The Homesteader's Sweetheart

by Lacy Williams

  Maxwell cleared his throat, face reddening. “We’re talking about Emily Sands.”

  “I didn’t know you were sweet on her.” Jonas sat on the end of one of the benches, close enough to be part of their conversation without having to speak loudly and possibly wake Breanna.

  “I ain’t really said anything to anyone, because…” Maxwell looked down and fiddled with his pants leg. “Well…she’s really somethin’ special and I’m…”

  Jonas held his breath. Would Maxwell share about his past? He was remarkably closed-mouthed about it, even to Jonas, who only knew bits and pieces.

  Penny reached out, stretched a little, and ruffled Maxwell’s curly black mop of hair. “You’re something special, too.”

  His son looked up, his face open, hopeful. Yearning for Penny’s approval to be real.

  Jonas knew exactly what Maxwell was feeling. His stomach had tightened into a knot as he waited to see what she would say to his son. He wanted her approval for Maxwell.

  He tried not to think about what it would feel like to have Penny’s approving gaze rest on him.

  Penny moved her hand to rest on Max’s shoulder. Jonas saw the boy tense before he relaxed at the simple touch.

  “You work hard to help your father on this homestead. I’ve seen you with Oscar and the horses. You’re a smart fellow.”

  Maxwell’s face was still pink under his tan. He looked down again. “I cain’t read,” he said, his voice barely audible. “And I’m too old to go to school anymore.”

  Jonas’s breath caught again. He’d known the boy couldn’t read, but not that it bothered him this much. Jonas himself couldn’t read, could only work a few sums, enough to make sure he didn’t get taken at the general store, but he’d grown used to it. Oscar and Davy could read well, and the other boys continued their schooling in the winter months. With only his kids on the homestead, reading wasn’t a skill Jonas needed often.

  But if it bothered his son, he would find a way to help Maxwell.

  “Just because you can’t go to school, doesn’t mean you can’t learn,” Penny said, her hand still on Maxwell’s shoulder. “If your father agrees, we could borrow a primer from one of your brothers and practice your reading in the evenings, when you’re done with chores for the day.”

  Maxwell looked up. “You’d teach me to read?”

  “Of course.”

  His eyes started to shine, but then his brows creased. “But what if…could you…I know you gave Oscar some advice about wooing Sally. I ain’t…I cain’t talk to girls. Maybe you could…you could…help me?”

  Jonas couldn’t imagine what it had cost the boy to admit both to the fact that he couldn’t read, and also his painful shyness.

  “We can do some lessons on that subject, as well. If your father agrees.”

  Maxwell looked to Jonas, dark eyes shining, face full of hope. How could Jonas say no?

  “It’s fine with me, if Miss Penny doesn’t think she’ll be too tired after supper. And if Walt doesn’t need you,” he qualified.

  “Thank you.” When Penny looked at him, her eyes were shining, too.

  He was a little surprised she’d agreed, but less so than when he’d first begun getting to know her. Penny had a compassionate heart and she was sensitive to the needs of his children. No doubt she had heard some of the things Maxwell hadn’t said and had responded to his needs.

  “Is it all right if I go out and check on Ricky and Davy? Make sure they aren’t getting into trouble?”

  “That’s probably a good idea.” Those two had a knack for getting into scrapes.

  Jonas watched him troop through the kitchen and disappear out the back door. For a moment while he had the portal open, the sound of rain intensified, then faded again to just the sound of drops hitting the plank roof.

  When Jonas turned to face Penny again, she was staring at where Maxwell had disappeared. He became conscious that they were alone for the first time since the corral. Well, alone except for the sleeping Breanna and Walt.

  “Your sons are…interesting.”

  Jonas bristled. No one insulted his family—

  “Oh,” Penny said, her eyes on him now. “No, I didn’t mean anything bad. Just that each one has his own character. They are all so different.”

  Jonas’s tension flowed away.

  She clucked, a funny sound, and shook her head. “And none of them have a clue about women. Girls.”

  “You’re probably right. Maybe Ricky. His ma raised him in a bordello before she died.”

  Penny’s open mouth conveyed her surprise. “That’s—” She looked as if she couldn’t find a word strong enough.

  Jonas shrugged. “She did the best she could by him. Some parents would’ve just abandoned him.” Like Jonas’s had.

  “I’ve been wondering where all the boys came from. That seems like such a crude way to say it. Where did you find them?”

  “Met Oscar on the train out of Boston. I guess to be correct I should say he was being thrown off the train. He’d snuck on board without a ticket.”

  Her wide blue eyes showed what she thought of that. He was sure she’d never contemplated doing something so improper.

  “Why was he alone?”

  Jonas looked away, looked down so she wouldn’t see anything in his face if he revealed too much. “His parents died. Uncle took him in for a while but it wasn’t a good situation.” To say the least. “His uncle was pretty mean.”

  Penny seemed to understand what Jonas wasn’t saying; her eyes darkened with compassion.

  “And the rest?”

  Her gentle reaction made it easier for him to tell the boys’ stories.

  “I paid for a ticket so Oscar could come West with me and Breanna. By the time we’d reached Ohio, I’d talked him into staying with us. He’s the one who found Seb when we disembarked the train in Denver. The little tyke was grubby, sitting on the street, wailing. No one around knew him or who his parents were. No one seemed to want him, thought maybe he was sick because of his crying.

  “When anyone would have been able to see he was just hungry, if they’d just looked. I picked him up and he clung to my neck and I couldn’t leave him…” Jonas still remembered the tearing feeling in his gut when he’d picked up the small boy who obviously hadn’t had a meal in days and had clung to him like a vine. “Finally, we discovered his parents had died days before. A judge put him in my custody.”

  “You settled a homestead with a teen, a toddler and an infant?”

  Jonas didn’t know what to think at the amazement in her voice. He ran his hand along the length of the finely sanded table. “I did what I had to. Couldn’t leave them behind. Your grandmama was a big help. Peg taught me to cook, helped when Breanna got a fever and I didn’t know what to do.”

  “She was a great cook.” Penny’s smile held a touch of nostalgia. He imagined she missed Peg, a wonderful lady with a heart of gold. “But how did you do it?”

  He shrugged. “There were a lot of days where I did chores with Breanna bundled in a sling across my back, with Seb following along behind me and chattering to her. Oscar was easy. He wanted to earn his way and I could understand that. He was more help than anything else.”

  She shook her head gently, one hand resting on Breanna’s brown curls. He continued his story because she’d asked.

  “Edgar came to us next. He’d been on an orphan train and was the only boy not taken. Someone had told the train lady I might take him.

  “Looking at his sad blue eyes, I knew what he was thinking.” That no one wanted him. “He stayed.

  “Stumbled on Davy and Ricky camping next to the creek a ways up.” He remembered the smell of a too-smoky fire and the two hungry boys who’d looked so guilty and so afraid when he’d come upon them. “They’d run away. Wouldn’t tell me where they were from, only that they weren’t going back.

  “Then Matty… His family lived a few miles from here. They’d settled a homestead but his parents got sick and passed
away. The preacher brought him to me.”

  She must’ve been counting, because when he paused and tried to decide the best way to tell Maxwell’s story, she asked softly, “And Max?”

  Jonas exhaled hard. “I don’t think he ever knew his dad. His ma was…unkind to him. She’d passed on by the time I met him. I’d taken Breanna down to Cheyenne to see the doctor there. Maxwell was in the street, scrapping with some bigger, older boys. It was clear he’d been on his own for a while—and he was losing the fight. I stepped in, but instead of thanking me, he turned on me.”

  Jonas shook his head at the remembrance of the gangly boy with too much anger inside. “I told him I’d take him home with me if he wanted, and where Breanna and I were staying, but I didn’t hold out much hope that he’d come. But he did. Showed up the next morning next to our wagon, bruised and with a black eye and came with us. By the next town, Breanna had won him over.

  “Took me longer.”

  “Of course. You had to earn his trust. It’s clear that he thinks of you like a father now. All of them do.”

  Jonas allowed himself a moment of pride for his sons. He’d taken each of them in with a lot of prayer, and so far they’d been blessings to his life.

  Oh, he expected them to be boys. They could rustle up mischief in a matter of seconds. But he loved them all, and thought they probably loved him back.

  He’d made his own family, and it was something special.

  And then Penny asked the question he most assuredly didn’t want to hear. “And what about your background, Jonas? You’ve told me all about the boys, but I’d like to know your story, too.”

  * * *

  Penny watched Jonas’s face, so open and full of affection while he’d spoken about his boys, shutter and close off. The only clue she had that she’d asked something she shouldn’t have was the muscle fluttering in his now-clenched jaw.

  “Of course you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” she offered. “I think I’ve guessed part of it, anyway.”

  He stared into the fire. Was he going to ignore her query, or was he gathering his thoughts?

  “You grew up without your parents, didn’t you?” she prodded gently.

  His expression darkened. “What do you mean?”

  “Just…some of the things you’ve said…makes me think they weren’t around.” Things like how he could relate to how the different boys felt…

  He grimaced. “I guess you could say that. In a manner of speaking.” He paused and she thought that would be all he was going to say. She resolved not to push him anymore. She didn’t want to ruin their friendship by prying where she wasn’t wanted.

  “My ma left when I was real little. I barely remember her at all. And my pa walked away when I was five. Left me on a street corner without so much as a goodbye.”

  He spoke the words dispassionately, as if it didn’t hurt to say them, but Penny knew it must. “Oh, Jonas,” she breathed.

  She wanted to touch him, to reach out to him in comfort, but with Breanna asleep across her lap, she didn’t dare move.

  He shrugged again, an offhand movement, but his face hadn’t cleared. Was there more to his story than just parents who had abandoned him?

  “I grew up mostly on the streets. Did a stint in an orphanage around my tenth birthday, but I hated it. The other boys were cruel, and there were too many of us.”

  She remembered his comment about Breanna and how he didn’t want an orphanage for her. Of course he would feel that way after living in one himself, especially an overcrowded one.

  “But how did you survive?” she asked, curiosity erasing her determination not to ask more. “After only two winters in Philadelphia, I can’t imagine how you kept warm.”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes you could find a bed in one of the homes. Sometimes it was just curling up in some newsprint over a heat register outside a house or business. There were a lot of us on the streets. We made do.”

  She didn’t even have to close her eyes to remember the dirty street urchins she and her friends from Mrs. Trimble’s Academy would pass sometimes on their way to the stores to shop. She’d turned her face away from the poignant stares, unable to bear even looking at them. Remembering her coldness shamed her.

  “But how did you eat? And get new clothes?”

  “I hawked papers for a bit. Did my best business as a bootblack.”

  He must’ve seen her puzzled look, though he wouldn’t meet her gaze. He explained, “I shined shoes.”

  Oh. Absently, she wondered how much money one could make doing that. It couldn’t be much. And yet he had managed to survive.

  “One of my customers was Pete, who happened to be a bricklayer. He was a regular, and after a while he saw me keep doing a good job. He decided to take me on as his apprentice.”

  “So that’s how you came to work at the home next door to Mrs. Trimble’s.”

  “Mm-hmm, eventually. I worked with him for a year and a half. He gave me a room in the back of his shop. Really it was a little closet. He taught me a lot. Was one of the first people to show me respect.”

  “And then you started working next door…”

  His face tightened, and she knew there was more he wasn’t telling her. “What?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t want—Breanna might wake.”

  Something he didn’t want his daughter to hear. And sure enough, even as he spoke, Breanna rustled and a soft “hmm” slipped from her lips. After a moment, she popped up on the couch, one side of her hair sticking every which way out of its braid.

  “When’s dinner?”

  Breanna’s question preceded a stampede of boys coming from their bedrooms. Walt roused, as well, and after gathering his bearings, nodded out the window to the moisture that had turned to a fine mist.

  “We’d better be getting home, girl.”

  And Penny found, for the first time, she didn’t want to leave.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jonas shifted in the saddle, keeping one eye on the boys curled in their bedrolls around the campfire and the other on the small herd of bovines rustling quietly in a bunch nearby. He and his sons had driven the cattle hard the last two days and should reach Cheyenne tomorrow mid-morning. With Oscar left at home to take care of the basic chores, and Breanna and Seb staying with Walt and Penny, Jonas didn’t feel he had to rush the trip, not like he usually did.

  He’d reluctantly agreed to Maxwell’s request that Sam come along on their short cattle drive, and so far he’d been pleasantly surprised by the boy. Sam and Maxwell seemed to have developed a rapport while working together to fix Walt’s barn and some fence line, but Jonas still didn’t completely trust Penny’s brother.

  Thinking of Sam made him remember Penny, and one thought kept running through his mind over and over again, especially in the quiet of night, like right now.

  Will she ever look at me the same again?

  After two days on the trail, he’d hoped to gain some perspective; he’d felt raw, as if his insides had been scraped clean, from the confessions he’d made to Penny in the aftermath of the rainstorm.

  She had been so attentive when he’d told the boys’ stories. Was that what had pushed him to tell her his own? He’d shared it with only a few people. And none, not even Walt, knew what he’d nearly confessed before remembering Breanna was in the room and could wake at any moment.

  His deepest secret.

  That he’d bitterly disappointed Pete, the man who’d taken him in off the streets and taught him about bricklaying. Up until Breanna’s conception, he’d thought of Pete as a surrogate father.

  He’d gone to Pete when he realized the mess with Breanna’s mother wasn’t going away. Pete hadn’t believed him when Jonas had said he hadn’t touched Millie Broadhurst. His mentor didn’t understand Jonas’s need to take care of the helpless baby that would be born.

  Pete had kicked Jonas out of the little room in his shop and refused to listen. Jonas had spent two nights on
the street until the Broadhursts had sent him and Millie to an aunt’s home in Boston to wait for Breanna’s birth.

  Pete’s unbelief had hurt almost as much as Jonas’s parents’ desertions because he’d thought Pete had had a better opinion of him, would believe him. Apparently, Pete hadn’t been able to overlook Jonas’s past and upbringing on the streets.

  Now that she knew, Jonas worried that Penny wouldn’t see him the same way, either.

  And unfortunately, she seemed to be the only thing his sons wanted to talk about. They were still singing her praises for her skilled bareback riding when she’d helped bring in the cattle. She’d surprised them all, including him, with her finesse and determination to see the job through.

  Thinking about the loose cattle gave Jonas a little relief from thinking about his lovely temporary neighbor, but brought another puzzle before him. When he’d gone back to the corral, he’d found the fence post that had supposedly been knocked down by the cattle when they’d panicked from the storm.

  Only it had appeared to have been tampered with. It looked like someone had partially dug it up and then used a heavy leather strap of some sort to pull it out of the ground. But who would do something like that? And why?

  Jonas knew not everyone in town agreed with his actions, taking in the boys like he did, but he didn’t think anyone would let his cattle out on purpose. It was a dangerous thing to do and could’ve lost him the money he hoped to gain by selling the animals.

  Maybe he’d been wrong about the post. He’d have to look at it again when he and the boys returned from Cheyenne.

  Movement from the bedrolls near the fire alerted Jonas that it was almost time to let Maxwell and Sam take their turn watching the herd. The two boys spoke softly and moved to saddle their horses, picketed near the fire but not close enough they’d trample the group as they slept.

  Jonas walked his horse over and dismounted, preparing to rub down the animal and settle it for the night. He nodded silently to Sam as the boy worked at saddling a sleepy mare.

  Then, remembering the joyful expression on Penny’s face when he’d encouraged her brother once before, he paused and turned to the teen.