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Bootheel Betrothal

By Helen Gray

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Chapter 1

Missouri Bootheel, 1934

Mad at the world, Lynn Buchanan kicked at the gravel in the road. A dusty puff flew forward, along with her shoe that had come untied. More aggravated than ever, she limped across the foot-gouging gravel to retrieve the shoe, wiping the taste of dust from her lips. The rain that had forced workers to leave the fields early had lasted only long enough to moisten the surface of the ground that was baked dry and hard by the end of summer heat. Dark clouds overhead indicated more rain looming.
Once she reached the shoe, Lynn gave it a quick shake to empty it of dirt and gravel. Then she placed it on the ground and shoved her foot into it. As she squatted to tie it, the sky opened up and released a downpour.
“What a pickle,” she muttered, getting to her feet and ducking her head. She began to run, her worn cotton dress flapping around her knees.
The sound of hooves and rolling wheels behind her prompted Lynn to move to the edge of the road.
“Ma’am. Would you like a ride?”
The deep voice made her pause and look over at the wagon that had stopped beside her. She cupped a hand over her eyes to shield them from the rain, pushing wet strands of hair back from her forehead, and made quick note of the man gazing down at her. Lean and muscular. A strong, tanned face beneath the brim of a brown hat. A lint covered, worn tan shirt was plastered to his back, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. Dirty denim pants covered with more of the cotton debris. Scuffed black boots. A working man. He picked up an umbrella from the seat beside him and snapped it open.
Lynn breathed deep and fast, tempted by the thought of a ride, but reluctant to climb into a wagon with a stranger.
“You don’t need to be afraid, Ma’am. I’m a local resident, and I don’t eat young ladies for supper, no matter how hungry I am.”
The friendly tone eased her fears a bit. Then another crack of thunder and an increase of rain spurred her into motion. Fighting the clinging dampness of her dress, Lynn reached for the man’s outstretched hand and let him pull her up the side of the wagon. She landed with a plop beside him as yet another roll of thunder sounded from the east. A flash of lightning snapped through the clouds and disappeared.
He moved the umbrella so that it covered her head. “Take it. I need my hands to drive.”
Without hesitation Lynn gripped the handle, and he clicked to the horses. With one hand she pulled the soggy bonnet from her head and placed it on the wagon seat. Then she used both hands to hold the umbrella. The musty scent of damp clothing blended with that of rain drenching hot, thirsty soil and field plants.
“I thought I knew everyone around here, but I don’t recognize you,” her benefactor commented as the wagon began to roll.
Grateful for partial protection from the rain, Lynn turned to face the man. She held the umbrella over so that it covered his head as well—his very handsome head—being careful to not touch him. He looked tall, even sitting, and had eyes so dark they gleamed beneath a wealth of black, dampened hair. His skin was tanned from outdoor work, and he was dirty, but the expression on his face was pleasant.
He grinned. “I was hinting for you to tell me your name.”
“What’s yours?”
He chuckled. “Mitch Stratton.” His hand moved slightly, as if he meant to offer her a handshake, but then he maintained his grip on the reins. “I’ve lived around here all my life.”
“I’m Lynn Buchanan,” she said politely, trying to maintain the proper decorum drilled into her from infancy. Lynn had been content with whichever name her parents preferred.
“You live around here?”
She hesitated again, unsure how much to reveal to a stranger, even one who looked and sounded harmless. But he probably knew everyone around here, and she would have to get off this wagon some place he would recognize.
“I have a room on Ivy Road with a Mrs. Griffin.” And today’s short work hours meant she might not have enough money for next week’s rent.
He nodded. “She’s a good woman.”
Yes, she was a good woman, but intrusive. Mrs. Griffin had started inviting Lynn to church as soon as she took the room, and continued to do so daily. Church was okay, Lynn supposed, but she was ambivalent about it. Her parents had attended fairly regularly, since they considered it the correct thing to do. Personally, Lynn couldn’t see that church made life any easier. Look at the shape the world was in right now. Formerly wealthy people were paupers. Jobs were almost impossible to find, especially ones that paid anything decent. She, who had always had plenty, now found herself living in poverty and picking cotton. She hated it.
The man eyed her in curiosity. “Where are you working?”
“At the farm back there.” She indicated behind them with a jerk of her head.
His expression brightened. “Oh, you mean the Thayers. They’re good people who’ll treat you right. How long have you been there?”
“Only a week.” It seemed like longer—much longer.
“So what brought you to this area?”
She cocked her head at an angle and studied him with narrowed eyes, blinking against spatters of rain finding their way beneath the umbrella. “I needed a fresh start and a job.”
He gave a little snort of disbelief. “You came here looking for a job?”
She shrugged. “Among other things.” Like answers.
Her dream of life as the wife of a successful businessman was gone, and her parents were both dead. She had come to this southeastern section of the state known as the bootheel hoping for a fresh start and to find her birth mother. Instead, she had no money, and the only job she had been able to find was the backbreaking work of picking cotton. In marked contrast to the rugged Ozark hills she had always known, the land here was flat and fertile, the only area of Missouri suited to raising the stuff.
“Surely there were more job prospects in the cities than down here.” He looked down at her blue cotton print dress and her hands and wrists that were scratched and reddened from the dried bristles of the cotton plants. “Don’t you have gloves?”
“They got so ragged I threw them away.”
“Do you have family here?”
She shook her head. “No family anywhere.”
She had no proof otherwise. Not only had this awful Depression taken away her home and personal belongings, but everything she had known, or thought she had known, had proven untrue. The biggest blow had been when, shortly before her death last year, Mother had told Lynn that she was adopted, taking away her entire identity.
Thinking her fiancé, Randal Kidwell, would comfort her had been a mistake. When Lynn told him of her mother’s revelation, instead of sympathizing with her and proposing marriage as she had been led to expect, he had informed Lynn he was marrying someone else.
“Why did you decide to move to this particular place?” he asked, reclaiming her attention. “Do you know anyone around here?”
Lynn didn’t feel comfortable answering his question, but it sounded like an opening. “My parents talked about this part of the state. They had friends down here.”
He turned his head, his attention caught. “Have you visited them yet?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know where they live, and I only know the woman’s name.”
“What is it? Maybe I can help you find them.”
She stared at the rain that was dwindling to a light sprinkle. After quitting her job, the first place she had gone to was the home for unwed mothers where her mother had said she and Dad had gotten Lynn as an infant. Lynn had been persuasive enough in telling her story to the woman who ran the home to get her to give her the name of the woman who had given birth to her. Further research had led her here.
The only information she had was that name. Should she ask this Mitch person if he knew the woman?
She regarded him carefully, afraid to open up to him, but needing to know. “The name Mother talked about is Nadine Stevens.”
*
Mitch went rigid as a name from the past hit him in the mid-section. An eerie sensation ran up his spine, making him sense that there was more to this gal’s motives than she was telling. Her manner telegraphed that she didn’t really want to be here. He suspected she resented her circumstances, and that she looked much better when cleaned up. Right now she had dirt on her face and cotton lint in her wet hair. Something about her manner—her stiff posture and a slight quiver in her jaw—told him she was nervous, and not quite truthful.
Suspicion made him hesitate. He couldn’t just open up and tell a stranger what he knew about his best friend’s family. He decided to play dumb. “Did you move here specifically to look up those friends?”
She shrugged, her eyes narrowing with wariness. “My parents died,” she said at last, closing the umbrella and placing it on the seat with her bonnet. “Other things happened after that. I needed a fresh start, so I decided to come to the place my parents used to talk about, hoping to find people as friendly as they had described.”
The sarcasm that colored the word friendly made Mitch feel a bit small. But he didn’t dare trust her. “Tell me more about these friends of your parents. Did you ever meet them? Did your parents ever come down here to visit them?”
She shook her head. “If I ever met them, I was too young to remember. And I don’t recall ever coming here to visit them, or them coming to see us. Mother and Dad always spoke of them in a fond way though.”
He frowned, staring at the strands of shoulder length, dark blond hair that blew across her cheek. “You came to see these friends based on just talk?”
She swallowed, as if devising an answer. “I thought friends of my parents would want to know about their deaths.”
Mitch couldn’t identify exactly what it was about her story that sounded so wrong, but his suspicion intensified rather than lessening. “Why are you really here?” he asked, unable to prevent the sharp edge in his voice.
Her expression turned frightened, and she scooted toward the end of the seat. Then she grabbed her bonnet, swung her legs over the end of it, and dropped to the ground.
Realizing how much he had scared her, Mitch started to call out an apology, but she was already running like a frightened rabbit, jumping across the road ditch and fleeing across the field. He started to go after her, but then common sense warned that chasing her would only scare her more. He had never frightened a girl before. He felt terrible.
*
Lynn gasped for breath as she stumbled and weaved through the rows of cotton stalks, the now mucky dirt pulling at her shoes. When she reached the far side of the field, she paused and looked back. Seeing no one pursuing her, she jammed her bonnet back on her head and dragged in a long deep breath. As her heart rate gradually slowed, she scanned her surroundings. Beyond another field to her left was a huge building, with three or four small frame ones around it.
She headed that direction at a fast walk, breathing hard.When she got near the smallest building, which appeared to be an office, Lynn paused next to it to catch her breath. As she studied the big building, she realized it had to be the cotton gin where her fellow workers said the cotton they picked was taken. Three wagons, with covers over their loads of cotton, were lined on the slope to the shed porch, waiting a turn for their load to be sucked into the gin, while two workers moved about the yard. This had to be the last of what had been picked before the rain brought work to a stop.
Lynn started back toward the road, but the sight of a wagon in the distance brought her to an abrupt halt. She backed up, and panicked when she recognized the driver. There wasn’t time to get away, and she saw no place to hide. She couldn’t return to the fields she had left behind without being seen. The only possible concealment she could see was behind that line of wagons. The driver of the first one was talking over his shoulder to the driver behind him, and the one in the rear seemed to be listening in on the conversation. None of them were looking her way.
The sound of Mr. Stratton’s wagon pulling off the road and coming up the lane toward the gin spurred Lynn into motion. Praying the drivers wouldn’t see her, she bent low and raced to the back of the last wagon. Now out of sight, she lifted the cover and peered under it. As she had thought, it was filled with cotton. Desperate to hide, she pulled herself up onto the back of the wagon and swung a leg over the wooden tailgate. Then she gave her body a forward push that propelled her over the top of it. She slid face down into the cotton, and was instantly buried. She lay there, suffocating in the lint and debris, and strained to listen for what was happening beyond the wagon.
She heard Mr. Stratton’s wagon pull from the road and come to a stop. Then another one rolled away. When the one in which she was hiding lurched forward, she realized in fresh panic that the first wagon in line had left and the second one moved forward. This one would be next. And she would be exposed.
Lynn struggled to turn over and sit up, wiping lint from her mouth and eyes with her bonnet. She started to climb back out of the wagon, but froze when footsteps and voices approached. She peeked under the tarp and saw the two yardmen she had spotted earlier walking alongside the wagon. They paused.
“Too bad the rain stopped the pickin’ today,” one said.
“Yeah, but the moisture sure is nice,” the other one responded.
Lynn eased back and lay still as they chatted, her body quivering in fright. When they finally moved on, she tried again to climb out of the wagon, but at that moment it lurched forward and jostled her flat onto her back. Her bonnet slipped from her grasp. Then, before she could right herself, the cover was jerked away.
She burrowed under the cotton in an effort to become invisible. The loud noise of machinery started, and the cotton began to flow upward. Suddenly there was a yelp and the machine stopped.
Lynn looked up, and stared into the surprised gaze of Mr. Stratton. His grin scared ten of her twenty years from her.

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