The Telegram Said His Mail Order Bride Died on the Way West — She Stepped Off the Train Alive

Chapter 2

The ranch at the end of the Cross Fork road showed what it was, and what it was was built.

Nolan Reeves had raised the house himself in 1874, in the spring, when the ground was soft enough for footings and the lumber was dry from two trips of hauling. He’d framed it green and let it settle, and the walls had settled true, the way things settle when a man works them square. He’d raised the barn in 1876 with two neighbors and a quantity of sandwiches that his wife had packed — Ruth had packed them, and she had ridden out to the site at noon with a wet cloth for the back of his neck, and he remembered carrying that first cold bite of her sandwich into his mouth like it was yesterday. He’d driven every post in the north fence between 1878 and 1880, on winter mornings before the light was fully up, because corral posts set in frozen ground were corral posts that would hold.