The Amish Blacksmith
Page 1
Other Books by Mindy Starns Clark
The Men of Lancaster County Series
By Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner
The Amish Groom
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The Amish Blacksmith
The Women of Lancaster County Series
By Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould
The Amish Midwife
http://bit.ly/AmishMidwife
The Amish Nanny
http://bit.ly/AmishNanny
The Amish Bride
http://bit.ly/AmishBride
The Amish Seamstress
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HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture verses are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Cover by Garborg Design Works, Savage, Minnesota
Cover photos © Chris Garborg; Yanika / Bigstock
The authors are represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE AMISH BLACKSMITH
Copyright © 2014 by Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, Mindy Starns.
The Amish blacksmith / Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner.
pages cm.— (The men of Lancaster County ; book 2)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5736-6 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5737-3 (eBook)
1. Amish—Fiction. 2. Blacksmiths—Fiction. 3. Lancaster County (Pa.)—Fiction. I. Meissner,
Susan. II. Title.
PS3603.L366A76 2014
813'.6—dc23
2014007403
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s and publisher’s rights is strictly prohibited.
DEDICATION
In loving memory of Robert Irwin Dickerson
1907–1977
Loving grandfather, amazing horseman, wonderful man
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to…
Everyone at Harvest House Publishers, in particular our lovely and gifted editor, Kim Moore.
Chip MacGregor, the literary agent who helped bring us together in the first place.
John Clark, for brainstorming, help with research, and so much more.
The Riehl and Fisher families of Lancaster County.
Elam Stoltzfus and Elias Stoltzfus, for sharing your Amish blacksmith shop and your friendship and patiently answering our many questions.
Meg Selway, for your insights into all things equine.
Emily Clark, Lauren Clark, Tara Kenny, Adam Sullivan, and Suzanne Scannell, for being so helpful throughout the process.
CONTENTS
Other Books by Mindy Starns Clark
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Part One
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
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part Three
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
Discussion Questions
About the Authors
Lilies on Daybreak Pond
The Amish Bride
The Amish Groom
The Amish Midwife
The Amish Nanny
The Amish Seamstress
Ready to Discover More?
About the Publisher
PART ONE
ONE
The muscles under the horse’s chocolate-brown flank rippled as I pressed my hand against his warm side.
“Easy, boy,” I said, my tone that of father to frightened child.
At my work station in the blacksmith shop, I shifted so the horse could better see me and continued running my hand across his body. Halfway down his left rear leg, I came to a stop when my fingers reached a puffy knob that shouldn’t have been there. Bending closer, I gently palpated the hock. I’d already scraped out the dirt and turf imbedded around his shoes minutes before, but this swelling told me to take a second, closer look at the hoof.
I flipped on my headlamp and gave the horse’s fetlock a tug. In response, he nervously shifted his weight but allowed me to hoist up his leg. Crouching, I studied the hoof’s surface in the glow of the beam, noting how it was worn on the inside edge. I turned to Trudy, the young teen who stood nearby, her arms crossed as she watched.
“I think Patch’s knees are swollen,” she told me solemnly. “The back ones, at least.”
“Actually, they’re called ‘knees’ in the front but ‘hocks’ in the back. See how the joints bend differently? A hock is more an elbow than a knee. But you’re right. There’s some swelling here for sure.”
She nodded, cupping a hand around her own elbow. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have corrected a customer, but Trudy was different. She wanted to know. She wanted to learn. Trudy’s family lived in a neighboring Amish district in Gap, and they had been coming to this blacksmith shop—as had my family and I—for years.
“This looks worn and uneven,” I continued. “I’d say he’s been favoring the inside of his leg.”
“He’s been pulling to the right. Sometimes I think he’s going to take us both straight into the ditch.”
I lowered the horse’s hoof to the concrete floor, and he tossed his head and nickered. I reached up a hand to remind him with a gentle touch that I was still there, that all was well. On the other side of the shop, my friend and coworker, Owen Kinsinger, was at the forge, pounding a flaming-red shoe against the rounded cone of an anvil. The horse rotated an ear toward the sound.
“Is there anything I can do for Patch?” Trudy asked. “He seems so sad.”
I stifled a smile, thinking how much she reminded me of myself when I was her age. Like me, she had a fondness for horses and seemed to think of them as more than ju
st a means of transportation. Also like me, she often lingered at the blacksmith shop, watching as the family horse was shod, rather than leaving the animal in the morning and returning for it later in the day the way most folks did.
The difference between us was that Trudy usually left once the work was done, while I’d always stuck around afterward for as long as I could, peppering Owen’s dad, Amos Kinsinger, with a thousand questions about what he was doing and why. Growing up as a worker in my father’s buggy shop, I had always gravitated toward the tasks that involved welding, learning so much over the years that eventually folks thought of me as the resident blacksmith. But there was one big element of the blacksmithing trade I’d never had the chance to learn: the task of being a farrier, or an official shoer of horses. Ironically, that was the only part of smithing that I really cared to do.
That’s why Amos had always held such fascination for me. Though he, too, could weld with skill almost any item that came his way, what most impressed me were his skills as a farrier. Watching him, I’d always longed for that to be my job as well.
Now, at twenty-four, I’d finally achieved that goal, though it hadn’t been easy—especially the part where I’d had to break the news to my daed about leaving the buggy trade. Once I managed to do that, I set about making it happen, first by spending four months at a farrier school out in Missouri and then returning home to step into this apprenticeship at Kinsinger Blacksmith and Welding. I had already been working here, mostly under Owen’s guidance, for a year. That left one more year to go, at which point I should be experienced enough to take on pretty much anything that might come my way as a blacksmith or a farrier.
I shifted to the horse’s other side. Funny how a person could put off doing something that really interested him, I thought as I ran my hand across Patch’s flank, like how I delayed the switch from the job of building buggies to that of shoeing horses. But when you grow up in a family of buggy-makers, it’s tough to be the first one to decide to do something different.
Once I did, though, I couldn’t believe I’d waited so long. Sure, the work of shoeing was hard—and now and then my back ached something terrible at the end of the day—but I really enjoyed spending my hours working with horses. It also helped that my daed’s buggy business continued along fine without me, sparing me from feeling as if my departure had created a hardship for him or the family.
When I reached the horse’s hip, I again ran my hand down his leg, only to find that this hock was swollen as well. A look at the hoof revealed that it was even worse than the other, and I pointed out the damaged, uneven area along the hoof’s quarter to Trudy. No wonder the animal was having trouble. I couldn’t imagaine how long it had been since this horse was shod, surely a lot more time than the recommended eight weeks for a driving horse.
“Where did you say you got him?” I released the leg and stood up straight.
“He belonged to my uncle’s neighbor, but then Patch started rearing up and not following commands, so the neighbor stopped driving him. He just put him out in the pasture and forgot all about him.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know. Uncle Vernon didn’t like how the man and his family were handling Patch, so he offered to buy him. He didn’t ask a lot of questions.”
“And how did the horse come to be yours?”
“He’s calmer with me than he is with my uncle, so I asked if I could have him,” she said. “I knew Patch might give me some trouble, but I had to do something. Like I told you before, he just seems so sad.”
I gave the young teen a smile. “I think if I had hooves in as bad a shape as these are, I’d be sad too.”
“So what happens next?”
“Well, now that his hooves are all cleaned out, we’ll hot shoe him. That will give him a good fit and fix the problem of the uneven wear and tear.”
“What about his not wanting to follow commands?” Trudy persisted. “What are we supposed to do? Daed knows you’re good at helping horses with behavior problems. He told me to ask you about that.”
I appreciated hearing those words of affirmation, especially considering I was still relatively new to the horseshoeing business. That I was known to have a way with horses—even before I went to farrier school—was what I hoped would allow me to establish my own shop someday. I liked the idea that people thought of me as somewhat of an expert on how to calm and coax an agitated or spooked horse. I wasn’t sure why God had chosen to bless me with this particular kind of insight; I just knew that I had a lot of respect for horses and enjoyed helping them perform at the best of their ability.
“What kinds of behaviors are you seeing?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m amazed he’s letting you stand there at his side. He usually hates that.”
“Yeah, a horse will protect his flank when he thinks he’s in danger. If he has a flaw or ache or whatever, he will hide it if he can. Horses don’t want others to see their weaknesses.” I turned to Trudy. “There are really just two kinds of animals, you know, prey and predator. Flight animals and fight animals.”
Trudy’s eyes narrowed. “Sure, maybe in the Wild West, but this is Lancaster County.”
I smiled. “Horses understand which one they are, even in the domesticated world. They don’t stop thinking like horses just because they start pulling buggies. Every horse knows he’s prey, not predator, and that his flank is his most exposed vulnerability.”
“You’re saying Patch is scared he’s in danger, and that’s what makes him act the way he does?” Trudy looked from the horse to me, trying to understand.
I stroked the animal, caressing his long neck, hoping to draw out some of his anxiety through the gentlest of touches. “In the wild, a horse can never let on to the herd or a predator that he’s easy to pick off or even wounded in some way. He has to hide all of that to survive.”
Trudy moved forward to put her hand on the horse’s neck near mine. Patch swung his head around and nodded, as if to say, “The man’s right.”
“How can I convince him I mean him no harm?” she asked.
This was always the part that intrigued me the most, figuring out how to get a horse to drop its defenses and learn to trust again. It usually took some time—and a little sleuthing. Some horses didn’t like certain noises, some feared tall things or shiny things or painted stripes on the road or puddles or stop signs. Once I understood what the issue was, it all came down to trust. If I could get a horse to trust me, it was a lot easier to get it to trust its owner. And only when a horse trusted its owner would it obey despite its fear.
Back when I was still working at my father’s buggy shop, friends and sometimes friends of friends would bring over their problem horses so I could work with them. It was no big deal, really, just an extra something we offered as part of the buggy trade. Usually, for a skittish driving horse, I would spend an hour or so with it a couple times a week, trying to figure out what it was afraid of and then helping it understand that the thing it feared was not going to cause it harm.
I would be happy to work with Patch as well, though not today. Amos and Roseanna—my boss and his wife—had instructed Owen and me to leave our afternoon clear. They had already left in a hired car for the Lancaster train station to pick up their niece, Priscilla, who was moving back here after having been away for six years. They wanted everyone to be available to welcome her home.
And it was to be a big welcome indeed. Much of the Kinsinger extended family was coming to greet Priscilla and share in a big celebratory meal. In fact, judging by the rattle of buggies out in the drive, it sounded as though some of them had already begun to arrive.
I’d been invited to eat with them, which ordinarily would have been a good thing. I bunked in a small structure here on the Kinsinger farm that had once served as a guest cottage, and though that cottage had a kitchen, there weren’t many things I could make. I ate lunch with the Kinsingers almost every day, and I was always glad when they invited me to supper as well
. Roseanna was a wonderful cook, not to mention that I would enjoy seeing Priscilla again after all these years.
The problem was that this was a Saturday, and I’d been planning to spend the whole evening with Amanda Shetler, the lovely young woman from the Kinsingers’ district whom I’d been courting of late. For a while now, ever since my future as a blacksmith had begun to look more secure, I’d been thinking about marriage. After all, my nephew and best friend, Tyler, had gotten married last fall, and he seemed happier than ever. Wanting to settle down myself, a few months ago I’d started courting Amanda, who was as cute and easygoing and uncomplicated as they come. While I would have preferred spending the evening with her, I had felt obligated to accept the Kinsingers’ invitation to help welcome their long-lost relative back into the fold. But that meant a lot less time with Amanda this evening—and no time to work with Patch this afternoon. Amos and Roseanna were due back with their niece within the hour, so I needed to wrap things up for now.
Turning to Trudy, I told her I was busy for the rest of the day, but that I should be able to follow up with her horse over the next few days. “If you can spare him, you should just leave him here,” I added. “I’ll work with him during my free time and see if I can’t figure out what’s bugging him.”
Trudy crooked an eyebrow. “I don’t… I don’t have much saved up for this.”
“That’s okay. I have plenty of room in the barn for a guest, no extra charge, though I wouldn’t mind your giving Amos a bale of hay or a small sack of grain once I’m done, if you want, since it’s his barn and he covers the feed. Otherwise, we can just make it a part of the shoeing.”
Trudy smiled. “Ya?”
“Ya. I’m happy to do it. I want to help him just like you do.”
“Thank you, Jake,” she gushed.
“No problem. Of course, now we have to figure out how to get you home. Want me to see if one of Owen’s sisters can give you a ride?”
Trudy shook her head. “That’s okay. I have a few stops to make along the way, so I’ll just walk. It’s only a mile or so.”
She told Patch goodbye and as an afterthought asked me if she could leave her horse cart here too.