In This Western Land
Book I

Written by Pawface and Windhowler
Illustrated by Windhowler.
 

Chapter I
Wagon Hut, Mill Town

Hanging particles in the air caused the horizon sky to glow red one morning in the West. Awash with the hues of dawn was Mill Town, a small town lying just a couple of miles from the US Cavalry Post which was slightly infamous for allowing a single, certain buckskin mustang to rob them of a great number of their mounts a while back.
     It was 5 am.
     All but one house of the town showed some sign of life as yet, with most folks still in bed. That single house was Wagon Hut, home of the Adams family, a big wooden cabin on Python Street. One of its ground floor windows, looking out at its backyard, was wide open, shutters well back against the plank walls of the building, and a patchwork blanket was hanging to air over the sill. Light clouds of dust billowed out of the room in frequent gusts, traces of feather down floating out with it. There came the muffled sound of pillows being plumped, a mattress buffeted and shaken. In time the noise died away, and a girl with deep red-brown, fairly wavy locks put her head through the window; she gazed around at the stillness of the square yard that was edged by wooden constructions of different sorts. Wagon Hut,  long and tall, took up all of one side of the square. The side to the girl's left was a line of small wooden sheds, one storing food for the house, the another animal feed and, in the third, with an underground cellar, ice. Opposite these sheds stood the Red Shack, a sort of a hayloft like the house completely taking up one margin of the yard on its own. It had a bare earth floor, no front, and a wooden roof sloping down towards the yard, and held up by long, thin-pillar-like stakes. Inside it stood a small buckboard wagon, among a variety of agricultural machines.
     The girl's eyes wandered from the left side of the yard, across to the right, acknowledging the silence, the peace. Nothing moved save the morning flies, whizzing lazily on delicate, shiny wings.
     All of a sudden a quiet sound, like a husky chuckle, caught her attention. Her gaze instantly flickered over to the fourth side of the yard, facing the house. There stood two stables, with a gate in-between which lead out of the yard. Over the bottom half of each stable's Dutch door, a furry head stuck out. One head gave a low bellow, the other whickered softly.
     The girl smiled, taking up the blanket from her window sill and placing it back neatly on her bed. She crossed lightly over to a coat hanger that hung beside her room door. Excitement sparkled in her eyes as she unhooked a rather worn looking long leather jacket and put it quickly on. Then she left the room, stepping quietly along the corridor, over the house's old wooden floorboards, so as not to wake her parents, who had planned to have a long lie-in after a long busy day of work.
     When she crossed the kitchen, which was on the way out the house, the girl found her older brother, Paul Adams, at the dinner table, sitting comfortably with a book and a mug of coffee.
     Paul noticed his younger sister's movement as she went past from over the top of his book, and he looked up.
     'Morning, Jenni!' he said cheerfully and loudly, with a nod of the head. 'Up early too?'
     Jenni put a finger to her lips before nodding, smiling as she began buttoning up her jacket.
     'Yes, Paul,' she said. 'Pa and Ma are still asleep. I'm just off to check on the animals.'
     'Without breakfast?' asked her brother, gesturing with a finger to, standing on the kitchen table next to a cast iron pan, a plateful of sausages he had obviously just cooked up for the family.
     Jenni smiled. 'I won't be long, only an hour or so.'
     'They'll get cold!' frowned her brother, fingering something in his hand that before Jenni had not noticed. It was a letter. He kept glancing at it in a preoccupied manner, turned it over to look at its back, again and again, even though there were, clearly, no words there.
     Suddenly Paul tossed the letter casually to one side, and pushed a clean china plate over to Jenni.
     'And if you don't eat them,' he said, a firm note rising in his voice. 'Benny with find a way to get them before you have time to. Better now than never, Jenni Adams.'
     'I guess you're right,' Jenni said, taking up the plate and putting one of the sausages on it, as well as some well-washed lettuce leaves kindly given to them by their elderly neighbour, Mrs Clarence, the previous day. She sat down heavily at the table beside her brother and began to eat. 'It's just I want to check on Michigin as soon as possible, to see if he hasn't damaged his leg again after he got frightened by the gunshot, and slammed it against the stable manger.'
     'Yea-ah, sorry about the gun. Pesky foxes - after the hens.' Paul gave a wry frown. 'And 'course then there's Hannah . . . '
     'She is pregnant,' said Jenni, with an excited smile. 'And the calf is due any time soon.'
     'How many calves has she had again?' Paul asked, rather distantly. He was peering over at the letter lying near the salt and pepper shakers in the middle of the table. He reached over and propped it against the salt.
     Jenni glanced at the letter with a puzzled look. She wondered what it was and why her brother kept glancing and fiddling with it, but she did not ask of it and instead resumed their talk, answering his question.
     'Three so far; this will be the fourth; and although I must say that I have loved the calves Hannah's had before, I have high hopes that this one will be something of a special kind. Perhaps it will be female, we've only ever had males.'
     Paul nodded slowly. 'Yup.'
     Jenni gave her brother an enquiring look. He seemed to be acting oddly that morning, it seemed like something was on his mind.
     But, she shrugged her curiousity off,  got up from the table without a word, and cleared the dishes away. 'Well!' she said, picking three soft apples from a wooden basket in one of the kitchen corners. She stuffed two into her coat pockets, taking a bite into the third. 'I'll be about the yard if you or anyone else needs me. You're going out too, aren't you?'
     'Yup, later' he replied, standing up briskly and taking the plates from his sister to wash them at the sink. 'I'm going to the General Store to buy a new blade for the axe and some groceries. Father also asked me to check out the new tack in Harvey's Woodhouse; maybe we'll consider getting a new saddle for your little pony.'
     'I'd like that!' said Jenni with an eager smile. 'And so would Michigan. Last time I rode him, his saddle was a bit too tight. He's getting bigger you know, Paul. He's not the same little pony you bought me last winter.'
     'I'll say!' said her brother, folding the dishcloth he had just used for the dishes and placing it neatly on the wooden table-top. 'Little fleetfoot! He's a great runner too, faster than before, I know that! Er, until recently, that is. Bother the gun scaring 'im . . . '
     Above their heads, the two of them could hear someone walking across the landing.
     'Father's up,' Paul said. 'You'd better get Huron ready. Give him extra oats for breakfast, he's going to have a long day today. Father plans to give him a warmup before the end of leave.'
     Jenni heard her father coming down the stairs for breakfast, nodded and left the kitchen. She dashed outside and just about skipped across the yard towards the stables.
     The same bellow she had heard from her bedroom window greeted her as she neared the stable on the left. Jenni rubbed the pink, velvety nuzzle of the large beast that stuck its head over the door and took out one of the rosy apples from her pockets.
     'Morning, Hannah,' Jenni said, affectionately stroking her cow's soft ears and scruffling up the little amount of hair on it's head. 'How are you feeling today? Good?'
     Out of a slightly tipped head the cow's warm brown eyes looked quizzically at her owner's face, and her lower jaw chewed the gift apple carefully into a cud. Hannah had lived on the Adams' small homestead all her life. In fact she had been born there. When Jenni was ten years old she offered to take full responsibility of the Hannah the calf and her parents agreed, so long as she didn't attach herself to the animal in case things went badly and they would have to sell her - that time was when financial difficulties kept cropping up for the family. Luckily, they never did sell Hannah, who became Jenni's own. Hannah was an excellent milker. She had produced three fine bull calves, two of which had become meat for the family, big, fat animals held in the admiration of all the Mill Town folk. They were also fattening Hannah's third and most recent offspring, another bull, now over a year old.