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.