The Dogtrot Christmas
appears in Barbour Publishing’s A Log Cabin Christmas Collection, which will re-release on September 1, 2013.
Here’s the opening chapter of my novella. If you’re interested in possibly winning the entire book, check out our Goodreads contest starting Monday, August 19 and running through August 26: Log Cabin Christmas Collection Goodreads contest
If you want to know what finally happens and you don’t win a copy, check out the book for pre-sale! It comes with eight other fine stories to get you into the Christmas mood: love, drama, Jesus and celebrating in primitive conditions. Enjoy!
The Dogtrot Christmas
Chapter One
Balanced on top of the sticky pine cabin wall, Molly Faires clung to the end of the log roof beam while Jamie fought to place it.
“Easy now. I think I’ve got it. Get down and out of the way.” Jamie didn’t take his eyes off the log as she scrambled down the unchinked walls to the ground.
Molly tucked a strand of blonde hair back into her sunbonnet as she watched her brother wrestle the log toward the notches.
“Is it lined up?” he called.
“Almost there.” She held her breath. This was the first one. If the two of them could set the beams, they wouldn’t have to bother the neighbors for more help. Once they got the beams secure, Jamie could build a roof covering the two small cabins and the breezeway in between: a Texas “dogtrot” cabin.
When his straw hat blew off in the direction of the flourishing vegetable patch, Jamie stayed on focus, inching the heavy log into place. Then he jerked as a swallow flit too close and he lost his hold. “It’s going. Get out of the way!”
Molly sprinted a dozen yards north to where the young ‘en Andy was tied to a loblolly pine stump already trying to sprout again.
The log shuddered and slipped down the side of the cabin walls. It landed on end and then fell forward with a mighty thud into the stump-studded yard. Belle, the yellow dog who had followed them all the way from Tennessee, high tailed it away, barking as she went.
Molly hugged the toddler to her side while she gauged Jamie’s reaction. All around her the forest seemed to wait, too, the bobwhites in mid-call and the mourning doves worrying softly in the underbrush.
From his perch on the cabin wall, Jamie snickered.
He slapped his thighs, threw back his head and laughed with a crescendo that exploded the world back into action.
Molly’s shoulders relaxed in relief. He hadn’t laughed since his wife Sarah died in childbirth eighteen months ago. Maybe God was answering her prayers?
Andy shouted baby talk and raised his arms.
“I’ve got ye.” Molly untied him and carried the boy to his father.
Jamie jumped down and surveyed the log. “It’s too big for the two of us,” he said, taking the toddler. “I’ll have to ask Clay another favor and get him over to help finish up. Ye may be strong, but setting the roof beams is a man’s job.”
Molly looked around the clearing they had grubbed in the hill country full of piney woods. Most of the logs, fat ones as well as saplings, had gone into building the small cabins. A stack of cedar shingles, carefully honed during the winter, waited the beams and cross poles to go onto the roof.
“Surely we can try again,” Molly said. “I’ll help. I know I can share the burden.”
Jamie shook his head. “The Good Lord’s been a watching out for us, but your tender heart and desire to help could get ye hurt. I don’t feel right about trying again. It’s only another week or so. We’ve got plenty of other work to do.”
The animation sagged out of his eyes and his skin seemed to go thin as the bleakness he had worn for so long took hold again. “It’s not like she’ll be here to see it.”
“But ye picked a good site,” Molly said. “Just what Sarah wanted. The living cabin on the right, the cookhouse cabin ten feet away on the north side leaving a space big enough for three dogs to trot between.”
“Aye, this style cabin works best in Texas. We get some neighbors back here, we can put up the roof to join ’em and this homestead will be done.”
Molly shook her head. “Maybe your part will be done, but I’ll be hauling mud from the stream to chink out those logs all summer.”
Jamie set his son onto wobbly legs and tousled his hair. “This young ‘en can help. He’ll like getting his hands in the mud. ‘Sides, he needs to start earning his keep.”
“You’re starting him to work young like pappy.”
“You don’t know how long you got with ’em. We be blessed ma and pappy started us working young.”
The clearing sloped down gentle to a trail through the dense underbrush and woods to the watering hole. The green leaves stirred in a scrap of breeze and alerted Molly’s senses. Indians raided this countryside. Growing up, her ma had warned many times, you never saw ’em until it was too late.
Belle’s barking turned to a gruff bay and Jamie thrust Andy to her. “Hie ye to the cookhouse and bar the door. I don’t know what this is.”
“Hush, Andy.” Molly scurried with him to the cook cabin open to the sky. Jamie grabbed the rifle standing upright beside the open doorway.
She crouched beside Andy and stared through the log gaps toward the trail. Belle streamed from the woods, making enough noise to flush out every bird within miles. The dog paced before the cabins, teeth barred. Jamie waited in the breezeway.
A Mexican man dressed in worn dirty clothing pushed out of the woods, leading a lame satiny black stallion. “Vaya, perro,” he yelled at Belle.
The dog bounced left and right, growling and barking. The man stopped. “Que es esso?”
Jamie walked toward him cradling the rifle in one arm and holding up the other hand in greeting. “Buenos dias.”
“Good day,” the man replied in a deep voice that held just a trace of Spanish lilt. “Call off your dog.”
Jamie slapped the side of his right leg and Belle joined him. The dog quivered but did not take her eyes off the stranger.
“I have been away. You are new here.” The man removed his faded cloth hat and untied the red scarf from around his neck. He wiped his forehead in the June heat and Molly noted his handsome features. His blue black hair shone in the sun light as he glanced around the clearing.
Jamie shifted. “Ye be from around her?”
“I am Juan Ortega Luis Vasco de Carvajal.” He gestured north. “My family has lived on this land for three generations.”
Jamie extended his hand. “Jamie Faires. Ye be our neighbor, then.”
The man’s eyes swept to Molly and he nodded. She picked up the little boy and joined them.
“This be Molly and my boy Andy.”
Juan Ortega Luis Vasco de Carvajal swept his hand into a bow like a Spanish gentleman. “The countryside always welcomes a beautiful young woman.”
“Thank ye,” Molly said. Something about his weariness caught her heart. “Have ye far to go? May I get ye and your horse some water?”
Coal black eyes stared back. “We drank at the stream.”
“Your English is very good.” Molly stepped closer with Andy. “May he pet your horse?”
“Sí.” Carvajal motioned the horse forward. “I had a tutor who came and went over the years. It is important to talk with Anglos in a language they understand.”
The horse’s tongue stretched to explore Andy’s fingers. He giggled. Molly smelled the sweetness of the woods in the horse’s mane and sighed. “Don’t you miss having a horse, Jamie?”
He nodded.
“What’s his name?” Molly asked.
“Maximo, the great.” Carvajal frowned. “How do you hold this land?”
Jamie shifted the rifle to the ground beside his boot. “Bought it. We’ve come with a party from Tennessee and settled up to where Mexican lands begin on the north side of the woods.”
“How much?”
“As head of household they only let me have 4600 acres. I share with Molly.”
Molly watched the Tejano calculate their holdings. She wanted to grab Jamie’s arm and warn him not to say too much. But she was 19 to his 24; surely he knew better.
The man’s jaw tightened and his dark eyes glittered. “This is fine property,” he said. “I have always liked it, especially since my father gave it to me.”
Jamie flushed. “We paid hard cash for this land.”
“Perhaps you paid money,” Carvajal said. “But you are squatters.” He tugged the horse’s bridle, turned on his heel, and headed into the dense undergrowth.
Before they could think of anything to say, he was gone.
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