A Bride for the Wounded Miner (Preview)

Chapter One

Haven, New England

April 1879

The late April sun was watery, peering through thin, high clouds down at the sad grave site. Lisa-Jo Peterson tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear, but the breeze blew it free again. What did it matter? She was one of five people standing at her father’s grave, and she was sure at least two of the others had wandered over out of some morbid curiosity. What she looked like as the tears rolled down her cheeks was unimportant. Her father, pain in her rear as he had been, was gone, and despite everything, she would miss him.

“Let us bow our heads in prayer,” Pastor Newman said in his somber tones.

Lisa-Jo dutifully bowed her head and considered the man who now lay in the cheap coffin in the ground.

Her father hadn’t always been a liar and a gambler, although that is what he had become. When Lisa-Jo and her sister Gillian had been small, he’d been a wonderful father. He had worked down at the docks loading and unloading cargo from ships. It wasn’t a good living, but with their mother working as a seamstress, they’d never lacked a thing.

A bad flu when Lisa-Jo was eighteen had taken her mother, and in the seven years since then, her father had steadily drunk and gambled his way into his coffin. It was truly sad that he had chosen such a life for himself. For her. Being three years younger than Gillian, Lisa-Jo had born the worst of it.

Gillian had quickly married after their mother’s death and moved to the Pacific Coast—or as Lisa-Jo put it—as far from their father as she could get while still living on land. If she could have found a way to live on a boat out in the ocean, Lisa-Jo was certain that Gilian would have done it.

Suddenly, Pastor Newman was no longer speaking but was standing quite politely beside her, waiting. She looked at him and blinked in confusion.

“Well, that’s old Nate in the ground, good and proper. His spirit will find rest now,” Pastor Newman said with a knowing look as though he had it on good authority that despite his many faults, Nathanial Peterson was in heaven.

“Yes, I suppose so.” Lisa-Jo nodded politely at the pastor. What else could she really do? Her father’s spirit’s rest hadn’t been high on her list of current concerns. She had a terrible feeling that her father, in his usual fashion, hadn’t quite finished making her life difficult.

The pastor bowed his head sagely but didn’t move on. He just stood there beside her, waiting. Was there something she was supposed to do now?

Oh right. That.

Lisa-Jo suddenly realized what the pastor was waiting for. Her father hadn’t been a regular at church, and frankly, neither was she. She had had to guarantee the pastor payment for conducting the service. Pulling her purse from her pocket, she handed over the agreed fee.

Pastor Newman counted the money. “Thank you, Lisa-Jo. I hope to see you in church this Sunday.”

She made some vague remark, since she might be forced to work to recoup at least some of the cost of burying her father. It was funny in a completely sad way how her pay as the local schoolteacher didn’t seem to cover more than her rent and food nowadays. To make ends meet, Lisa-Jo had been repairing clothing in the evenings. Sailors and fishermen always needed rips repaired and new buttons put on their shirts and were willing to pay for quick, good work.

Luckily, the pastor didn’t seem to care about her reply and moved on quickly.

The other mourners, if that was what they were, had long gone, leaving Lisa-Jo and Bill, the young man who worked in the cemetery and whose job it was to close up the grave, behind.

He was leaning on his spade, watching her. “Is it okay if I fill it in now?” he asked. “Only it’s my lunch in an hour,” he said.

Lisa-Jo said, “All right. I understand.” There was nothing for her there in the ground. It was just a dead body. Her father was gone.

She thanked Bill, then turned and walked out of the cemetery onto the road.

As she passed between the low, white picket fence and the gate of the cemetery, two tall, burly figures stepped out in front of her. They had been lurking by a large oak tree, and she hadn’t seen them until it was too late to turn around.

However, they had never been introduced to her, she knew them. At least she knew who they worked for. They’d come around her house often enough, demanding money from her father. Lisa-Jo always thought of them as Burly and The Beard because one of them was clean-shaven and huge, and the other, apart from being large and bristling with muscles, also had a shaggy, unkept beard.

“Fellas,” she said with a nod in greeting, meaning to make her way past them.

“Not so fast,” Burly said, extending a long, bulging arm. “We need to have a word with you.”

“Why?” Lisa-Jo demanded, trying not to let her fear show. She had heard terrible stories of what these men could do to a person. “You know my father’s dead, right? So, what do you want with me?”

“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” the Beard said, smiling at her. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. It had a hint of alligator in it, like he was hungry and considering whether she’d make a good snack or not. “With him gone, the burden of paying off his debt falls to you, the next of kin.”

She wondered if he’d been coached in that little speech. It sounded rehearsed to her. The meaning of his words took away all her bravado, however, and the terror, brought on by years of stories, flooded her mind. Lisa-Jo tried to swallow, but her throat was suddenly too narrow inside to let anything pass through. She stared up at the large men with no idea what to say.

“I think she understands, Henry. What do you think?” Burly asked.

“Yeah, she’s got the picture now, Trent,” Henry said, stroking his beard. “She knows we’ll take it out of her flesh if we have to.”

Lisa-Jo was terrified. She knew what that meant, and she couldn’t bear the idea. “It’s okay, I have savings,” she blurted out, finding a way around the restriction in her throat. “If you give me a little time, I can pay. How much does my father owe?”

“He’s dead,” Henry said, still running his fingers down his beard in an oddly disturbing manner. “So, he doesn’t owe anything.”

Lisa-Jo didn’t understand. What was he saying? Oh, of course. She worked it out in her head. “How much do I owe?”

“Clever girl,” Trent said, beaming. “Didn’t I tell you that this one was bright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Henry said. “Tell her.”

Trent did one better and gave her a piece of paper with the figure written on it. It was a statement of sorts, showing all of her father’s losses and his few payments. Lisa-Jo swallowed hard when she saw the total at the bottom of the page. It was just over a thousand.

Her heart sank into her boots. How had her father managed to rack up this much debt? It made no sense. He’d said he was always paying off his debts, and that was why he couldn’t contribute to rent and food.

“I don’t see a lot of payments here,’ Lisa-Jo remarked. “My father said he had paid off some of it every month.”

Trent shook his head. “If you want to dispute the figures, you can come and see Butch. He’d be happy to go over everything with you.” Although his words weren’t threatening in the least, his tone was icy, filled with the promise of every kind of torture.

Lisa-Jo shuddered. “No, it’s fine. Just give me a couple of weeks.” She spoke hastily, just wanting to get away from them.

“You have five days,” Henry said. “Then we take it out of your flesh.” He smiled at her, and the alligator was back.

“Five…?” she asked, the fear gripping her heart so hard she felt a pain in her chest. She gasped. “I can’t…five days…”

“It’ll be four if you keep talking,” Trent warned her. “Now nod.”

She did.

“Good girl. And don’t worry about finding us to make the payment—we’ll come to you,” Henry said. “We know where you are every moment of the day.” Winking, he looked around as though at a host of unseen, watching eyes.

Lisa-Jo’s blood ran cold. She stared at them, her mind racing and her heart pounding in her chest. Five days to raise the kind of money that she would have to save all of her wages for years to get. What was she going to do?

She would have to make some kind of plan to pay off her father’s debt. Perhaps if she sent Gillian a telegram, her sister could wire her some money. After all, he was her father, too. She could at least help a little.

What’s family for if not to help you when you need it most? Gillian will certainly want to save me if she can. I’m the only sister she has.

If Lisa-Jo sent the telegram that day, perhaps she could have the money in five days. That would be good.

She should also write to Christopher about it. He was a farmer in a little town in the mountains in the Washington Territory. Lisa-Jo had answered his advertisement for a wife in the Matrimonial News, and they had been corresponding for the last six months. He would want to know about this. She had a letter to him in her pocket. It was mostly written, but there was space for another paragraph or two about her plight. Maybe he would have some good advice, although it would come very much after the fact, since the letter wouldn’t reach him for three weeks at the earliest.

Walking up the street to the post office, Lisa-Jo’s spirits lifted a little. She didn’t have to face this alone.

Once inside, she went to the counter and penned a quick telegram to Gillian. It was just the bare bones of what she wanted to say because telegrams were charged by the word.

In the letter to Christopher, she elaborated on the situation a lot more and felt much better, even though the postage was quite expensive. Now that she was counting every last penny, she almost decided not to send it. But that would be silly, so she gritted her teeth and paid.

With that done, there was nothing left to do but go home and see if there was anything worth selling. She doubted there would be. Her father made a habit of selling everything that wasn’t nailed down. Lisa-Jo had long since lost any attachment to physical things since they wouldn’t be around for long but would soon feed her father’s gambling habit.

Lisa-Jo and her father rented a small two-bedroom house near the docks. It was part of a string of low-cost housing owned by Mr. and Mrs. Merriweather. He was currently the mayor of Haven and not a great landlord. He left that to his wife, but she had little interest in other people’s plights. So, there were leaks in the roofs and rats in the cellars, and that was just how things were in Dock Row. Still, it was better than living in a barrel, as her father used to say when he was alive.

Not much better.

Lisa-Jo unlocked her door and went inside to work, worry, and wait. How many days would she have to endure before she got a reply? Lisa-Jo had no idea. All she could do was hope it would be sooner rather than later.

***

Gillian’s reply came two days later.

Will help. Wiring what I can.

That was good news. Lisa-Jo had worked out that if she took her savings out of the bank and her sister sent her at least five hundred dollars, then she could probably pay the lot. However, if Gillian sent less, then she might be a bit short. It was a great pity to see her savings go for this. She had worked so hard and scrimped for so long just to hand it over to thugs. That broke her heart far more than the loss of her father had. He’d been sick for a while, and his passing had been more of a mercy than anything else.

If he’d lived longer, I would have more debt to pay.

It wasn’t a kind or charitable thought, but Lisa-Jo wasn’t feeling much of either for her late father. He had been a burden while alive and now seemed to be set to continue as one in death. It just wasn’t right.

Along with the money, Gillian had sent another telegram. This one asked Lisa-Jo what her plans were for the future.

Lisa-Jo hadn’t replied. As she walked up the hill to the little schoolhouse where she taught, she considered her options. Could she stay in Haven now? With so much sadness and loss around her, she wasn’t sure she could. Anyway, what was there for her? No marriage prospects, no family there. She kept hoping that Christopher would ask her to marry him and then she could move out West.

That would be a chance at a new beginning. They needed teachers in little farming towns in the mountains, the same as everywhere else. Maybe she could even be in charge of the school. She worked under the thumb of Headmaster Miller in Haven. He was a bookish man with no people skills at all, and he smelled of cheese.

“Well, Miss Peterson,” Headmaster Miller said, shocking her from her musings.

Lisa-Jo jumped and then looked around guiltily. She hadn’t been thinking anything nice about him, and having him speak to her from the top step of the school was quite unnerving. It was as though he knew she’d been thinking nasty things about him. Just because they were true didn’t make them any less unkind.

“Headmaster,” she said and tried to smile. It felt like a grimace. I hope it doesn’t look like one. Perhaps it would be better not to smile.

She adjusted her features hastily.

“You are almost tardy! And on a Monday, too. What’s next? Taking a long weekend? Skipping school entirely?” he asked in his short, prim manner.

“I apologize,” she said, hanging her head.

He studied her with his little beady eyes and then snorted. “All right, you’d better get to your class before those hooligans cause trouble.”

“Yes sir,” Lisa-Jo said and scampered up the steps. She moved past him, and yes, he smelled of cheese despite none being in evidence.

Being in trouble at work was the last thing she needed, so Lisa-Jo did her best to do her job and keep out of the headmaster’s way. At least for the next couple of days. Perhaps once she had paid off her father’s debt, she would feel better.

She hated having to wait, but that was all she could do. Each morning, she counted down the days until the nightmare would be over.

The day finally arrived, and Henry and Trent had the sense not to bother Lisa-Jo at school for the money. She could only imagine what Headmaster Miller would say to that.

“There,” she said, handing over an envelope bulging with her and Gillian’s hard-earned four hundred and seventy-five dollars. “It’s all there.”

They were on her doorstep, and she could feel her neighbors watching her, but she didn’t care. This would be the last time Trent and Henry ever came to her house.

Trent took the envelope and then pushed her back inside through her open doorway. “We don’t make a habit of counting money on the street.”

They backed Lisa-Jo right to the kitchen and then made themselves at home. While Trent counted, Henry sat staring at her. There was a horrible, hungry look in his eyes. Lisa-Jo perched nervously on her chair, looking anywhere but at him.

After an age of the world, Trent stirred and looked up from his counting. “It’s all there. Down to the last dime.” He looked appreciatively at her. “Well done. I didn’t think you’d get it all. I thought there would be a shortfall.”

“Me too,” Henry said. “I was hoping. We get free brothel visits, you know, and you’d do nicely.” He licked his lips.

Lisa-Jo felt bile rise in her throat. She had to get these men out of her house as fast as possible.

“It’s a pleasure doing business with you,” Trent said, pocketing the envelope with all the cash back inside it.

“Good, so we’re done?” Lisa-Jo asked, her heart fluttering nervously in her chest.

“I believe so,” Trent said with a nod. “Unless you’d like to take up the mantle your old man left you and come for a card game tonight.”

Lisa-Jo shook her head. “Nope. I don’t think so. Now, I’ll thank, you gentlemen, for leaving. I have a lot to do.”

Trent and Henry stood, scraping their chairs loudly on the wooden floor. They walked to the door.

“You sure you don’t want to make some extra money? You’d do well in one of Butch’s brothels,” Henry said as Lisa-Jo opened her front door.

She leaned on it for strength. What would it take to make these two leave? Perhaps she needed to buy a gun.

With what money? Every last scrap of my savings is leaving in Trent’s pocket.

Lisa-Jo forced a smile. “No thanks, I have a job.” And she closed the door in their faces.

Leaning against it, she realized that she would never be free of her father’s taint. Never as long as she lived in Haven. Then Henry and Trent would always be breathing down her neck, trying to find some way to ruin her life.

I have to get out of here. Maybe I can go to Gillian. Yes. That’s a good idea. I’ll send her a message tomorrow, and with my next wages, I’m buying a train ticket to the Washington Territory. I am leaving Haven.

A feeling of great joy and hope washed over her, and for the first time in a long time, Lisa-Jo smiled.

Chapter Two

Culver’s Peak, Washington Territory

May 1879

Bastian Kramer inspected the wooden pole he had been handed. It wasn’t long enough. He could tell that before he even got it upright. Standing six feet tall himself, the pole didn’t reach more than a foot above his head, which he shook.

“Nope, this one’s too short,” he said.

Young Harvey Chapman nodded. “I can see that now.” He was a short fellow with a stocky build. If he was a type of dog, he would be a bulldog for sure. “It’s for a hops trellis, right?”

Bastian put the pole back down. “That it is.”

“Your old man giving it another go? I know the crop was ruined last year,” Harvey said conversationally as he led Bastian through the yard, hopefully, to where the right poles could be found. “Everyone took a nasty knock.”

“Yeah, that much rain isn’t a good thing,” Bastian said, remembering how it had rained hard for over a week in early spring. It had drowned the rhizomes before they even had a chance to bud. So, few had made it that Culver’s Peak’s hops farmers had almost all gone under. His father included.

But it was a new year, a new spring, and a new crop. So far, the rains had been few and very gentle, which was good for the plants. If they could get a good crop in maybe his father would even smile again.

They stopped in front of a stack of poles. Harvey raised one and handed it to Bastian. This one was ten feet long, and Bastian smiled. “This is more like it. How many do you have?”

“How many do you want?” Harvey asked, putting his hands on his hips.

“A hundred, to start with. Should do the north field,” Bastian mused.

Just then, he spotted his brother Christopher walking over to them with Mr. Chapman, Harvey’s father, in tow. They were talking, and Christopher was carrying a length of twine in his hands.

“That looks like a good pole,” Christopher said brightly. Then he handed the twine to Bastian. “Feel this. I think it’s better than the stuff we normally buy.”

Bastian ran his fingers over it. Then he wrapped the ends around his fists and pulled his hands apart as far as they would go. The twine pulled tight. It didn’t unravel, nor did it snap. He tried harder, pulling with more of his strength. Working in the local gold mine had given Bastian a solid, strong build. If he couldn’t break the twine, it was most likely strong enough. Despite his efforts, the twine held. He nodded and handed it back to Christopher.

“Then we’ll take it,” Christopher said to Mr. Chapman, who was an older version of his son. “If Bastian can’t break it, then it’s pretty hardy stuff.”

Bastian gave his brother a look. “Really?”

Christopher laughed. He was just as big as Bastian. They were often mistaken for each other despite Christopher being two years older, they were that much alike. “Well, you’re usually the one who breaks things.”

Bastian chuckled and shook his head. He could list at least ten times it had been Christopher who had broken something and then handed it to him to be caught with. It was a standing joke as far as his big brother was concerned.

“Harvey will help you get the poles into your wagon, and we can do the paperwork,” Mr. Chapman said to Christopher, and they walked off, leaving Harvey and Bastian to do the heavy lifting.

They finished up their business at the lumber yard, paying for the goods from their own money they earned in the mine.

Things had been tough since their mother died in a freak accident. She’d been taking down the laundry as a storm rolled in off the peaks and been struck by lightning. One moment, she was alive and fine, and the next, she’d been struck and was gone. Their father hadn’t recovered despite their best efforts.

Perhaps, if Bastian and Christopher could somehow coax a successful crop out of the soil, despite having to work in the mine five or even six days a week, they could turn things around for the old man. At least, that was the plan.

They drove through the little town of Culver’s Peak, nestled in a valley between the high peaks. The town was growing. With the lumber yard and the mine, there were jobs for strong, capable men, and that drew new folks in. From a tiny town of around five hundred souls, they had grown to more than a thousand in the last ten years.

Bastian found things like that fascinating. He loved to hear about the world away from the mountains. Far-off cities held all kinds of delights that he knew he was unlikely to ever lay his eyes on. They fascinated him. Perhaps if he didn’t have such strong ties to his family, he would go, but with Christopher, their father, and sister to look after, Bastian knew that he was never going anywhere.

Still, he loved to hear stories.

“Can we stop at the saloon?” he asked his big brother.

Christopher shrugged. “I don’t see why not. It’s lunchtime, and we still have some groceries to get for Melanie. Hey, maybe there’s even a letter from Lisa-Jo waiting for me.”

“You should check,” Bastian said.

They pulled up in front of the saloon and tied the horse to the hitching post. It was a good spot because there was always food and water for the horses there.

Then they separated. Christopher headed to the post office while Bastian went into the general store. He had a list of things to buy given to him by his little sister Melanie. She was in charge of the house now and ran it as strictly, if not more so, than his mother had.

The bell over the door jingled as he ducked in through the doorway. He was a little too tall for it and had banged his head on the lintel too many times to count. Mr. Oscar Newberry smiled behind the counter.

“Bastian,” he said enthusiastically. “How’s your old man doing?”

“He’s…” Bastian wondered how to answer that. His father was depressed and often refused to get out of bed or the rocking chair on the porch. “He’s hanging in there,” he said, deciding on something akin to the truth.

Mr. Newberry nodded soberly. “It’s hard to go on when your heart has ripped out of your chest. I know when my Ethel died, I wanted to crawl right into the grave along with her. But with Jean and Wallace to look after, I couldn’t do it.”

Bastian knew there had been a lot of loss in the town over the years. Mudslides were common when the fall rains came, and everything got wet and soggy around them. And then there was the mine.

He didn’t want to think about that. Not on his day off, but he knew it was a disaster waiting to happen.

“How is Melanie?” Mr. Newberry asked, changing the subject.

“Bossy,” Bastian said and laughed. “She’s taking after our mother more and more every day.”

This made Mr. Newberry laugh as he took the list from Bastian and went to work gathering the things on the list. When he was done, there was a pile of things. Rice, flour, canned beans, lamp oil, candles, soap…the list went on and on. Bastian hoped he’d have enough money for this and some lunch.

It turned out that despite the list being so long, Mr. Newberry’s prices were very reasonable, and Bastian managed to pay without trouble and still had enough for lunch.

He packed the goods into the wagon and then went to the saloon. The Stolen Nugget was quite busy it being a Saturday afternoon. It took Bastian a moment or two to find Christopher sitting at a table by the window near the back.

This was one of the times when being a big fellow was a good thing. Despite the crowd in the bar, all jostling to get Mr. Evans’ attention, Bastian found it easy to reach Christopher.

He had several letters on the table and was reading one while he waited. There were two pints of beer on the table, too, and two pies with fried potatoes and salad.

“Took your sweet time, didn’t you?” Christopher asked, looking up from the letter.

“Mr. Newberry was in a chatty mood,” Basian said as he took his seat. “Thanks for ordering, it’s really busy in here today.”

“Yeah, I think there was a baseball game this morning,” Christopher said.

Bastian shrugged. “Could be.”

“It could be fun. You could go and ask Mr. Turner to join the team if you like,” Christopher teased.

Mr. Ewen Turner had moved to Culver’s Peak five years earlier from New York. Apparently, baseball was taking the country by storm, and he had a love for the game. So much so that he had introduced it to the youth of the area and fielded two separate teams out of them. Now, the Culver’s Lions battled the Peak’s Bears every other weekend in the spring and summer.

“I guess it passes the time if you’ve nothing else to do,” Bastian said. He couldn’t see himself playing. He was too big. All the players were shorter and had far less bulky muscle. “Anyway, we have the farm to resurrect.”

“True,” Christopher said with a sigh.

Bastian took a sip of his beer. “Anything interesting in the mail?”

“You mean, did Lisa-Jo send another letter?” Christopher asked, smiling. “Anyone would think she was your friend.”

“Well, if you do decide to marry her, then she’ll be family, and I’ll have to get along with her,” Bastian said, picking up his fork and digging into the pie. It was a chicken pie and smelled delicious. Mrs. Evans, who worked in the kitchen, was a master of pie making.

“Funny you should say that,” Christopher said, looking thoughtful. “She did send a letter, and things aren’t going well for her. Her father died.”

Bastian stopped eating. He looked up from his plate, suddenly filled with sadness for her. He chewed and swallowed hastily. “Is she okay?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Christopher said. “She’s had to pay off her father’s gambling debt to some nasty people, and she’s worried that even though she’s paid, they won’t leave her alone.”

Bastian stared at his brother, suddenly filled with fear for Lisa-Jo. He liked her very much. Christopher always told him about her letters, and through those little snippets of information, Bastian had built a picture of her. In his mind, she was a sweet person who worked hard and did her best. What more could anyone ask for?

“You have to ask her to come here,” Bastian said.

Christopher frowned. “But I don’t know if I love her. What could I possibly promise her?”

“Who’s talking about love?” Bastian asked, a little exasperated. What needed to happen was plain as day to him. She could be in danger, and they needed to save her. Why couldn’t Christopher see that? “Just offer her a place to start fresh. She’s a teacher, right? Well, Mr. Emerson could probably use the help up at the school. Maybe she could come here and teach. Then, at least, she’d be away from the bad men.”