A Bride at Last by Melissa Jagears

Author:Melissa Jagears [Jagears, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC042030, FIC042040, FIC027050, Mail order brides—Fiction, Frontier and pioneer life—Fiction, Kansas—Fiction
ISBN: 9781441269515
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

Silas groaned and rolled over. Since returning to his homestead outside of Salt Flatts, nights on his cabin floor had not been kind. He should get to work making another bed, but the mess Peter Hicks had left drove him to do as much as possible before a cold snap made outside work even more unpleasant.

He lifted his head off the quilts he’d piled on the floor and squinted into the early morning light filtering across where Anthony slept on the bed.

His hip aching at how he must have lain throughout the night, Silas pulled himself up off the floor and onto the chair he’d dragged in. The boy’s joints and muscles probably would’ve taken sleeping on the floor better, but it was the least he could do to help Anthony look favorably on his new home.

Taking his clothing from yesterday off the back of the chair, Silas slipped them on before heading into the kitchen to stoke the fire for coffee.

A few minutes later, Anthony came stumbling in, rubbing at his eyes.

“Good morning, son.” He smiled. The cricks in his body and the weight of dread over the coming winter lessened a smidge just by uttering the word son.

“Can I go to school today?”

Silas pressed a hand to his complaining stomach and slid the pot onto the burner. “Maybe next week. We have pears to gather and some of the persimmons are dropping, so we need to gather those right away and make persimmon leather.” They needed everything he could store considering how much of the garden had been left to rot or was eaten by wildlife. Evidently Peter Hicks had done nothing more than load as much of Silas’s goods on Silas’s wagon as possible and head west. The man had told him he needed a job to help him start his own homestead but had failed to explain he planned to take Silas’s stuff to do so.

At least the bulk of his savings had been in the bank, but with the way Kansas weather went, he needed to keep every dime there in case next year’s crop failed or the winter was harsh. So in the meantime, he’d scrounge every wild growing thing possible.

“While I fix something for breakfast, why don’t you throw the scraps to the pig?” One pig. The other two hadn’t survived without being watered for weeks.

The boy groaned but worked to put his muddy pants back on.

“Maybe you could do the laundry before our clothes walk away from us. Kate said you worked at a laundry once. Could you do so without help?”

Anthony stopped pulling his boots on to frown at him. “Back in Breton you said you didn’t need me for chores. That’s all I’ve done since we got here.”

He swallowed. “This isn’t the situation I expected to bring you home to.”

Anthony gave him a glare the orphanage directors would have clocked him for, then tromped over to the washstand and scrubbed his face.

Silas followed him out to the barn but stopped in the middle of the yard.

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