Mail Order Josephine - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides) (14 page)

“Thank you!” Josephine embraced her mother-in-law. “Thank you!”

Mrs. Stockton laughed. “Now, go! Go! The day’s a-wastin’!” She hustled Josephine out of the kitchen and out of the house, where Ben Hancock waited with their horses at the front step. On the veranda, the low morning sun hit Josephine in the eyes and she automatically put on her hat. Billy stood agreeably for her while she mounted to her saddle, and the men did the same. Andrew approached his horse last, scanning the scene with the determined appraisal of a manager evaluating his team for the day’s work. But just before he climbed into his own saddle, he halted, ducked back into the house, and re-emerged with a rifle in his hands. He carried it over to Josephine and tied it onto her saddle. “You’ll need this.”

She vacillated between arguing with him and thanking him, but in the end, she said nothing, and the four riders headed out toward the ranges, where the cattle herd stood ready for the week-long journey to the sale yards in the town. Half a dozen dogs of every age and variety scooted along with them, dodging around their horses’ feet. When they reached the herd, the riders fanned out, urging the cattle on their way with whistles and calls, while the dogs barked noisily at their heels. Before long, the sea of black bodies flowed across the pasture toward the gap in the hillside where the trail led down to the river.

Josephine felt the familiar body of Billy seething and undulating underneath her, and her own legs wrapped around him welding her into his flesh, making them a single organism. When he broke into a canter or slowed to a trot, she instinctively adjusted her posture and her weight to match him, leaning into him when he turned and slackening her reins when he required them. She discovered the truth of Andrew’s statement that the horse accomplished the vast majority of the work of herding the cattle, and that she only observed him and facilitated his movements. Billy seemed to maintain a mental rapport with the cattle the human riders could never match, and he used his affinity for them as a herd animal to communicate where he wanted them to go. They obeyed him implicitly, and Josephine deferred to his superior judgment as well.

As the herd moved out of the valley into the unknown territory of the trail, Josephine rejoiced in her freedom, a freedom greater than anything she could have achieved outside this marriage. She gloried in the fulfillment of her fate, a fulfillment stretching as high and wide as the great vault of the sky above her. She knew that, through her participation in this work, she could contribute back to the Stockton family something as valuable to them as this freedom was to her, and her experience fending off the rustlers when Andrew got shot told her she could meet any challenge they encountered on the way or thereafter. She no longer judged herself too weak or too feminine to take up a weapon in the defense of the Stockton family’s interests—
her
interests. These were her people, her loved ones, her blood and her bone. She would go to any extremity to protect and promote them.

At last, she exulted in her own transformation into the most complete, the most satisfied Josephine possible. She could never have believed this course would bring her such life-altering contentment. She barely recognized herself, in these clothes and this hat, with a rifle hanging at her side, and a horse jogging underneath her. The whole world looked as different as if she rode through a dreamscape of purple trees and green clouds. The future stretched out before her like a limitless carpet, welcoming her into unseen possibilities and endless expanses of bliss.

THE END

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©
2013 by
Kate Whitsby

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This is a work of fiction. All characters, names,
places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.