by Montana West
All the best, Montana
SECOND HAND HEART
When circumstances force widowed mail order bride, Grace James to hire a handsome new ranch hand to keep the horses in check and the bandits at bay, will Grace succumb to Arthur McAllister’s charms?
Tragedy strikes 20-year-old Mail Order Bride, Grace James nee Thomas when her rancher husband, Mark James dies suddenly in their second year of marriage. Widowed with a small child and a large horse ranch, Grace and her mother-in-law, Minnie James, struggle to keep the horse ranch going. But when circumstances force Grace to hire a handsome new ranch hand, Arthur McAllister to keep the horses in check and the bandits at bay, will Grace succumb to Arthur’s charms? Or is the memory of her first husband too strong for Grace to take another chance on love?
Prologue
Spring 1877
Married at eighteen, widowed at twenty. That was the foremost thought in Grace James née Thomas’s mind as she watched in stunned disbelief as the casket containing the remains of her husband was lowered into the ground on the small hill that Mark had jokingly said one day was to be reserved as the family cemetery. At the time, they had both laughed at the absurdity of anyone being buried on that plot any time soon, believing that they would both live until old age.
She could hear someone sobbing, deep, heart-wrenching sobs that told of the loss of the one who mourned. The sun was shining, birds were calling out to each other and in the distance a cow mooed. Just a normal spring day in the countryside area of Bozeman, Montana, named after the trail blazer John Bozeman who, together with his trusted friend John Jacobs, established the Bozeman Trail, which was a side trail off the famous Oregon Trail.
Whatever was happening seemed so surreal that Grace thought she was dreaming and would soon wake up to find her darling husband watching her with his deep brooding eyes that had made her heart turn and beat very fast from the very first moment that she had set her eyes on him. Mark James, husband, friend and lover of Grace Thomas, and father to two year old Sarah James, who bore a striking resemblance to her father, now lying still, soon to be buried under the earth, returning to the dust from whence man came as the preacher droned in his deep soft voice.
Grace wished she could turn back time to seven days ago to a time when she was so happy and had the whole world at her feet. Mark had just purchased ten more Appaloosa horses from his friend Chief Bear Claw, a Nez Perce tribal leader with whom he did a lot of business, and they were of good stock. Mark had a liking for the Appaloosa horses because of their stamina and intelligence and very good disposition. Their spotted color made them easily camouflaged so they were a favorite with soldiers and law enforcement officers, and their easy demeanor made them very easy to handle.
That night, however, Mark started to experience difficulty breathing and no amount of steam inhalation or rubbing would help. In the morning Grace sent for the nearest doctor who had his practice in the town of Bozeman and when Dr. Miles Woodrow arrived, he deduced that Mark was suffering from too much exposure to cold and possibly pneumonia.
“Must have happened when he went to meet with Chief Bear Claw,” Grace agreed. At that point Mark did not look too ill and the doctor left some foul smelling concoction for him to take three times a day, as well as hot soup and Grace was to ensure that he kept warm at all times.
Three days later, Mark took a turn for the worse and by the time Dr. Woodrow was summoned once again, Mark was gasping for breath, his face lined with the fatigue of straining to breathe normally. Grace was very worried but calmed down when Minnie James, Mark’s mother, arrived from Billings where she lived and the two of them tried to do all they could for their beloved but at sunset Mark breathed his last.
Forced back to the present, Grace heard Minnie’s voice calling out to her softly and she turned her head slowly, wondering why the simple task seemed to completely drain her.
“Grace, Sarah needs you,” Minnie’s tearful voice said once again. She was holding Grace’s two-year-old daughter whose face was streaked with tears, her fat right thumb in her mouth. The girl was sucking her thumb noisily, something she only did when she was distressed.
“I can’t...” Grace shook her head, turning away from her mother-in-law and her daughter, watching as the grave diggers filled the hole into which the man of her dreams would remain for eternity. She was numb, she had not shed a single tear since Mark had died in her arms two days ago.
Grace had not cried when Dr. Woodrow arrived two hours later and pronounced him medically dead, finding Grace still holding Mark’s head on her lap. She had not cried when neighbors and friends came to pay their last respects to the young man who had been so hardworking and determined to make a success of his ranch that he had named the Fierce Filly. And even now as she watched her husband being buried, not a single tear fell from her eyes. The grief in her heart was so deep but she did not want to fall apart in front of all her neighbors and friends, and she did not want Minnie and Sarah to be further distressed.
So Grace did what countless women have done over the ages, she internalized her pain, raised a hard face to the sky and pursed her lips. She had to go on for the sake of Sarah and Minnie, and make sure that her husband’s dream of having the best horse ranch in southwestern Montana became a reality.
***
Tom Mays watched the young widow with narrowed, calculating eyes. He owned the Big Stud ranch, which was to the east side of the Fierce Filly. Poor girl, she seemed so young and immature and to have lost her husband so soon after marrying him must be devastating for her. One of his ranch hands had informed him that Mrs. Grace James had come in from Boston, Massachusetts, and he had no doubt that after the funeral and realizing how lonely life could be out in the Bozeman Valley with a small child to look after, the young widow would soon pack her bags and be off back to Boston and probably another marriage.
She was not quite a looker, at least not according to him. Tom preferred his women to be small and petite, easier to control. This lass was slightly taller than the average woman, standing at about five feet eight inches, and even though she was slender the hint of fullness was there in her features. Besides that, she had a stern look in her eyes and the few times that they had met in town or during community gatherings he had sensed an underlying sense of seriousness.
All that would not help her here now that her husband was gone, and it was just a matter of days before she began selling all their stock and equipment and eventually the one hundred and sixty acres of land that her husband had acquired as part of the Homestead Act. Mark James had received his acres from the then mayor of the town along with a number of other people almost five years ago and started his ranch. Tom Mays had already been a rancher for about three years after inheriting the Big Stud from his parents when the newcomers arrived and at first he had looked on in amusement as young Mark had struggled with the sorry pack of horses that he had.
“Mark my words,” he remembered telling one of his drinking buddies, “That young stag is all fired up with the excitement of finally owning his own piece of land but will soon get bored like other young men his age and seek a buyer. Then he will continue on to California for the good life and to blow all the money away.”
To his surprise and chagrin, the young rancher had stabilized his ranch after two years of struggling, getting prize horses from the Shoshone and Nez Perce who still roamed the area. Mark James had slowly built his stock and at the time of his death, he had almost fifty horses that were fine breed, most of them Appaloosa horses.
Tom pursed his lips. The amount of work that went into running a ranch was hard enough for a man, how would a mere socialite from Boston manage that? He smiled inwardly. His own ranch was doing very well but he wanted more land and he would put his ear to the ground and wait for the merest whisper that the Fierce Filly’s new owner wanted to sell. He would push her into selling him all her horses and the land, and he was sure that like all women, Grace James did not have any business acumen.
; Yes, he would wait, and he would gain. That thought made him almost smile but he checked himself because he did not want the neighbors giving him questioning looks as to why he seemed so cheerful when the mood was so solemn indeed.
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All the best, Montana
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ever since she was a child watching Westerns like Hondo and the Big Valley with her dad, Montana West has always had a fascination with the Wild West. Now she lives on her Indiana farm with her husband, Jim, two cats, four horses and an elderly goat named Bluebeard. Montana and Jim are avid collectors of the work of artists of the American West, her favorites of the Hudson River School whose artists like Thomas Hill celebrated nature through their transformative works.
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