A Groom for Heather by Christine Sterling

Author:Christine Sterling [Sterling, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-19T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Heather left the lawyer's office and held her head high as she walked down the alley. Once she was out of sight from the main road, she leaned her arm against the wall and dry heaved. How she got through the meeting she would never know.

The cowboy was buying her farm. He didn’t look like someone who knew a lot about farming, but he was right. Why should she be concerned? It was his property now. Fumbling around in her reticule for her handkerchief, Heather pulled out a square of linen cloth and wiped her mouth. She needed to get home and prepare supper. Arthur was probably complaining to Millie that he was starving. Heather was convinced her best friend thought Arthur was never fed.

She walked to the butcher shop and using a skeleton key she went inside. The shelves were empty, but the scent of smoke lightly filled the air. There was one barrel that still had cured pork buried beneath the salt. Heather might gift that to Mr. James. She gave a little laugh. It wasn’t hers to give anymore.

She opened the door where Jackson would cure pork. The sweet smoky scent of sugar-cured bacon still lingered. There was a note glued to the wall. Even though Heather had read it a thousand times, she read it once more. Be sure to check the smokers. Two-parts hardwood to one-part wet cottonwood. I love you. J. Heather traced the words lovingly before peeling the paper from the wall. She folded it and placed it in her pocket, giving it a little pat.

Those were the final instructions Jackson gave her before he left on the hunting trip. It was her job to make sure the smoker was smoking around the clock. Little did he know that she worked from dawn to well past dusk once the blizzard passed. Since so many animals died, the meat would have been wasted if it weren’t for being able to smoke it. Heather even went from farm to farm, showing the farms how to set up a smokehouse of their own.

She walked through the smoke room and unlocked the door leading into a small backyard. The buckets of cottonwood which were normally kept along the fence had long been moved. There were normally two flat wagons that Jackson used to prepare the meat for smoking. Those had been sold. The yard was bare apart from patches of grass and several dandelions giving a bit of color to the dull ground.

Heather felt her throat thicken as she wandered through the small store once more. Jackson introduced her to many of the people in town as they came through the shop. He was well respected, and the town welcomed her with open arms. Taking a deep breath, she locked the shop and put the key in her pocket with Jackson’s note. She’d give the key to Mr. James the next time she saw him.

As she walked down Stagecoach Road towards the livery, she spied Charity and Nathaniel coming out of the new doctor's office.

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