High Plains Bride. Valerie Hansen

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      “We will not accept charity.”

      “I need a good cook, and it would give you a roof over your head. Please? You’ll be doing me a great favor.” Will waited until Emmeline finally nodded.

      “All right. Hopefully, it will just be for a few days. I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Logan.”

      “You can begin by calling me Will,” he suggested.

      “If I am to be in your employ, I should not be so familiar.”

      Will could tell she had slipped into a subservient position and he didn’t like that. In a way Emmeline was behaving wisely. If she remained in High Plains, keeping her good name would be crucial to finding a husband and making a new life for herself.

      That thought hit Will like a punch in the stomach. Most young women chose to marry and raise families.

      It was the idea of Emmeline Carter as a bride that stuck in his craw.

      VALERIE HANSEN

      was thirty when she awoke to the presence of the Lord in her life and turned to Jesus. In the years that followed she worked with young children, both in church and secular environments. She also raised a family of her own and played foster mother to a wide assortment of furred and feathered critters.

      Married to her high school sweetheart since age seventeen, she now lives in an old farmhouse she and her husband renovated with their own hands. She loves to hike the wooded hills behind the house and reflect on the marvelous turn her life has taken. Not only is she privileged to reside among the loving, accepting folks in the breathtakingly beautiful Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, she also gets to share her personal faith by telling the stories of her heart for all of Steeple Hill’s Love Inspired lines.

      Life doesn’t get much better than that!

      High Plains Bride

      Valerie Hansen

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Many are the plans in a man’s heart,

       but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

      —Proverbs 19:21

      Special thanks to the two other authors who

       participated with me in the series

       After the Storm: The Founding Years,

       Renee Ryan and Victoria Bylin

      Getting to know both these talented writers

       as we’ve worked and plotted together

       has been a real blessing.

      Special thanks and acknowledgment to

       Valerie Hansen for her contribution to the

       After the Storm: The Founding Years miniseries.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Letter to Reader

      Questions for Discussion

      Prologue

      Kansas Territory

       1858

      The two solitary riders felt the brunt of the wintry wind at their backs as they urged their weary mounts toward the closest high point in the flint hills. Both men were wrapped in buffalo robes they’d obtained from the Plains Indians they’d encountered near the abandoned Kansa Mission School at Council Grove.

      Will Logan, in the lead, was glad they’d brought enough baubles with them to successfully trade for the thick, hairy robes. Though the hides weren’t the sweetest-smelling things he’d ever encountered, without their protection he and his friend would literally be freezing.

      He pulled his broad-brimmed, felt hat lower and bent forward in the saddle, bracing against the force of the prairie gale and wishing mightily that he’d had the foresight to grow a beard and let his thick, dark blond hair reach his shoulders instead of keeping it so neatly trimmed.

      His fingers were half-numb inside his leather gloves as he tugged on the rope fastened to their pack mule’s harness, urging the stubborn animal to keep pace. Although it plodded along in begrudging compliance, the rangy mule laid its ears back, snorted and blew clouds of condensation from its nostrils, clearly not agreeing that the small party was behaving sensibly by leaving the known route and pressing on into uncharted territory.

      “Just a few hundred yards more,” Will shouted to his human companion.

      Zeb Garrison kicked his bay gelding and pulled up beside Will’s sorrel. “So you say. I should have known better than to follow you out here in December. We’re both likely to freeze to death. And the horses, too.”

      Will laughed in spite of the icy needles of frost pricking his cheeks and nose. “You got soft working in Boston,” he taunted. “This change will be good for both of us. You’ll see. And by getting an early start, we’re far enough ahead of other settlers to lay claim to the choicest plots of land in this neck of the woods.”

      “Assuming we live long enough to enjoy them,” Zeb countered. “If the weather doesn’t kill us, those Indians we keep seeing in the distance might. I still say they’re tracking us. Probably want their buffalo hides back.”

      “Nonsense. We bought them fair and square.”

      With one final lunge, the horses gained the high ground. Will’s pale blue eyes widened, and he shaded them with his hand on his brow, sighing deeply. Below lay total vindication, as lush a valley as he’d ever hoped for and the wide, meandering river that completed their list of necessities. Too bad his doubting father was not here to see what he’d found.

      Rising in his stirrups, Will turned to his lifelong friend, pointed and grinned. “There. See? I told you we’d find the perfect place for your mill and my ranch. I can picture it already. The town will go down there, thanks to the generosity of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, and I can use my stake from them to bring in longhorns to graze these hills. Eating switchgrass and big and little bluestem the likes of what grows here in summer will fatten up those critters real fast. They’ll be ready for market in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

      Zeb’s nod was barely perceptible beneath the bulky buffalo robe, but he did agree. “Maybe you’re right. It does look promising. I think I even see a small waterfall upstream that I can use for power. Still…”

      Will wasn’t about to take no for an answer. He’d prayed continually for the good Lord’s guidance and knew without question that this was his personal promised land.

      He passed the mule’s lead rope to Zeb, then gave his horse its head and let the animal choose the best route of descent from the wide mesa to the river valley below. Will was so exuberant he paid no heed as the animal’s shod hooves loosened bits of shale and ice that