Chapter One
Hazelwood, Dakota Territory, 1876
It was two hours before dawn that August morning when Otto Riggs knocked on the door to the sod house. The routines never varied much through the years. Sometimes the rain shifted how the days went. Thaddeus often thought his father didn’t sleep the night before they agreed to begin the wheat harvesting.
“Mother has tea and muffins,” Otto said from outside. He rarely ventured into the old sod house. Thaddeus knew it was his father’s way to respect Thaddeus’ privacy. The soddy was the home of Otto’s youth, but since Thaddeus turned sixteen, it was his son’s place.
“Thank you,” Thaddeus said through the door. He lit the small bedside lamp and stretched as he sat up in bed.
The large sod house was the home of his father’s youth. Until Thaddeus turned sixteen, the sod house was storage for the corn-sheller, threshing machine, and various tools used on the farm. The old house, carved out of the butte and framed with the original wagons that brought his grandfather’s family to the homestead, served as a shelter against the harsh weather that sometimes drove other farmers out of the prairie lands.
When his grandfather died in ’66, Otto converted the soddy to a storage shelter despite Thaddeus wanting to live in the place by himself. At ten years old, he was tenacious. Otto and his mother, Hattie, decided that ten was too young to sleep alone in the shelter carved out of the butte. They likely had expected Thaddeus to give up on his requests.
Otto had used Thaddeus’ persistence to his advantage. He promised Thaddeus that if he worked hard on harvesting and planting, he would learn how to read the weather and the wheat. He could move into the soddy from the main house when he turned sixteen.
Thaddeus had lived in his grandfather’s first homestead house the last four years. He still shared the space with the harvesting equipment, sometimes mice. One year, he found a prairie rattler had taken up point next to a newly dug gopher hole. The gopher appeared when summer temperatures got so hot it felt like the prairie grass could catch fire.
Thaddeus enjoyed his privacy. It was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. When hard rains made the sod roof leak, he slept in the main house with the rest of the family. He didn’t worry about his sister, Deanna, investigating the old sod house. The dense spider population kept the ants and flies under control, while the spiders kept Deanna from spending any time inside the soddy.
Thaddeus dressed in a linen shirt and cotton trousers, with a gray slouch hat to keep the sun out of his eyes. Most days, he went shirtless because the summer sun baked the sweat on his shirt. It was easier to stay cool in the summer breeze that pushed over the grasslands from the northwest. The almost constant wind came off the mountains several hundred miles away. When the gusts across the prairie reached their homestead, the wind turned gentle. The distant Black Hills were mere brown humps viewed from Hazelwood. When storms from the mountains covered the mountain peaks, they knew it was a few hours before the rains met the plains.
Thaddeus had learned to pay attention to the sky. The weather meant everything to the farm. Crop yields depended on spring rains for golden harvests in the autumn. Long winters pushed back planting and losing two weeks of seeding the ground meant putting off chores until the crops got started. But when Otto woke Thaddeus at four that August morning, they knew it would be a bumper year for wheat.
He stepped out of the soddy into predawn. His father had already wandered back to the house across the gravel yard. The chickens began filing out of the henhouse. Thaddeus and Otto had even beaten the cocks crowing that morning.
Dejected, the roosters hurried out of the henhouse, chasing the last of the chickens. One rooster tilted its head, eyeballing Thaddeus as his father wandered back toward the main house. Its hackle spread across its breast as the wings beat; the rooster hopped off the ground and crowed. The roosters led the rest of the chickens behind Thaddeus, walking to the house expecting muffin crumbs for the late alarm.
Thaddeus felt a sense of urgency about what needed to happen over the next few days. Otto left the door open for his son, and Thaddeus smelled warmed baked bread and fresh corn muffins.
“Good morning, son,” his mother said with a smile. Hattie placed a steaming cup of tea on the modest table. “Come sit a moment.”
Otto gave his wife a suspicious look. Hattie waved her hand at him as if shooing a fly.
When Thaddeus sat down, his father’s leathery mitt dropped on his shoulder and squeezed it. Otto remained standing, sipping from his teacup. He didn’t want to get comfortable with the work they had ahead.
“Where is Deanna?” Otto asked. “Isn’t she awake yet?”
“Don’t worry about your daughter. I’ll make sure she gets her chores done today.” Hattie dropped two soft corn muffins on the plate in front of Thaddeus.
Otto opened his mouth to say something in retort about Deanna, but Hattie pushed another muffin against his mouth. Crumbs scattered across the floorboard, and Otto laughed.
Despite the long workday ahead, Otto was in high spirits. Thaddeus ignored his mother kissing his father’s cheek.
“Good morning, good morning,” Deanna said, whisking through the hallway from the rear door. She appeared rested and moved with the willowy grace only a fifteen-year-old could muster at that time of the morning.
Deanna kissed Otto’s cheek. Before he could turn, she plucked the rest of the muffin he had in his hand and took a bite before sitting at the table across from Thaddeus. She scooped a spoonful of raspberry preserves on the stolen quick bread.
“Can you get out to the south fields today?” Otto asked. “I thought I saw a herd of pronghorn grazing in the alfalfa patches.” He looked at Deanna, waiting for her to respond.
She wrinkled her nose. “Their piles are too small,” she said.
Otto’s eyebrows bounced up. “You want to cut more grass? Betsy doesn’t give us chips. The chickens get to the goat pellets before anyone else.” Otto sounded firm in his questions, but there was a hint of playfulness in his eyes.
Hattie put a gentle hand on her husband’s back, standing beside him. Thaddeus saw his mother’s tender touch was sufficient to keep Otto from getting too upset about fuel needs. They had more than enough cow chips and braided grass to keep the stove lit throughout the rest of the winter and stacks of dried corn stalks that fit neatly into the potbelly stoves. But Otto had explained often it was best to plan well and expect the worst when it came to winter on the prairie.
The best fuel source was buffalo chips. The chips flashed hot and were fast-burning with very little odor. Sunflower stalks worked well, too, for fires. The ground around the homestead had a few low spots where the water kept the ground soggy year-round. Box elders grew in the mighty copses that kept the areas shaded and a haven for pronghorn, ferrets, and other wandering wildlife.
Box elders never thickened more than a few inches in diameter. They weren’t the best for building. Thaddeus’ grandfather was a wise man who knew the sparse trees on the land were a sign of healthy ground. The limited availability of wood meant having the trees gave them access to building materials. But his grandfather had explained the trees served the family better when the trees thrived. The family kept the deadfall and trimmed the branches. Firewood helped the family more than worrying about building with trees that bent like reeds in the wind.
“If we had another cow, we’d have more patties,” Deanna said thoughtfully.
Otto nodded. He finished the tea. Hattie took his cup before he could rinse it himself in the steel basin. “I’m going to look into getting another cow before winter sets.”
Thaddeus looked up, surprised.
“With this year’s yields, we should have more than enough to get some of the necessities we’ve wanted for a while now.”
Hattie squeezed her husband’s middle, resting her head on his powerful shoulder. “Can we have a clothes wringer?” she asked.
Otto’s eyes softened. “For you, my dear, I will give the world.”
It was a household filled with love. Thaddeus grew up supported and taught by two generations that understood that working together was the only way to succeed. They shared laughter nightly after chores, even when their muscles ached and their sweat hadn’t dried from working in the fields all day.
Deanna and Thaddeus learned to read through their mother and grandmother’s coaching. Their grandmother died at the age of sixty-eight in ’70. Their grandfather followed his wife in the winter of ’72. They left a lifetime of knowledge, working the fields and tending to livestock, and had taught the rest of their family to live off the prairie lands.
Thaddeus finished his corn muffin and got up. He swigged the rest of the tea. Deanna tossed a dishrag at him that draped over his face as he laughed gleefully. The excitement had bubbled over into the rest of the house.
“Thaddeus and I will start cutting in the north field,” Otto said. “Deanna, once you’re finished milking, start fanning out the stalks to get the spikes ready.”
“I know, Father.” She stuck her tongue out at Thaddeus when he pulled the towel away from his face. “I want to work the thresher.”
Otto chuffed at his daughter. “You do? Well, have at it.”
“She’s too small to run the machine,” Hattie said.
“Well, when we finish in the north field, I’ll come back and work with you,” Thaddeus said. “It will do you good to grow some arms instead of those twigs hanging at your sleeves.”
Deanna jumped at Thaddeus, and he deflected her attempts to grab him by the neck with ease. He spun her around and lifted Deanna off her feet.
The hand thresher mechanically separated the grain from the stalks. It was a labor-intensive job that took strong arms and a lot of upper body strength.
“Alright, you two,” Otto said. “You waste all your energy in here, and you won’t have any for the fields.”
Thaddeus and his father collected a hand cart filled with waterskins, whetstones, scythes, and sickles. They needed to reap the wheat, barley, and corn in the coming days. The family grew everything they needed for themselves. The additional yields of the harvests went into the city to sell.
The Riggs family owned six hundred and forty acres initially purchased through the Land Ordinance of 1785 when Otto Riggs senior purchased the land at the price of $1 per acre. Thaddeus’ grandparents used every dollar they had saved to make a future for their family.
By 1800, when many people couldn’t afford the rate, the government halved the acreage to three hundred twenty and increased the price per acre to $1.25. By that time, the Riggs had already cultivated over one hundred acres of the property. They never went hungry. Many families living in the prairie town of Hazelwood had dry goods through long winter days because Otto believed in sharing their excesses.
Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. It was a scripture that Thaddeus heard throughout his life growing up. Many times, when his parents heard of other families having meager returns on their harvests, they made sure no one went hungry living in the area. They took very little if anything in return for the generosity. People of Hazelwood knew the Riggs family wasn’t afraid to give back whenever they had more than enough. No one ever took advantage of their kindness. Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.
Chapter Two
Working together with his father using scythes took discipline and concentration. Thaddeus often lost himself in the rhythm of the swaying scythe. A honed blade could cut a half-acre of wheat or barley before it needed sharpening again. Corn stalks dulled an edge by the quarter acre. He learned how to follow the natural flow of the field, creating straight windrows of wheat or corn or barley.
The windrows allowed the crop to dry in the sun before harvesting. Typically, it took Thaddeus and his father three days, ten to twelve hours long, to cut the acreages they intended to sell in the city. Anything left over stayed in the family. Hattie and Deanna spent long days tending to the goats and single cow, feeding the chickens and few pigs they kept.
Canning was a family enterprise they shared. Every year, the root cellars had caches of food stores, dried pronghorn, and salted pork, with rows of Mason jars on makeshift shelves. The cornmeal and flour that lasted through the winter needed to get used up before summer. Often, Thaddeus and his father returned to hot meals with freshly baked loaves of bread and pies. Hattie always made special meals for the family during harvest time because it took extra effort to prepare for the next growing season.
Thaddeus stopped at the end of the acre, marked off with stakes made from box elder saplings. His grandfather had stripped and varnished stakes years ago to separate field portions. Each section took the same amount of time to cultivate and harvest. It was efficient, making each season’s return plentiful.
The sun had shifted from east to west, making the Black Hills glow orange like the sunset set them on fire. Thaddeus looked around at the rolling fields of gold. He leaned the scythe against his hip and scooped up a few cut stems. The long spikes were healthy and firm. Thaddeus peeled the spikelets to get a better look at the grains.
His grandfather had shown Thaddeus what to look for in kernels. Thaddeus understood to look at the whole stalk to get a good sense of its overall health. The grains in his palms were healthy and heavy. Satisfied with the look of the wheat, he scattered the kernels over the ground again. His grandfather also explained that eating raw wheat sometimes made healthy men and women very ill. So, feeling an empty stomach that drinking water all day couldn’t fill, Thaddeus scanned the windrows looking for his father.
“You did more than your share this time,” Otto said when Thaddeus walked the four acres back to where his father had only finished two and a third.
“You’ll do more than me tomorrow,” Thaddeus said thoughtfully, not showing the swelling pride he felt. “My arms and back won’t want to move by then.”
Otto had collected their supplies. They had corn muffins and goat cheese for lunch and drank five waterskins of water between them. Thaddeus finished loading the cart, and his father stared at him.
“What’s wrong?” Thaddeus asked, feeling the pride spill away like a torn sack of flour.
Otto smiled warmly. He patted his face with a handkerchief. “You make me proud,” he said. “Many young men want nothing to do with what their fathers hand down to them.”
“Are you giving me the farm?” Thaddeus asked with a grin.
He wiped his face and arms with the linen shirt and draped it over the wall of the handcart. The sun had turned his skin bronze over the summer. By August, the hottest month of the year, fieldwork was impossible to do while wearing a shirt. He kept the slouch hat firmly on his head throughout the day. Protecting his eyes and head from the sun was a trick from his grandfather. The brim of the hat kept his shoulders and upper back from getting sunburnt.
“I don’t want you and your sister to think we’re not grateful for your hard work,” Otto said. “We’ve been blessed over the years, with both of you, but also with fruitful harvests.”
Otto turned the handcart around and began the long trip overland back to the house. Thaddeus pushed the cart through the field. He considered his father’s good mood after the long day.
“I think we could yield five bushels an acre this year,” he said.
Otto grunted and glanced over his shoulder. “That wheat is almost as tall as you. And the heads are as big as the palm of my hand. We’ll get six to seven bushels an acre for certain.” Otto pulled the cart between the windrows he had cut that day. “I wish we could get more seed sowed next season.”
“Why can’t we?” Thaddeus asked.
Otto faced forward, talking as he pulled. “We’re four people, and this is a lot of land.”
“Why not hire help?” Thaddeus asked.
Otto stopped pulling to look at him over the top of the handcart. Thaddeus couldn’t read the stern expression. “We use our funds to make purchases, Thaddeus. What would we pay anyone to help? Who could we trust?”
Thaddeus had pondered the notion throughout the year. His father had reservations about other people working his lands. “If we had more hands, we’d have bigger hauls,” he said. It wasn’t selfishness. It was the belief that asking another man to share the family’s burdens made Otto responsible for the next man’s needs.
“There’s no guarantee a crop will produce. You know that.” Otto began pulling the cart again. Thaddeus walked around to take up one of the posts. His father pushed from the center strut. “If we don’t have a strong harvest, we won’t have enough to pay someone else.”
“Don’t pay them in currency. Pay them in their ability to produce a harvest,” Thaddeus continued when he saw his father open his mouth to talk against the idea. “We have more ground than we can cultivate. We have more acreage than anyone in Hazelwood. If we found someone who wants to learn to farm and earn a living, we can broker an agreement.”
Otto looked sideways at Thaddeus like the setting sun had set him on fire. “Why would anyone want to work land that doesn’t belong to them?” he asked.
“Grandfather once told me that a man will work all day if he knows there’s a reward at the end of it,” Thaddeus said. “The right inducement would make a man proud to have half of what we do.”
“That doesn’t change my belief that without wages, you can’t expect someone to work.”
“Offer them a share of the crops they harvest.”
Again, Otto looked at Thaddeus like he had now turned to ash from the burning sun.
“Consider what’s possible if you offered someone an opportunity to work portions of the fields,” he said. “They sow and reap, and you get half of what they produce. They can keep the other half to feed their families, maybe sell their shares for profits.”
“I don’t think someone wants to work for half of a harvest.”
“You haven’t asked anyone. That’s a reasonable sum considering it’s your land.”
“Where are they to live?” Otto asked. They were halfway home, and Thaddeus had piqued his father’s interest with the possibilities. It was in his tone. He wasn’t dismissing the idea as something outlandish. “You can’t expect someone to come up from Hazelwood every day to work the fields.”
“Grandfather’s soddy is a safe shelter.”
Otto grimaced at the idea. “I don’t know if I like the idea of opening our property to strangers, son.”
“Then they can build another somewhere near the fields they’re harvesting.”
“That’s asking people to move onto our land.”
“It’s still our land,” Thaddeus said. “But you’re giving someone a chance to have something they’d never get anywhere else.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?” Otto asked.
“Long enough to know you can’t keep breaking your back every season, Pa,” Thaddeus said. “I see it in your knees, and today you have a quarter fewer windrows than you did last year.”
“You’ve been keeping track?”
“I have to,” Thaddeus said with a smile. “There’s more I need to do if we want to get a big haul.”
Otto laughed with his son, but Thaddeus knew it was for his benefit and not his father’s humor about the observation.
“I wouldn’t know anyone willing to become a tenant and work the land for half a harvest.”
“Let me ask you if someone offered that to you and Ma when you were my age, would you take it?”
Otto didn’t answer immediately. The single-level farmhouse and livestock sheds looked like apple crates on the horizon at that distance. Thaddeus saw the thread of gray smoke coming from the small stovepipe on the roof.
“If I thought someone’s offer didn’t jeopardize our future, I suppose I would,” he said. “But you’re asking a lot from someone you don’t know. Trust isn’t something that shows up ready to work. It’s something you might not see right away, and sometimes think it’s there when it never happened.”
“Set up a legal agreement,” Thaddeus said. “Have a contract drawn up between you and the farmer. Have it set for one season, contingent on their ability to harvest what they sow. If it doesn’t work out, you can evict them from the land.”
“Contingent?” Otto repeated and smirked. “Your mother likes teaching you and your sister words that take up a mouthful.”
“Consider it, will you?” Thaddeus asked.
“I’ll consider it.” His answer was too quick. His father had their current crops to think about instead of what happened for the next season.
“Are you telling me that so I won’t bring it up again?” Thaddeus asked.
Otto laughed again, harder and louder. “It’s a grand idea, son. But I don’t see someone willing to put in so much of their sweat and blood into something that might not yield enough to feed them for another winter.”
“You can teach them how to read the soil and the seeds,” Thaddeus said.
“I think if it came to happen, I’d leave that up to you.”
Chapter Three
It was a consistent and fruitful process working teamed up in the days following harvesting. Thaddeus and his father had more than thirty bushels of wheat between them, along with seven bushels of barley and three hundred pounds of burlap-bagged corn ready for the trip into Yankton. The season’s crops produced more than the family had anticipated.
“We need another wagon,” Otto said. Thaddeus stood by his mother, looking over the grains and corn ready to go. Stacks of forty-pound bags with handstitched tops already collected. They weren’t finished with the threshing or grain ingathering.
“Why can’t you make two trips?” Deanna asked. It was their first year taking more than a wagonload to sell. She genuinely didn’t know why it was a problem.
“It’s best to make one trip and hope for the best,” Thaddeus explained. We’ll get better prices with fresher supplies. If it rains between now and the time we get to the market, that burlap traps the water.”
Thaddeus and his father gauged the wagon’s axel beds, reaches, and spring bars. Putting all that weight on their single wagon wasn’t worth the risk.
“It’s too much weight,” he said.
Otto nodded. “Who do we know that has a wagon we can borrow?” he asked.
“What about Jimmy Nash?” Thaddeus said. “If he’s not taking corn into the city this year, he can lend us the wagon and the horses.”
Otto frowned. “Why wouldn’t he harvest enough corn for the market?” he asked.
“Aubrey told me half his crop got rootworm,” Hattie said. “He burned off half an acre before the rootworm got the rest.”
Otto shook his head. Thaddeus knew Jimmy Nash was a competent farmer, but he didn’t understand how to protect crops from blight. “I warned him not to plant too close to the creek.”
“We can offer him a bag of corn,” Thaddeus said. “That will make up more than his losses.”
“I can take a basket from the garden, too,” Hattie said. “We don’t have enough jars to can the rest. Deanna can weave a few baskets to carry vegetables to the city.”
“What am I supposed to do with those?” Otto asked.
“I’ll sell them on the corner while you’re at the depot,” Deanna said.
Otto gave his daughter the kind of look a father does when he knows there’s an ulterior motive. “You think you’re going into the city with me?” he asked.
Deanna nodded. “Thaddeus has to go, too,” she said. “You need two wagons. I’ll go and sell fresh vegetables from the garden, and you deal with the brokers.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Thaddeus said. “We’ll take some of the older preserves and jars that we need to eat up this year.”
“You want to give strangers spoiled goods?”
“How dare you,” Hattie said, thrusting her knuckles against her hips. She glared at her husband. “When have you ever opened one of my jars and found bad food? Thaddeus is right about the surplus, though. Last year I threw out fifteen jars of pickled onions.”
“Well, yeah,” Deanna said. “Who wants to eat that many pickled onions? They give people wind.” She waved her hand in front of her wrinkled nose.
“That didn’t stop you from eating more than your share,” Thaddeus said.
Deanna picked up a stone and threw it at her brother. He caught it quickly.
“Don’t do that, Deanna,” Otto said. “You could hurt someone.”
“Not the way she throws,” Thaddeus said.
The second rock hit him on the arm. Otto shook his head. “This is more troublesome this year. But I’m not complaining.”
“With the money we get from selling the vegetables, we can get Mama new jars for canning,” Deanna said.
“There might not be enough money left over for new dress fabric,” Hattie said. “But I sure would like to replace jars if I give up so many.”
“You think this is a good idea?” Otto asked.
Hattie nodded. “I have more than my share of work around here. You take Thaddeus and Deanna. You’ll be gone a day, maybe two if you sleep on the trail.”
“We get to sleep on the trail?”
“I’ll be sleeping in the wagon with Pa. You can sleep on the trail,” Thaddeus said. He managed to catch the third stone before it hit him on the head.
“Deanna, please, don’t throw rocks. It’s dangerous.” Hattie waited for Otto to consider their needs.
“If we get a second wagon, we’ll have more than enough room for extra grains. I can finish threshing out the east fields while you go talk to Jimmy,” Thaddeus said.
“No, I’ll need you to drive back the wagon if Jimmy agrees.”
“What about me?” Deanna asked.
“What about you?”
“I can drive a wagon.”
“How can you drive a wagon when you need to make baskets for you to make enough money selling zucchini?” Otto asked.
Deanna’s face lit up. “Can I go?”
“As long as you don’t throw stones at your brother anymore,” Otto said.
She emptied her dress pockets of stones intended to use as weapons on her brother. Deanna ran to her father, flung her arms around his neck, kissing his cheek. When she pulled away from him, Deanna skipped across the farmyard. Three goats got curious about her and gave chase, hopping and jutting their heads. When the goats lost interest in her, Deanna picked up a sickle from the handcart.
“Don’t forget to look for Ella,” she shouted at Thaddeus.
Thaddeus saw his mother smiling at him as she made her way back to the main house. Otto was indifferent about the comment.
Deanna ran into the prairie grass, where she could find suitable weaving materials. She used the dense reedy stalks to make her baskets using a technique from their grandmother. Instead of using willow, which wasn’t available in the area, Deanna used the same principles with prairie grass. They weren’t as durable or long-lasting as willow baskets. But no one was faster at basket weaving than Deanna—she could churn out five to six baskets in a day, depending on the sizes she wanted to make.
From the moment his sister mentioned the girl, Thaddeus could think of little else.
***
The wagon ride to Jimmy Nash’s house took almost two hours. Nash started his homestead three years ago and struggled every day to make it worthwhile. The three hundred and twenty acres he’d received from the government was too much for him and his wife to manage alone. They struggled yearly, trying to get a foothold in bountiful crops.
On the ride over to Nash’s house, Thaddeus got a good sense of how much more land belonged to the family. Acres of fertile untapped land sprawled over both directions of the trail leading off their property.
It was a well-worn wagon trail first blazed by Thaddeus’ grandparents when they purchased the land. The direction was relatively north to south, making it easier to define their fields in relation to the main house. Once they reached the end of the property, a wider trail running southeast to northwest eventually led to Yankton and Fort Dodge, Iowa — depending on which way one turned off their property.
The hamlet of Hazelwood was the closest settlement to the Riggs’ property, with a population of fifty-five families. But to get to Hazelwood, Otto turned left, heading toward Fort Dodge until the fork in the road veered north.
“You got something on your mind?” Otto asked when more time passed during the ride. He looked pleased with enjoying the break from farming.
Thaddeus and his father got along better than most fathers and sons that Thaddeus knew. Otto had commented a few weeks ago about how children weren’t interested in carrying on traditions or family-oriented businesses. It was true as he saw it, too. In the years following the War Between the States, farming wasn’t about sharing crops for profit. It was more about self-sustaining home lives.
Farmers that went off to fight in a war they didn’t fully understand sometimes returned to find everything they had left behind suddenly gone. Generational farming wasn’t as prevalent as it once was, and it cost more money than it was worth to start up again. Families taking advantage of the reprisal to the Homestead Act of ’62 only got half of what Thaddeus’ grandfather received in 1790 on the heels of the expansion west of the Mississippi. Still, it proved too much for many people who didn’t understand how to work day in and day out, turning untamed prairie lands into plentiful crops. Nash was one of the last few farmers in the area.
Otto leaned against Thaddeus, bumping his shoulder while they rode on the wagon. Their field horse had one speed and over the years, pulling the spike-toothed harrow or the plow, getting a faster gait from the animal was an impossible task. They were relegated to the horse’s meandering walk. Sometimes the animal trotted when they went downhill, and the wagon shafts pushed on the breeching dee and tug strap attached to the belly band, forcing the harness breeching against the horse’s rump.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked. “You’re not getting ready to tell me you want to run off and join the railroad, are you?”
Thaddeus laughed and shook his head. “No, nothing like that,” he said.
“You got that bug Deanna put in your ear about Ella Lowery?” Otto pressed.
Thaddeus smiled, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks.
“It’s okay if that’s what’s on your mind, son. I understand. She’s one of the few young ladies around here your age, and she’s prettier than a sunrise on the sunflower patch.” Otto wasn’t one to make comments about anyone else. It surprised Thaddeus to hear his father’s thoughts about it. “Do you ever talk to her when you get into town?”
“I haven’t been into town since the beginning of August,” Thaddeus said. “There isn’t time for socializing during harvest.”
“Is that you trying to make me feel poorly about what we do?”
Thaddeus put his hand on his father’s shoulder. Otto was a thoughtful man with an even temper. He was a man to aspire to be like, in Thaddeus’s view. But his father had a hard time thinking about the future when it came to the potential of the land.
“I am a farmer,” Thaddeus said. “Like my father and my grandfather, I don’t want to do anything else. I don’t plan to run off to join the railroad. I don’t want to be a drover or dig for gold, hoping to strike it rich. The farm has a lot to offer, but it does not see the potential it can reach with more hands.”
“Is that why you’re quiet?” Otto asked. “You’re thinking about bringing on more people to work the land? We can’t afford to hire anyone to help us.” He stared at the road ahead. There wasn’t much to directing the horse. The path looked like the ridge and furrows in the fields, so the animal kept moving forward. “I thought about your idea of letting someone work the land and keep half the profits.”
It surprised Thaddeus to hear that. He kept quiet, knowing if Otto brought it up, it was on his mind, too. Sometimes it took longer for some seeds to germinate.
“What if they don’t understand to leave fallow fields that still need tilling when they’re not planting? You understand the importance of rotating the crops. How do you tell a stranger how to work the land when they bring what they know into the fields, thinking it’s the right way?”
“Maybe they might know something different that you don’t,” Thaddeus said. “There are other ways to farm besides what we were taught.”
Otto looked surprised. “Good thing your grandfather’s not alive to hear you say that.” He sighed. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about bringing on someone else or letting a family move onto the land. What happens if it doesn’t work out? How do we evict them?”
“That’s what contracts are for, Pa.” Thaddeus didn’t have any understanding of the legal system or the government. But he grew up beholden on the faith that a binding contract between his grandfather and the United States government handed the family a legacy through the land ownership that was one of the largest in the territory.
“You put a lot of thought into this. I appreciate your willingness to want to do more. But until you start a family of your own, I’d like to keep doing what we can with what we got.” After a few minutes, Otto added, “You should find Ella when we go through town today.”
Thaddeus saw the smirk on his father’s face.
“The Adventures of a Dauntless Soul” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!
Thaddeus Riggs is a young farmer in the Dakota Territory with a strong sense of ethics, and always willing to stand up for what’s right. When tragedy strikes the family after his father passes away, Thaddeus is determined to do his best for his farm and make his deceased father proud. His life turns upside down once again though, when an out-of-town sheriff pays a visit, claiming that Thaddeus’ father didn’t die of natural causes…
Will Thaddeus be brave enough and uncover what lies behind his father’s mysterious death?
Luckily for him, Ella Lowery enters his life and she is eager to help him in his challenging quest of truth. Yet everything gets more complicated, when they discover that Ella’s father has dark secrets of his own and there might be a connection to the death of Thaddeus’ father. To make matters worse, Ella’s father pressures her to marry an older, ruthless man, threatening to destroy her chances of ever finding true love with Thaddeus.
The road to justice can be extremely perilous and filled with unexpected turns…
Time is running short and the fastest gun will have the last word. In a web of lies and deceit, will Thaddeus clear his father’s name and forge a new life? Will he and Ella find happiness by each other’s side, or will they be both victims of a great conspiracy that threatens to wreck their dreams of finding justice together?
A pulse-pounding drama, which will make you turn the pages with bated breath until the very last word. A must-read for fans of Western action and romance.
“The Adventures of a Dauntless Soul” is a historical romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.
Hi there, I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek of my latest story! I will be impatiently waiting for your comments below.