Mismatched- Digital Collage 5" x 6"

In my pantheon of bad relationships one stands out from the others: my brief marriage to Mona Sinclair. Mona's old man was General Sinclair. She had been something of a wild child back in Chicago and the General was convinced that she needed to meet someone outside her circle of jaded young cosmopolitans. Being unattached I fit the bill. The General had called me back from the Northern Territories for what he said was a critical mission. When I learned it involved chaperoning his daughter I politely declined.However, the Old Man wouldn't take no for answer and so we met.

Our first date was awkward. We spent dinner in relative silence until we connected through her love of fur and my passion for trapping. Although we had broken the ice, I found her way too dramatic for my tastes. Everything with her was either fabulous or a fiasco. Frankly, I hoped the evening would be a one shot deal. The General as I was to learn had other plans for us. At his insistence, I escorted Mona to various social functions throughout Autumn. Anyone but the General could see we had nothing in common. As far as I was concerned,Mona viewed me as nothing more than an ungainly accoutrement. By November, the General informed me that my future depended on my commitment to a more permenant arrangement with his daughter. Following a Thanksgiving dinner at his house, he announced to the extended family that Mona and I would be wed in December.

We married in an over-the-top ceremony at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Chicago. It was a tense evening. During a toast, Mona's aunt, Virginia McClellan referred to my Best Man, Soaring Eagle as "that perfectly charming young savage."After the reception we traveled fifteen miles north to the wooded suburb Glencoe where the Old Man had purchased us a home. In choosing it, my father-in-law sought for us a middle ground between the wild and the city. Though Mona and I tried to make the best of it, each of us knew the marriage was doomed. The firing of my musket got on her nerves as much as her endless prattling on about the latest fashions iritated me. In no time we retreated to separate bedrooms. It came as no surprise when one day she ran out of the house claiming she had to get into the city immediately to attend to some unspecified urgent business. I admit I stonewalled her wanting to avoid another one of her scenes. And so, she walked out never to return.

Our marriage was annulled, the house sold, and I was free to return to the wild.Upon arriving back North I swore I would never mix business and romance again. Of course, all that changed when I met Sitting Bull's Vassar-educated daughter, Lynn. But that is another story.