A Tenderfoot Bride: Tales from an Old Ranch

Book excerpt: "A Tenderfoot Bride" is a memoir by Clarice E. Richards of Dayton, Ohio, who moved to a ranch in Elbert County, Colorado, east of Pikes Peak, in 1900. She was a bride of Jarvis Richards, a former Congregational minister from Vermont. It was an unlikely landing spot for these two educated easterners, but Clarice, with her inquisitiveness and lively sense of humor, became extensively westernized as she witnessed the high tide of the wild, lawless days, followed by much more grazing eras of the sheepman and farmer. Excerpt: "When our train left Colorado Springs and headed out into those vast stretches of the prairie, which spread East like a great green ocean from the foot of Pike's Peak, all the sensations of Christopher Columbus setting sail for a new world, and a few peculiarly my own, mingled in my breast. As the train pounded along I stole a look at Owen. He was absorbed in the contemplation of a map of our new holdings. Under that calm exterior I suspected hidden attributes of the primitive man. Certainly, there was some reason why Western life was to his liking, having had the chance to choose."