The Fire and the Ore by Hawker Olivia

Author:Hawker, Olivia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2022-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

JANE

Centerville

February 1857

The money from the sale of Elijah’s plow held out almost till winter’s end. On that dismal ride home from Smoot’s Mercantile, with the cold nipping at her bare head and ears, Jane steeled herself for even leaner weeks to come. She resolved to make do with her fifteen dollars till spring was well underway and the garden was in, for then she wouldn’t need to fret so much over food and warm clothing. When the roads had cleared of ice and snow, she could take Sarah Ann’s lap quilts to town and sell them door to door. She might cut firewood in the canyon and sell it in bundles along the road. All manner of opportunities might present themselves if she could only stretch those precious banknotes through the winter.

In the end, it wasn’t Jane’s money that gave out first. It was her spirit. One morning, late in February, she woke to find that Sarah Ann had already risen from their bed and was fixing breakfast on her own—a porridge made from the last of Elijah’s oats. Jane tried to rise, too. She tried to speak, but a leaden dullness had settled across her spirit and pressed her body down into the old straw tick. Her heart and head alike seemed plunged into a thick, heavy silence.

One clear thought remained, and it repeated endlessly against the void. I’m not likely to find another position—not in a store, nor in any woman’s home.

Word had surely made its way around Centerville—rumors of Jane’s outburst at the mercantile. No one would hire the short-tempered girl who’d dressed down Tom Ricks—especially not now that he’d emerged as a great hero who’d played a critical role in rescuing the stranded pioneers.

She lay staring at the weak morning light around the cracks of the shutters. Spring was still many weeks away. When the garden emerged from beneath its blankets of snow, she must prepare the soil and plant it, and pull weeds and tend new growth. She must haul wood from the canyon, food from town, see that Sarah Ann took her medicine each day. The weight of all that work, the endless responsibility, bore down upon her young body till she felt her bones grinding to dust, till she felt as old and used up as a broken clay pot.

I can’t do this on my own. It’s all too much for one girl to bear.

Jane didn’t try to blink back her tears or wipe them away. She let them fall on her thin pillow and made no attempt to quiet her sobs, though she knew the sound would alarm Sarah Ann. When her sister came to hold her hand and soothe her tears away, Jane forced herself to sit up. She could only move very slowly, as if age or illness had stiffened her limbs.

“I must ride to town this morning,” she said woodenly. “There’s someone I must speak to—the sooner, the better.”

She hadn’t any idea where she might find Tom Ricks, though she had a notion that the healer Tabitha must know where the man lived.

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