The Mail Order Wife

Summary

A prairie-scarred pilgrim named John White, nursing the wound of May Webster’s filial refusal, treks westward to coax a barren government acreage into a kingdom of wheat; his quarter-section rubs against the equally ambitious claim of Bob Strong, and the two solitary tillers merge furrows, oxen, and dreams. Half a decade of calloused brotherhood later, Bob—tired of beans, soot, and his own echo—scribbles a mischievous postscript to a mundane Chicago supply order: “If you stock a marriageable woman, ship her COD.” The inked jest lands on the desk of none other than May, now chafing under the yoke of her ailing father’s silence. She answers the ad with the same trembling defiance that once denied John, sealing her fate into a carpet-bag and rattling west by rail and wagon. When she steps onto that limitless horizon, the wind whips memory into flesh: John’s eyes, sun-blistered yet unmistakable, lock onto hers; deferred devotion flares like dry sage on a lightning strike. Bob, suddenly the outsider in his own joke, confronts the arithmetic of affection—two hearts minus one equals a lonely partner. In a final act of frontier chivalry he cedes claim to the woman who was never inventory, restoring the lovers to a shared furrow beneath a sky big enough for second chances.

Synopsis

John White's sweetheart, May Webster, refuses to marry him while her old father is in need of her, and John goes west to take a government farm. Finding that their two ranch grants adjoin each other, he and Bob Strong become partners. Five years later Bob suggests that they get a housekeeper, and in spite of John's contempt of the idea. Bob adds a postscript to an order for some goods from a Chicago mail-order house, stating that if the company has any young woman who would care to go west and marry, to include her in the order. It is May who opens the letter and reads the postscript. After some correspondence between her and Bob, arrangements are made for the wedding, but the plans are suddenly changed when the young woman appears and meets her old sweetheart, John. The old love awakens and Bob is finally forced to give the girl up to his partner.