A Young Amy 1861 / 1991

Chapter One

This is a short story while I'm writing another longer one.

September 1861

Amy was just waking up but could feel the cold seeping through the Ranch House. She sat up and walked over to the window scratching the ice off the Pane of glass inside with her nails. She looked out and couldn't see anything but white, this was the worst winter storm she'd ever seen since that dreadful day 3 years ago when the winter storm was not even as bad as this one. She thought how fortunate she was to have got all her provisions in early.
Ever since that storm when she lost her parents and grandfather she'd always got things ready early. The last thing Amy wanted was to end up like they did.
She wrapped herself in a large blanket and used one of her fathers ties to secure it around her body. Amy put her furlined slippers on her feet and walked to the main room fireplace where she could still see embers glowing, brushing the Ash away from around the edges she was careful not to disturb those bright embers, Amy collected the Ash and put it in the bucket then grabbed some kindling and carefully lay it on top then some larger pieces.
She walked over to the corner of the room and opened the little cupboard taking out the bellows and then walked back and kneeled infront of the fire, the kindling had already started to catch so she started pumping the bellows slowly to get the fire going a bit more then put some more Logs in the firepit.
Amy sat in her Grandfather's Rocking chair waiting for the heat to start spreading through the house.
Thirty minutes later she had a roaring fire, the heat had spread through the house quickly thanks to the way her family had built the Ranch House using very large Tree trunks which helped to keep the heat inside.
Amy walked over to her bedroom and got dressed, but not in dresses like most young women, Amy found it warmer to dress in men's clothes, trousers, vests, shirts, woollen tops and Leather boots, but these were her mothers clothes. She put her father's long leather coat on and his cowboy hat, leather gloves and then walked out with a bucket to fill with fresh Snow. Amy only had to go to the end of the porch as there was already 4ft of snow. She was glad she gave the horses plenty of food and water in the barn when she noticed the snow starting to fall yesterday afternoon, her father raised cattle but she sold them for a large amount of money. There was no way she could look after the large herd on her own. She bred and trained horses like her Mother and made a nice living at it so far.
Amy filled the bucket with snow and walked back into the house, she shivered when the warmth hit her due to the freezing temperature outside then filled the kettle and hung it over the fire on the hook.

While Amy waited for the water to boil she thought about what happened three years before as she always did this time of year.
Her father had gone hunting, he'd taught Amy to hunt very well but asked her to stay and help her mother, the storm came out of nowhere and when he hadn't come back by the following morning her mother and grandfather went to find him. The storm had died down by then and they thought it would be safe, but by late afternoon the storm returned with a vengeance and three days later she found her family frozen, they were only a few feet away from her father. Locals helped to bring them back, and made wooden coffins to put them in, they left them round the back of the barn as they were still in mid winter, when the ground had started to thaw they were buried in the start of what in later generations would become the Family's Cemetery.

Amy was 15 and a half years old then, Other's offered to take her in but Amy thanked them and stayed at her Family's Ranch, that was when Amy started to write a daily diary for future generations. Now she was 18 and a half years old, turned down many proposals since her 16th Birthday.
Amy always said to her mother that she would marry for Love and she hoped that one day she would meet someone. The problem was that they were far and few, scattered around this new world, she new the history of when settlers first arrived back in the 1600s but settlers were still sparse especially in this area. Although there were settlements, there were also Reservations for the Native Americans, and then you had the gangs of Bandits. Lives were worth nothing back then whether you were European or Native Indians, bandits didn't care. Amy always had guns loaded near the doors.