The Lord Helps Those Who Help Themselves: A Pair of Western Romances

By Doreen Milstead

Barkeep Weston B. Freeman is a quirky and fresh take on the mail order bride story, and it's full of love and faith and has a love story about a gentle English woman and a no-nonsense bartender. Finding Home with The Lord’s Help, is a love story about two families traveling West along the Oregon Trail--both have lost their matriarchs and one has lost their faith on God. One young woman looks across at the other family--full of love and faith--then up to her gruff father who has lost his. It’s through faith and unselfishness that they are able to face their daily challenges both on the trail, and off it, and find love in all things.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Hart
• Release date: Mar 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463295991

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The Lord Helps Those Who help Themselves: A Pair of Western Romances

by

Doreen Milstead

Copyright 2020 Susan Hart

Table of Contents

Barkeep Weston B. Freeman

Finding Home with the Lord's Help

Barkeep Weston B. Freeman

Synopsis: Barkeep Weston B. Freeman is a quirky and fresh take on the mail order bride story, and it's full of love and faith and has a love story about a gentle English woman and a no-nonsense bartender

Weston B. Freeman was of no particularly high breeding. In fact, some of those that might have known him in his younger days had said he was more likely the foul offspring of a rabid dog and a wild Indian. Wherever he came from though, he’d never known his ma or pa and he came into this world with no claim towards anything of his own. He was on honest man sure, but whenever old Weston decided that he wanted for something he was going to make it his one way or another. A lot of times that meant a lot of hard work and sacrifice on his part, but sometimes it meant killing a man and some sacrifice on their part. He made no qualms about it, that’s just the way things were.

Weston was eccentric in that way. He’d hear tale of some fancy thing that made no use to him but would catch his interest none the less and his mind would be set to getting it. He had a wild and varied taste and he saw no reason in denying himself the pleasures that this life had to offer. Something he’d never thought of one day would be the most important thing in the world to him the next and would remain so until he got his hands on it. That’s how he came to own the bar.

In his life Weston had been all over the country. He’d tried his hand at all kinds of work but he could rarely find any that seemed to fit him just right, certainly not for lack of trying though. He wasn’t afraid of hard work, not even as a youngster. Rumor said that before he even turned eighteen, he’d been a hand on ranches from here to Mexico, been on cattle drives well into the Northwest Territories, he’d fixed buggies, driven railroad spikes, chopped big timber and killed Indians a while for the U.S. government.

By the time he’d settled down in Montana he’d have tried a heap of other things and been accused of trying a whole heap more and still he’d never found himself set to a task that he liked too much, but he kept on. He was brought to Helena, Montana during the first mining boom when there was nothing there but hard stone and a few tents on the ground. He sure wasn’t brought there to be a miner though.

Weston had been sought out by some beady eyed little bean counter on behalf of the Hershfield Mining Company. Some pompous ass business man had laid eyes on Weston a year before watching him handle a railroad crew one day and corral the men into hunting some savages who’d run afoul of the camp the next. That fat cat had old Weston’s name written down in a book somewhere and when it was time for hiring mean bastards with the grit to oversee the ragtag batch of miners they’d be bringing in the company goons were sent to fetch him. It wasn’t a job that Weston was too keen on but he’d had a little mix up with the law a way back that only a bunch of scrawny little accountants could seem to shake loose of him. Figuring that jail just couldn’t cater to his discerning tastes much, Weston accepted their deal and when the first bunch of miners were marched up the mountain, there was ol’ Weston squinting down at them from atop a brand new pony with a fancy new hat on his head, a buffalo rifle on his back, and a revolver on his hip.

Helena came up fast. More and more miners had to be brought in to chew up the mountain. Some of them were bringing families with them and then there had to be more people to supply them with all the tools, lumber, food, and all kinds of other things to keep them going. With an abundance of young, hardworking men getting money in their pockets and no town in which to spend it, soon came the whores. Whores came filing up the mountain by the wagonload and even marching their way up in their fancy French boots.

And, where there’s a whore, there’s politicians. A few of them came sniffing around Helena sensing that plenty of money was changing hands and started to volunteer themselves for all kinds of important positions right in the middle of it all. The next thing you know, Helena, Montana had become a real live town. A courthouse, a general store, a post office and a whole bunch of saloons seemed to pop up overnight, and there was Weston B. Freeman right in the middle of it all.

Weston got all kinds of strange ideas from watching these people around him. He’d never been in such a