Mail Order Bride: Schoolteacher, Cowboy Rancher, & Some Stolen Cattle

By Beth Overton

A Boston schoolteacher heads to Kansas to meet her new mail ordered husband. Immediately starting off on the wrong foot, she finally does meet her man and from that point onwards, her life changes in a dramatic and unexpected way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beth Overton
• Release date: Feb 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311845191

Beth Overton

Beth Overton lives in Northern California with her husband and three cats. Besides writing romances, she loves to read everything she can get her hands on, as well as cooking up gourmet delights for her entire family.

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Mail Order Bride: Schoolteacher, Cowboy Rancher, & Some Stolen Cattle

By

Beth Overton

Copyright 2016 Quietly Blessed & Loved Press

Synopsis: A Boston schoolteacher heads to Kansas to meet her new mail ordered husband. Immediately starting off on the wrong foot, she finally does meet her man and from that point onwards, her life changes in a dramatic and unexpected way.

Bernice Poe stepped off the train at Gilbertsville Station and waited for her future husband. She had answered a matrimonial advertisement in a paper out east from a farmer who was looking for a woman who would be willing to help him with his homestead. Barnabas Barney Kush had started a ranch with the money he had saved working for the railroad in 1880 and was too busy to meet any suitable women in the time he had spent getting the ranch up and running. Bernice Simpson had been a schoolteacher in Boston and longed for a place where the men were strong, the horses tall and the cattle plentiful.

It was a good match and they wrote each other every day for two months until she agreed to come out and meet him at the station near Topeka, Kansas.

Bernice was an auburn-haired woman who was fair of complexion and stood five foot five. She got off the train carrying her luggage in one hand and a copy of Homer’s The Odyssey in the other. She had always wanted to read the epic poem and the trip across the plains had given her the opportunity.

She didn’t find it too hard to identify with a man who wandered the earth trying to get back home to his true love. She had just reached the section where Ulysses had finally came back to his island kingdom, when the train pulled into the station where she would meet her future husband. She was the only passenger to get off at the station and even the conductor looked around to make sure no one else was getting off the train.

No one got back on the train. The station itself was a small wooden building in a field of tall grass. There was no station agent at it, as far as she could tell and how anyone bought a ticket for it was a mystery to her. Bernice waited until the train had pulled away to meet her husband as it had let her out on the opposite side, blocking the platform from her vision.

When the train had moved on she found herself facing not one, but four men staring at her. Bernice put her bag down and looked them over. She couldn’t tell who her future husband was because they all looked to be the same age, race, hair color and height. There were some differences in their appearances, however, and it was possible to tell them apart even at her distance.

The four men just stared at her for about thirty seconds. Finally the man on the right turned to the others and made a comment: Looks like we are three brides short.

No, Bernice called from the other side of the tracks. It looks like I have one more man than I can handle.

The other four men dropped their collective mouths open, then starting laughing. They thought what she said was so funny each had to sit down on the benches behind them to catch their breath. Finally, one man walked back up to the edge of the platform.

That was real funny, ma’am,