“You think I can’t handle this ranch, a wife, and a baby?” he glared at her.
“Let’s see who’s tougher,” she shot back.
Being abandoned as a baby taught Pauline one thing: She’s not someone people stay for. Running away from her controlling adoptive parents and an arranged marriage, she answers a mail-order ad, hoping for freedom—and maybe even love. But when she arrives at Amos’s isolated ranch, she finds a baby on his doorstep and a man staring at her like she was the last thing he wanted in his life. “This wasn’t my idea,” he said. Neither was the baby, apparently…
Amos has lived alone for years. He pushes people away, hidden behind his scars, inside and out. He didn’t ask for a wife or a baby, but here they were, turning his quiet ranch into chaos. “You don’t trust me,” she told him one night. “I don’t trust myself,” he replied.
Just as they’re figuring out this new life, danger arrives, claiming the baby as his own. Now they have to protect the family they never asked for—but can’t imagine losing…
Through fields and storms, they learn to stand,
A family formed by fate’s own hand.
In the heart of Montana, where hearts are tried,
They’ll find what matters when they stand side by side.
Willamette Valley, Oregon, 1842
Fire could be man’s greatest friend or his most formidable foe. Fire meant warmth and home-cooked meals. It could mean the difference between freezing to death or thriving. Fire created, but it could also raze entire settlements to the ground.
Ten-year-old Amos Overby shot upright in his crudely hewn bed, gasping and choking. Thick black smoke wrapped its oily fingers around his throat, the caustic air singeing his nostrils and stinging his eyes when he tried to tear them open. He’d been pulled from a nightmare of flames he couldn’t escape, but he was awake, and he was still living that terror. He realized that his family’s cabin was on fire, and he’d never been more terrified in his life.
He untwisted himself out of his patchwork quilt and threw himself off the side of his bed. His knees hit the wood floor painfully, hands groping along the rough-sawn cuts blindly. The boards were hot. The heat spread from his splayed fingers up into his arms.
His eyes were wide open, but everything was black. Ash. Gray. The air was scorching and acrid as he tried to breathe in the tiniest amount through his mouth.
Emily’s bed was on the other side of the small attic in the tiny cabin. The fire roared somewhere in the distance, yet close, all at once. The cracks, pops, and sizzles burst apart, filling the silence like obscene screams.
He knew he wasn’t dead, but he would be if he couldn’t escape the blaze.
The thought of dying this way, trapped in the cabin, letting the flames eat away at his body, gave him a fresh burst of energy that cut straight through his terror.
He scrambled along the too-hot floor, trying to locate his sister’s bed. Why was it so hard to find? The attic had barely enough room for the both of them. Why couldn’t he find her?
“Emily?” His scream was a muted croak. He coughed violently, his lungs bruised by the searing air. “Emily!”
“Amos!” The watery cry reached him to his right, followed by a fit of hacking and a dry, rasping cough.
He groped blindly, scrambling on his hands and knees like an animal. He thrust a hand out in front of him, and finally, it curled around something solid and soft. He didn’t know what part of his sister it was, but he jerked her to him. The cotton of her nightgown was smooth after the rough wood floor. He tore frantically at the fabric, ripping off a strip. He found his sister’s face, locating her nose and mouth blindly so he could tie the fabric over both.
“The cabin’s on fire! Don’t breathe in the smoke. Keep that on your face, Em.”
“I’m scared,” she whimpered on a muffled cry. She was only six years old. If he was scared senseless, how much more was she?
“I know. You have to be brave. Don’t let go of me. I’m going to get us out of here.”
He went first, grasping onto Emily’s hand. He crawled, keeping low, trying to stay out of the smoke, even though the floor was getting hotter and hotter. It was like shimmying over burning coals.
His hopes sank, and a new wave of terror obliterated his lungs when he saw the orange glow near the corner, where the crude stairs ran along the wall. There were no windows up here. There was barely enough space for them to stand upright.
“Ma! Pa!” he screamed, his voice exploding in a fit of coughing that scoured his throat. It was as though he’d forced rough wool fiber down into it.
There was no choice. Those steps were the only way out. The cabin was being consumed. How much longer would the beams and walls last?
“I’m going to carry you,” he told Emily. He didn’t want her to face the flames first. “No. That’s not—get on my back. Can you do that?”
She’d done it hundreds of times over the years.
Amos didn’t wait for her response. He shifted her onto his back, bent over double to fit under the timbers that supported the roof, and guided her hands around his neck.
“Close your eyes and hold on tight. You don’t let go for anything, you hear me?”
“I’ll hold tight to you,” Emily cried, sniffling loudly near his ear. Her sobs of terror and then a choked cough tore through him, lodging straight in his heart.
It was go now or possibly be trapped in the fiery inferno if he waited a single second longer.
Amos summoned the scant courage he could find and raced headlong down the stairs. Emily screamed as a wall of fire rushed at them. The smoke was blinding, stinging his eyes, working its way up his nostrils even though he tried his best not to breathe it in. The fire was a wall, the whole thing so hot that it felt as though his skin was peeling away from his bones.
Amos couldn’t make a sound. Couldn’t call for his mother or father again. They had to be outside. They had to be okay.
They had to.
Please, please, please.
The chant roiled violently in his chest as a fresh wave of terror gave him the energy to trace across the cabin to the door.
It only took his foggy brain a second to realize it was still barred.
His parents weren’t outside.
He looked back into the cabin’s interior, but the fire and smoke prevented him from seeing anything. The world was a mass of horror, and in this nightmare, even the door was on fire. He was a big boy for his age and strong, but he was still only ten years old. He raised his bare foot and tried to kick at the door, hoping it would shatter outward, but the wood wasn’t so far gone. It held.
Frantically, he turned to the tiny oilskin window. The skin was gone, the fire funneling all around the gaping wound in the cabin, sucking the air from outside gleefully.
He didn’t have time. It was too hot. There was no air.
Desperation made him brave. He tunneled down inside himself, drawing on a strength he didn’t know he had. He threw himself at the door, grasping the burning wood bar with both hands. The fire licked over his palms, danced up his arms, and burst over his chest. He didn’t feel anything. Only the brutal blast that nearly knocked him down as he wrenched the door open.
He thrust himself down and out, running.
Running as far as his injured lungs would allow him to run.
He collapsed on the grass, eyes pouring water, the tears blinding him to everything except the small figure beside him. She curled into a C, but he peeled her back so he could make sure she wasn’t injured. His smoke-stained tears changed to ones of relief so powerful that they doubled him over onto his knees when he realized that Emily was okay. She wasn’t on fire. She was breathing, staring up at him with wide, horror-laced eyes.
“Ma,” he croaked. “Pa!”
He wanted to go back for them, but he hadn’t been able to make out anything in the cabin except for the flames and smoke. He’d barely got Emily out as it was. He wouldn’t be able to find them. Wouldn’t have the strength to drag them out if he did. He had no protection against the powerful, raw force of the fire.
His fingers clenched the green grass beneath him and burrowed deeper, searching for the cool earth.
Dirt.
Dirt meant freedom. It meant a new life. A fresh start. It meant long days and exhausted but happy nights of dreaming.
It had.
It had meant all those things, but now dirt meant the harsh scrape of shovels. Wood boxes lowered into wounds ripped in the earth. It meant men with bowed heads and sometimes a traveling preacher. It meant ashes and finality.
Amos might be young, but he’d seen his share of death. Still, this was never supposed to be their reality.
Right there in front of him, the orange blaze illuminated the unbroken land beyond. The flames consumed his home, his family, his life. The inky smoke curled up above the dancing orange glow, climbing toward the bruised plum sky as if it could touch the very stars that inspired so many dreamers.
The land gave hope, but it could also be cruel. It gave, and it took. It provided, and it claimed, seldom in equal measure.
He felt the pain then.
It was so acute that it stole his rasping, sawing breaths from his body. The black came for him, but before it consumed him completely, he knew that this night would scar him for whatever remained of his life, until those shovels sang their raspy song of finality over him.
Bozeman, Montana Territory, 1867
Pauline’s dress clung damply to her body. She sighed in relief the second she stepped through the front door, closing it against the hot July sun. She set her basket of wildflowers down on the floor and removed one glove and then the other. She’d taken care not to stain them. She removed her hat with equal care, breathing hard against her tight lacings. Even in such a rough, newly hewn land, her mother insisted that she dress and comport herself as a perfect lady.
Picking up her basket, she walked toward the kitchen. She’d put the flowers in water before her mother realized she’d done more than go for the leisurely walk with Susan that she’d promised. Mother, with her delicate nature and genteel sensibilities, had to endure, even at the end of the world.
Her father was one of the richest men in Bozeman, their house one of the finest in town. Susan’s family wasn’t nearly so well off, and if there had been much of a choice when it came to women in the town, Pauline never would have been allowed to associate with her.
A firm scowl etched itself between her brows.
The house was silent. Her shoes barely made a sound as she stepped gingerly across the floorboards, muffled by the expensive rugs.
A flare of shame heated her blood, that they should have so much while others had so little.
Her mother was likely upstairs right now, lying down with another headache. She’d always been delicate, both in body and in mind. She’d somehow survived the grueling journey out here, even though they’d traveled in far more luxury and relative safety than most. Her father’s vast fortune allowed it, and he’d only grown it here.
She stepped into the kitchen, preparing a smile for Cook. The older woman worked miracles with anything she touched, often making Pauline’s favorite dishes, but there was no one. The kitchen was silent, cold, and preternaturally still.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. The whole building was eerily quiet. Where was Lottie? Where was Cook?
“Pauline.”
Mother’s voice drifted from the hall behind her. Pauline started, gasping guiltily. She hid her damp palms in the folds of her sprigged ivory cotton with the tiny pink blooms.
“Please come to the parlor. Your father and I have something we’d like to speak to you about.”
Pauline’s stomach was suddenly as heavy as lead. She forced down the bitter taste in her mouth by swallowing convulsively. She’d overheard her parents a few nights ago, when they didn’t realize she was still awake, discussing Johnathan Stevenson, her father’s business partner at the bank. He’d lost his wife to a fever the year before and had several sons who were older than Pauline. They were all married, and suddenly, it made a terrible kind of sense why her name and Mr. Stevenson’s came up in the same whispered sentences.
“No!” She shook her head frantically, dislodging several pins and sending strands of her thick, auburn hair whipping about her face. “No, I won’t marry him! You can’t make me!”
“You’ll stop that right this minute.” Mother’s hand flew out and grasped Pauline’s upper arm. She might be a small woman, but her grasp was like an iron manacle. “Your father has made you a wonderful match. You’re well beyond the age of marrying. If we lived in proper society, you’d have a husband, a household, and children of your own by now. You have a responsibility to this family.”
How many times had her parents reminded her of exactly that? They’d adopted her when an illness claimed their young son. There had been a series of stillbirths before that, ruining her mother’s health. The heavy burden of carrying on the family name rested squarely on her shoulders. While Pauline was deeply sorry for the pain her parents endured before she’d been part of their lives, she’d always wondered why they hadn’t picked out a boy. Why her and only her? Why not a boy to become a man, and take over the family business? It never once occurred to her in the past just how advantageous a daughter could be.
All around her, women were entering the West, free from the restraints of society. Survival was paramount, and women filled roles that would have been unthinkable in other places. She’d hoped, foolishly, that she might find a different life out here, at what seemed like the edge of the world.
It wasn’t that Pauline didn’t want to be a wife and a mother. She loved children. She just didn’t want to marry Mr. Stevensen. He was older than her father. He could have been her grandfather. The thought of being forced to make a life with him chilled her skin and churned her stomach.
“No,” she hissed, trying to wrench her arm free. “I can’t.”
Her mother had once been a great beauty. Everyone said so when she was younger, but now those features were sharpened into hard points. Her dark brown eyes held no softness.
“You’ll obey us. We’re your parents. Charles!” Mother grasped her other arm, shaking her while she cried shrilly for Pauline’s father. “Charles!”
“Please!” Pauline pleaded again, the dark already closing in on her, the cold, wretched earth swallowing her whole, the fear smothering her, turning her thoughts nonsensical. “Please, not down there. Don’t lock me down there! You can’t! Please!”
She stopped fighting as fear made her weak. She’d been forced into that dark, dank hole before. Every house had a cellar or a pantry. There’d always been somewhere to put her so she could come to her senses and stop her hysterics.
She felt the blood drain from her face. She’d never swooned, but the way the darkness pressed at the corners of her eyes at the horrifying memories, she knew it was a close thing.
No matter that she was taller than her mother—broader, hale, and healthy. She’d been sick rarely, while her mother was often ill. At the moment, none of her strength would save her. She couldn’t run. She was utterly frozen except for her wildly beating heart and her frenzied pulse.
“You need time to think and come to your senses,” her mother snapped, using that oft-repeated, dreaded phrase. “When you’re ready to be an obedient daughter and do your duty, you’ll be allowed out.”
The shadow of Pauline’s father filled the hall, his footsteps heavy, like the tread of the ghosts in the wild stories she and Susan often told each other, giggling even as they scared themselves breathless.
Pauline gasped for air, the sputtering breaths making a pathetic wheezing sound in the hall’s enclosed space that seemed to echo back at her mockingly.
Her father said nothing, but then, he hardly ever did. He expected blind obedience. His hand replaced that of her mother, and Pauline was dragged toward the back of the house. A cold sweat broke out over her whole body when her father tugged open the cellar’s door. He thrust her down the first wooden step. She could already feel the cold, smell the musky, dank earth scent.
“No,” she whispered feebly, hot tears carving down her cheeks.
It was the only plea she got out before the door slammed shut and the bolt slid in place behind her.
They’d purposely dismissed everyone who might hear her and come to her aid.
Pauline sunk down on the steps, trembling so viciously that her teeth chattered. There was no use fighting. She’d learned that in the past. She could scream and cry, scratch at the door until her nails tore and her fingers bled. No one was coming for her. They’d leave her all night if that’s what it took.
She stuffed the back of her hand against her mouth and bit down on her knuckles, sinking her teeth deep into her own flesh. Closing her eyes, she rocked back and forth on the step. Every other time, she’d allowed her parents to break her. She’d come out of that hole chastened and meek, apologetic. The perfect daughter.
Except she wasn’t. Not really.
They’d adopted her when she was only a few months old. They’d always looked after her needs, but kindness? She wasn’t sure either of her parents knew what that was. Like many who were well off, they’d employed others to do most of her rearing. She belonged to those past women, tender and stern in their own right, as much as she might belong to her mother and father.
They’d never said that they loved her. They were seldom tender. She couldn’t remember either of them ever touching her with kindness.
At the same time, many parents were that way. Not many families were like Susan’s. Her mother was a stout woman with seven surviving children besides Susan. They lived rough, in a small house. Their clothes were well-worn; their shoes were passed down from one child to the other. They didn’t have much in the way of possessions, but they were happy. So, so happy.
“I’m not marrying him,” Pauline whispered to herself. She repeated it again, this time stronger, swearing it as an oath.
Her tears stopped. Her neck unbowed. She lifted her head and straightened her spine.
Often, since arriving here, she’d stopped to gaze longingly at the horizon, wishing she could run away. In the city, it wouldn’t have been possible, but out here, in Montana Territory? Susan loved telling made-up tales of adventures to her brothers and sisters. Some of it was based on fact. It was dangerous out there. The West was a wild creature that didn’t want to be tamed, but it was also beautiful.
If she could get past the bars of her cage, she might find some of that beauty for herself.
If she stayed, she’d be forced to do her parent’s bidding.
The tremors vibrating through her muscles stopped. A jolt of strength flowed through her. Determination made her bold. The hysteria that had gripped her only moments before bled away. The dark wouldn’t hurt her. The damp couldn’t do anything more than make her uncomfortable. If there were spiders, they were probably more afraid of her. She’d told herself these things a thousand times in the past, but she’d never really believed them.
Until now.
She was twenty-two years old, far past the age at which most women married. She was no longer a child. Although she might not have been able to make a life for herself back home, things were different in the West.
She could be different.
It might mean giving up everything she had, but if that were the price for freedom, she’d pay it. Gladly.
The cellar had a door to the outside. It was barred and locked, but nothing was built like in their last house. Here, everything was wood, not brick and stone, and while it was freshly hewn, wood might give way. It could splinter.
She lowered herself into the cellar, bold now, uncaring that it was dark and cold. She even laughed softly when she searched for the tiny pinpricks of light coming from the outside. It didn’t take her more than a minute to locate the door.
Setting her shoulder against it, she pushed. It budged maybe half an inch. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
For the first time in a very long time, hope warmed her. She pushed. Again. She kept going until her shoulder was sore and probably bruised, and then she switched to the other side. With every rough shove, it felt like the door gave a little bit more. More and more, and then finally….
Whatever was anchoring the chain down gave. The door flew open so hard that it banged against the side of the house.
Pauline didn’t hesitate for a moment. She hauled herself through the opening and ran as if everything in her life depended on it because, truly, it did.
She had no hat, no gloves, and her dress was dirty and stained. She was in a wild state of disarray.
She knew what she must look like, so she forced herself to settle. She smoothed her hair and walked in measured steps, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, skirting behind houses.
It felt like an eternity before she reached the small wooden house where Susan lived.
Only hours before, they’d laughed and talked and dreamed as usual. Sang songs, made up stories for Susan’s brothers and sisters, snuck out to pick flowers. She’d been so worried about ruining her gloves and giving herself away.
Susan would help. She’d figure out what to do. She was mature and practical in ways that Pauline wasn’t, even though she was years younger. Meeting her had been the best part of moving to the end of the world. Pauline was so scared, so sure she’d hate it, so intimidated by how endlessly open the sky felt and how a person could lose themselves in the land, be swallowed right up, and change irrevocably.
But that was a year ago. She wasn’t the same person she’d been when she first arrived.
Susan found beauty in the unknown. She knew how to laugh and carry on, even in the face of hardship and pain.
Pauline was the uncertain one. She was the bird who stared out of the bars of her cage, but when the door opened a crack, she was afraid to leave.
Not anymore.
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This is a book I want to read to find out what happens.
It sounds like this should be a good story. I’d like to find out what the extent of Amos’s injuries were. Hopefully it will say more in the next chapter. I’d also like to see Pauline be able to sneak back into the house after she meets with Susan and makes a plan to be a mail order bride. Pretending to go along with her parents, but then she could secretly pack up some of her things and leave before having to marry the older gentleman escaping to find her next beginning. I’m looking forward to reading this book and seeing if part of my thoughts are on track with what you write.