The Lieutenant’s Wife

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She Wore a Yellow Ribbon:

Women Soldiers and Patriots of the Western Frontier.

Miles and miles of cactus and sand stretched out before a small caravan making its way across the Arizona Territory to an army post in Prescott. Frances Ann Boyd, a petite woman barely past twenty, cast a worried glance at her husband, Orsemus, driving their wagon. The young lieutenant kept his eyes fixed on the rugged trail. Three mounted soldier escorts led the train along the dangerous path toward a canyon in the near distance. It was six o’clock in the evening and, apart from the sound of the wagon wheels bumping along the rugged terrain and the horses’ hooves clopping over rocks, all was quiet.

Frances eyed the horizon before them then disappeared into the wagon. She picked up two sabers lying next to a trunk, unsheathed them, and thrust them out either side of the back of the wagon. From a distance she hoped it would look like they were armed with more travelers who were ready to do battle with the Apache. “Unless they come very close,” she thought, “the dim light would favor our deception.”

To learn more about Frances Boyd and other women soldiers and patriots of the Western Frontier read She Wore A Yellow Ribbon.