LOL I had to laugh at your use of the "olden days". When I say that, I mean the 1800s.
Anyway, I answered the above thread too, so I'll repeat a little. I'm old enough to remember people like Ray: men who worked the land - ranchers and farmers - in the West (and Midwest) were often very decent people. He would have wanted to help a young woman in trouble, and would have also been in dire need of a helping hand on the farm. Farming was (and is) hard physical work, and couldn't be done alone. A wife was really necessary. It wasn't mentioned in the script, but he might have been paid a small fee to do it, too. Mail-order brides weren't that common, btw, and weren't any more common in the western states than anywhere else. But again.. where that happened, it was because the man needed help to work a farm. The deal was that she got a stable home and the opportunity to start fresh, to have children, etc. He got a helpmate on the farm.
I think that, from my perspective, people back then were more understanding of making commitments to helping someone in need. Making a lifelong commitment was taken very seriously, and it wasn't all about romance - that would have been considered a little flighty and silly and immature. It was about practical stuff: finding someone who was morally decent and a hard worker. With someone like that you could really build something, for generations to come. That was what people valued. If there ended up being a little romance, well, great. And the lucky ones found that too. Like Livy and Ray.
This story takes place btw in La Junta, Colorado. My family settled in that area (Nepesta and Fowler - a few miles away) around 1861, and were ranchers like Ray. My grandparents were Ray and Livy's generation, and so I know well how their minds worked and what their lives revolved around. It truly was "the greatest generation" and the ones that came after have been much less generous of heart.
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