James and I both got a whipping for losing that old rocking chair! Didn’t nobody pay no mind to the fact that I could’ve died or that my brother walked home buck naked in the snow, they were too busy tanning our hides over a stick of furniture!”
Everyone laughed, more at the telling of the tale than the actual events, and Paul grinned. Gertie stood up from her seat to pass around the last of the pie, urging the men to quit laughing long enough to finish so she could start on the washing.
Only John wasn’t smiling. For him, this nightly ritual of eating together under the stars, swapping stories and singing songs while they ate their fill, was a chore. It was something he had to endure as the owner’s uncle, but he felt out of place. He was an older man, and as such, he should have his own property by now, not living off the good graces of his brother’s child. This should have been his food his employees were eating, and there should have been a wife at his side to smile sweetly as he told stories. The worst pain of all was knowing there should have been children, a dozen of them perhaps, running like wild things as the grown folks looked at the stars.
But there never would. There was no wife, there would be no children… and there sure as heck wasn’t any land, at least not for John.
* * *
“You were awfully quiet this evening,” Matthew said to his uncle as the ranch hands bade them good night and disappeared off into the bunkhouse. “You’re feeling all right, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’m fit as a fiddle,” John answered with a thin smile. “Just thinking on things, that’s all.”
“Like what things? The cattle?” Matthew inquired, seeming suddenly concerned. John only shook his head.
“Is
that all you ever think about?” he joked, nudging his nephew gently with his elbow. “You know, there’s more to life than raising up a cow and selling it to market.”
“I know that,” Matthew replied. “I just can’t think of any other thing that would cause a man to worry! ‘Course, I have you and Pa to thank for that. There’s matters others must face that I’m plain aware I don’t have to lose any sleep over. And I thank God for that—for you and Pa—every night in my prayers.”
John cleared his throat, unaccustomed as he was to this kind of family talk. “Well, I’m glad I could do my small part to keep this land in the family for you. I’d best be heading back to my cabin now.”
“Are you sure you won’t ever move up here to the house? There’s more than enough room. You don’t have to live way off like some old town witch, facing the cold winters all by yourself. Heck, we can even build on here if it makes you feel better to have your own place to call home.”
A Love Defying The Odds (Historical Western Romance) Page 4