12/17/2025
"“Wait… you’re going to put that in me?” — The mail-order giant bride froze, but the cowboy…
Marta Cunningham, the Queen of Arkfield
In the Year of Our Lord 1887, in a cold little room in Boston, lived a woman who seemed carved by the gods themselves to be a giant. Marta Cunningham stood six feet two inches barefoot, had the shoulders of a lumberjack, hands capable of cracking a walnut between two fingers, and a waist no corset in the world dared to tame.
Since childhood they had called her the long one, the tower, the mule in a dress. Her stepmother, a snake with a doll’s face, threw her out of the house the day she turned twenty-four.
“We don’t keep pack animals here,” she spat, slamming the door.
Marta was left on the street with a broken suitcase and a heart even more broken.
For weeks she slept in cheap boarding houses, sewed until her fingers bled, and ate hard bread. One night, flipping through an old newspaper, she saw the ad:
Widowed man, rancher in Montana, seeks wife of strong character and strong hands. Appearance unimportant — what matters is a soul capable of enduring mother-born winters. Write to Jessie Hartfield, Territory of Montana.
Marta took up the pen. Her letters were long, sincere, without embellishment. She told him she could carry 100-pound sacks, cook for 20 cowboys, care for sick horses, and that she never got ill. She never mentioned her height.
Jessie Hartfield wrote back for four straight months. His letters smelled of leather and pine. He never asked what she looked like, only repeated:
“I need a woman who doesn’t break when the wind blows 40 below. I need a woman stronger than me.”
The day Marta stepped off the train in Maeri, Montana, the wind slapped her face like a knife. She wore a gray dress she had sewn wide herself because she couldn’t find enough fabric in Boston for a woman her size. People on the platform stared with their mouths open.
A child yelled:
“Mom, look! A giant lady!”
She lowered her head, used to it.
Then she saw him. Jessie Hartfield was not the poor cowboy she had imagined. He was tall, yes, but not as tall as she was. Broad-shouldered, with a black beard streaked with silver, eyes the color of the sky before a storm. He wore a black formal suit and a brand-new Stetson. Beside him was a carriage drawn by four purebred horses.
When he saw her, he didn’t step back. He smiled as if he had been waiting his entire life for someone exactly like her.
“Marta Cunningham?” he asked in a rough voice.
She nodded, bracing for rejection. Jessie removed his hat and bowed slightly.
“Welcome home, Mrs. Hartfield.”
They were married that same afternoon in the small wooden church. Father Omage had to stand on a stool to put the rings on their fingers. The ranch cowboys, who had come out of curiosity, fell silent at the sight of the bride who nearly touched the ceiling with her head.
The reception was held in the hotel hall. Everyone expected Jessie to get drunk and regret everything, but he didn’t drink a single drop. When night came, he took Marta upstairs to the room prepared for the bride.
She trembled. She had heard stories of men who demanded horrible things on the first night. Jessie closed the door gently, went to a corner, and brought out a hand-carved cedarwood box, as large as a small trunk.
“This is for you,” he said. “Open it.”
Marta swallowed hard. She thought of running. She thought there would be ropes, a whip, something to humiliate her for being so big. Her huge hands trembled as she lifted the lid. Inside, on green velvet, shone a ring — an emerald the size of a walnut, surrounded by small diamonds. It was the most beautiful jewel she had ever seen.
Beneath the ring lay a leather folder with notarized documents.
Jessie spoke slowly, like someone presenting a treasure.
“That emerald was brought by my grandfather from Colombia in 1842. He gave it to my grandmother the day they were married. My mother wore it until the day she died. Now it’s yours.”
Marta didn’t understand.
“And these papers,” Jessie continued, “are half the Hartfield ranch. Land, house, cattle, bank accounts — all in your name. Legal and signed before the judge. If I die tomorrow, no one will be able to throw you out. Not my greedy cousins, not the bank, not the devil himself.”
She looked at him as if she were dreaming."