A Touch of Grace by Lauraine Snelling

Author:Lauraine Snelling
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2010-10-26T22:00:00+00:00

WHILE JONATHAN HAD THOUGHT haying hard work, shocking the bundles of wheat was another exercise in endurance.

He, Samuel, and Trygve walked behind the binder, grabbed two bundles of wheat, leaned them against each other, then stood another three to five against the shock and moved on up the field. Trygve made it look easy, but getting the rhythm took some doing, and having to go back to stand up a collapsed shock made him more careful. To put it mildly, wheat was a dusty and prickly business. His neck, under his shirt, itched like fire.

The girls bringing out water jugs were a most welcome break both morning and afternoon. He had the feeling that Grace was avoiding him by not making eye contact. He wished he had introduced the possibility of coming to New York in a more gentle manner. The look on her face had reminded him of their dog’s yowl when Mary Anne, as a toddler trying to walk, stepped on his tail.

At the end of the day, Jonathan collapsed on the ground, almost too tired to clean up and eat supper. Even worse than being hot and dirty, the bits of wheat spears that dug into the skin, especially under his shirt collar and pants waist, itched worse than a hundred mosquito bites. When Mrs. Bjorklund passed around a salve she’d made, he smeared it on immediately.

“You should market this,” he said as the fire in his neck died out.

“Metiz taught me how to make it. Have you heard of her?”

“The Indian woman with the wolf?”

“Yes. She taught us all so many things about living on the prairie. We might not have made it through that first winter without her. People rail about the Indians, but she was a true friend. I miss her still.” Ingeborg stared out the window. “She knew all about the herbs around here, which things are medicinal and which are good to eat. I keep a box of simples of my own now, and Dr. Elizabeth has been writing down all my receipts for the uses and mixtures.”

As the family sat down to supper, Jonathan couldn’t help but relive the shock he’d had that afternoon when he’d grabbed a shock and felt something moving in it. When the rattlesnake stuck his flat head out between the stalks of wheat, Jonathan dropped the shock with a yelp and leaped about five feet in the air and straight back.

“What’s the matter?” Trygve dropped his bundles and came running. Together they watched the snake slither away.

Jonathan laid his hand over his heart, hoping to keep the thundering organ in his chest.

“Yep, prairie rattler all right. Sometimes they get tossed up on the wagonloads of hay too. They like the cool of the shade.” He turned to grin at Jonathan. “Good thing they can’t strike without coiling. Saves us from plenty of bites that way.”

“That was too close for comfort.”

“As pa says, a miss is as good as a mile.”

But it wasn’t your arm that felt that critter moving.

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