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RAIN HAMMERED AGAINST the windows of the train as it traveled through the stormy night. Ada watched the drops strike the window and run sideways before flying off into the wind. The train car was dark with only a single lantern near the door in the event that a hasty exit was needed. Most of the passengers were sleeping, and a young mother was crooning to her fussing infant to keep him quiet. Daybreak was still a few hours away, but Ada was too nervous to sleep. The recent weeks had flown by, and she was finally less than a day away from meeting her husband-to-be in California. She knew she should be excited, but instead she felt a nervous dread in the pit of her stomach.
Unlike most brides who joyfully anticipated their wedding day, she had never even met the man she was to marry. The match had been made by her father who had answered an advertisement in an Indiana paper. Not only had Papa answered one, he had answered four pleas from men seeking wives. Only Oliver Betts had written back, agreeing to take on a twenty-year-old potential bride. At her age, Ada was practically a spinster, and Mr. Betts was taking quite a chance on her, Papa said, but Ada didn’t care. Getting married wasn’t her idea at all. She was content to stay home in Indiana and care for her aging father. Her five older brothers had all left home. One by one they had found wives, married, and had children of their own. Only Ada remained behind, the youngest of the six siblings and the only girl. But Papa insisted she marry and have a family of her own. He didn’t want her to live her life alone and lonely, as he had after his wife’s death. Ada had never had a suitor, and none of the young men she had grown up with seemed interested in courting her. They were busy preening in front of well-dressed young ladies from nearby towns such as Shelbyville—not that the city girls wanted anything to do with them.
She toyed with the handkerchief in her hands, pulling it back and forth between her fingers. She had no idea how to be anyone’s wife. She had been raised by a man in the company of men. After her mother’s death, when Ada was only two years old, her father never remarried. Instead he raised his children alone. As soon as Ada was old enough to reach the stove, she took over kitchen duties for the family. She was a good cook—one of her few accomplishments. She did not sew or knit or long for babies of her own. She preferred the company of the horses her father bred and trained for farm work. When she wasn’t cooking or cleaning up after six messy men, she was in the barn with the horses. They were her only friends, since the girls she went to school with were not interested in including her in their activities. They ridiculed her ill-fitting dresses that had been donated by the church ladies’ auxiliary and the hand-me-down boots she wore that had once belonged to one of her brothers. Her hands were capable and calloused, not dainty and ladylike, and there was a smattering of freckles across her nose because she never remembered to wear her bonnet when she was outdoors.
A layer of condensation obscured her view, and Ada wiped it away with her handkerchief. The rain had stopped, and a nearly full moon peeked through the clouds. The landscape was flat and barren, nothing like the lush woods of Indiana she had played in with her brothers when they were children. She knew there were mountains near where she would be living, at least that’s what Oliver had said in one of his letters. There had been three of them, each one addressed to her, although her father had written the replies before showing them to her. She had no idea what her father had written on her behalf, but he must have embellished her qualities a great deal to interest someone as educated as Oliver. He was an accountant for a shipping company in California, which she imagined was a difficult and important job. She never was much good with numbers.
The sky outside grew a shade brighter with the coming of the sunrise. The train was due to arrive in Placerville at 11 o’clock in the morning, so there was still time to get some sleep. Ada closed her eyes and tried to calm her nerves. It wouldn’t do for her to be in a tizzy when she met her future husband
