Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

T ONGANOXIE KANSAS, MAY 1866

"Looks like you need a little help, Sadie," Joe Curtis said as he leaned over the bottom half of the stall door where Sadie Cahill was mucking a stall. "Things would be better for you if you had a man around."

Ignoring him, she tossed the soiled straw into her wheelbarrow, letting it get a little too close to where Joe was standing. He had to straighten to avoid getting a bit of the muck on him. Without acknowledging him, she turned to get another forkful of the straw.

"Come on, now, Sadie, I've been helping you out for the past three years and you at least owe me a bit of conversation."

That froze Sadie in her tracks. As she turned around, her grip on the pitchfork tightened. "Helping me? You shoe the horses—the very job that you're paid to do. You're not paid any less than you would if you were doing the job at the livery in Lawrence. How do you see it as a favor?"

He spit a bit of chew off to the side, a bit of dark dribble making its way over his chin before he used his shoulder to wipe it away. "I could have raised my prices on you, but I've held them back all this time."

"Oh," she said, lifting a brow. "So, I should be thankful that you haven't taken advantage of me by raising prices?"

He gave a half shrug. "The town's getting busier, and you've got more horses that need shoes these days. I'm having to come out here twice a week now and it's a two-hour trip from Lawrence."

"You're paid more because there's more work. It's not as though you're being asked to do anything for free."

"Most blacksmiths wouldn't come out all this way."

"I understand that, and I'm grateful to you for being willing."

He cultivated a bored look and heaved a bit of a sigh before leaning on the stall door once more. "I'm not sure how much longer I'd be willing to keep coming out all this way. I mean, you're not that pretty."

Blinking hard at him, her heart leapt toward her throat. She'd never thought of herself as a beautiful woman, but she'd always caught a few eyes now and then. Usually the wrong ones, like Joe Curtis's. Her jaw tightened as she swallowed back the urge to use her pitchfork in a violent fashion. "This is a business, and you are doing a job. You are being paid for your services, and all the tools and equipment are here for your use already. Nothing about this has to do with whether I'm pretty or not."

"Well, I'm feeling a little unappreciated. Maybe if you and I started courting…"

That made her raise her pitchfork to chest level and point it at the man. "Keep your distance from me or you will feel even less appreciated."

His hands went to his hips as he took a step back. "You wouldn't."

Stepping forward, she gestured in his direction with the pitchfork. "Try me."

For a long moment, he just stared at her, glaring with her in a staring contest. Then finally he shook his head and threw up his hands. "Fine. I don't need all of this. You're crazy and it's not worth coming out all this way. Good luck finding a new farrier."

As he stomped toward the barn doors, Sadie's heart sank toward her stomach. What was she doing? She was chasing off the one man that she'd needed in order to run her business. Joe grabbed hold of his flashy chestnut mare from the stall on his way and mounted in the barn aisle.

Aunt Penelope squealed a little and jumped out of the way as Joe trotted his horse out the barn and into the street. With her hand on her chest, Sadie's aunt blinked at her, mouth agape. "What on earth is going on?"

Still holding her pitchfork at chest level, Sadie answered, "He was getting fresh with me, and I put a stop to it."

"Sadie!" Her aunt cried. "You should have strung the man along. We need him. What if he doesn't come back to shoe the horses next week? What are we going to do? Tonganoxie has been without a blacksmith since your father left for the war. And now that he's not returned, it's just been you and me."

"I'll trim the horses myself. I've seen it done a million times. Father taught me how to use a hoof gauge and how to tell when a foot is level. I know how to bevel nails and shape a shoe."

"But do you know how to apply those nails into a horse's foot? Do you really want to hold a horse's leg up in the air for several minutes while doing the job? This is man's work, Sadie. You're nearly as strong as a man, sure, but you're not one."

"Who decided it was man's work? I can do it." Even though her aunt made all the business arrangements with the hay dealer and the grain seller, and dealt with the customers when they needed a stall for their horses in town, it was Sadie's job to do the day to day chores that kept the livery running. All the feeding and cleaning of the twelve to twenty horses in the livery was her job, and her back and wrists ached for the labor.

Her aunt waved a hand. "Fine. Give it a try, but you're only adding more work to yourself. You still need to fill the water troughs and clean the stalls. You don't have the time to add shoeing the horses to everything else you're already doing."

"I'd rather do that than deal with that man ogling me and making lecherous comments. He says that he wants to court and get married, but what he really wants is to roll around in the hay. He's not the type to make an honest married man. How many times has he shown up here late and hungover from spending the night in a saloon? You've heard the rumors about his escapades with ladies of the night."

"Still, Sadie, you could have had some discretion."

"You say that I could have strung him along, but he was getting impatient with me for spurning him for nearly three years now. This wasn't going to end well, no matter what," Sadie said quietly, a bit of sadness overcoming her as she looked over toward her father's anvil. No, She didn't want to marry a man like Joe Curtis. It wasn't that she thought she was better than him, but she did believe that she should not be unequally yoked. A drinker, a tobacco chewer, and a lech who slept in on Sunday after spending Saturday night in a saloon wasn't what she wanted to hitch herself to. "He just isn't the kind of man I need to consider marrying."

Her aunt sighed and nodded. "It would be nice if you could find a good, Christian man, and one who didn't mind hard work and horses."

Finally, Sadie put her pitchfork down and pat the buckskin gelding on the nose who'd been nudging her from his stall door. "That sounds like it would be too good to be true."

"Well," Aunt Penelope said softly, "We need to put an advertisement in the papers and see if we can't hire a new blacksmith at least."

"I already said I'd do the work myself."

"For now, that's possible, but you need to be thinking long term. Let me take care of putting out the advertisement."

Sadie knew that arguing with her aunt would get her nowhere, so she shrugged, bit her tongue and gripped her pitchfork. Then she headed back toward the stalls that needed cleaning. Making her way around the wheelbarrow, she let out a sigh. Since the war, her whole, rural town of Tonganoxie had been a down on men of marrying age. There were men who were married and those who were younger than her, but the remainder were like Joe—not the marrying kind.

Shaking her head, she tried to focus again on her work. It didn't matter. All that mattered now was taking care of the livery that her father started here in town and making sure that it continued strong. If she broke her back putting in the work to do it, it would be worth it. It wasn't often that two women could live independently of men the way that she and her aunt were doing. And as long as she kept her nose to the grindstone, she'd be able to succeed by God's grace. Picking up another pile of soiled straw with her pitchfork, she tossed it into the wheelbarrow.