The Matador Hotel died on July 5th, 1965, but they didn’t bother burying it until last fall.
Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon, Stephen Bly
The plot for Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon developed like homemade stew in a crockpot. A slow simmer. Then, the image of the 1950s kitchen filled with sweet aromas and sights and sounds. Hours later all the parts seemed ready.
The story grew out of fond memories from my childhood. What makes it real personal is that I was 10-years-old in 1954, just like the narrator. And I did hear numerous accounts about the “old days.” At that time, Johnny Appleseed was a legendary hero. I learned about him at the knee of my Indiana grandma. She figured anyone who dedicated himself to planting apple trees must be a good guy.
I often get asked where I grew up. Readers of my westerns suppose I was born and raised in some rough and tumble part of the west amid gunfights and wild adventures. Well, they’re somewhat right. Home for me was a ranch north of Visalia, California, in the great San Joaquin Valley.
“That doesn’t sound like the wild west,” they say.
They’re wrong. From Joaquin Murietta to the Dalton Brothers, Visalia Saddles to the Miller and Lux Ranch. . .that valley’s filled with western history. One of my favorite tales involved the gunfight and capture of Sontag and Evans at Stone Corral, a few miles down the road from our home.
Cribbage and cowboys. . .I figured I fit right in.
Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon, Stephen Bly
It seems quite natural for me to write about a grandpa and the game of cribbage. My grandpa taught me to play when I was 4-years-old. I played him once or twice a week until he died when I turned 15. In the book Pop’s name is Theodore and his wife is Katie, same as my grandparents.
Talk slow and think deep. It’s part of the Code of the West. Some scoff at the notion of an unwritten set of rules that honest men lived by. Politically correct history books deny the Code’s existence. Those authors and professors didn’t grow up in the West. I remember in the mid-1980s standing at the graveside of my uncle. At the time, his place encompassed around 14,000 acres. As I looked down at the coffin of my Uncle Buster, an old-timer slid up beside me. “He was a good man, son. He lived by the Code.”
There’s a quiet buzz from antique ceiling fans, like six thousand crickets, all out of tune. You don’t even notice, until there’s silence.
Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon, Stephen Bly
Woolworth’s department stores provided lots of pleasure for kids like me. Like a Dollar Store, they included a soda fountain lunch counter, better merchandise, and a friendly clerk behind every counter. By 2001 the company focused on sporting goods and changed its name to Foot Locker Inc. A classic example of a company that adapted to the market needs.
In today’s consumer shopping mall world, it’s hard for some to envision the incredible thrill of merchandise-packed Five & Dimes. I couldn’t believe so many products existed. I’m not sure kids today can experience anything near that excitement. A $.49 badge? That’s what Little Brother, the 10-year-old narrator, gets. A little spendy for 1954. I remember getting a 25-cent a week allowance, provided I did all my chores, in a time when $1.00 per hour provided a decent wage.
My bedroom teemed with White Owl cigar boxes, my granddad’s favorite cigar. He didn’t smoke them much; mainly he chewed them. And because I lived across the road from him, I got many of his boxes. Lots of childhood treasures can be stored in a cigar box.
Folks today think that 1954 existed in some other galaxy, on some other planet. Maybe they’re right.
It’s hard to believe that world and this one are made of the same stuff.
Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon, Stephen Bly
I can’t tell you about television in 1954. We didn’t have one yet. Didn’t matter. Didn’t need one. When I came home from school, I did chores or played outside until dark and Mom made me come indoors. Now, that does sound like a century ago.
I did not know cowboys named Quirt, Bronc, Thad, Shorty, Coosie or Pop. But I knew men much like them. In fact, most folks called my Grandpa Wilson “Pop.” I once met an old-timer in Magdalena, New Mexico, who had been a sheriff in the 1930s. He still packed a pistol and watched the door, just in case someone he sent to prison got out and scouted him for revenge. I based my character, Quirt Payton, on him.
All the aged cowboys I ever met wore long-sleeved shirts, usually some faded shade of white, with the collar buttoned. This kept the dirt out when he rode down the trail or behind a herd of slow moving cows. Also, an old beat-up Stetson and yellowed cigarettes stained their fingers.
I don’t suppose the current generation has ever ridden in the open trunk of a car, nor let the air down in the tires to drive down a railroad track (and they call skateboarding an extreme sport). At one point, the six cowboys in the novel, plus Miss Diane Anderson, and the boy narrator, pile into a ’49 Plymouth, without seatbelts. I could have been the poster child for the need of such safety devices. I fell out of my parents’ car, going about 55 miles per hour, in 1949. I spent 10 days in the hospital nursing a major concussion.
At least one of the stories happened to me. In 1994, in Telluride, I was told by the hotel clerk I couldn’t get a room. He intimated I wasn’t their kind. My gruffy appearance after a week’s research in the wilds didn’t impress them. So, I drove all the way to Cortez for a room, arriving about midnight. To say I was ticked is an understatement.
It’s like I’m right there in the room with these old-timers. Some of these scenes I do recall first-hand. I remember going to see a friend of my grandfather’s at a 4-story hotel in central California in the mid-1950s. His room was carpeted with out-dated newspapers that he hadn’t got around to reading yet. Such images last forever.
My favorite things to do when the weather threatens and I can’t play golf: oil the saddles, clean the Winchesters, or write a novel about the Old West.
In Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon I discover that maybe I wasn’t born 100 years too late.
Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a copy of Cowboy for a Rainy Afternoon.
Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon (hardback, Center Point) will be released: June 2010.
You’re reading about a cowboy. . .which leads you to Wyoming. . .which leads you to a house made purely of fossils. . .which leads you to animal
extinction. . .which led me to something called a genetic bottleneck.
I’d never heard of such a thing.
Here’s the definition of a genetic bottleneck. (It has NOTHING to do with cowboys) A genetic bottleneck is a significant reduction in the size of a population that causes the extinction of many genetic lineages within that population, thus decreasing genetic diversity.
Now what tickled in the back of my brain was endangered species. If there are very, very few of the animals left they tend to all be related. You start running into trouble like you would if a. . .oh. . .a male dog had puppies with one of it’s own daughters. There are tendencies for birth defects, the same reason cousins are forbidden to marry.
So, though I wasn’t familiar with the term, as I read I realized I was familiar with the concept.
Did you know there is a genetic bottleneck for people? Huh? Huh?
Humans have remarkably little genetic diversity, especially in comparison to our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. I read that online. I’d never heard that humans were more or less genetically diverse than other creatures. What does that even mean?
The genetic bottle neck brings me to creatures like Neanderthal Man, troglodytes, to use a more generic–and no doubt incorrect–term. Cave men.
All of the ‘human-like’ cave men come BEFORE a genetic bottle neck in human history.
NOW YOU JUST KEEP READING. I SWEAR THIS IS INTERESTING. TRUST ME.
Here’s one of the more popular theories about why there aren’t human-like creatures on the earth besides humans. The Toba supereruption occurred between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago in Indonesia, and it is recognized as one of Earth’s largest known eruptions. The related catastrophe theory holds that this supervolcanic event plunged the planet into a volcanic winter, which resulted in the world’s human population being reduced to as few as 1,000 breeding pairs. This created a bottleneck in human evolution.
Okay, now think about it. This is SIXTY-NINE THOUSAND YEARS AGO.
We read all the time about earth history being millions and millions of years old. And yet here they’re saying that about. . .oh. . .70,000 years ago, a drop in the bucket of earth’s history, there might have been as few as 1000 ‘breeding pairs’ (let’s go ahead and humanize this and call them PEOPLE. . .MARRIED PEOPLE) on the planet.
Another place used FIFTY THOUSAND years ago. Another said Neaderthal Man vanished THIRTY THOUSAND years ago.
Okay, now we’re getting down to a very imaginable number because honestly it’s impossible to think of one million and not just be overwhelmed by it.
So, I’ve just got a question.
If the ‘genetic bottleneck’ proves that whatever men survived grew into the current population of the earth. And they’re theorizing a catastrophe of some sort, the Toba supereruption being one possibility. . .I’d like to submit my own theory of why, suddenly as recently as 30,000 years ago human life on earth became SMALL and very genetically similar–sort of like FAMILY. Now I’m no scientist. Not a paleontologist or biologist, but I am a THINKER.
How about (brace yourself) ………..CREATION!
How about if that was the point in the creation of the earth when God made man.
Or (brace yourself again) how about a Great Flood. Noah and his family. . .now there’s a genetic bottleneck for you.
I’m just saying–all these scientific theories–well, I get it. I get that they’re trying to explain earth history without including miraculous intervention by God. That’s their job. “If God didn’t do it, then how did it happen? Maybe this, what if that…?”
But just once in a while, like when I’m looking at muddy water, I wonder–How long would I need to stare before LIFE would come crawling out. And if it did, how long would I have to stare at a one-celled mud slug before it evolved into a kangaroo and a Swedish Ivy plant?
Think about the land around you, the spectacular spring blooms and the magnificent trees and the Grand Canyon and the sweeping plains of Nebraska and Kansas and buffalo and mountain lions and alligators and carrots and watermelons and bumblebees and cockroaches, ask yourself, if this all did come from some one celled critter crawling out of a prehistoric mud hole, then isn’t that a BIGGER miracle than God just saying, “Let there be light!”
And I’d also like ONE example from anyone of one living creature that, in recorded history, has evolved. Seriously, I mean I know these things take a long time but c’mon, one thing. One time a chicken laid an egg and a baby was born that could…breathe under water. I can think of some animals that have adapted… adapting is very different from evolving. Where a black and white moth changed to more black than white when London became sooty. But there’s no genetic difference there.
Either way, out of supposedly millions of years of earth history, i think we can make three statements.
1) Humans only appear in their current form a few thousand years ago.
2) Nothing has evolved since we’ve started paying attention–an no, going extinct doesn’t count.
Mother’s Day is quickly approaching. It’s a day set aside to honor the women who either brought us into the world or cared for us once we were here. And sometimes we celebrate the love of women who have been like mothers to us. My novella Montana Rose in the To Be a Mother Love Inspired Historical anthology is the story of two young women who never knew their mothers, but who found each other.
Olivia Rose is a teacher at a girl’s academy, and Emily is her young student. When the school is forced to close, they leave behind everything familiar and travel west so Emily can meet the uncle she never knew existed. Both of them desire a family and a place to belong, and Emily finds both sooner than Olivia. Olivia’s feelings are torn, because she’s happy for the child, but she yearns for the same acceptance and fears she’s missed out.
To Be a Mother is in stores now! Think about picking up a copy for a special woman in your life—as well as one for yourself!
Today I’m giving away autographed copies to two readers who leave comments. Thanks for stopping by!
Smooches!
Mountain Rose by Cheryl St.John
Teacher Olivia Rose knows what it’s like to grow up alone and unwanted. But convincing reserved rancher Jules Parrish he can give his orphaned niece a real home won’t be easy—unless Olivia seizes the chance of love and motherhood she never expected….
A Family of Her Own by Ruth Axtell Morren
War and tragedy destroyed Rianna Bruce’s chance at happily ever after…or did it? Reuniting with her first love, Noah Samuels, proves that her feelings haven’t gone away. In helping his young daughter, can Rianna show the disillusioned Noah the blessing of a second chance?
The south west portion of Alberta is known for ranching. There are a number of historic ranches still in the area. Doing research last summer, I visited a number of them. The scenery itself is wonderful and the ranches great places to visit.
The Bar U Ranch is designated as a national historic site and has a museum-like atmosphere. It began as the North-West Cattle Company and like other early ranches faced many set backs such as falling cattle prices, deadly winters
William Winder had come the North West in 1873 as a member of the North West Mounted Police, but after he retired he decided to take up ranching. With the help of his father-in-law, Charles Stimson, he convinced Sir Hugh Allan, a highly successful businessman and head of the Allan Steamship Line in Montreal, to set up the North-West Cattle Company in March 1882. Fred Stimson, Winder’s brother-in-law, was appointed manager, and went to Chicago in 1881 to look over and select appropriate bulls coming to market from western ranges. On the trip up to the Highwood River area, a snowstorm hit, but Stimson allowed the cattle to drift south to the Old Man River area, where they could graze. His decision saved the herd.
Another wise decision on the part of ranch owners was to invest in horse ranching.
A number of famous and infamous people have been part of the Bar U. Soon the ranch was known everywhere winning prizes and awards, as well as a reputation for breeding some of the finest horses in the world.
John Ware—a big black cowboy who impressed his rivals by riding horse no one else had. Ironically, he died when his horse stepped in a hole and fell on him.
An outlaw—The Sundance Kid, part of the Hole-in-the- Wall Gang in Montana-came to the Bar U to lay low. He worked and signed his real name, Henry Longbaugh.
The book, The Virginian, is modeled after a man called Everett, or Eb Johnson. The author, Owen Whistler, met him in Wyoming. After Eb left Wyoming, he headed for Canada and was hired as foreman of the Bar U.
From the 1880s to 1930s the cowboys got paid a dollar a day plus keep.
Another famous ranch I visited was the OH ranch. In 1876 Lafaytte French, a buffalo hunter and Indian trader from Pennsylvania, USA, met Orville Hawkins Smith, a mule skinner who drove teams between Salt Lake City and Montana, and the seeds of the OH Ranch were planted. In 1878 the two frontiersmen established an Indian trading post at Blackfoot Crossing, only to have it closed by the North West Mounted Police a year later because of the usurious prices charged. Non plussed by the event, the two men moved to what is now High River, Alberta and opened the soon-to-be town’s first legitimate business, a stopping house for settlers traveling to their new homesteads.
In 1881, the two raconteurs bought some cattle and began squatting at what is now the Main Headquarters of the OH Ranch. The two men decided to use Smithy’s initials to brand their cattle. The OH brand was the twenty-fifth cattle brand registered in what was then known as the North West Territories. Perhaps unknown to the two fledgling ranchers, the letters O and H are two of only seven characters which cannot be branded upside down or backwards.
It was interesting to visit these ranches and see some of the original buildings still intact. Research is such fun.
Today one lucky comment poster will win a copy of The Cowboy’s Baby!
Would you like to win an advance copy of Kansas Courtship? It’s my March 2010 release, but I’m giving away three copies today. To enter the drawing, just leave a comment below. I’ll pull three names at random.
This is Book #3 in the “After the Storm” series, a continuity set in 1860 in High Plains, Kansas, a town that’s been devastated by a tornado. The first two books are High Plains Bride by Valerie Hansen and Heartland Wedding by Renee Ryan. We’ll be hearing more from Renee on Saturday.
Here’s the back cover blurb:
Rising Storm . . .
Town founder Zeb Garrison is finally getting his wish–a qualified physician is coming to High Plains. Yet when Dr. N. Mitchell turns out to be the very pretty Nora Mitchell, Zeb is furious. The storm-torn town needs a doctor, but Zeb needs someone he can trust–not another woman who’s deceived him. If Nora’s going to change his mind, she’ll have to work fast. All she has is a one-month trial to prove her worth . . . to High Plains and to Zeb.
And here’s an excerpt . . .
Chapter One
August 1860 High Plains Kansas
“Look over yonder, missy,” said the old man driving the freight wagon. “That’s where a twister snatched up those children.”
Dr. Nora Mitchell turned on the high seat. With the dusty bonnet shielding her eyes, she looked past Mr. Crandall’s gray beard to a lush meadow. A breeze stirred the grass and she smelled loamy earth. With the scent came a whiff of the mules pulling the three freight wagons the last miles to High Plains. In her black medical bag she had the precious letter from Zebulun Garrison inviting her to interview for her first position as a paid physician.
Never mind that she’d signed her letter to him as “Dr. N. Mitchell.” What difference did her gender make when it came to practicing medicine? None to her, but it mattered terribly to men with old fashioned ideas.
She’d lived with that prejudice since the day she’d entered Geneva Medical College, the alma mater of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America. The prejudice had become even more challenging once she graduated. She’d interviewed for fourteen positions in the past year and received fourteen rejections, all because of her gender.
You’re female, Dr. Mitchell. That makes you unqualified.
Women shouldn’t be subjected to the vulgarities of medicine.
Perhaps you can find work as a midwife. That suits your gender.
She’d been close to despair when a cousin wrote to her about an advertisement in the Kansas Gazette. Wanted: a licensed physician for a new Kansas town. Compensation dependent on experience. Contact Zebulun Garrison, High Plains, Kansas.
She’d posted a letter to Mr. Garrison immediately. Not only had he offered “Dr. N. Mitchell” an interview, he’d sounded enthusiastic. “Our current doctor is retiring,” he’d written back. “We are a growing a community in need of a skilled practitioner with an adventurous spirit.”
Nora had pictured bustling shops and a busy church. She’d imagined delivering babies, setting broken bones and treating croup and sore throats. Those expectations had changed as she’d traveled with the Crandalls. She’d split the riding time between Mr. Crandall and his wife, a buxom woman who’d birthed nine children and never stopped talking. As they’d traveled from St. Joseph to Topeka, south to Fort Riley and on to High Plains, the woman had told horrific tales about Kansas weather. Two months ago, a tornado wiped out half of High Plains and devastated a wagon train. Most frightening of all, it had snatched away the children Mr. Crandall just mentioned.
“Captain” John Hance was reputedly the Canyon’s first non-Native American resident. He built a cabin east of Grandview Point at the trailhead of an ancient Native American trail he improved to allow access to his asbestos mining claim in the Canyon. He started giving tours of the canyon after his attempts at mining asbestos failed, largely due to the expense of removing the asbestos from the canyon.
The trail, completed in 1884 and commonly called the Old Hance Trail by historians, was to become Grand Canyon’s first tourist trail, as Hance quickly realized there was money to be made guiding wide-eyed tourists into the depths of the Canyon.
I love this. This is what makes America great. Hance abandoned mining for tourism in the mid-1880s. To me that’s just a man seeing a way to make money, supplying a product others want, a product that is born out of his life and his skill and his hard work.
Hance delighted in telling canyon stories to visitors, favoring the whopper of a tale over mere facts. With a straight face, Hance told travelers how he had dug the canyon himself, piling the excavated earth down near Flagstaff (a dirt pile now known as the San Francisco Peaks).
I exchanged emails with a man who works at Grand Canyon National Park and does re-enactments of John Hance’s tall tales. I asked him if any of those tales were written down and he directed me to one recording of a tale similar to one John Hance told. But Hance never told the same story, the same way, twice and he never wrote any of them down, so only oral history survives. Despite his many outrageous claims, Hance left a lasting legacy at the Grand Canyon, passing away in 1919, the year the Grand Canyon became a National Park. Hance was the first person buried in what would become the Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery.
The trail John Hance found still exists. It’s listed as unmaintained and in poor condition. A Falcon Guidebook, Hiking Grand Canyon National Park, calls it a vigorous rim-to-rim backpack of three or more days—the South Rim’s most difficult trail. One man, an experience back country hiker said that even having been over the trail before, the time he took the trail with it in mind to report on it, he got lost five different times-by lost I mean he realized he’d gotten off the trail and had to backtrack to find it. There are miles with no discernable trail. I also, just because research is maddening, found this account of the Hance Trail.
The New Hance descends into Red Canyon (a side canyon of the Grand) and arrives at Hance Rapids on the Colorado River. Although the New Hance is a secondary trail, it is well marked and easy to follow. Note that this is really different than the other report. So what is the truth? Ah, research! Such fun.
One picture I found showed people rock climbing down a stretch of rock face, so that seems pretty challenging to me but when you think back to those days, it was probably a wonder to even find a way down. No state roads department was in there clearing it and paving it.
So, has anyone been there? Have any of you gone down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Anyone spent the night at Phantom Ranch or taken the burro ride? If so, you have my deepest respect because this is a truly rugged place.
I grew up in West Texas, in Mitchell County. So far, I’ve used my hometown of Colorado City as the actual setting for only one of my books. But all of my westerns, whether historical or contemporary, are set in fictional towns in that part of the country. Its wonderful history fuels this writer’s heart and imagination.
The first ranch was established in the county in 1875. Only a handful of ranchers followed until the building of the Texas and Pacific Railroad spurred settlement of the area.
Mitchell County and Colorado City, known then simply as Colorado, were organized in 1881. (For clarity, I’m going to add City.) Ranchers moved thousands of Texas Longhorns into the vast open range of West Texas. Colorado City sprang to life with stores, saloons, boarding houses, hotels, churches and a school.
When it came time to sell some cattle, those same ranchers—from all across West Texas and southeast New Mexico—herded them to Colorado City for shipment to Kansas City and Chicago. They also hauled in wagonloads of buffalo bones, gathered from the prairie, and sent them to factories back east to make fertilizer and buttons.
Supplies for the town and ranches came into Colorado City by rail and were hauled by wagon all across West Texas and the Panhandle. The area needed people, and they came, full of dreams and the determination to make them happen. The descendants of many of those families are still there.
Bob and Betty Gary arrived in Mitchell County in 1881. Mr. Gary was employed at a grocery in Colorado City until he and Betty bought a ranch south of town in 1898. Several years later, their daughter, Ewell, married Charles Thompson. When they inherited the land, they changed the name to Thompson Ranch—which is where I grew up.
My parents moved to the ranch in 1945, a year after they were married. Soon Daddy became the ranch foreman, a position he held until his death over fifty years later. The ranch had six thousand acres which my dad, my brother, and one or two hired hands worked—raising around three hundred head of Hereford cattle and farming cotton.
But when I needed a fictional ranch for the powerful, wealthy family in my new series from Revell, The Callahans of Texas, I wanted something bigger. So I moseyed down the highway and borrowed sixty thousand acres from the Spade Ranch. It runs over a hundred thousand acres, so I figured they wouldn’t mind letting me use some of their range. Imaginary cattle don’t eat much.
And it has an illustrious history. Technically, it is the Renderbrook Spade. Renderbrook comes from a large spring on the ranch, named for Captain Joseph Rendlebrock who led Company G, Fourth Cavalry through the area in 1872. They were scouting for Indians or Indian signs as well as exploring and mapping the little known country west and north of Fort Concho, which is near San Angelo.
They had a brief skirmish with some Indians, which lasted “less than no time.” The little battle helped attach the Captain’s name to the spring, although someone botched the spelling, and called it Renderbrook.
By 1882, brothers J.W. and Dudley Snyder bought the land around Renderbrook Springs. They’d been ranching for several years and knew that the free range wouldn’t last. They built a substantial headquarters, known as the “White House.” It is still there today.
They did well until the financial panic in 1885 was followed by a severe drought in 1886-1888. Ranching had changed since the early days, and capital requirements for land, livestock and improvements such as wells, windmills, tanks and fencing were beyond the reach of most who had built the beef cattle industry.
The Snyders needed a buyer for their ranch when Isaac Ellwood and his son, William L., arrived in Colorado City in 1889.
Originally from New York, Isaac had had a few adventures—working as a teamster on the Erie Canal and later spending time in the California goldfields. But he had settled in DeKalb, Illinois and established a prosperous hardware business. Adequate fencing was a common problem, and Isaac worked on a design for barbed wire. In 1874, when he saw that Joseph Glidden’s design was better than his, Isaac formed a partnership with the older man. Two years later, Glidden wanted to retire and sold his interest in the company to Washburn & Moen, a wire manufacturing company from Massachusetts. Isaac now had a powerful partner that changed a little cottage industry into big business. He made millions.
When Isaac and his son came to West Texas to promote their barbed wire, he was already a respected horse breeder and owned a progressive farm complex outside of DeKalb. But he wanted land in Texas. They stayed at the St. James Hotel, the ritziest one in Colorado City. It was favored by cattlemen, particularly the big operators.
When the Ellwoods toured Renderbrook, they liked what they saw, especially its potential. They bought the ranch, but the Snyders kept their cattle and their brand.
Isaac turned over the running of the ranch to William L. and went back to Illinois to tend to the wire business and harvest at his farm. William L. began searching for a herd. He found it two hundred miles away in the Texas Panhandle. He purchased 800 head of cattle from J. F. “Spade” Evans and acquired the brand which is shaped like a short-handled spade. Thus the ranch became Renderbrook Spade, generally known as Spade Ranch.
I not only borrowed some land for the Callahans, I appropriated the spring, too, renaming it Aidan’s Spring in honor of Aidan Callahan. He brought the first herd into my fictionalized version of the area and established the ranch and the little town of Callahan Crossing.
The modern day Callahans—Dub and Sue and their children Will, Chance and Jenna—are as loyal to the ranch and the town as Aidan was. Each of the three books has a stand alone romance, but their love of God, family and West Texas runs strongly through the series.
And the siblings need that support. In Jenna’s Cowboy, which hits the stores in January, Jenna and her family help their friend and her hero, Nate Langley, deal with post traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Emily’s Chance, which comes out next September, Chance recruits their help to try to win the heart of a big-city career woman who has her five-year plan all laid out—and it doesn’t include him.
And in the last, yet unnamed book, Will falls for a courageous young woman who is pregnant, unmarried and homeless. The family pitches in to show Savannah that wealth or poverty doesn’t matter when it comes to love.
My thanks to Cheryl St.John and the ladies of Petticoats and Pistols for asking me to be a guest blogger.
Leave a comment to enter the drawing for a copy of Jenna’s Cowboy.
Jenna’s Cowboy is Sharon Gillenwater’s nineteenth published novel. She’s written for both the ABA and CBA, with settings ranging from Regency England and Scotland to Texas in the 1880’s and modern day Texas. Five of her books were published under the penname Sharon Harlow. Visit her website at http://www.sharongillenwater.com She is also on Facebook.
Sharon will send an autographed copy of Jenna’s Cowboy to one person who comments this weekend!
I’ve already talked to someone who’s found it in a store and it’s no longer listed as a ‘pre-order’ on Amazon.
So it’s out there.
A cynical cowboy has to convince the toughest cowgirl you’ll ever meet he should join her family. . .and then convince himself.
Here’s the beginning
The Husband Tree
Belle Tanner pitched dirt right on Anthony’s handsome, worthless face.
It was spitefulness that made her enjoy doing that. But she was sorely afraid Anthony Santoni’s square jaw and curly dark hair had tricked her into agreeing to marry him.
Which made her as big an idiot as Anthony.
Now he was dead and she was left to dig the grave. Why, oh why didn’t she just skip marrying him and save herself all this shoveling?
She probably should have wrapped him in a blanket, but blankets were hard to come by in Montana. . .unlike husbands.
She labored on with her filling, not bothering to look down again at the man who had shared her cabin and her bed for the last two years. She only hoped when she finished she didn’t forget where she’d buried Anthony’s no-account hide. She regretted not marking William’s and Gerald’s graves now for fear she’d dig in the same spot and uncover their bones. As she recalled, she’d planted William on the side nearest the house, thinking it had a nice view down the hill over their property. She wasn’t so sure about Gerald, but she’d most likely picked right, because she’d dug the hole and hadn’t hit bones. Unless critters had dug Gerald up and dragged him away.
Belle had to admit she didn’t dig one inch deeper than was absolutely necessary.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Husband Tree is available now on Amazon. And I’ve had my first reported sighting in a bookstore, so it’s HERE!. I have my author’s copies now. So I can give one away! YAY!
I’ve been playing my Mannheim Steamroller CD constantly on my computer. I just love their version of Deck the Halls. It says Christmas to me. And, I just heard Amy Grant singing Breath of Heaven. So, so beautiful, sort of downbeat and haunting but I keep thinking about it after it stops playing. I just love it.
If you picked up almost any novel in the early 1990’s, about half of them would have a theme connected in some way to amnesia. It could be the main character or a supporting character. Either way, that theme and topic flooded the market for a brief period of time. So much so, that once the phase passed, editors wouldn’t even touch a novel that mentioned the word let alone had it as a plot element.
It’s a good thing that isn’t the case today. I’ve read some amazing novels in recent years where one character suffered from some form of amnesia and loved how the author brought the story around.
Hearts and Harvest
One of my books that I have circulating, trying to sell, involves the heroine suffering from a case of amnesia, but over 100 years ago, it was quite a bit different than we view it today. In fact, although the term dates back to the 1600’s, there weren’t a whole lot of doctors who diagnosed it as such until the late 1800’s. When I discovered this, it took my story in a turn for the better….and more entertaining.
What I discovered in most of the smaller towns or further out west in the more unsettled areas, the average doctor didn’t encounter many cases of this. So, being unfamiliar with how to diagnose or treat a patient suffering from it, they did one of the only things they could do. They compared it to what they *did* know.
And that was sleepwalking.
Quite often, sleepwalkers act and speak in ways that are foreign to their normal behavior patterns or personalities. Then, when they wake up, they have no recollection of what they did. In many ways, they suffer memory loss.
Patterns and Progress
In addition, most believed that you should never awaken a sleepwalker for fear that you might separate their mind from their body and cause the person to suffer far greater maladies than whatever is causing them to behave this way. From medical books of the time period of my story, there are many documented cases exactly like this.
So, when a doctor was faced with a patient suffering from amnesia due to a traumatic experience, an injury or any other cause, that doctor might caution those who know the patient to tread lightly. Such is the case in my story. My heroine is a prim and proper lady from Philadelphia who escaped an arranged marriage and fled east, then married a successful cattle baron in Wyoming. While journeying by train to visit her uncle, her train is robbed and an explosion causes her to lose her memory.
Traveling on the same train is a young woman fleeing from an abusive marriage and coming to take a job as a barmaid in a saloon. A case of mistaken identity has my heroine working as that barmaid while news of her death is sent back home to her husband. When her foreman finds her, he can’t believe his eyes. He’d always held a torch for her, and now he has his chance! Once her husband finds out, the town doctor issues the warning that he shouldn’t reveal his identity to his wife for fear that further harm than good could result. The foreman takes his boss to see his wife, but the ranch owner can’t touch her or tell her who he is. Instead, he has to sit back and watch his wife flirt with his foreman!
And so the story continues…
As you can see, time *does* make a difference in medical discoveries, treatments, and diagnoses. In the case of my story, this discovery added a whole new dimension that made the writing of it a whole lot of fun!
Leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for a copy of Patterns and Progress by Amber Stockton.
Tiffany Amber Stockton is an author, online marketing specialist and freelance web site designer who lives with her husband and fellow author in beautiful Colorado Springs. They celebrated the birth of their first child in April and have a vivacious puppy named Roxie, a Border Collie/Flat-Haired Retriever mix. She has sold eight books so far to Barbour Publishing. Other credits include writing articles for various publications, five short stories with Romancing the Christian Heart, and contributions to the books: 101 Ways to Romance Your Marriage and Grit for the Oyster.
While the camels did the work well they were nasty and frightened horses, at least that’s the general explanation for why the program failed.
Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (this was pre-Civil War, how INTERESTING that Jefferson Davis was then Secretary of War, huh? He was encouraged to import camels to supply Western wagon routes. It was a dry, hot , hostile region, not unlike the camel’s natural habitat.
Davis, sold the idea to Congress. “For military purposes, and for reconnaissance, it is believed the dromedary would supply a want now seriously felt in our service.”
Congress agreed and appropriated $30,000.
33 camels were imported from the Middle East. They were loaded onto a Navy ship—and yeah, that was as hard as it sounds—and transported to Texas. There Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale took over.
Along with the camels came Hadji Ali to train soldiers in camel wrangling. The Americans slurred Hadji Ali’s name into Hi Jolly and the man became very well known in the west.
Beale set out in June, 1857, with Hi Jolly along, for California. Camels carried 600 to 800 pounds each and traveled 25 to 30 miles a day. After reaching California the expedition returned to Texas, a success — at least to Beale.
Beale wrote. “They pack water for days under a hot sun and never get a drop; they pack heavy burdens of corn and oats for months and never get a grain; and on the bitter greasewood and other worthless shrubs, not only subsist, but keep fat.”
He concluded, “I look forward to the day when every mail route across the continent will be conducted and worked altogether with this economical and noble brute.”
But perhaps he was too optimistic. What he didn’t say was that the camels didn’t take to the West’s rocky soil. It actually became a huge problem because, unlike the smooth sand of the Arabian dessert, American sand was more rocky. It got stuck between the camel’s toes. They experimented with many ways to solve this problem. Hi Jolly for a time wrapped their hooves with burlap and eventually an iron horseshoes, made camel shaped, came along but the cloven hoof was a problem.
And prospectors’ burros and mules — and even Army mules — were afraid of the odd-looking creatures and would sometimes panic at their sight.
Still, in 1858, then-Secretary of War John Floyd told Congress, “The entire adaptation of camels to military operations on the Plains may now be taken as demonstrated.”
He urged Congress to authorize the purchase of 1,000 more camels.
Congress didn’t act, however, as it was preoccupied with trouble brewing between the North and South. The government ended the experiement and Hi Jolly was grieved but stayed in America and lived until 1902. His burial place is beneath a pyramid shaped marker…with a camel on top.
In the meantime these camels were also being used privately on ranches. It was while moving some of these camels that the nation’s first and only “camel cavalry charge” took place. In 1849 they were trying to cross the Colorado River into California with camels when a large war party of Mojaves showed up and looked ready to attack. The civilian laborers mounted the camels and charged, routing the Mojaves.
In 1860, experiments were made with racing camels. It was hoped the camels could be used to carry “camel express” mail. The racing experiments proved unsuccessful. Camels excelled at heavy loads carried slowly.
After 1860, Siberian camels were imported to San Franscisco, and ended up in Canadian mining operations. Eventually these were turned loose and became wild herds.
The camel corp was abandoned and the camels either sold or, if they didn’t sell, set free in the desert. Generations of them survived. In the mid-1870s one wandered into Fort Selden, New Mexico Territory. The young son of the post commander saw it and ran, terrified, to hide behind his mother. The post commandant was COL Arthur MacArthur. The terrified child grew up to be General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.
The last camel sighting was in 1941.
This look at American Military History is brought to you in honor of Veteran’s Day. Go hug a vet. If you don’t know him, thought, make sure he’s not armed first. And by the way, that goes for hugging ANY stranger.
![Steve with blackhat&jacket 1[1]](http://petticoatsandpistols.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Steve-with-blackhatjacket-11.jpg "Steve with blackhat&jacket 1[1]")
By Stephen Bly
I don’t suppose the current generation has ever ridden in the open trunk of a car, nor let the air down in the tires to drive down a railroad track (and they call skateboarding an extreme sport). At one point, the six cowboys in the novel, plus Miss Diane Anderson, and the boy narrator, pile into a ’49 Plymouth, without seatbelts. I could have been the poster child for the need of such safety devices. I fell out of my parents’ car, going about 55 miles per hour, in 1949. I spent 10 days in the hospital nursing a major concussion.
The genetic bottle neck brings me to creatures like Neanderthal Man, troglodytes, to use a more generic–and no doubt incorrect–term. Cave men.
And I’d also like ONE example from anyone of one living creature that, in recorded history, has evolved. Seriously, I mean I know these things take a long time but c’mon, one thing. One time a chicken laid an egg and a baby was born that could…breathe under water. I can think of some animals that have adapted… adapting is very different from evolving. Where a black and white moth changed to more black than white when London became sooty. But there’s no genetic difference there. 
Mother’s Day is quickly approaching. It’s a day set aside to honor the women who either brought us into the world or cared for us once we were here. And sometimes we celebrate the love of women who have been like mothers to us. My novella Montana Rose in the To Be a Mother Love Inspired Historical anthology is the story of two young women who never knew their mothers, but who found each other.
Mountain Rose by Cheryl St.John
Would you like to win an advance copy of Kansas Courtship? It’s my March 2010 release, but I’m giving away three copies today. To enter the drawing, just leave a comment below. I’ll pull three names at random. 
“Captain” John Hance was reputedly the Canyon’s first non-Native American resident. He built a cabin east of Grandview Point at the trailhead of an ancient Native American trail he improved to allow access to his asbestos mining claim in the Canyon. He started giving tours of the canyon after his attempts at mining asbestos failed, largely due to the expense of removing the asbestos from the canyon. 
experience back country hiker said that even having been over the trail before, the time he took the trail with it in mind to report on it, he got lost five different times-by lost I mean he realized he’d gotten off the trail and had to backtrack to find it. There are miles with no discernable trail. I also, just because research is maddening, found this account of the Hance Trail.
different than the other report. So what is the truth? Ah, research! Such fun.
I grew up in West Texas, in Mitchell County. So far, I’ve used my hometown of Colorado City as the actual setting for only one of my books. But all of my westerns, whether historical or contemporary, are set in fictional towns in that part of the country. Its wonderful history fuels this writer’s heart and imagination.
My parents moved to the ranch in 1945, a year after they were married. Soon Daddy became the ranch foreman, a position he held until his death over fifty years later. The ranch had six thousand acres which my dad, my brother, and one or two hired hands worked—raising around three hundred head of Hereford cattle and farming cotton.
Isaac turned over the running of the ranch to William L. and went back to Illinois to tend to the wire business and harvest at his farm. William L. began searching for a herd. He found it two hundred miles away in the Texas Panhandle. He purchased 800 head of cattle from J. F. “Spade” Evans and acquired the brand which is shaped like a short-handled spade. Thus the ranch became Renderbrook Spade, generally known as Spade Ranch.
My thanks to Cheryl St.John and the ladies of Petticoats and Pistols for asking me to be a guest blogger.
My new book
What I discovered in most of the smaller towns or further out west in the more unsettled areas, the average doctor didn’t encounter many cases of this. So, being unfamiliar with how to diagnose or treat a patient suffering from it, they did one of the only things they could do. They compared it to what they *did* know.
suffering from amnesia due to a traumatic experience, an injury or any other cause, that doctor might caution those who know the patient to tread lightly. Such is the case in my story. My heroine is a prim and proper lady from Philadelphia who escaped an arranged marriage and fled east, then married a successful cattle baron in Wyoming. While journeying by train to visit her uncle, her train is robbed and an explosion causes her to lose her memory.
Traveling on the same train is a young woman fleeing from an abusive marriage and coming to take a job as a barmaid in a saloon. A case of mistaken identity has my heroine working as that barmaid while news of her death is sent back home to her husband. When her foreman finds her, he can’t believe his eyes. He’d always held a torch for her, and now he has his chance! Once her husband finds out, the town doctor issues the warning that he shouldn’t reveal his identity to his wife for fear that further harm than good could result. The foreman takes his boss to see his wife, but the ranch owner can’t touch her or tell her who he is. Instead, he has to sit back and watch his wife flirt with his foreman!
The U.S. Camel Corps was an experiment by the 
sounds—and transported to Texas. There Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale took over. 
demonstrated.”
