Amanda’s Mail Order cowboy
The Story of A Mail Order Bride and Her Mail Order Husband
Susan Leigh Carlton
Amazon Publishing
Copyright © 2014 by Susan Leigh Carlton.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
Susan Leigh Carlton Associates
Tomball, TX 77377
www.susanleighcarlton.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Amanda’s Mail Order Cowboy/Susan Leigh Carlton. -- 1st ed.
Contents
Amanda’s Mail Order cowboy
Description
Prologue
Rance Kendall
The Raid
What Do We Do About Abigail?
The Guardian
Here’s How It Works
The Letter From Rance
Amanda Taylor
Amanda’s Letter
At Last! An Answer!
So Many Questions
Amanda’s Decision
An Idea to Consider
Will You Marry Us?
Amanda’s Story
A Wedding
Going Home
Cheyenne
Ranch Life
Meeting Friends
The Russell House
The Letters
The Surprise
Epilogue
A Note From Susan
About Susan
Susan’s Other Books
Description
This is a fictional western romance story about a Wyoming rancher and his mail order bride. As a romance, it has some sexual content, deemed Heat Level 2, of 5. Prior books in this series were Heat Level 3.
It is 1876. The Oglala Sioux, under Red Cloud are on the warpath, tired of seeing miners and settlers encroaching on land ceded to them by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1866. Scattered raids on isolated ranches result in the deaths of entire families. One such family is Jim Russell’s.
Rance Kendall is a second generation rancher in the Wyoming Territory. He treats his ranch hands like family and is a compassionate and generous man to his neighbors. With his best friend as his foreman, he takes over a highly successful cattle ranch seven miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming, following the death of his father.
After he found the sole surviving daughter of the slaughtered Russell family, he took her under his care. At thirty-two, he recognized his need for the companionship of a wife and mother for little Abigail. He placed an ad in The Matrimonial News.
Elmira, New York
Amanda Taylor is a thirty year old school teacher. She has been courted for over five years by Randall Cunningham, She saw him with another woman, and realized he would never propose. Her future appeared to be as a spinster school teacher. Out of desperation, she places an ad in The Matrimonial News also,
The story tells of her struggle to overcome her fears, as well as the concerns of her loving parents, and her desire to create a meaningful future with love and companionship.
This is the story of Rance and Amana and how their love grows from long distance letters to marriage and a life on the western frontier.
Prologue
The Great Sioux War of 1876-1877 revealed the superiority of the Oglala Sioux over the US Cavalry forces in Southern Montana and Northern Wyoming, in the vicinity of the Big Horn Mountains. A treaty signed at Fort Laramie in 1868 identified a portion of the Sioux territory as the Great Sioux Reservation for their exclusive use. This area included the Black Hills region of the Dakota Territory.
A reservation was set aside in the Dakota Territory. The treaty states: "the United States now solemnly agrees no persons except those herein designated and authorized so to do... shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article..."
General Philip Sheridan, of Civil War fame ordered his subordinate, General Terry to determine the suitability of the area as a location of a fort. The recon party formed by General Terry was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer.
Colonel Custer found it to be ideal for a fort, but found something else... Gold. The news of the gold discovery spread like wildfire throughout the US and triggered the big gold rush of thousands dreaming of a better life into the Black Hills. A problem arose; the area of the discovery was clearly inside the territory reserved in the treaty for the Sioux nation.
The government under President Ulysses Grant did not attempt to stem the vast numbers of its citizens and their dreams of fabulous riches, but legally, he couldn't allow them in. President Grant elected the option of attacking the Sioux roaming around in the area claiming they were outside their defined borders and were committing atrocities against the settlers.
An ultimatum was issued ordering the roaming Indians to return to the defined reservation or be forced by military action to do so. Some of the Indians roamed in the summer, and returned to the reservation in winter, where they would be fed by the government. Others lived year round in the surrounding areas.
General Sheridan assumed he would only be fighting those living off the reservation. This proved not to be the case.
Since the discovery of gold and the influx of the settlers, there had been a mounting tension. Large numbers of Indians missed the deadline to return to the reservation and Colonel Custer and his 7th Cavalry were sent to enforce the order. The Cavalry's intelligence was bad and they were significantly outnumbered by the Sioux under the command of Sitting Bull. Custer's entire force of five companies was wiped out, with 268 killed and 55 wounded. This battle is known as Custer's Last Stand.
chapter one
Rance Kendall
Lazy K Ranch, Cheyenne, Wyoming…
The five feet, ten inch Micah Kendall, his skin dark from the sun and his many hours in the saddle, worked side by side with his employees, and harder than most.
Drawn by the lure of free land, the Kendall family had forsaken Texas, and its oppressive heat for Wyoming. They drove their herd to Wyoming, followed by a wagon containing all of their possessions, and a chuck wagon. The trip took just over two months. Micah’s crew built a bunkhouse for the three cowboys, a small ranch house for his wife, Mattie and his son, Rance, as well as a barn for the livestock. It had been a race against the on-coming winter; a race they barely won.
What Micah had, he earned the old fashioned way, through sweat and hard work. He started the Lazy K with 1100 acres taking advantage of the various homestead laws and other programs offered by the government and the Union Pacific Railroad.
Along with his friend and foreman, Wylie Thompson, he went back to Texas and bought 1500 head of cattle. He hired five drovers to help drive the herd to Cheyenne, arriving with 1,837 head. He took advantage of the high price of beef, and sold 1,000 head to
the Army for a large profit.
With his profits, he enlarged the bunkhouse, and the ranch house. Then he added a small house for his bachelor foreman, and bought more land.
The following spring, he returned to Texas and drove another three thousand head back to the Lazy K. He bought more land and repeated the process in 1874. In three years, he had increased his land holdings to 30,000 acres. His herd now numbered over 3,500 head. There was no need for more trips to Texas and the ensuing long trail drives. The Lazy K was now a profitable operation.
Rance’s mother, struck down by pneumonia when he was only twelve, left a distraught husband and son to fend for themselves. His father hired Consuela Martinez, the widow of one of his trail cooks to serve as housekeeper.
Rance had begun doing a man’s work when he was fifteen. After he finished elementary school in the small one room school house, he and his best friend, Clay McAllister finished their schooling in the Cheyenne school system.
Both Rance and Clay had chores assigned to them, and had to get to them as soon as school was dismissed for the day. They had no time for social niceties. Neither had a girlfriend and all of the girls their age married, either after dropping school, or immediately upon completion of school.
A line camp on the Lazy K Ranch 1876…
Rance woke up shivering. The fire in the stove had died during the night, and the temperature In the line cabin plunged. The ranch hand with him was still asleep. They had been out riding herd for a week and planned to return today.
He lit a fire in the stove, using wood stored in a corner of the cabin for situations like this. Once the fire was going, he pulled on his boots. He usually slept in his clothes while out riding herd. He straightened the blankets on his bunk, and put the makings for coffee on the stove.
“Curly, it’s time to rise and shine old buddy.” His working partner didn’t stir, so he pulled the blanket covering off the bed, and called once more. “Curly, wake up. We’ve got to get moving.”
Curly rolled over and said, “Why couldn’t you have waited a few more minutes? I was just about to kiss her and you ruined it.”
“You would have gotten your face slapped if you tried it,” Rance said.
“Not with this one. She really liked me… It’s cold in here. I’m freezing.”
“Looks like we had a freeze last night. I’m glad we’re going home today. It’s no picnic being up here when it’s real cold,” Rance opined.
“You got that right, buddy. I’ll go take care of the horses while you’re fixing breakfast. What’re you going to fix anyway?”
Rance grinned. Food variety in the line camps was non-existent. “I thought we might have some beans and some good hot coffee.”
“Why not?” Curly said. We haven’t had that since last night.” He pulled on his Mackinaw coat, picked up the water pail and went outside. He filled the pail from the creek, and took it back to the lean-to where the horses were and divided it between them. He filled their feedbags with oats and hung them over their heads.
“I think you’re right about the freeze. The creek had ice along the banks,” he told Rance.
“Let’s eat and get out of here,” Rance said.
They ate the beans and drank the scalding hot coffee. While Rance took stock of the supplies in the cabin, Curly took the tin plates, the bean pot and coffee pot to the creek and cleaned them.
By the time the horses were saddled, the fire in the stove had died away, and they were ready to leave.
They rounded up the strays they had gathered the day before, and began driving them back to the main herd. They began moving the herd from the high pasture back to one of the lower grazing areas.
Their luck was good, the herd was docile, and presented them with no unexpected problems. It was after dusk when they rode into the corral. They curried and fed the horses. After they finished caring for the horses, Curly went to the bunkhouse and Rance went to the main house.
When we walked into the kitchen, Consuela said, “Ah, Señor Rance. It is good you’re home. You are hungry, no?”
“I am hungry, yes,” he replied. “Where’s Pop?”
“He was not feeling so good, and went to bed after eating,” she said.
After he finished eating, he went to his father’s bedroom and peeked in. He was asleep, so he didn’t disturb him.
The next morning, when he went into the kitchen, Consuela had coffee on and was preparing breakfast. “Pop already gone?”
“No, Señor Rance. He is not up yet.”
“That’s not like Pop. I’m going to check on him.”
He went into the bedroom; “Pop, you still under the weather?”
There was no response so he went to the bed. His father’s skin was cold to the touch. The ashen pallor of his face told the story. Sometime during the night, his heart had given out, and he died peacefully in his sleep. He sat on the bed, closed his eyes, his head in his hands. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
“Consuela, Pop’s dead. He was all right when I looked in on him last night. Can you help me get him ready and we’ll bury him beside Mama?”
Consuela washed the body, and wrapped it in a clean sheet, then a blanket. Rance then wrapped it in a canvas tarpaulin. It was put in a pine box made by one of the ranch hands. The box was lowered into the freshly dug grave on the hillside, by his beloved wife.
Rance read from the Bible, said a prayer, and then began filling the grave with the removed dirt.
It was a sad day, made drearier by the cold rain that began falling as they made their way back down the hill to the ranch house.
chapter Two
The Raid
Rocking R Ranch 1876
Jim Russell and his twelve year old son, Seth, were in the barn milking the cows when the attack began. Twenty Sioux warriors, their faces covered with garish war paint swept down the hill in behind the ranch.
When the first cries of the attackers were heard, Jim grabbed his rifle, ordered his son into the hay loft, and scrambled after him up the ladder. He began firing at the raiders through the open door of the loft.
His only ammunition was the cartridges loaded in the magazine of the Henry repeater. Torches were thrown into the barn, setting it ablaze. If they stayed in the loft, they would be burned alive, so Jim and Seth scrambled back down the ladder. His empty weapon useless, Jim grabbed a pitch fork, determined to fight to save his family.
The father and son did not last long, cut down in the shadows of the flames. Two Sioux warriors counted coup on the two.
Cora Russell had been in the kitchen preparing breakfast for her family when she heard the ruckus in the yard. She grabbed the Navy Colt revolver Jim kept in the kitchen. She went through the door and began shooting. Struck in the head by a tomahawk wielded by a mounted warrior, she fell at the foot of the steps.
The raiders drove the livestock out of the corral and rode back in the direction from which they had come. For some unknown reason, they did not burn the house.
* * *
Rance Kendall, the owner of the Lazy K, and two of his hands, hazed the twenty three strays ahead of them toward the main herd. “I think that’s the last of them,” Rance said.
“I hope so,” his foreman, Clay McAllister said. “I’ve been in the saddle so long my sores have sores.”
Rance stood in his stirrups and pointed toward the Rocking R ranch of Jim Russell. “Clay, Is that smoke I’m seeing?”
“Sure looks like it. Want me to check it out?”
“I’ll come with you. These fellers are going back in the herd all right,” Rance said, and spurred his horse in the direction of his friend’s ranch.
As they got closer, they could see the house was intact. “Looks like it’s just the barn,” Rance yelled so he could be heard above the sound of hooves of the horses.
The first body he saw belonged to Cora Russell, lying at the foot of the steps to the back porch. He dismounted and dropped the reins over the hitching post. When he looked around,
he saw the bodies of Jim and Seth where they had fallen at the barn door. Both had been scalped.
The gory sight sickened Rance. He had known Jim since they both went to the same one room school. Cora had been a mail order bride from back east.
Rance had considered going down the same path his friend had taken, since a shortage of marriageable women existed throughout the Montana Territory. Reluctant to deal with strangers, he could never bring himself to write the letter. Now thirty-two years old, he resigned himself to the life of a bachelor.
When he checked the Henry repeater that had been Jim’s pride and joy, he found the magazine empty. His friend had fought on after he had run out of bullets; the bloodied pitchfork by his side spoke of the fight he had put up. The Indians had carried their dead away, leaving no evidence of their losses behind.
“The baby,” Rance said suddenly. “I don’t see the baby. I hope to God the Indians didn’t take the baby.” He ran toward the house, and went into the kitchen. There, he could see the makings of the meal Cora had been preparing.
Rance searched the house, looking for the two year old daughter of the Russell’s. He entered the bedroom, and heard a whimpering from beneath the bed. He knelt on his hands and knees and looked underneath, and into the frightened blue eyes of a blonde haired little girl.
“It’s all right, Abigail,” he said, making his voice as soft as possible. “You can come out. No one’s going to hurt you.” She shook her head.
He lay on the floor and put his hand, palm up under the bed. Do you know who I am, honey?” She shook her head.
“I’m Mr. Kendall. I’m your next door neighbor. Will you hold my hand?” She shook her head.
“I’m not going to go off and leave you here under the bed,” he said. “We’re going to make sure no one hurts you. I promise.”
“Clay, would you go over to the ranch and get Mrs. Martinez? Maybe she will come out for her. I don’t want to just pull her out. It would probably just scare her more.”
Amandas's Mail Order Cowboy: The Story of A Mail Order Bride and Her Mail Order Husband (Mail Order Brides Book 14) Page 1