Mail-Order Counsins 4: Bridget

By Joyce Armor

Mail-order bride and family healer Bridget O’Hara is stunned when her fiancé suddenly calls off the wedding. Determined not to be cast aside, she travels to the Oregon ranch Karl Burgen owns with his brother Gus, who is married to Bridget’s cousin Per. Once there, she discovers Karl has been seriously injured and is in pain, angry and depressed. As she attempts to heal him and bring him back to his old self, Bridget and Gus encounter rustlers, killing the brother of a murderous outlaw. The man vows revenge, plotting to destroy the ranch and ravage the women before killing them. Complicating matters are the discovery of an injured Indian boy and the threat his tribe poses, an injury to Bridget and Karl’s stubborn personality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joyce Armor
• Release date: Oct 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463646885

Joyce Armor

I knew from the age of 8 I wanted to be a writer. I was 15 when I wrote a scintillating short story targeted to the confession magazines, my first attempt at getting published. Alas, “Drunkenness Cost Me My Womanhood” was rejected. In the next decade, I fed my need to write by penning long letters (a dying art), Christmas card notes, English essays and term papers.Armed with a degree in English, I was tending bar in a Las Vegas casino (long story) when I had an epiphany: I would do everything in my power to become a TV writer. Two weeks later I was living in L.A., and a few months after that, I landed a job as a production assistant at MTM, where I learned from the inside how to write and rewrite scripts. In partnership with another P.A., Judie Neer, I started writing spec scripts. Finally one was accepted by “The Tony Randall Show.” Over the next several years we were freelance TV writers, with credits including “The Love Boat,” “WKRP in Cincinnati” and “Remington Steele.” Then we both got married and started birthing babies. My little family left the L.A. smog for a small town in northern California.Over the next two decades, I wrote a parenting column that won a national award, several books (Letters from a Pregnant Coward, The Dictionary According to Mommy, What You Don’t Know About Having Babies), children’s poetry (in Kids Pick the Funniest Poems and other anthologies) and plays produced in community theaters.I also got divorced and moved my two sons across the country to Myrtle Beach, SC. There I wrote hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles and columns and co-owned a regional business/lifestyle magazine.Several years ago I moved back to Ohio from whence I began, where I enjoying hanging out with family and old friends, including the same group I ate lunch with in the cafeteria in 7th grade. Since returning to my roots, I’ve read more than 1,000 romance novels and novellas. Many I loved, some I felt “enh” after reading and others I wanted to reach into the book and hit at least one of the protagonists with a brick.That’s when I decided to write my own romance novels and novellas, the kind I wanted to read, with smart, funny protagonists; and interesting (to me, anyway), not overly complicated plots with conflicts not so contrived they make me want to gnash my teeth. You might disagree, and all I have to say about that is different strokes for different folks. My youngest son once told me he absolutely hated English classes because with math, 2+2 is always going to be 4, but judging writing is so subjective. In my younger years I might have turned myself into a pretzel trying to fit my writing into some publisher’s niche. Not happening anymore. Now I’m writing for me, in my own unique voice.I’ve always been a much better writer than a salesperson, hence the e-publishing route. And I’m basking in the control. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Book preview

Mail-Order Cousins 4:

Bridget

Joyce Armor

Mail-Order Cousins 4: Bridget

Smashwords Edition

Cover: Vila Design

Trusty Reader: Chris Gale

Expert Formatting: Jesse Gordon

Mail-Order Cousins: Bridget

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are purely fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

Near Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, 1877

No. This could not possibly be happening. How could he? Why would he?

It didn’t make sense. For the fifth time, Bridget Anne O’Hara read Karl Burgen’s brief letter, but it still said the same thing. He had changed his mind and did not want her to come. He said the marriage was off. After she got over the shock and the wrenching hurt, she felt a little angry. Well, maybe a lot angry. He couldn’t just change his mind. She wasn’t having it. That’s all there was to it. She stewed and mumbled and finally decided to go on as if the letter had never arrived.

They had corresponded with each other for five months, and Karl had proposed in the last letter before this one. She’d written him back and accepted. Her cousin Per had told her he was a wonderful, honest and hardworking man, and she could see this in his letters as he described the ranch in Oregon, where Per and her husband, Gus Burgen, and his brother Karl were partners. Her mail-order fiancé—or was that former fiancé?—described with pride building the house and barn, adding a bunkhouse and a growing herd. The ranch boasted a number of horses now as well as cattle, and the partners had sold more than two dozen horses to the Army, bringing in enough money to hire two ranch hands.

Bridget also found Karl’s letters humorous and charming and had half fallen in love with him through the mail. He wasn’t going to dump her by post, and that was that. If she got all the way out to Oregon and he still wanted to call off the wedding, she couldn’t prevent that. At least she could see his eyes as he cast her away. Sometimes she felt she had a gift for looking into a person’s eyes and seeing into his heart. And, at the very least, she could have a nice visit with her cousin and new second cousin and get to know Per’s husband. She could be a big help at the ranch, too. She could cook and sew, ride and take care of horses and cattle, and was a healer of sorts, inventive and skilled in the medical arts.

She twisted her thick, dark red hair into a long braid as she pondered over the abrupt change in Karl, going over in her mind his harsh letter. It had only arrived 20 minutes ago, and already she had it memorized.

Bridget:

I’ve a had a change of heart and have

decided not to marry. You’ll find

someone else better suited.

Karl Burgen

Not Dear Bridget or My Beloved Bridget as in his other letters. And as if she wouldn’t know who had written the letter if he hadn’t added his last name. He hadn’t used his full name since his first letter months ago. What was going on?

I’ve had a change of heart.

Had she said something wrong in her last letter? She had been deliriously happy to receive his proposal. Had she sounded too happy in her reply? Was that even possible? She knew she could be a little pushy, not to mention headstrong, but she didn’t think she had stepped over any line. She simply told him she was thrilled to accept his proposal and when she would be arriving. Oh, and she told him about her brother falling out of the apple tree and spraining his ankle and about the cow that went missing. And the parade in Elizabethtown celebrating Independence Day.

Her train was leaving in the morning, and she would be on it, by God. She didn’t feel she was just going blindly. Bridget was optimistic by nature and felt surely she and Karl could work this out. There was no way she was telling her family that her fiancé didn’t want her anymore. She had planned to leave the farm, and she was leaving; that was all there was to it. Her sister Lindy had been a mail-order bride, as were her cousins Per and Sophie. They all had found happiness, and Bridget wanted her piece of the pie, too. If she wasn’t meant to marry Karl, why had her heart beat faster with every letter she received from him? Why did the name Bridget Burgen sound so right?

By now Mam and Da had come to terms with their daughters traipsing off to the frontier as mail-order brides. She supposed that might partly be because Da had been an immigrant, arriving in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1853. He came as a youth to the United States after surviving the terrible Irish potato famine, on a rite of passage to see what this young country was all about. Then he met mam and became a loyal American, doing his duty as a sergeant in the 15th Pennsylvania Regiment during the War Between the States. Da understood the spirit of adventure and a need to find something beyond one’s roots. So her folks didn’t try to talk her out of it, although they did advocate caution, prodding her to really think about what life would be like in the wilderness. It didn’t help their cause, of course, that Per had married Karl’s brother Gus and was, by all accounts, gloriously happy.

Bridget thought space was probably an issue at the ranch so only packed one small trunk and a valise. She remembered how Per had simplified her wardrobe when she traveled to Oregon and she tried to do the same. By now her twin brothers were used to losing an outfit each so that their mail-order bride sisters, as well as their cousin Per, could ride astride and dress comfortably for any dirty jobs. Fortunately, farm clothes shouldn’t be all that different from ranch clothes. She included in her trunk several jars of strawberry preserves, which she thought might not be readily available in the backwoods, and all of her herbal remedies and salves as well as her few medical instruments.

Before leaving the farmhouse, most likely forever, she dashed off a letter to Per telling her that Karl had called off the engagement but she was coming anyway and when she would arrive. She asked her cousin not to tell Karl of her imminent arrival, reasoning she would be more likely to learn the truth if he were surprised and didn’t have time to concoct a detailed excuse. She hoped the letter would get to Vale, Oregon, where the last stagecoach would deposit her, and out to the ranch, before she did. Otherwise the situation could be more awkward than it already was.

Ready or not, Bridget O’Hara was heading west to meet her destiny.

Chapter 1

I’m missing you already, dear Bridget, her mother said as she hugged her second oldest daughter.

I’ll write, Mam, just as soon as I get to the ranch.

Don’t fall off any horses, her little brother Cody joked.

She ruffled his curly brown hair. I’ll try my best.

We better be on our way, lassie, if you don’t want to miss your train, Da urged.

One by one, she hugged her mother and five siblings standing there, even though her teenage brothers, including the one on crutches, and little Cody squirmed. They would be happy to receive a hug from a woman soon enough.

You’re sure and certain this is what you want, Bridget girl? her father asked as he directed the carriage to the front of the train station.

Aye, Da. Karl is a fine man, and I’ll be with Per, too.

You can always come back if it doesn’t work out, he said as he helped her down.

I know that, and you and Mam can always come visit, too.

I’d like to see the West meself before I’m too old to appreciate it.

Fine then. Just give me some time to settle in first.

The train was somewhere in Indiana when she remembered that conversation and wondered if she would ever settle in. Based on Karl’s abrupt dismissal of her, she was sure and certain he would not be pleased to see her, at least at first. And then a horrible thought occurred to her, and she

Reviews for Mail-Order Counsins 4

[benn9314 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great story about the early settling of the Western frontier