Tina Tracks a Trail Boss: A Historical Western Romance (Brides with Grit Book 8)

  Tina Tracks a Trail Boss

  A Historical Western Romance

  Brides with Grit Series: Book 8

  Copyright © 2016 by Linda K. Hubalek

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016906425

  Published by Butterfield Books Inc.

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting this hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Except for the history of Kansas that has been mentioned in the book, the names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A sweet historical romance set in 1873. Widowed Tina Martin and her two young children were moving from Texas to her brother’s place in Kansas, when their train wrecks near Austin. Suddenly, Tina, soon to be a mother for the third time, loses her children, and is severely injured.

  Leif Hamner lost his wife and son in childbirth last year when they were returning home to Texas after driving cattle up to Kansas. He’s back alone in Texas, until finding a tiny newborn baby hidden in the back of his wagon. This sets off a chain of emotions and events as Leif hunts for the infant’s mother—the injured Tina—and nurses them back to health.

  Acts of fate put the two damaged souls together, healing deep wounds as they travel north to join their families in Kansas. But his family has secrets which could ruin their tender love. Can Tina and Leif weather the conflicts, or will they be torn apart?

  Dedication

  To women, past and present—

  thank you for traveling a “trail” to improve life for others.

  Chapter 1

  Fall 1873, near Austin, Texas

  He heard the creak of wood behind him and he whipped around. Sounded like someone was trying to climb in and grab something out of the back of his wagon. “Get out of there!” Leif Hamner’s voice boomed menacingly. He just finished loading the wagon with supplies and had walked around the front of the wagon, ready to leave town. The curved canvas top covering the wagon bed prevented him from seeing over it, so he dropped down on one knee to peer under the wagon, hoping to glimpse what way the intruder went. All he saw was a flash of red as a girl or woman raised her skirt to run. Whoever she was, she was gone by the time he reached the back of the wagon. Peering over the back gate, he studied the items he’d just placed in there. Lid was still on the bushel basket of apples he’d bought. Box of food staples was still packed tight. Small keg of pickles hadn’t been knocked over. Well, someone tried to see what was in there, but didn’t have time to lift anything out of the wagon and run off before he yelled.

  Leif walked back in front of the wagon, climbed up onto the seat and released the brake. He clicked his tongue the same time as he flicked the reins, and his two-horse team pulled the wagon out of the alley behind the mercantile and onto the side street. He always avoided Austin’s Main Street, preferring to get his supplies on the east edge of town, even if it was a rough part of Austin.

  At six foot, five inches, with a revolver on his right hip, he wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone bothering him. Plus, his attitude for the past year kept everyone away anyway. He was a solemn, serious, thinking man, at least compared to his friendly outgoing brother, Dagmar, but losing his wife, Britta and infant son on the trail had turned him into stone. He felt as hard as granite on the outside, but felt ready to crack at a moment’s notice. The grief had lessened a bit over the months, but Leif didn’t think he’d ever forget his wife’s last tearing scream which stopped mid-breath before she collapsed back on the make-shift pile of blankets in the back of the wagon. Their son was stillborn, his wife dead.

  First, he wanted to burn this wagon, but it didn’t make sense to destroy a piece of needed equipment. He thought of trading it for another, but that didn’t settle his mind either. Leif’s wife and future had died just a few feet behind the seat he sat on. Maybe it was his way to keep their memory intact, or torture himself because he couldn’t save them.

  Leif had made the trip to Kansas this spring with his family, driving a herd of over two thousand head of longhorns to Ellsworth, Kansas. Leif was the oldest at twenty-seven. His siblings, Dagmar, and twin sisters, Rania and Hilda, were right behind him in age, and ready to get off the trail and settle down. His parents Oskar and Annalina consented to permanently settle wherever the family chose. All but Leif liked the area around Ellsworth County, so his parents bought a homestead, and his three siblings stayed in Kansas.

  Leif and his parents went back to Texas by train to move the rest of their possessions to Kansas. They signed on with a small outfit bringing a late roundup of longhorns up the trail, so they’d make money on their last trip north and have help getting their own small herd of cattle and horses to their new home.

  Leif had swayed back and forth more often than a small tree in a wind storm on what to do with the rest of his life. He was going to join his family in Kansas, then the next minute he couldn’t imagine leaving behind the two graves buried in the little cemetery on the edge of town. They had been nearly home from a trail drive when Britta went into labor with their child. This wagon was used to bring their bodies home to their final resting place.

  Finding work wasn’t the problem. He could stay on at the ranch his family had been working since immigrating from Sweden, or another nearby ranch. It was taking that step to sever ties with the area he and Britta knew as a couple that Leif couldn’t handle. Her family worked at the same ranch as the Hamners so they grew up together, fell in love and planned to continue the family tradition of cattle drives. Britta had traveled with his family before and after they were married, going to Louisiana to New Mexico. Now she wasn’t able to travel with him anymore, and he felt obligated to stay by her side.

  So he turned around to head back south this morning, after being on the trail for only two days with his parents and the herd. He’d stopped in Austin to buy food supplies he couldn’t go without and was heading back to the ranch, hoping the owner hadn’t given his job and home to someone else yet.

  After a ten-minute drive through the outskirts of town, he pulled into the cemetery where he had spent hours talking to Britta since she died. Leif was anxious to tell her he was staying home with her, even though he still had mixed feelings about it. His moder had argued he could ride the train back to Texas anytime to visit the graves, because it would be better for him to stay with the family than to keep living in the past. Leif sighed, hearing his moder’s voice repeating her opinion, but it didn’t drown out Britta’s final scream.

  He pulled the team to a stop, set the brake and sat there a minute, thinking of the last time he was here two days ago, saying good-bye, promising he would never forget them.

  One of the horses snorted and shook his head, trying to get the flies off his ears; otherwise, there was no sound, with no trees around the cemetery to catch the wind.

  The grass was high around many of the grave markers, and clipped around others. Simple, crude wooden crosses with no names. A wood slab with a name and date carefully painted in block letters. A variety o
f designed iron crosses which would outlast the wooden versions. Then there were stones set at the head of the graves, with chiseled names and dates, forever showing who rested six feet below.

  Leif spent hard earned money to order a stone for Britta and their son, because he felt obliged to mark their final resting place. And he’d told his family, if something happened to him on the trail, they were to bring his body back to rest beside his wife and son. They didn’t have to add another stone with his name etched in stone because Britta’s stone would always be there.

  The cemetery had doubled in size since Britta’s burial. About a week ago, a train had wrecked nearby, killing and injuring dozens of passengers. Some bodies were shipped back to where the families lived, if it was known. Other victims, many unidentified, were buried in this cemetery.

  Leif shuddered, thinking of what these graves held. Every person would have died because of a violent accident and injury. He hoped death came quickly for these poor souls as they became mangled in the wreckage. Witnessing Britta die had made him acutely aware of suffering and death, be it human or animal.

  Just as he swung his leg over the edge of the wagon’s side to hop down, movement in the back of the wagon caught his eye. He pulled himself back up, put his knee on the seat and peered through the canvas arch.

  There was something moving wrapped in a light-colored cloth. Leif drew his gun, thinking it was a snake, but then he didn’t want to shoot a hole through the end gate. Bet that was why he saw someone behind the wagon before he left town.

  No…too round a body for a curled up snake. Probably a puppy a father declared there was no food for, so the daughter decided to hide it, thinking of the flash of skirt Leif had seen when the person ran away.

  Leif returned his revolver to its holster and climbed down off the wagon. A whimper as he walked around to the back of the wagon made him stop mid-stride. That didn’t sound like a puppy but he wasn’t sure because one of the horses blew breath at the same time.

  He cautiously looked over the end gate, watching the thing wiggle again. Looked about like a five-pound ham wrapped in…a bath cloth. Leif reached in, ready to flick the cloth apart to see what was hidden and how to get it out when the thing let out a tiny wail.

  Leif froze. Oh, dear Lord, it sounded like…

  A tiny human fist struggled its way between the folds of the cloth, making the material fall way from the face of a newborn. Leif stared as the skin of the unclothed infant continued to be revealed as it shook and found its voice.

  A newborn child. Someone had put a newborn in the back of his wagon and then ran off! That flash of red. Someone didn’t want her child?! Grief and anger hit at the same time. Leif sat in the back of this wagon, less than a year ago, holding his dead son, sobbing for the loss of his family.

  And anger because someone had a precious child—and she abandoned it?

  Leif tenderly lifted the baby out of its hiding place and out of the wagon. Leif shook so hard he was afraid he was going to drop the baby. He got down on his knees and set the bundle on the grass. Pulling the cloth corners wide revealed a tiny baby boy, the cut cord still wet, as was the underside of the cloth since it was soaked from the baby’s body fluids.

  Its skin was red, wrinkled, but the boy had a healthy set of lungs now that it had been disturbed. A black shock of hair stood straight up on his tiny skull. Between breaths, the infant opened his eyes blinking at the bright light which had recently become his world.

  Leif quickly bundled the newborn up again trying to make his mind think through his shock. The babe needed dry clothes and its screaming meant it was probably hungry. Did the child get any first nourishment from its mother? That was always the first concern with an orphaned calf. Did it get the colostrum from his mother before the cow died or rejected the calf?

  The flash of red skirt. What it the boy’s mother trying to give the baby away…to keep it safe for a bit? Or to give him away forever? No, the mother wouldn’t have the strength after just giving birth to hightail it down the street. Did the mother die and “red skirt” tried to abandon the baby?

  Leif got up, lowered the end gate and reached in for his bag of clothes. One of his shirts would keep the baby dry for a bit. Leif carefully transferred the baby from the bath cloth to a shirt and swaddled the baby. Instinctively he cradled the baby in his big hands and laid him to his left shoulder. Tears came to his eyes before he let his right hand touch the baby’s back to comfort it. This is how it should have been with his son the first time he held him instead of holding a lifeless body.

  “Britta…” Leif automatically said, turning toward his wife to ask what to do next. But through his tears he saw her tombstone, bringing Leif back to the present. The baby’s cries turned to whimpers as it snuggled against his chest. Leif squeezed his eyes shut then felt tears draining down his rough shaven face. He looked down to see the drops falling on the infant’s head, and quickly wiped them away with his thumb.

  “Now what do I do?” Leif muttered out loud. He was standing with a newborn in front of his wife’s grave. When did he wander the twenty feet over here from the wagon?

  He got down on one knee, taking the infant from his shoulder and turned its body toward the stone, as if to show it to his wife. “Why was he put in our wagon, Britta?” The stone’s words blurred as a new set of tears clouded his eyes.

  Leif changed to sit cross-legged in front of the stone, moving the baby back against his chest, using his other hand to wipe the tears away again.

  “His momma had a hard soul to abandon her baby. Or desperate. Or she didn’t make it like you.” Where’s the father? Grandparents?

  Leif looked at Britta’s name on the stone. “He so very tiny. Seems about half the size I remember our son being. Got a good set of lungs though. Why wasn’t he wanted?”

  He sat there a moment thinking of his and Britta’s excitement over having their first child, planning their future as Britta’s body changed over the months. Leif talked of the trails their child would ride as he or she grew up. But more than once, Britta would say, “…or live in one place, with friends in school, a church to attend with his or her family, a bed under a roof instead of the sky all the time…”

  He’d always felt guilty Britta wasn’t in their home when her time came. They were on the trail most of the year, but heading home for their child’s arrival. Would she and their baby have survived if she gave birth at home? That question would always haunt him.

  The infant was rubbing against his chest, instinctively looking for nourishment. “Britta, I need to take this little one back to town.” He stood up, cuddling the baby closer to his chest. “I’ll be back to tell you about his mother so you won’t worry.”

  Leif unrolled his bedroll in the front part of the wagon to make a nest to snuggle the baby in a safe and warm spot. He looked back to the gravestone one more time before climbing onto the wagon seat.

  “Now what, Britta?” Leif still talked out loud to Britta, just to hear her name. “I’m not having any luck finding help for this baby.”

  He patted the baby’s back, trying to sooth the crying infant. The storekeeper told him it was probably from the brothel. This end of town was full of brothels, but surely women putting their babies in the back of people’s wagons was not a common event.

  Leif bought a quart of milk and a yard of flannel to tide the baby over until he found the mother. He ripped off a strip of the material to dip in the milk and put in the infant’s mouth so it could suck the liquid out for a little nourishment. Leif got the rest of the material folded and wrapped the baby’s bottom five seconds before the babe soiled it. He’d have to go back and buy more flannel soon if Leif’s luck didn’t change soon.

  The doctor Leif finally tracked down smelled like he was half drunk and Leif turned away when the doctor said he’d examine the baby. The infant had healthy lungs and all his fingers and toes, so there was no need to subject him to the man’s filthy hands. “Probably belonged to one of the working
women around here. Take it to the orphanage at the end of town.”

  Leif reluctantly now stood at the door of the orphanage, waiting for someone to answer his knock. It was a two-story wooden house, not too old, but not painted. It lacked the warmth of a family home. There were a least a dozen children, young school age, pulling weeds in a garden to the side of the house. They all stopped to look at Leif, but then went back to their work when one of the older children said something.

  Leif was ready to open the door himself because no one had answered after his third time knocking. Maybe the caretakers were in the back and didn’t hear him pounding on the door?

  His hand was reaching for the handle when the door slowly opened, revealing a lad barely tall enough to reach the handle on the other side.

  Pushing the door open wider revealed young children of all sizes who stood solemnly looking up at him without an adult in sight.

  “Pop-Pa?” A tiny girl asked as she studied his face.

  “No, that’s not Pa, Emma,” said an older boy who pulled the younger version of himself out of the doorway. The only difference between the two was their hair color.

  The children were grouped in pairs or triplets, even though they were all crowded in front of him. It reminded Leif of bringing new cattle into an established herd. You brought in new animals but they still stood aside, not part of the group, even though they were all the same species. Three matching redheads, freckles and all, showed they had to be siblings by their looks and how they hugged each other. Leif’s chest squeezed, hurting for their misery.

  Leif also noticed tender red jagged scars on their tiny faces, arms wrapped in bandages. The little girl who spoke had a splint on one leg.

  “I’m sorry,” a harried looking older woman came to the door, with a crying baby in her arms. Her shirtwaist and apron were wet stained with something brown, smelling worse than fresh cow manure. “I heard you knocking but needed to switch this baby’s messy diapers before I picked him up again.”