Into the Sunset by Doris Rangel

Author:Doris Rangel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Womens fiction, western fiction, short stories, old west stories, frontier women, literary western fiction
Publisher: Doris Rangel
Published: 2020-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

LIFE IN THE WILD WEST WITH MRS. LAURA COSGROVE

A traveler has a right to relate and embellish his adventures as he pleases, and it is very impolite to refuse that deference and applause they deserve.

Rudolf Erich Raspe

Travels of Baron Munchausen (1785)

LIFE IN THE WILD WEST WITH MRS. LAURA COSGROVE

She was in love.

With her new husband, so she said. With life, certainly.

But most of all, Laurie Cosgrove was in love with adventure.

Born and raised in the small farming community of Chittings, Kansas, the farthest afield she’d ever been was a visit to an aunt in Middle Falls, thirty miles away. Middle Falls wasn’t much larger than Chittings, and to the young Laurie it could have been her hometown’s mirror image – a bitter disappointment to a girl who for weeks had looked forward to seeing something different.

Her new husband, Caleb Cosgrove had a good head on his shoulders, according to Laurie’s parents, who thought his steadying influence might be good for their daughter. Laurie had known him all her life. Their families were close, living on adjacent farms on the outskirts of Chittings. They knew the same people, shopped in the same stores, went to the same church on Sundays.

As a younger son, Caleb had known he would have to move on someday if he ever wanted a family of his own. His parents’ farm could sustain no more than two families at a time and it was a foregone conclusion those two families would be his parents and that of his older brother, now married and with one child, another on the way. The bedrooms in the farmhouse were full. It was time for Caleb to go.

He was ready. A year ago, he’d headed west to seek land he could get cheaply if one was willing to do the work and face the dangers of creating a farm from wilderness. He’d found it in Colorado, filed on it, built a cabin and barn, then headed back to Kansas to fetch his bride.

Laurie’s parents were right. Caleb did have a good head on his shoulders, and he had chosen his young wife carefully. He knew exactly what stock Laurie came from, had watched her grow up. A good girl, she’d been raised to be proficient in a good farmwife’s duties – cooking, cleaning, doing those things a woman did to keep a household running smoothly. She had a nice figure, too, and had never been sickly, so should have no trouble bearing his children.

It didn’t hurt that she was pretty as well, and with a lively sense of humor. Also, he loved her; perhaps not the ‘in love’ of a young girl’s dreams, though knowing her well, he’d never say such a thing to his new wife, but he loved her just the same.

Yet Laurie’s strongest trait, as far as Caleb was concerned and after due consideration of Chitting’s eligible female population, was her willingness to leave the life she’d always known and go with him. When he’d talked of finding

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