Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Loose Id Titles by Fyn Alexander
Fyn Alexander
WINTER HEARTS
Fyn Alexander
www.loose-id.com
Winter Hearts
Copyright © November 2014 by Fyn Alexander
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Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
eISBN 9781623005061
Editor: Judith David
Cover Artist: Fiona Jayde Media
Published in the United States of America
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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter One
Winter 1881
De Smet, Dakota Territory
The wind howled like a lonely wolf.
It wasn’t the only thing that was lonely. Winter had set in hard, and now, at the beginning of January, Luke was sick of it, unsure he could stand another three or four months of winter blizzards. But what else was there to do? Some men got so lonesome that they picked up their guns and blew their brains out. Others went crazy and wandered off onto the prairie, where they froze to death.
Luke Chandler was stronger than that. Just last summer he’d survived a beating in New York City that would have killed a weaker man.
Five burly longshoremen had dragged him outside the White Horse Tavern and into a dark, stinking alley on Hudson Street, all because he’d smiled at another man. When he’d walked into the crowded bar, the man, rough but handsome, had nodded at him. Bored and already slightly drunk, he had misread the signs. The smile he threw back, hoping for a quick tussle outside the back door, was flirtatious. It was enough to get him a couple of black eyes, three or four broken ribs, and so many bruises he couldn’t shave for weeks because his face was so swollen.
After his wounds had begun to heal a little, he’d headed west to Dakota Territory, stopping at the General Land Office in Brookins to claim a quarter section of good cropland. The short, skinny man who had written up the land patent for him looked as if he had never worked a plow in his life. “Are you the head of a family?” he’d asked several times.
“No, but I’m thirty years old. Plenty old enough to acquire land for the price of the filing fee,” Luke had answered, growing increasingly irritated.
The question, When are you getting married? had become something he dreaded, having been hounded by it from about the age of twenty.
“Looks like you’ve been in a fight too,” the man had said over the top of his wire-rimmed spectacles. “I hope you can keep out of trouble. The government wants nice little law-abiding towns set up on prairie land. No outlaw types are welcome.”
“I just want land to farm. I want a quiet life,” he’d said. All he wanted was to be left in peace.
“You’ll find a wife when you get there,” the man assured him. “She’ll keep you out of trouble.”
He’d arrived at the little town of De Smet at the end of summer, too late to plant crops on his hundred and sixty acres, but there’d been time to build a claim shanty and a small barn for his horse and the cow he’d bought on the way. All by himself he’d dug a well so he’d have fresh water for when he could put a pump indoors. When winter proved colder than anyone had anticipated, the first storm blowing in in mid-October and lasting a week, he’d ridden into town and rented a one-room house with a small stable for his horse and wagon and the cow. There he’d have access to the stores to buy food and supplies.
The house was built of logs, which was warmer than boards, and it had a thick board floor. But the biggest bonus was a sink with an indoor water pump. Luke had furnished the place with his own bed by the far wall, which was wide enough for two. He’d been optimistic when he’d made that bed. Now he doubted anyone but he would ever sleep in it. He had emptied out the straw tick and refilled it with the fresh hay he had cut from the Big Slough. He had two straight-backed chairs and a small square table for his meals. A couple of shelves were nailed to the walls to store food and pots and pans. Being small, the house was easy to heat and sweep. But, lonely, he’d grown lazy, and the place needed a good cleaning. He knew his first winter would be hard, but according to Mr. Fuller, who ran the general store, there’d never been one as hard as this.
Looking over at the unmade bed, the thick patchwork quilt his grandmother had made for his wedding day falling off onto the dusty floor, he felt ashamed. There had been no wedding day, and Grandma had died three winters past. Luke picked up the quilt, shook off the dust and crumbs to the floor, and threw it onto the bed without actually making it. His guilt at disappointing Grandma was appeased, but only slightly, by straightening her quilt.
Shivering, he threw more coal into the cookstove, stoked it up, and closed the hatch. It was difficult to stay warm when you were hungry. The coffee in the pot had been keeping hot since morning. Luke poured the last strong dregs into a tin cup and tossed it back. It tasted foul but warmed him down into his empty belly.
The last of the salt pork he’d brought with him was gone. Glancing over at the sack of cornmeal resting against the wall, he saw there was barely a quarter of a sack left. Plain corn mush without maple syrup or gravy to give it some flavor had soured on him days ago, and he had no desire to make more just then. Thank God a train was on its way with supplies for the town.
Unexpectedly, silence settled around the little house. The howling had stopped, which meant the
storm that had imprisoned the townspeople in their homes for the past five days was over. As relieved as a child who had found an orange in his stocking on Christmas morning, Luke ran to the small window, pulled back the burlap sack he’d nailed up in lieu of curtains, and looked out. The men of the town were already hurrying across the street to catch up on the gossip. The moment a storm ended, the town came to life.
From the hook by the door, Luke took his hat. He pulled on his heavy buffalo coat. Snowdrifts were high, but the sky was blue and the sun shone so brightly that he squinted when he stepped into the street. All winter the prairie had alternated between fierce, blinding storms and bright blue skies. Children wrapped against the cold shouted and laughed, throwing snowballs and pulling one another on sleds. A young woman stood at an open door beating a small rug. When Luke caught her gaze, she smiled shyly and dipped her head.
He stomped his way through the snow and into the warmth of Loftus’s Grocery, Dry Goods, and Merchandise. Women crowded around the counter buying the few items of food left on the shelves and bundles of firewood for the stove. Wood was scarce on the prairie. Coal brought in by the trains was used in most stoves, but Fuller’s Hardware had sold out of coal last week. Luke was lucky he’d thought to buy a good supply while the store still had it.
“How you doing, Chandler? Keeping the little house warm?” It was Ernest Turner, the town pharmacist and the owner of Luke’s house.
“I’m managing.” Luke said as little as possible to the other men. He had nothing in common with them, and he didn’t want to get friendly.
Tipping his hat to the man, he went to see what was left on the shelves. A couple of tins of oysters and a small sack of dried beans were all he found. There was tea, which he rarely drank. He took a jar of molasses to flavor the beans and was heading to the counter to pay when a pungent, vinegary smell wafted up his nostrils. A barrel half-full of pickled cucumbers stood there. He hated pickles but feared he might need them in a pinch. “I’ll take some pickles too.” He put his items on the counter.
Loftus took a long fork to fish the pickles out of the barrel. “How many?”
“A dozen,” he said reluctantly, watching Loftus stuff the ugly green things into a jar.
“You got a wife?” Loftus screwed a lid onto the jar before scribbling the prices of the items into a ledger and adding them up in his head. “A dollar fifty.”
Luke could also add in his head, and he read upside down. “That’s a dollar thirty-five.” He pulled some coins out of his pocket and counted out the money.
“So it is.” Loftus smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “You got a wife?” he repeated.
“Nope.” Luke tossed the coins onto the scarred counter. It was a small town with no more than a hundred and fifty inhabitants. Everyone knew he was unmarried.
“Well, there’re lots of pretty girls in town. Come spring you’ll be seeing them all at church, and you can take your pick, a good-looking man like you.” The man spat a wad of chewing tobacco into a spittoon behind the counter and tore another piece off the plug with his teeth.
Stuffing the oysters, molasses, and pickles into his coat pockets, Luke met his gaze. “Can’t wait.” He took the sack of beans and went outside again, breathing in the cold, fresh air. His house smelled stale. He needed to open the door for a while and sweep the damned floor, but first he’d stop by Fuller’s Hardware to see if there was news on the trains.
Fuller’s was busier than Loftus’s because that was where the telegraph messages came in. Two men had begun a game of checkers on an upside-down crate over by the pot belly stove, while others stood around watching them. Looking around the store at the men, mostly young or in their middle years, together with a couple of graybeards, he knew he didn’t belong among them, that he would never truly be one of them. He could think of nothing to say to them beyond discussing the severity of the storms, and he’d done that between the last two blizzards.
“Any news on the train?” he asked Fuller.
The man shook his head, his expression dour. “I got a telegraph just now. The train is stuck in a deep gully, all snowed in. They’re digging it out. Could take weeks.”
“But I’ve got almost no food!” Money he had, plenty of it from working in the gold mines up north the past few years, but what good was money when there was nothing to buy?
“At least you don’t have a family to feed,” another man said. It was Mr. Ingram, who owned a quarter section south of Luke’s. “I’ve got a wife and four daughters over there.” He nodded at the window and the other side of Main Street. “We’re almost out of food too.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ingram.” Luke felt ashamed complaining when there were children going hungry. Being a tall, muscular man, he could last the winter on very little food, but a child could not.
“You sure about that train?” he asked Fuller again.
“I’m sure,” Fuller told him.
In the street Luke looked up at the sky, which was already darkening to gray. Sometimes they had as much as five days between storms, but not this time. “Storm’s coming back,” he shouted over his shoulder. A stream of men hurried out behind him, making their way home through the snowdrifts before the blizzard made it impossible to see.
Inside the untidy little house, his loneliness wrapped around him like a cold wind. The men in town had their wives, and many had children. At Royal Wilder’s feed store, the two Wilder brothers shared a place, keeping each other company.
Luke hung his coat and put away the food. He picked up the broom and then put it back in its corner. He didn’t feel like sweeping, but the unmade bed drew him toward it. Grandma’s quilt still lay where he had tossed it, in a bundle in the middle of the bed. He pulled it off the bed and shook it to fluff it up again. He smoothed the sheets and blankets, plumped the pillows, and laid the quilt carefully on top. It was surprising how just tidying the bed brightened the house and made it look tidier.
Sitting on the bed, he picked up the envelope on the upside-down tea chest he used as a night table and pulled out the photographs tucked inside. None of the three pictures was framed, but he planned to frame them one day when he had a proper house.
Staring at him was his grandmother dressed in black, wearing her church bonnet and sitting stiffly on a chair. The photograph had been a momentous occasion: the first and only likeness she had ever had taken, and she was already old by then. On her deathbed three years back, she’d pointed at the linen chest across the room and told him in her soft, weak voice to fetch the patchwork quilt.
It was beautiful and full of color: reds, greens, and blues, with brown here and there. “It’s for your wife. I thought you’d be married by now, but you will be one day.” She had given him the photograph too, and then she had spoken to his sister while he stood back with the rest of the family, waiting for her to die. Luke leaned down to sniff the quilt. The smell of cedar from Grandma’s linen chest still lingered, taking him back to her bedroom that day. Her death had prompted him to go out to the mines to work in hopes of getting rich. Maybe she would be looking down on him and be proud of him then.
He had loved her dearly.
Feeling his throat tighten as it did when he was upset, he quickly shoved the photograph away and looked at another. Luke and his younger brother stood behind a couch where his four sisters sat lined up. On either side of the couch, a couple of marble pedestals stood bearing big leafy plants. The picture had been taken about ten years ago at a photographic studio in Boston not far from his father’s butcher shop. He looked at the smile on his face and snorted. Life had seemed so full of promise then, even for a man with his inclinations. Back then he’d had no idea how cruel life could be. His sisters were all married now, and one had gone west like him. His brother-in-law had taken over the shop for a few years when his father had taken ill with rheumatic fever and never fully recovered, but Luke’s younger brother would inherit it. He pushed the picture back in the envelope and took out the third.
Then he was on his feet at the stove, ready to throw the picture into the flames, but as he had done so many times before, he hesitated and, after a moment, pushed it back into the envelope and returned it to the tea chest where it would remain for another few months before he took it out again.
He crossed the small room and opened a can of oysters, which he ate quickly. The temperature was dropping as the wind howled louder. He’d better do the chores early before it got dark. It was hard enough trying to see in a blizzard, but a blizzard in the dark was impossible. Dragging his coat on again, he opened the door, paused, and took a breath as snowflakes sharp as tiny razor blades hit him in the face. For a moment he closed his eyes, then opened them to near slits as he made his way outside, one hand keeping contact at all times with the house so as not to get lost. Around the back he grabbed the clothesline strung from the house and followed it fifteen feet to the stable. He never used it except to find his way. He had only two shirts, two pairs of trousers, and two suits of flannel underwear, which he hung in the house after he washed them.
Pretty Girl, the chestnut horse he had owned for the past five years, greeted him with a whinny when he entered. “I should move into the stable with you, Pretty Girl. At least I’d have company.” He spent five minutes petting her and talking nonsense to her before hefting a hay bale into her stall. The animal began to eat at once; the only way to stay warm in these temperatures was to eat.
Luke hadn’t bothered to name the cow. If things continued this bad for much longer, he’d have to slaughter her to feed himself. She hadn’t produced milk for the past couple of months anyway. “Here you go, girl.” He brought her a bale of hay and stood rubbing her head for a few minutes while she ate. Then he began to clean up the manure and sweep the stable to keep it habitable for the animals. They’d been outside less often than he had this winter, but they had each other. The chores done, he gave Pretty Girl another pat and kissed her nose before finding his way back to the house.
Winter Hearts Page 1