When she had first arrived in Canon City, she had gotten a room in a small mansion on Macon Avenue, surrounded by high oaks and maples. Needing money, Annabelle went to work in the mansion as a live-in housekeeper and nanny for a very wealthy family who owned oil in Florence and several businesses in downtown Canon City. That became her goal, to eventually open her own business in Canon City, but first she would remember the constant admonition of her father, “Crawl before you walk,” when she would get overly enthused about any new idea or project she was ready to undertake.
For right now, she was working hard and taking other jobs as well to earn as much as she could.
Annabelle had grown up in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Her father had been an industrialist in New York City, made a fortune, and moved to Canandaigua, New York. It was a beautiful area, with tough winters and magnificent woods and waters. The town actually had been the primary residence of the Seneca when the white men came and started settling the East. The Finger Lakes were several very large wooded lakes in upper west-central New York State, the home of hardy people. In fact, at the same time Annabelle was cleaning the mansion in Canon City, suffragist Susan B. Anthony was in the Ontario County courthouse in Canandaigua being ordered to pay a $100 fine, which the women's rights advocate refused to pay and never would.
Annabelle was a very tough-minded person herself. When Joshua Strongheart saw the tear in her eye on the stage, it was very unusual, but she had been at the end of her rope. After moving, her father had made several large investments in the area and lost heavily. Then he started making more risky investments, trying to recoup or make up for his previous losses, which only made matters worse.
The long and the short of it was that Annabelle's family had gone from being wealthy to struggling for every penny by the time she fell in love and got married. Then, when her husband died, she was left with nothing but a very small amount of money.
Annabelle, however, viewed all this as in part good fortune, as she had developed a real toughness emotionally and physically, as well as an incredible work ethic growing up. She knew she would be successful someday, another husband or not, and she had now made her mind up that with God's help, she would do it on her own. In short, she was a survivor. On the other hand, she did not like being alone, and a part of her hoped she would fall in love again and marry someone whom she could spend out her days with.
A good example of her survivor skills came shortly after she moved to Canon City and started working at the mansion. She had gone into town for supplies, and her long black hair and piercing blue eyes made many men take notice, but one day she caught the eye of a beast who had come to town to trade some furs and buy supplies.
Bear Borgadine was quite simply a man of enormous dimension. He could move any rock that was not larger than himself, and reach tree branches that others could not even touch, and break off most of those with his cantaloupe-sized hands. Garbed in a massive suit of animal armor, the fur-clad mountain man spent all his time in the Sangre de Cristo, Collegiate, and San Juan Mountains, always out of sight from man. Each fall, though, he would end his trapping and start looking for winter quarters, and every fall he would find some prospector high up in the mountains and kill the man for his cabin. In the springtime, Bear was on his way.
It was such a fall day, after dispatching a longtime hermit, that he went down below to prepare for a long winter and spotted Trish Garman, a beautiful blond young woman who was the youngest offspring of the Garman clan, with nine older brothers, each a cold-blooded hard-core outlaw. If not a killer yet, each of the brothers was galloping in that direction.
Bear had made his once-in-a-year trip for supplies to the small town of Poncha Springs and was returning to the Big Range, when he happened on the beautiful Trish. He decided he wanted her as a prize to have during his long winter stay, knowing he would get rid of her once the snows were gone and he was ready to start traveling and trapping again.
He laid a trap for her on the river road, along the churning Arkansas River, west of Cotopaxi, as she returned home from a shopping trip at Colorado City. Having captured the beauty, Bear took her with him to his cabin high up in the Collegiate range, where she became his virtual slave.
This man was half-animal in his thinking and instincts anyway and did not care that she was the sister of outlaws, or that she was innocent herself. She was simply a new object he wanted, and he had gotten everything he wanted by sheer force and intimidation his whole life. Much as Big Scars Cullen had, except Cullen needed to be led. Bear Borgadine was a loner and did whatever he wanted.
The outlaw family searched high and low for Trish, but because of their high-profile status, they did not want to enlist the aid of others, especially the law. They figured they were so dominant in numbers and toughness that they would be able to find their sister and string up the hombre that took her. But they finally had to give up their search.
Bear did not get his nickname for no reason. Every winter he almost went into hibernation. He spent a good deal of time in the summer and late fall preparing his alpine cabin for this winter seclusion. He jerked meat, shot game, cut firewood, took in supplies, set up his winter trapline, and usually kidnapped one or two tribal women to spend the winter with him. Then in the spring he would kill them and get rid of the body, usually just stuffing it under rocks. That is what he did with Trish Garman. He liked having a white woman so he could have some conversations over the winter.
When he spotted the ravishing, raven-haired, blue-eyed Annabelle, he knew he had his target for the upcoming winter.
Annabelle went to several different stores that day, thinking often about Strongheart, who was at that time on his way to Oregon. She, as mentioned, was indeed a survivor, so she was very aware of her surroundings, especially people. Annabelle was used to men staring at her and took that in stride, never taking herself too seriously, but the giant of a man following her around downtown Canon City was very obvious. Her mind started working on how to handle the situation.
Walking quickly down toward Old Max, the territorial prison that could be found at the west end of Main Street, Annabelle checked behind her occasionally. She saw that the big fur-covered man was still following her. She concluded that if he did not have evil plans, he would simply have approached her. So, she reasoned, he must be up to no good.
Going into the livery stable and blacksmith shop, she wanted to try to solve this on her own if she could, without enlisting the aid of any men. It was not defensiveness or an overinflated ego on the part of the young lady. She was actually being thoughtful and considerate. Annabelle knew the farrier, also a large and muscular man, but very kind and a true gentleman, seemingly very devoted to his wife, who ran a laundry down the street. She figured if she talked to him, then the beast following her would maybe stay back when he saw the size of the blacksmith. The other possibility would be the blacksmith or another man getting into a fight on her behalf. She did not want that.
Annabelle greeted the blacksmith and started asking him questions about shoeing her horse, which she already knew the answers to. She was killing time, so she could think.
She had already decided that she was not going back to the mansion that day, which was a quarter mile away anyway, with several alleyways and empty lots in between. She did not want the behemoth to know where she lived. Further, Annabelle did not want to needlessly expose any innocent man to danger, such as the blacksmith, who would surely go confront the large mountain man on her behalf. Annabelle could sense that the stranger following her was pure evil.
She asked the blacksmith if he would rent her a horse, and he said absolutely. He saddled it while they spoke, and she noticed that the big bear of a man remained across the street lounging in a rocking chair a business owner had set out for his own comfort. The merchant certainly saw the big man through his shop window, but he was not going to approach such a rough-looking monster of a man. This intimidation factor had allowed Bear to function for decades in any manner he chose, but it was not going to work with Annabelle, especially after what had happened on the stage.
When the horse was saddled, she asked if the blacksmith could let her borrow some saddlebags as well. He did so, and she put her shopping items inside them, letting him think she was tired, had more errands to run, and did not want to walk her legs into the ground. In actuality, she normally loved walking into and around town. There was a lot of traffic, especially horse traffic, in Canon City, and there was a bridge not too far away, called simply the Fourth Street Bridge.
She had also noticed earlier that the big bear man had a large draft horse, a Percheron, that he rode, and it was tied at a hitching rail in front of a tavern. Further she knew that he would be able to see her from many spots on Main Street riding across the Fourth Street Bridge, which she wanted to do.
She mounted up and almost trotted out of the livery stable, turning and heading toward Fourth Street, where she turned toward the river. She carefully looked back and saw her husky pursuer scrambling down the street toward his own horse. As she crossed the bridge, one glance back told her that the man was almost to his horse. When she got to the other side of the bridge and was now out of sight of downtown, she put the horse into a fast trot. She knew that if she galloped, her horse would leave obvious tracks mixed with all the other horses that had passed that way. But if she trotted, the tracks her horse left would not be as obvious. There was a lot more vegetation closer to the river, and at one point where there were a lot of bushes and trees, she carefully picked a spot, put her arm across her face, and turned her horse into the foliage. Once out of sight, she dismounted, walked him a short distance in the woods, and tied him to a tree. She then made her way back to Fourth Street and crawled forward to where she was well hidden but could see the hard-packed road heading south of town.
Annabelle waited anxious minutes until she heard the big horse approaching. She almost held her breath, as the big man and his draft horse rode by. After he passed, she crawled forward and watched until he rode to the hill a quarter mile south and the road then turned to the left and up onto a hill above town called Prospect Heights. Once he was out of sight, she returned to her horse, led him out of the undergrowth, and galloped back to town, constantly checking behind her. She galloped and trotted the horse all the way to the mansion, which was north and east of where she'd been at Fourth Street. Once there, she walked the horse around outside the stable, letting him cool down and constantly watching to the south to insure that the hairy giant did not reappear. Bear did not. He was already well south of town, trying to pick up her trail.
What she did not know that day was that one month later, he would be well west of Canon City, near Poncha Springs, heading up toward his cabin in the Collegiate range with a captured young Ute woman in tow. The woman was the betrothed of a very courageous young Ute warrior named Old Moccasins, who followed the giant. When the mountain man rounded a bend in a switchback trail heading up the mountain, he came face-to-face with the warrior, who launched an arrow that took Bear right in the side of the neck, slicing his carotid artery and windpipe both. He panicked and tried to whirl his horse, and both went off the side of the trail, rolling down the rocky cliff and hardly recognizable as man and horse when they landed at the bottom of the cliff, a bloody pile.
Old Moccasins retrieved his very happy fiancée as well as Bear's pack mule and supplies. The two returned to his home area several days' riding away, on past Pagosa Springs and south near New Mexico Territory.
Buzzards, several coyotes, two different actual bears, and other predators would make Bear Borgadine and his large horse disappear within a few days' time. He would simply become one more of many who roamed the West and disappeared in avalanches, rock slides, and flash floods, with a few people wondering whatever happened to them but never really finding out.
Annabelle kept the livery horse in the mansion's stable and returned it the next day, enjoying her leisurely stroll back to the big stone house on Macon Avenue.
One of Canon City's founding families, the Anson Rudds took notice of her, after hearing about her personality and her work ethic at the mansion. She had not even been there a full month when they asked her what kind of business she wanted to start, and she said she loved to cook and wanted a small café. They owned a small, empty building just off Main Street and a small house on Greenwood with a nice yard and nice mountain views, and they offered to set her up in both and gave her a modest payment plan, so she could have them paid back within ten years.
Annabelle was deeply grateful to them and immediately started cleaning and decorating both the small cabin and the new café. The blacksmith let her have credit and helped by installing a good cooking stove.
Within weeks, she had water in both the café and the cabin. That was very unusual, as most homes had wells outside, but the café building had an indoor pump, and the Rudds had one installed in the cabin, too, as the water table was high in the lowland area along the Arkansas River basin, and water from wells in the area was good. Plus they had wanted to update the cabin previously and had already planned to do so by putting a well inside with a pump.
Annabelle learned from other merchants that Canon City, unlike a lot of Colorado, had very mild winters and got less than a foot of snow per year. The climate was semi-arid and the town was surrounded by mountains on three sides, with the prairie opening up out to the east, so it was protected. Plus, in the drier atmosphere, she would learn that she could go outside without a shawl or coat in the winter as long as the sun was out. Unlike during her upbringing back east, the winters here generally would not bring the humid freezing cold that would chill her to the bone. Also, the summers were hot, but because of the nearby mountains, there was often a cooling breeze blowing. On top of that, there were more than 330 days of sunshine each year, so she immediately started putting in a garden behind the café and at her little house. Within a week or so, she also started learning which local farmers provided the best fruits and vegetables, and that most of the best crops came from the south side of the river and from around Florence, as the soil seemed to be a little more alkaline on the north side. This was especially true the farther you got away from the river. Just a few miles north of her, she learned there were patches of white alkali in the soil. As far she could learn, there were no areas of alkali south of the river around Canon City.