Tomorrow's Promise: Mail Order Bride

Chapter Five Beautiful

Chapter Four

Sledge City, 1850

 

            Belinda sat down in front of an older woman who looked to be in her late 40’s. She didn’t want to sign up to be a mail order bride but she didn’t have any other way of supporting herself. She had been in Sledge City for about two months and she was unable to find work, her money was almost gone, and to top it all off she was becoming hungry. She couldn’t find a job anywhere, because she didn’t know how to do anything. This was her last opinion; she couldn’t let Tom Burton find her. If she becames some other mans wife Tom couldn’t do anything to her. She was so scared; how could she marry again so soon after David? He had hurt her so badly that she had become scared of most men. If she didn’t marry then what else was there out there for her? She could get a job in the men’s club up town. But she didn’t have an idea what the women who worked there did. However, she had heard rumors that those lady’s where giving more then just drinks.

            She lived with some of those girls in the tiny boarding house where she was staying. The room was very cheap ( in more ways than one.), but the money from selling the horse was running out. She knew she had to do this and just get… married.  Anything was better then going hungry on the street or having to sell herself to pay rent next week.

            So when she saw the piece of paper that the girls were passing around in the boarding house, she didn’t think twice about coming and signing up to become a mail order bride. She had a lot of men ask for her companionship but they all looked dirty and nasty. She knew that they only had one thing in their mind. To bed her and leave her or have her as their little toy, however if she married someone she didn’t like then she could always run away when she got some money.

When she walked into the mail order agency building at morning the older lady didn’t waste any time. She asked her all kinds of questions like her whole name, age, and birthplace. She had already made up her story, and it was easy, she told her that she was 20 years old; her whole name was Belinda Abigail Morris. She was born in Costa de Sol, Spain(which made her an immigrant in the eyes of most Americans but was much more acceptable than admitting she was the child of questionable heritage). She told them that her parents had brought her from Spainyears ago but had died tragically just recently and she needed a new start in life.  After all the questions were answered and she signed a piece of paper stating that she just married a man named Kristian Harris. She just couldn’t believe she just married a man she never met before. The older lady kept talking about the date that she would have to catch a stage to Sunrise, Texas in a month on a Saturday at 2:00 p.m. Wait a minute, she’s going to Texas? She had never been out west before. She heard nasty rumors about cowboys, Indians and how they were killing each other over land of all things. She was part Indian, but it was too late to take her signature back. The old lady smiled at her and got up to say that the meeting was over.  She got up and slowly made her way back to the boarding house. When she got back to her room, she let the tears fall. She couldn’t hold them back anymore; she was once more a man’s toy and a man’s possession. But she wouldn’t be a worrier over things she couldn’t change. She had promised herself on the way back home that she wouldn’t let this man see her cry.