The Unbound Horizon

Just so everyone knows, this is my first attempt at writing, I've never been good at it, but at the same time I have a wild imagination that needs to get out somehow. Also I don't currently have internet so I am literally going to be writing this whole story on my iPhone, so I apologize for autocorrections that will probably occur during this story.

Chapter 1: 1840

Alan and his wife Helen dreamed of having a horse a cattle ranch all their own where they could raise their family away from the busy city. They were poor, and so they both worked and saved every penny they had until they had enough money to buy a plot of land. The land was empty, there was no house, barn, fence, or well.

When they started building their house they placed it on the top of a hill over looked their entire property. It was a small two story house with a wrap around porch, so that at night they could sit on their porch and see everything that they had made.

The barn came next, they built it big enough to hold hay bails and feed, and cows for milking. After the barn had been completely they put up a wooden fence around the perimeter of their land with one entrance with a wooden sign above that read "Johnson's Ranch" .

The the little remaining money they had, they bought two milking cows, a bull, two horses, and a broken wagon, and seeds to plant a garden with.

Once they had arrived home with their purchases from town, Helen made some tea and they sat outside in old rocking chairs on their porch and looked out at the horizon. They saw the barn the built together, the wooden fence they put up together and the animals that they had bought. It has taken two years to finish everything, and they finally did it.

"Could life be any better?" Alan asked his wife.

"Yes Alan, I think it could." Helen replied with a shy smile. Alan looked at her wondering what she meant. "Alan dear," Helen said. "I'm pregnant." When Alan heard this he jumped up picked up Helen holding her close and spun he around.

"Are you sure?" Alan asked.

"I'm positive." Helen replied. And they both held each other knowing there would never be another moment as precious as this.

Chapter 2: 1867

It had two years now since the civil war ended, and the Johnson family were luckier than most to still have their whole family. Alan and Helen now had six grown children who helped out with their now very big horse and cattle ranch.

They first had Matthew who was now 25 and married to a woman named Ellen. Then they had a girl named Rebecca who was only one year younger than Matthew, she was also married to a man named Isaac. Then there was Benjamin who was 22 and married to a woman named Emily.

Then came Evelyn, who was definitely different she was 20 and was not married, and had no plans to ever be married, which during that time was very much frowned upon pretty much who she was and what she did was frowned upon by society, but she didn't care. After her were two more boys, Joshua who was now 15 and the youngest was William who was 10.

When the war started six years earlier a lot of things changed for the Johnson family. All three of the oldest men in the family went to fight for the confederate side. Alan, their father, Matthew who was 19, and Benjamin was only 16, but there was no stopping him from going, and so all three men left the family to contribute to the confederate army. This left Helen and her two daughters to look after the ranch and each other, and it scared them. The two youngest boys were only eight, and three at the time, to young to be of a lot of help to the ranch. That left Rebecca and Evelyn to look after it. Helen would help as much as she could but after bearing six children so close together it made her weak a little frail, she was strong in spirit, but her body wasn't able to keep up. Rebecca refused to have anything to do with cattle or the horses, she strongly believed that a woman's place was in the house and that the man's place was out in the fields.this left the responsibility of the ranch to Evelyn, who was only fourteen years old when the war started and her father and brothers left.