Amethyst by Lauraine Snelling Page B

reminding him he didn’t want to stay out in this weather any longer than necessary. Even though the sun was shining, it held little warmth for the land. He followed the path of Carl’s boot prints and entered the barn through the smaller door in the shed side of the hip-roofed structure. Barns smelled like no other place on earth: oats, corn, hay dust, horse, cow, and dung. He sniffed again. Surely there was a pig here somewhere, and the chicken house took up a good part of the other shed side. With one more sniff, he was a boy on his way to milk the two cows and feed the rest of the stock. As the eldest, much of the chores had fallen to him until his brother grew old enough to take over while he helped his father with the fieldwork. To think that he’d dreamed of the glory of army life, barely passing his seventeenth birthday before enlisting, so afraid was he that the war would be over before he got in.
    “Morning. Merry Christmas.” Carl looked out from around the hind legs of the cow was he milking.
    “Merry Christmas to you too. All right if I walk Kentucky around inside here? He’s not up to plowing through snowbanks yet.”
    “Of course. There’s oats in the bin and hay in the mow. Help yourself.”
    “I’ll fork some down for your team too, and the cows.”
    “Thanks.”
    McHenry climbed the ladder, wincing each time his full weight hit the bad leg. Stairs and ladders weren’t the easiest for him at the moment, but inhaling the fragrance of hay took his mind from the pain. And he didn’t trip—one more thing to be grateful for. He found the fork stabbed into the stack and pitched enough to feed the animals. If this was all the hay Carl had, unless spring came real early, he was liable to be in trouble.
    Unwrapping the scarf from around his neck, he stuffed it into his pocket. Pitching hay warmed one right up, like chopping wood. He’d noticed Carl had a nice woodshed with cut wood stacked around the three walls. The other building must be his workshop.
    Jeremiah fed the animals hay and dumped a small amount of oats in the grain box in the manger. “Don’t need you getting fat, old son, what with nothing to do here.” He pulled off the blanket and gave Kentucky a good brushing, threw the blanket back on, and backed him out of the stall. They walked up and down the aisle behind the cows and around the open center of the barn, Kentucky following him like a dog on a leash. After putting the horse back, he dipped water out of a barrel, breaking through the ice crust, and gave him a drink, then did the same for the Heglands’ two horses and the cows. “What are you feeding the pigs?”
    “I have a bucket up to the house. Keep it on the porch mostly, so it will have to thaw some. I throw a little grain and water too.” Carl stood up from the last cow and poured the frothing milk into a milk can, keeping out a bit to pour in a flat pan for the begging cats. “They don’t give much these days but enough to keep us going. Pearl sends what she can in to the store. Winter can get kind of tough.”
    “I’ll help you carry that.”
    “Oh, I got the sled right outside the door. Need to build a well house this year. Right into that hill east of the house will be a good site. Can run a pipe from the pump.”
    “Looks like you’ve done real well for yourself.”
    “Been working for de Mores long hours. It’s good pay, long as we can build. That man has more ideas than a sheep has ticks. Shame he’s not here right now so you could meet him. You and he got a lot in common, both having been in the military.”
    “All those brick buildings there to the west of town are his?”
    “Cattle yards, abattoir, railroad siding, icehouse. He ships butchered beef halves and some sheep in ice-cooled cars to the big cities back east. He’s even brought salmon from the West Coast clear to Chicago and points east.”
    “So he doesn’t live here year-round, then?”
    “He mostly does. His family comes out for the