Steel Cowboy

By Doreen Milstead

Let The Past Die With Him - An abused woman and her mentally challenged adult brother flee their home when she finally manages to escape, and she takes the train to Montana.

Turning an Arrangement Into Love - An Englishwoman leaves England for what she assumes will be a loveless marriage as all that they had agreed to was to care for her rancher, look after his home, and respect each other – but it didn’t include love.

The Identical Twin Switch - A woman’s twin sister becomes widowed so she arranges for her to go to Kansas with her, where she’s to be married to a mail ordered husband.

Three English Sisters, One Cowboy & The Navajo Nation - Three sisters from London strike out for the Americas, where one already has a fiancé in waiting – a cowboy in Nevada. He knows that two other women are coming but doesn’t know what he’ll quite do with them when they arrive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365570971

Book preview

Steel Cowboy

Steel Cowboy

By

Doreen Milstead

Copyright 2016 Susan Hart

Let The Past Die With Him

Synopsis: Let The Past Die With Him - An abused woman and her mentally challenged adult brother flee their home when she finally manages to escape, and she takes the train to Montana. Lucky to find a job immediately, their life starts to turn around, especially when the woman meets and begins to fall in love with a kind stranger who is well off and owns a ranch outside of town. Some secrets about her past start to emerge and she fears that their new life will be blown apart.

Marie shut the window so she would no longer hear her brother hollering from the back yard where he had planted himself for the morning. She felt sure it did it to irritate her and the neighbors who constantly complained about him and his doings. If it wasn’t yelling like this, it was turning over garbage cans, or pulling up people’s flowers or, in general, making an ass of himself in anyway his garbled mind could invent.

Years-wise, he was seventeen, but mentally, he was only about seven or so. Things would never change for Bob, either, lost as he was in a world of childhood, make-believe, and anything that he could manage to invent to entertain himself. The one thing Marie knew for sure, though, was that Bob loved her to the highest standard the word could reach.

She had helped their mother care for him since he was born, and she had cared for him alone since their parents died three years before. When she married her husband, it was only a few months when Bob had come to live with them.

Today, she was in no mood for his antics as she had other problems to deal with. Namely, an abusive husband who had taken his anger out on her the evening before. Commonplace and daily, the hits just kept on coming.

She strolled across the kitchen and into the hallway, taking another look at her black eye and puffed lip, markings of the recent blows he had landed because he was angry at his boss. No fault of Marie’s, but her fault in his mind, just the same. She had to get herself away from him, but that would mean taking Bob, the crazy brother, with her. A rock and a hard place - the phrase fit her life perfectly. She often wished her husband would just disappear and give her peace.

Marie went to the back door to quiet Bob down some.

Bob, please don’t holler so loud. The neighbors can hear you easy enough.

He turned to face her and smiled that lost smile of his.

Can they? he asked with his mindless innocence. I can holler louder.

No, no, don’t do that. You want to come in for some lemonade?

He rose from the rickety yard chair that he had claimed years before as his own and headed toward Marie, smiling the same smile. He came inside and went to the kitchen where he stood until she joined him.

Go ahead, you can get your own. With that permission, he got a glass from the cabinet and poured it full from the pitcher on the counter. Then, he joined her at the small table.

You eye is black, he said in a matter of fact voice. Did you bump that door again?

Yes, she answered, almost proud that he continued that association between her bruises and the door story she had told him long ago when the hits first started coming. He thought her face was always showing those same door signs.

Does it hurt? Poor Bob. The only thing he could imagine was that pain that comes from a boo-boo or slight falling down injury. He had no concept of what she went through, or that anyone would actually hit another person. He didn’t know that many of her bruises came because Bob lived with them, a sore spot with her husband and the one thing that Marie would always defend with her life. The brother would stay with her, no matter what grief it brought to her.

They talked for a little bit about whatever subject came to Bob’s mind. Then, she heard the front door close and her husband walked into the kitchen. Home early - that wasn’t a good sign at all.

Well, I’ve been fired, he said, throwing his lunchbox onto the wooden counter. Now, there’s no job.

What happened? Marie asked, sure that his temper had finally done him in with the boss.

Don’t matter. I don’t have a job. Don’t ask stupid questions. He poured himself a glass of lemonade and drank it straight down. Bob turned to face him.

What does fired mean? It was an innocent question and one that Bob would never understand, but he asked anyway.

For the rest of her life, Marie would remember what happened next, but it would always come to her mind in slow motion, and the quickness of the actual event only brought her the shame that she could never have stopped it.

From out of nowhere, her husband drew back his fist and slammed into the side of Bob’s head. A nasty hit that sent his lemonade glass flying and pushed a look of such shock into his face that his eyes bulged from their sockets. Her hand went out, but the blow struck, and hell flew into her body.

Marie was out of her chair and swinging at her husband before she knew what came over her. Bob was the one thing in the world that he wouldn’t maim and maul the way he had done her over the years and months they had been married. She would kill him before he would hurt Bob.

However, it had happened, and she didn’t stop it.

Bob screamed like bloody murder as the pain of the hit registered with him. He grabbed the side of his face and rolled out of his chair onto the floor, shielding himself under the table as Marie did her best to kill her husband with bare hands.

But, she was no match for the tall man with factory hands and an evil mind. He swatted her to the floor like he would have done a fly and she fell close to Bob. Her brother laid on top on her and protected her.

Stop, he said to his brother in law. Don’t you hit her no more! He was like a little child playing with a doll, but there was a resolve in his voice that made the older man stop, turn and leave the room. The brother and sister listened as the front door slammed shut and the house got quiet again.

The two of them lay there for a few minutes before Marie spoke.

I have got to get rid of him, she whispered, more to herself than to Bob, but he heard and he listened and he understood.

She helped him up, led him to the bathroom and cleaned the small wound that was on his cheek. Keep this wet cloth on it for a few minutes, honey, she said. You’re going to have a bruise there, but it will go away if we cool it down now.

He held the cloth against his cheek and smiled his slow smile. Marie wondered if he saw that mark as a badge of courage or a medal of honor. She just hoped he didn’t see it as a preface to what may come later.

They had their dinner and finally went to bed. Sometime in the late night or early morning, Marie heard her husband stagger into the house. She knew he was drunk and wouldn’t come to bother her. Navigating the stairs while drunk was not an easy task for him, so he usually would just pass out on the sofa. She liked it that way and never tried to change it. She fell back asleep with relief knowing he wouldn’t be pawing at her.

The next morning, Marie went through the living room on her way to the kitchen. He was lying on the sofa, arms stretched in either direction, one foot on the sofa, the other rested on the floor, bracing his body from falling completely off the couch. She left him like that, knowing that he would awaken shortly and ruin her whole day.

Marie made her coffee and drank a cup sitting alone in the quiet at the little table. An hour or so passed and neither Bob nor her husband came to join her. Thinking that was strange, she tiptoed upstairs, again past her husband, to check on Bob. She opened his door just a tad and heard him snoring away, telling herself that he was resting from the medicine she had given him to ease the pain she knew he would feel in his jaw that morning.

She closed the door tightly and went back downstairs.

At her husband, she stepped closer to him, the smell of liquor almost stifling her. It was then that she saw a black handle between his side and the couch, it was coated in drying blood, her husband’s blood.

Marie’s heart beat wildly in her chest as she leaned her ear against his mouth from which she heard no breath. She moved down to his chest, but there was no heartbeat either. He was dead.

She knew who put the knife in him and killed him.

At first, she panicked, not knowing what to do. She knew what she should do, but Marie had no intention of calling out for help and certainly, she would not go to the police. The blame would only fall on her or her brother for this crime, and there was no one to save either of them, no one to look after either of them. She had to do what she had to do.

Marie went back to the kitchen, dug through the jars and boxes where she had been hiding money over a long period of time, knowing instinctively that this day would eventually come. A day when she would take her brother and steal away from this miserable life and the man who was causing it.

She counted the money and was completely surprised at the sum of it. A hundred dollars in all, comprised of coins and bills, large and small, and even a little gold piece that someone had given Bob at some point in time. She had thrown it in as his contribution to a life of peace - if they ever found one.

Marie was thrilled. She had no idea it would all add up to that. It would be enough for the two of them to get out of town and away from their nightmare life. It would be their salvation, or at least she prayed it would be.

She went upstairs and carefully packed herself a bag of necessary clothing, sticking some personal mementos into the bag along with them. Particularly, she pulled the advertisement for a mail order bride from underneath old clothing that filled her bottom drawer. Marie had taken the flyer from the general store just a week before, but then, she didn’t know why she was moved to do it. Now, she understood that reflexive action and knew that God had planted the solution there for her to grab onto.

"Come to Montana," the ad read, "and find a husband. Women wanted for all types of

men and locations. You will be put onto a list from which men select the woman of their

choice."

Marie felt sure that she would fit the bill for someone, somewhere in Montana. It obviously didn’t matter which town she went to as the shortage of women there upped the ante in her favor. Plus, she had faith that happiness was going to find her. Finally.

Next, she went to Bob’s room and found him up and dressing.

Want to take a little trip with me? she asked, pulling clothes from his closet and dresser.

Although he wasn’t fully awake, he answered her with delight. Yes! he said, and clapped his hands together. To Bob, anything was a trip because he had no perception of travel. A trip to the corner market was a trip to him.

We’re gonna ride on a train. Think you’d like that?

His hands clapped harder and he began to help her fold his clothes and put them in a small suitcase Marie had pulled from the closet.

We have to hurry, and I need for you to be quiet when we leave, okay? He’s still sleeping downstairs and we don’t want to wake him up, now, do we?

He is sleeping? Bob asked, furrows of skin wrinkling up on his forehead as he processed conflicting thoughts.

Yes, Bob, he is sleeping. Marie didn’t want Bob to know he had surely killed the man. If he thought the husband was sleeping, that is all that he would ever say. Just that. And Marie would probably need for him to say it, long into the future. But she prayed his muddled mind would gradually forget.

They gathered the two suitcases and made their way to the train station through a back way that Marie often used to go to town, and a shortcut in the long journey on which she was now embarking.

When they reached the ticket counter and the man asked, ‘Where to?’ she calmly and firmly said, ‘Montana.’

I’ll give you and open ticket to Montana, the dispatcher said, and neatly printed out a form. You can get off the train anywhere you like there.

Thank you, Marie said as she paid the money and took the two tickets to a new life. She and Bob boarded the train within a half hour. As it chugged out of the station, Marie left her mind there and started a new life, which was as clear as the water that ran through the stream. Things had taken a new turn and she was riding the winding road for whatever would come with it - along with her crazy brother. And in her heart, Marie felt that a new husband would come her way, bringing a new hope for happiness with him.

It took seven days of hard travel to get to Montana; hard because the train weaved back and forth on the tracks, stopped at every station they passed and because Bob was quite unruly with excitement and anticipation, both emotions he didn’t know how to control.

After the first day, many of the passengers in their car pretended sleep or changed cars or just rudely shunned him away when he tried to talk to them. His constant banter and babble was also about to drive Marie crazy.