Forged in Love by Mary Connealy

Author:Mary Connealy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Romance;Romance fiction;Western fiction;Novels;FIC042110
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

17

When Mariah was in a bad mood, she liked to make angle iron.

Flat strips of iron about three inches wide and six feet long, turned raging hot about six inches at a time, banged and banged and banged until every ounce of her mood was poured into a defenseless strip of iron . . . and she’d made something useful.

Angle iron made great support legs for tanks and windmills, buildings and wagons. Its uses were endless.

And making it was very satisfying.

There was plenty of call for angle iron, so she was wise to make it ahead of orders coming in, though Pa had a fair amount on hand already. But today she needed to do some banging.

Pump the bellows.

Make the fire roar.

Turn the iron from red-hot to white-hot.

Vise it hard on the anvil with half its width sticking over the edge.

Swing the sledgehammer until six inches of the iron was bent at a perfect ninety-degree angle.

Then do it all over again on the next six inches.

Halfway through the first strip of iron, her muscles were singing with the pleasure of the work.

She was good at this. As she banged along, she quit being angry at Clint and switched to being angry at her pa. He’d never fully respected her work.

It was ridiculous to think that somehow Pa, in heaven now, was looking down, nodding and thinking his girl was a fine blacksmith and he’d apologize to her when someday he saw her come through the pearly gates.

Mariah was pretty sure there were more serious things to do in heaven, like worship the Lord.

Even so, she needed to prove it to herself, if not Pa. And as she banged with the hammer, she decided she didn’t need a stupid dress with stupid ruffles. A thought that intruded now and again and made her bang all the harder.

Then, because she loved her pa and wasn’t happy focusing her anger at him, she thought of those men who’d killed her family and might even now be considering whether they should kill her. She almost hoped some criminal would try because she was in the mood to make them pay for their effort.

Every outlaw and every rattlesnake in the territory that knew what was good for him would stay well back today from Mariah Stover.

The fourth six-foot length of angle iron was done. Unhooking the vise, she held it with tongs and plunged it into a trough of water to cool it, then tossed the fashioned iron onto a growing pile. She clenched her hand on her sledgehammer, contemplating how she’d make someone pay for threatening her.

She heard the smithy door creak open.

She spun around, already hurling her sledge.

“Ack!” Becky jumped back and slammed the door just as the hammer crashed into it right where her face had been.

Mariah ran for the door. “Becky, are you all right?” She tore the door open.

Becky stood outside, her face in a deep scowl, her hand resting flat on her heart as if she were trying to hold it inside her chest.

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