by Lynn Donovan
“Help!” A man’s voice accompanied banging. Ron knew who the voice belonged to. Jake McDaniel, his brother-in-law, was trapped in his barn.
Ron hurried Red toward the barn still covered by walls of drifted snow. He looked back at their home. Were Winnie Gail and the baby inside the house? Why hadn’t she come out to help her husband? A gut-wrenching sensation filled Ron with dread. “Jake! I’ve got a shovel.” He leapt from Red’s saddle and began digging through the wall of snow. “You all right?”
“Ron? Yeah, just mighty cold. Thanks to the livestock and horse blankets, I’m still here. Is Winnie all right?” Jake sounded weak, but he was alive.
Avoiding Jake’s question, Ron worked as fast as he could to get the snow back from the door and opened it enough that Jake could get out. “Thank you!” Jake clasped Ron’s arm, pulling him into a hug of gratitude.
“Of course. Is Winnie in the house?” Ron looked toward their whitewashed two story.
“Yes. I came out here just as that blizzard hit to check on the animals. I told her to stay in the house.”
“Good.” Ron didn’t share his concern that Winnie wasn’t out here to help free Jake from the snow-covered barn. “Let’s go check on her and get you something hot to drink.”
Jake nodded. His lips were dry and cracked. Did his livestock need water too? They walked toward the house, mostly sinking with each step into the knee-high snow that remained in their yard. Melting as it was, it was icy and packed in some areas, making it difficult to maneuver through or over it. Jake looked tired. Ron scooped Jake’s arm over his shoulder and helped the man toward the house. A rippled berm of drifted snow lay halfway between the barn and the house. Ron and Jake paused before attempting to step through it. Jake, especially, seemed hesitant.
Ron looked into his brother-in-law’s face. His eyes were huge and his lip quivered. “What is it?”
“I’m not—” Jake bent at the waist and shoved some snow aside, exposing yellow fabric with blue cornflowers. “Oh God, NO!”
He fell to his knees and pawed at the snow. Ron stared in horror as his wife’s youngest’s sister and her three-month-old baby emerged from under the drift. Frozen. Ron knelt and helped Jake dig his wife out. Jake collapsed against his family and sobbed. Ron looked around. He needed to do something to move her body out of the snow. A pile of barn wood protruded from a drift. Ron walked over and picked up a board that looked big enough. He came back to Jake and helped him move Winnie and Juniper to the board. Their bodies were eerily stiff. They carried the girls into the house and laid them on the bed. Jake sobbed over his wife and daughter. “I’m so sorry, Winnie.”
He lifted bloodshot eyes, “She must have come outside looking for me. How could I let this happen?” He leaned into her body and sobbed. “She was just a few feet from the front door?”
“This blizzard was blinding.” Ron commented, remembering his attempt to leave the wagon shop to get to his wife. He touched his brother-in-law’s shoulder and stood with him as he sobbed over his wife and child. “She probably got disoriented and had no idea where the house was once she stepped off the porch.”
Jake stood, sucking in his sobs, he panted. “I shouldn’t have left her.”
“You couldn’t have known. Linda and I got separated, too. I know what you are thinking, but none of us knew this blizzard was gonna hit this hard.”
Jake stared at Ron. “You and Linda? How?”
Ron rubbed his hand over his mouth and chin. “She’s writing a story… wanted to experience… Jake, I left her alone in a jail cell. Trust me, none of us had any idea this storm was gonna be this bad!”
Jake furrowed his brow and turned back to his wife and child. “What do I do now?”
“I’ll go tell Arnold.” Ron said quietly. “I reckon he’s gonna have a lot of work ahead.”
Sadness filled Ron’s chest. Being the only undertaker in town, Arnold Blanchard and his wife Peggy, if they survived the storm, were going to be overwhelmed with bodies to bury. This first one was going to be especially sorrowful.
Peggy and Arnold had taken Linda and her sisters into their home when they staggered into town that fateful day fifteen years ago. They were as much Momma and Poppa to the girls as the folks who were buried twelve miles outside of town. In fact, to honor Linda’s parents, Arnold had found the girls’ parents’ graves and moved them to Last Chance’s cemetery west of town.
Winnie was the youngest and had lived with them the longest before she married. This was going to break their hearts as much as it would Linda and her sisters’. Ron dreaded this task of letting everyone who loved Winnie Gail and baby Juniper know they didn’t make it. The little cemetery would soon be covered in fresh graves. Ron swallowed hard to clear the emotion from his voice. “I’ll bring him here for ya, Jake.”
Jake nodded.
“Meanwhile. Let me make you some coffee. You look like you need some warmth in your bones.”
Ron walked away, leaving Jake to mourn over Winnie Gail and Juniper. How sad it was for her to have died so needlessly. He prepared a coffee pot and stoked a fire in the stove. Soon the water was gurgling in the glass, turning darker by the minute. Ron poured Jake a cup and took it to him. “Here. You’re gonna need to eat something, too. When I get back, Linda and I’ll see about getting some food in your belly.”
Jake nodded, again. He looked lost in his own thoughts. Ron hated to leave but had to get word to the undertaker. Riding Red further down the street, Ron lifted his eyes to the fields beyond town. Dark spots dotted the expanse. The losses were unimaginably great. Livestock and people. Where would the body count end?
Chapter Five
Ron and Linda attended a town-wide meeting at Heather Barnes’s request in the Church to determine what to do next. It took four days to sort out who had survived and who did not. Some of the children who had been protected from the storm by Miss Millie in the schoolhouse were now orphaned because their mothers had made a desperate attempt to get to them. Like young Winnie Gail and her baby, they had perished in the blinding blizzard.
Linda’s sister, Hollie, and several of the surviving women selected which of the orphans they wanted to take into their homes. Hollie, who had never been blessed with any children of her own, had chosen three. Jenny and Marcus, who worked for Hollie, and a boy who couldn’t be comforted no matter what. Hollie apparently felt a strong tug in her heart and took the boy home with the other two. Ironically, the child’s name was Little Jake. Ron and Linda were on their way to the schoolhouse to select an orphan but discovered they had all been claimed. Ron couldn’t tell if his wife was relieved or sad. Perhaps she was still in shock from her ordeal in the jailhouse alone during the worst of it.
The sheriff and the pastor disagreed on the possibilities of the hunters’ survival. While Ron agreed Red Hawk and the men had a chance of finding refuge before the blizzard hit, as the pastor insisted had happened, his gut told him the blizzard took them by surprise just like it had done everybody in town, and his friends and brothers-in-law were never going to return alive. As soon as he and the remaining survivors had taken care of the devastation in town, he was going to insist a party go out and find the men. Either they would be rescuing the men or retrieving their bodies for a proper burial.
Ron turned his energies to the group of men and women who were hitching up wagons to collect the frozen cattle and bring them to the butcher’s shop. Even though Heather’s husband was among the hunters who had not yet returned, she volunteered to help butcher the meat and use their large smokehouse to preserve the meat while it was still viable.
Meanwhile some of the women from the outlying ranches came to town. Becca Collingsworth, Linda’s younger sister, with her two daughters, herded her surviving livestock of mules and horses and filled the livery to capacity. She and Dave McFarland had known each other since Linda and her sisters came to live in Last Chance. Dave bought most of his horses for the livery from Calvin Collingsworth. It was no surprise he offered h
er room in his home next to the livery and he moved into the tack room in the barn.
Celia Thornton wandered into town on the only horse left in her fleet with her cow and calf, lone survivors of her once abundant herd. Her husband, Ned Thornton, was among the men on the hunt. While Pastor Collins insisted the men would return, obviously Celia was convinced they would not and had taken matters into her own hands. Her sister, Faith, who married Ned’s brother, Aaron, took Celia into their home in town. Aaron Thornton did not go on the hunt. His position as postmaster and telegraph operator precluded his leaving for so long.
Then, one horrible day, Otis Ignatius Graham staggered into town covered in dried blood that had no source on his body. His face and fingers were black with frostbite. He wore a buffalo hide, like a hooded cape. It had been freshly killed.
The subject of the hunters’ survival was no longer a debate. Otis stood on the church steps and sobbed as he told the townsfolk that none of the hunters had survived except himself. He left the church and walked straight to the saloon where he drowned his sorrows with his old friend, Whiskey.
Grief swept through the hearts of those who survived the storm like the flood waters of the North Platte River was threatening the warehouses along its banks. Women sobbed, some fainted. Others became angry and screamed. The few men who were in town when the blizzard hit huddled together and devised a plan. They would take two wagons, enough morgue bags to enclose the bodies, and leave in the morning. Ron, as the sheriff, would lead Aaron Thornton, and Jake McDaniels on the retrieval. Otis was too far into his cups to guide them to where the men had perished, but he had described with enough detail the path they had taken that Ron felt sure he and his men could find the hunters.
“I realize you are the sheriff, and these men are your responsibility.” Linda had spoken to Ron in private. “But you promise me you’ll come back, Ron Applebee!”
“Sweetheart.” Ron took his wife close to his chest and kissed her soundly. “Those men deserve a proper burial here in the town they loved. I have to do this. It’ll be six days, eight tops. I promise, I will be back. But, if I don’t—”
“I don’t want to hear that.” Linda jerked out of his embrace. “Ron Applebee, promise me! You will come home.”
He gritted his teeth and pulled her back into his arms. “If I don’t, you go on without me. I want you to be happy.”
“Happy!” She twisted out of his grasp. “How could I possibly be happy without you. I love you with all my heart. There’s nothing extra to give another. So… you remember that! You come home or know that I’ll die a miserable and lonely widow in ugly, dirty widow weeds if you don’t.”
Ron chuckled. “Are you saying, if I don’t come back, you’ll never bathe again?”
She looked up into his eyes. Tears overflowed onto her cheeks. He wiped the tracks with his thumb.
“No. Never!” She sniffed. “I’ll become a nasty, filthy, destitute who no one will want to be near and die all alone in our bed holding a picture frame of you in your uniform.”
His chuckle rolled into a laugh. “Sounds like a line from your novel. Darling, I will be back. Six days, maybe eight. Don’t carry on so. You’re a strong woman, Lord knows you have the will of pure steel. You’ll be fine until I come back. Then we can get our friends and loved ones buried and try to rebuild our people’s broken hearts.”
She pursed her lips, ducked her chin near to her chest, and nodded.
He kissed her once again with so much passion, he felt slightly lightheaded when he pulled away. “See you in six days.”
“Maybe eight.” She corrected.
He climbed into the lead wagon with Jake. Aaron drove the other. They waved to the onlookers and moved onto the ferry to cross the river and head north.

Linda stayed at the ferry crossing until she could no longer see them in the distance. Everyone else had gone to wherever they needed to be. Once the wagons’ silhouettes became dots and even those were no longer visible to her, she turned and walked the short distance to her home.
It was the last time she saw her husband alive.
Chapter Six
Two months later…
Linda sat with the other widows. Some embroidered, others knitted, still others sat around a quilt, stitching the two sides together with cotton batting between. Linda contemplated the story she had wanted to write while Ron was still alive. She had filled a notebook with scenes, she just couldn’t bring it all together for a cohesive story. Her typewriter she had saved so hard to buy sat untouched. Longingly, she wished she was as strong and brave as her character, Priscilla Bouillon.
It had become routine to gather at the church for tea, crafts, and company. The past few months had been awful. While she and her two surviving sisters and many friends of Last Chance wanted more time to mourn their dead husbands, it was Pastor Collins who blatantly informed them that unmarried women could not remain in their western town. They were too much of a temptation to the unwed men and riffraff who might wander in. He flat-out told the ladies they all had to go back east where they came from or marry immediately. Of course, he had volunteered himself to salvage any of the widows’ souls by marrying any one of them. None had accepted his offer.
Out of pure mortification, the women had gathered and resolved to place an advert in the Matrimonial Gazette inviting men with marriage in mind to come to Last Chance, Nebraska. Since hardly anyone was ready for a marriage of love, the advert simply announced there was a need for husbands. The widows gathered daily as much for camaraderie as to avoid Pastor Collins. As long as they appeared to be busy hunting for husbands, Pastor Collins left them alone. Ironically, the church became their refuge from their tormentor.
It took two long months, but a stranger named Jack Wendler arrived with a satchel filled with responses from men from all over. Mr. Wendler carried his own letter in his hand. When he arrived at the post office, it was Heather Barnes who had taken over the postmaster position because Faith Thornton, the postmaster’s widow, was too grieved to function in his stead. Heather took the satchel and the one additional letter and marched them and the stranger to the church. The letters were divided among the widows. Each woman received approximately six letters, some more, others less, to read through and decide to whom they would respond.
It was Celia Thornton who picked Mr. Wendler’s letter, and thus began the first of many courtships.
Linda had poured through her six letters. None of the letter writers seemed to hold a candle to her Ron. But if she wanted to stay in her home, and in Last Chance with her sisters, she had to make an effort to find a new husband. Finally, she folded the letters and placed them back in their envelopes. She stood in a chair and dropped them from as high as she could reach over her head. The ones that fell address up, she set on the table, the others she kicked aside. She continued this until she only had one with the address facing up.
That was how she selected Charles T. Cairn. He was a secretary in a law firm back east. Perhaps, being a sheriff’s widow, Linda surmised, she might have some common interests with him with regard to the law. Maybe he would be interested in becoming the sheriff, since the position was open.
The thought plunged a dagger into her heart. She placed that feeling on a shelf in her mind and sat down to reply to what very well might be her next husband. Whether she found him to be good company or not, she didn’t care. Her heart would always belong to Ron. This was simply a means to stay where she belonged, in Last Chance. That was several weeks ago.
Today, several men rode up to the church and dismounted. The women set down their handiwork to find out who had arrived. Linda set her notebook and pencil in her chair and walked with the ladies to the spot where they always stood while newcomers entered the church. One shortcoming to their plan of having the responders meet the women at the church was that they weren’t given the opportunity to rid themselves of their travels. Although the weather was cool, so the men were not sweaty, they were dirty an
d in need of a shave and haircut. A few of the more refined gentlemen had traveled by train and then took the stagecoach to town. Their second stop was the livery and then here at the church. However, they still needed a freshening up before meeting their intendeds, which they were not afforded.
Linda sighed and stepped up to join her fellow widows as five men entered the church. Heather took charge, as usual, and introduced herself. The gentlemen introduced themselves in turn and stated who they had come to meet. Linda jerked her eyes forward when she heard the name. “I’m Charlie T. Cairn. I’m here in response to Missus Linda Applebee.”
Heather stepped aside and gestured toward Linda. She feigned a pleasant expression and stepped forward. Charlie snatched his dirty hat off his head and smiled nervously. “I’m pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
Linda licked her lips, prepared to respond politely with the same salutation. “I—”
“Applebee?” One of the men blurted. “You Sheriff Applebee’s kin?”
Linda turned to the rude man, lifted her chin, and glared down her nose. “I am his widow, Sir.”
Charlie looked nervous but took a step to stand between Linda and the stranger. It was a sweet gesture, but Linda could tell Charlie would be no match for this intrusive gentleman should he choose to get hostile. Charlie, who made his wages at a primarily sedentary desk job, looked to be the size of an underfed youth, although his disheveled, unshaved appearance indicated he was very much an adult man. This intruder, on the other hand, while he looked lean, his clothes indicated he had significant muscle tone to handle a strenuous job, such as stacking hay bales or aggressively defending a lady’s honor.
Who was this intruder? Had he responded to the ad and was here to find his bride-to-be?
Linda tensed, prepared to defend herself should he grab her or something, and asked the question, “Who are you, Sir?”
