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Tell you how it happened, and I'll tell it to you honest: how a hundred marriageable ladies (Brides, we called them, in honor of their destiny) come to grace our fair city of Seattle. And fair it is, the fairest you could hope to see short of Zion itself. I'll allow it didn't seem so to them right off, coming as they did from a place all starched and folded. Why, it was on their account we passed the ordinance to keep the pigs off the streets–not that they were doing a pinch of harm.
Me, I was the one fetched them. For those of you that don't know me, my name's Jason Bolt. I own the logging camp up above town with my two brothers Joshua and Jeremy. Own the mountain it sets on, too–Bridal Veil Mountain. 'twasn't named for the brides, as you might suppose. But on the other hand, the name wasn't entirely a coincidence.
This was the way of it: For a spell the men had been yearning for women. Not the kind they could row across the Sound and drop in on, if they had four bits saved they didn't mind squandering–for, truth to tell, none of that lot on the waterfront is worth the powder to blow them up with. No, sir, they wanted proper girls (but not too proper to steal a kiss from), the kind they could court and hanker for and get wedded with. They'd lay about mewling and moaning over it and I'd have to talk them into a working humor. And this one time I had the idea to christen the mountain anew–Bolt Mountain, she'd been called till then. Told the men she was their bride, and if they'd just treat her gentle–well, you needn't hear the whole of the comparison. But I did it up royal.
By and by, though, even I couldn't talk away their lonesomeness, and it was plain that women would have to be brought. Even the stuffed shirts saw that. Aaron Stempel, the town man who mills our logs (and who's warmed up considerable since then, I have to say), up and offered to pay our way to New England, where it was said you could pick women from the trees like green apples. Found out later he'd made plans to bring some in from elsewhere, in case I failed. Failed–me! But that was his great hope. For the condition he'd laid down was, then he'd have our mountain. With that and the mill, he'd be the only power in town, and my brothers and me, who were always disrupting his plans and getting under his skin generally, would be his hired hands, or gone altogether.
So we fetched them, like I was saying–and I'm telling it to you honest–on a boat commonly used for mules. Which wasn't altogether out of keeping, considering. Candy Pruitt, their ringleader–well, I always did say I like a woman knows her own mind. She picked my youngest brother Jeremy for hers, and has kept him out of mischief, mostly.
Well, that's how it happened. As for what followed, you can see for yourself if you happen on a collection of tales called Here Come the Brides–which was one of my sayings, by the way–in that new-fangled invention they call Teevee. (I reckon this for an Indian word.) Or you can read a few here in this other invention they call the Web. Ain't progress a marvel?
And, oh, yes...
bravenet.com
