Otto's Offer (Lockets And Lace Book 3)

by Zina Abbott

  His attention was drawn back to his family as his father dismounted and pulled him into a hug. After a few slaps on the back that nearly knocked Otto off-balance, his father stepped back and pulled Henry over. With a tentative smile, Henry stepped forward and held out his hand to be shaken.

  Otto offered the warmest smile he could manage as he nodded to his brother and shook his hand. “Good to see you, Henry. Came along to keep Pa company, did you?”

  “Naw. He brought me to help you get your wheat in. Figures he and Carl can get ours in, while between you and me, we should be able to get yours in, you having fewer acres, and all.”

  Jefferson began to untie the rope holding the pack to his horse. “Henry, let’s get these supplies in the house, then you can take care of the horses while I help your brother sort out what we brought.” Jefferson turned to Otto. “Henry is of an age he’ll eat you out of house and home if you let him. You make sure he works hard enough to earn it. I brought you plenty to last at least three or four weeks.”

  Wearing a grin as he worked the knots on his horse, Henry volunteered some of the best news Otto had heard since the arrival of his unexpected company. “Ma sent a loaf of bread and a dried apple cake. She also sent some butter since she didn’t know if your cow has freshened yet.”

  Otto helped them carry the packs inside. He felt painfully conscious that his kitchen was a wreck.

  However, Otto had learned within the year after his injury healed, if he wanted his homestead to succeed so he did not end up having to abandon it like so many hopeful men had who had moved to the area because of the promise of land for a reasonable fee, he had to make choices. He could still do almost everything that needed to be done to work his homestead. However, his weak leg and limp slowed him down. Some tasks were left undone so he had the time and energy to do what was necessary before the pain set in so bad he became immobilized. Which was why once the weather had grown warm enough for him to start the annual outside chores, he had let the inside of the house go, especially food preparation.

  “You have a bed for me, Otto, or do you want me to throw my blanket roll out in the hayloft?”

  Otto removed his slouch hat and rubbed his temples with his thumb and two fingers as he considered how ill-prepared he was to have company share his home. Thanks to family and friends pitching in to do the work, he was fortunate to have the wood frame house with two bedrooms above the living and eating area, but he owned only the one bed, the one he slept in. He couldn’t give up his spring mattress, or a bed high enough off the floor he could get out of it fairly easily in the morning when his hip was seized up with stiffness. Nor could he risk Henry, who tended to thrash about when he slept, share it with him for fear he might accidently jar the tender joint. “You can throw your bedroll on the floor in the bedroom to the right or sleep in the barn, whichever you prefer. Maybe on Saturday we can get into Abilene and pick up a tick we can stuff with straw for you.”

  “I’ll keep my kit up in the room, but sleep next to the stove or fireplace until we can get that tick.” Henry stepped into the sitting room. “This place is a mess, Otto. If Ma saw it like this, she’d chew your hide.”

  Wordlessly, Otto stared at his brother.

  That goes without saying.

  Otto followed his brother and surveyed the clothes, tools and empty cups scattered about. He realized once his father and brother stepped into the living area, they would see he had not picked up or cleaned in weeks. At least they were men and would not be as critical of his failings in the house. Thankfully, his mother had only sent food, but had not come along in person. She would have been mortified.

  “You don’t need to say anything to Mutti—Ma—about it, Henry. I don’t need her fussing at me the next time I do see her. If you tell her, there will be paybacks, little brother, and you won’t like it. I didn’t know you and Pa were coming, or I would have cleaned up.”

  “As long as you don’t tell tales on me, Otto. I know how everyone in the family is always finding fault with me.”

  Otto studied his youngest brother. The way Henry behaved when others complained about his failings was to ignore the complaints and let them roll off his back like water from a duck. Maybe they affected Henry more deeply than anyone suspected.

  Henry looked at him with curiosity. “Why do you sometimes call Ma, Mutti?”

  “Because when I was little, she spoke mostly German to us, and that is the German word for Ma. By the time you came along, she started speaking mostly in English.”

  “Oh.”

  Otto returned to the kitchen to find a goldmine worth of food—much of it in airtights—stacked on the small table in the country kitchen. He had run out of airtights, which provided a much-welcome variation to his diet. His plan was to get by on the dried beans and bacon he had left until his next trip to Abilene. His father had seen to it he and Henry would eat well for the next several weeks without a lot of fancy cooking and baking, which Otto did not know how to do, anyway.

  “This slop what you planned to eat tonight?”

  Otto turned to his father, who studied the crusty remains of his breakfast beans with a raised eyebrow. “I ran out of hardtack last week but have been getting by on beans with pork flavoring until I can get into town this weekend.”

  “Good we brought some ham and onions to flavor this up, although the onions are just about dried from spending the winter in the root cellar. You planning to get a garden this year?”

  “I hoped to. I figured I’d have enough from the sale of the wheat to get the seed.”

  “Put your brother to work plowing and planting the garden for you. He can bend and stoop better than you can.”

  “A truck garden is women’s work, Pa.”

  Both Jefferson and Otto turned to face Henry, who had returned downstairs and stood in the doorway to the kitchen with a scowl on his face.

  Jefferson glared at his son with an expression that brooked no nonsense. “Plowing is men’s work, son. And when there’s no women around, like in Otto’s case, then men need to put a decent garden in themselves if they want a full root cellar of vegetables to eat from over the winter. You’ve helped your mother when you were younger, so you know how to form the furrows and bury the seeds. You do that for your brother, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

  Shaking his head, Henry stepped into the room and answered with a grudging tone. “All right, I’ll do it.” He turned to Otto. “You need a wife. She’d not only keep this place cleaned up and plant the garden, she’d be able to cook better than you, if that mess left on the stove is any clue to what I can expect for meals the next several weeks.”

  “You won’t starve, son. Your ma sent bread, which should last you through tomorrow. In addition, she sent two tins of dry ingredients for corn bread. All Otto needs to do is add water and an egg, if he has chickens…” With an eyebrow raised, Jefferson gave Otto an inquiring look. At Otto’s headshake to the negative, he continued. “Well, you can throw in a dab of butter and some water, and it will turn out good enough. Just grease the Dutch oven real good before you put the batter in.”

  While Henry finished seeing to the horses, Otto put food away and made a stab at cleaning his kitchen. Jefferson turned his hand to dicing an onion and slivering off bits of ham to add to the beans and water. Soon, they sat down to a filling supper.

  They had almost finished eating, and Jefferson began to dole out the slices of Carlotte Atwell’s dried apple cake from the tin sent by his wife, when Jefferson shared his next plan. “Otto, in two weeks from this coming Monday, your Uncle Sidney and I are bringing up a few head of cattle to sell at Fort Riley. We should get this far no later than Tuesday night. We’d like you to join us. Don’t worry we’ll expect you to cook. Mary Palmer will be along and has agreed to keep us well fed. But her husband, Edward, doesn’t feel he can drive for long stretches. We figure with you along, you two can trade off.”

  Otto’s heart sank with the realization that not only was he a cr
ipple, but he was being treated like one by his family. Edward Palmer, his Uncle Sidney’s father-in-law, had his farm between those belonging to the two Atwell brothers. The Jefferson Atwell brood had been accepted as “family” by the Palmers, even though the connection was a round-about in-law sort of relationship. For years, Edward had been suffering from a weak knee that often caused him a great deal of pain—similar in many respects to the pain Otto experienced. What was different was that Edward was over thirty years older than Otto—an older man in his late fifties. At twenty-four, Otto was still a young man, but one who had been crippled by war.

  “Why are you driving them all the way to Fort Riley, Pa? With the Kansas Pacific Railway having arrived here in Abilene, you could sell them and put them on the train without adding the extra thirty-plus miles.”

  “We’ve been doing business with Fort Riley since the war, son. The train goes east, but Fort Riley helps supply the forts to the west, including that big one down in New Mexico, Fort Union, the one your cousin and her husband drive freight wagons to. Until it’s safe to drive a herd to one of the forts west of here, your Uncle Sidney and I prefer to continue to do business with Fort Riley.”

  “I see.” Only Otto didn’t see why his father wanted him to go with him. He could pick up Henry to help drive the supply wagon.

  “We hope to take some of the wheat harvest with us to sell, if not to the fort, then in Junction City. If you and Henry get enough of your wheat harvested, maybe you can hook up your mules and drive your own wagon of wheat to take with us, too. Mary is one tough lady in spite of her age. Back in that Arapaho Indian scare in Salina, with Edward’s knee torn up, she drove the Palmer wagon all the way from Salina to Junction City, if you recall. She can spell her husband.”

  “They decided it was Arapahos, did they?”

  “Yeah, about forty of them. Anyway, I’ll leave Carl at home to look out for your ma and sisters, and Jesse is going to keep an eye on Mima and Meredith. I’ve got our neighbor half mile to the east, Shorty Sanders, who wants to come and sell some of his cattle, too. He’ll help your Uncle Sidney and I ride herd.”

  Otto fought back his disappointment. Before he enlisted in the 16th Kansas Cavalry, he had helped his father ride herd. Now, he had to have a ladder or high fence to climb in order to swing his weak leg over the saddle. Once there, he couldn’t ride for more than an hour or so before the pain from having his hip joint at that angle became too intense to bear. His faithful horse that had seen him through the Powder River Campaign received little exercise from him these days.

  Even sitting on a wagon bench well-padded with folded blankets or quilts became uncomfortable before the day was over. Yet, like it or not, he did have to get his wheat crop to market once he got it harvested.

  “If we can get enough wheat harvested and bagged to justify the trip, I’d like to go with you and get it sold. I need to buy more food supplies, plus a few chickens would be a good idea now the weather is warming. However, even if I take my wagon and mules, Pa, I still have my horse and a few head of my own to take care of.”

  “Which is why now is the time for you to go. By then, you’ll have Henry trained on how you want things done around your place. He can stay behind to care for the animals and keep up with the garden and harvesting. His ma sent enough food in airtights he can survive for the few days we’ll be gone.”

  “I’d rather go with you and ride herd, Pa.”

  Jefferson turned towards Henry. “No, Carl is staying behind to take care of our farm, and you’ll do the same for Otto. Your day to help drive cattle will come.”

  Without a word, Otto studied his younger brother, wondering if he dared trust the scatterbrained teen to keep his livestock alive and well.

  As if reading Otto’s mind, Jefferson clapped his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “One thing Henry can be counted on is to take good care of the animals. He has always had a way with them.”

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  CHAPTER 2

  ~o0o~

  The next morning, as he prepared to leave for home, Jefferson sent Henry off to care for the animals. Once his youngest was out of hearing range, he turned to Otto. “Work him hard, Otto. Quite frankly, I hope you can get through to him about accepting responsibility where what I say sometimes goes in one ear and out the other. He’ll be fine with the animals, but it’s the rest I don’t want you to let him get distracted from.”

  “Maybe he’s not cut out for farming, Pa.”

  “Maybe. But until he learns a different skill, that is what he has been taught, and that is what he needs to do to support a family.” Jefferson stepped closer. “You know, your cousin, Jesse, keeps talking about going south to cowboy, to help drive longhorns up to the rails. I hope your Uncle Sidney can talk him out of it. Those longhorns carry a tick disease that all but wipes out the domestic cattle most of us raise.”

  Otto grimaced at the news. “I sure don’t want to see that. I only have a few head, not even enough to add one or two to the herd you want to sell in a few weeks. I can’t afford to have them die off because some disease.”

  Jefferson leaned even closer. “I don’t know if you can bear to talk about your war experiences, son. If you can, perhaps you will say something to your brother to convince him Army life is far from glamorous. He has these romantic notions of joining up so he can drive herds of cattle, or maybe some of the supply wagons the Army sends, down to Fort Union. He thinks he wants to fight and kill Indians, kind of like you got a notion to after the Arapahos killed those farmers west of Salina. As it was, it took all I could do to delay you a year before you finally enlisted.”

  “The bushwhackers that came not even a year after the hostile natives are what did it for me, Pa. I wanted to protect Kansans from our enemies, be they Indians or thieves disguised as Confederate soldiers. Then after what they did to Lawrence the next year, I couldn’t in good conscience ignore the need.”

  “Well, Henry’s ideas aren’t based on as realistic goals as yours were. If you get a chance, I want you to try to get through to him what marching in the Army involved, especially once they ordered your regiment to chase after the tribes up to the Powder River. Don’t sugarcoat it. I know you paid the price, and you’re still paying it. I don’t want him to go off and do something foolish without a chance to understand what he would really be getting himself into.” Jefferson stopped and offered his oldest a concerned look. “Can you talk about it without having nightmares afterwards? I won’t ask it of you if it will cause you distress.”

  “The nightmares are getting fewer and farther between. I’ll tell him, Pa.”

  Otto didn’t need to wait long for an opportunity to speak to his youngest brother about his time enlisted in the Army. After a dinner where the brothers enjoyed stew from a can—a welcome change from the beans Otto had eaten almost daily for weeks—and most of the remainder of the bread loaf his mother had sent, the two settled in front of the kitchen stove Otto had banked for the night.

  Henry began asking questions about Otto’s time in the Army.

  And so, Otto started to share his story. The cavalry regiment in which Otto Atwell served as a private was formed starting in November of 1863, partially in response to the attack against Lawrence, Kansas, the previous August by bushwhackers under William Quantrill. The rebels had hunted down and killed over 150 men and boys in the process. Execution would better describe what took place, since most of the victims were not battling it out with the marauders who attacked their city. The citizens were gathered up—hunted down from house to house—and murdered.

  This group of men who fought on the Confederate side of the war called themselves Quantrill’s Raiders but were not officially part of the Southern military. Therefore, they felt no need to hold to the rules of civilized wartime engagement. With their tendency to move almost independently in small units, their swift, violent attacks led to a great deal of disruption of communications and supply lines. They fought
a guerilla-style of warfare the regular Army soldiers often found difficult to combat.

  It had rallied Kansas men to join volunteer militias to drive the Missourian bushwhackers from the state like nothing else could have. Like his father had already admitted that morning, Jefferson had run interference on Otto’s plans to enlist in September of 1862. However, after Lawrence in 1863, and after helping his father get his fall harvest in, Otto, full of enthusiasm to join in the fight to save Kansas, took leave of his family. He traveled to Fort Leavenworth where they were forming up the 16th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. Unlike the militia units that had been organized for a one-hundred-day tour to drive the Missourians out of the border counties in response to what was then billed as the Lawrence Massacre, the cavalry unit Otto signed up to serve in required a three-year commitment. He knew, once they drove Quantrill’s Raiders from the Kansas border, he still had hostile Indian tribes to keep from attacking and killing his Kansas neighbors.

  As Otto told his story, Henry sat forward in his chair, his interest more intense than usual. “Were they the same bushwhackers who struck Salina? Did you get a chance to chase after them?”

  “I don’t know if they were the same men. They say Quantrill’s Raiders got to be well over a hundred in number, but they usually traveled in smaller groups. Only about twenty men hit Salina. Since they showed up early in the morning and caught the people in town off guard, the citizens didn’t resist as the thieves took what they wanted.”

  “Only they didn’t kill anyone in Salina like they did Lawrence, did they?”

  “The people of Salina were fortunate in that regard, considering all the accounts we’ve heard of some of the groups gunning down people for no good reason.”