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As always, their workday started with the crowing of their big, red rooster. Molly would be gathering any unfertilized eggs shortly. The rest, she was letting the hens sit on. They were letting the birds hatch as many chicks as they could possibly get, intending to sell the extra that survived at the end of the season and butchering many for their own consumption. This meant no eggs for breakfast unless the eggs were duds. Fortunately, the ducks churned out an excess of eggs, but it meant finding the darn things. The Peking ducks they raised weren’t the smartest about sitting on a nest, and it took time to find their eggs, determine how old they were and if they could be slipped under a broody hen or used for baking. But Molly enjoyed the challenge.
After a hearty breakfast, Erin went out to the fields where she would pull weeds, cultivate plants, and check on the crops. Normally, King and Queenie accompanied her, chasing off any varmint that dared to come on their fields with an eye to sharing the abundant crops. Today, she only had King with her. Enjoying his duties as guardian of the farm, he ranged far out in front her, searching for anything out of the ordinary. He stopped to watch as his human pulled weeds from the long rows of corn she was cultivating, being careful not to disturb the bean vines climbing the stalks. She gathered the long pods that hung from the vines into a bag she wore for this purpose. By noon, she had walked two of the enormous fields where she was cultivating corn, beans, and squash. The squash was making it harder to walk as the large leaves hid the produce, but they also discouraged the weeds. She walked and looked carefully, so she could gather the beans, a staple in their diet. Many would be dried for winter, and she would help Molly store them. They kept every extra bit of food that didn’t provide them cash money.
Erin looked up as she plodded back to the barn, her full bag heavy with beans. She looked up when one of the horses in the field snorted, glancing at King to see his reaction as she looked around. It was just the horse greeting her, acknowledging her as she headed in, but it paid to be vigilant. She never knew when she would have guests, and sometimes they were unwelcome. Some people accepted that Erin was working the farm alone, others expected her to marry and let her husband take over. Erin would never marry; she wouldn’t let a man, any man, have control over her. The laws would allow him to take the farm from her and do as he saw fit. She didn’t need a man to tell her when or how to plant her fields. She did fine all by herself. She would have thought the men would resign themselves to the idea after she had been doing this for herself for the last four years since her father and brothers’ untimely deaths from diphtheria. Still, some of her neighbors tried to marry her off. Even some of the townies had tried. Only one of the men had been persistent, and his offer was turned down. Erin wasn’t interested. She had never been interested. A good woman was supposed to marry. She understood that, but she wondered sometimes if she was a good woman, what with her unwomanly pursuits. She started whistling, so the horse would know it was her. It went back to grazing, its ears twitching at the whistle, deciding it was just her human making a song and not calling her to come to the barn.
When Erin’s good friend, Molly had lost her own parents two years ago, she had offered her a place to stay. Molly had never judged Erin for her looks. She had never tried to ‘pretty’ her up like their other school friends. All their friends were now married off except for these two, and many was the time that people shook their heads that Molly would choose to live with her poor, homely friend, Erin instead to find a fine man for herself. She was almost too old to find one now, but they wouldn’t understand, and the two women wouldn’t bother enlightening them. They were fine by themselves. They could run their own farm their own way. Erin owned the farm by right of inheritance, and despite people trying to swindle her out of the farm, it was owned outright. She had kept up the taxes and handled all the work involved.
“Ready for lunch?” Molly greeted her, taking the heavy bag from Erin’s shoulders.
“Yup,” she admitted, stopping at the outdoor pump to wash the grime from the hot sun off her arms and body.
“I’ve got cucumber and cress sandwiches made with fresh baked bread,” Molly told her with a smile, watching as Erin rubbed away the dirt that always accumulated from weeding, the sweat adhering it to her skin. She liked to see the muscles on Erin’s body, knowing how they felt beneath her fingers. She hadn’t realized how much she admired Erin until she began to live with her friend and her feelings changed to love. Some would find that kind of love most unnatural. To discover that this wonderful, hard-working woman loved her in return had been a revelation. And to discover the physical pleasures had been wonderful as they explored them together.
“Sounds good,” Erin grunted, rubbing her wet face on the towel they kept there.
“This looks like another pound or more to add to the sacks,” she commented, hefting the bag of green beans she would lay out to dry. Erin had made screens to keep the bugs and birds from ruining their drying efforts.
“I hope you’ll keep some for dinner,” she mentioned as she followed Molly inside, kicking off her boots by the door to avoid tracking in the dirt that always clung to them.
“I’ll cut some up for that right away,” she promised, knowing how prideful they were that they didn’t have to visit the stores in town but twice a year: once in the fall to sell their crops and once in the spring to replenish what they had used over the winter and couldn’t grow on their own farm.
“Wish I had time to plant and grow my own sorghum,” Erin mumbled as she sat down at the table.
“Maybe when we resettle,” Molly promised. “You’ll have to figure out how to get the plants there.”
“There is seed we can take, but at this rate, we ain’t gonna have room in the wagon with all we’re plannin’.”
“We are going to have to practice speaking properly, so people don’t know we are from this area,” she pointed out.
“There’s time enough to start talkin’ proper.”
“If you start now, it’ll come automatically when it’s important.” Molly handed Erin a plate with two sandwiches cut from the bread she had baked that morning. She made her own butter and had grown the cucumbers herself. Cress from the creek added mint flavor to their delicious sandwiches. “Think there’ll be cress in the creeks out west?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to dry out some of the cress roots and bring it along.”
“We’re gonna need a second wagon at this rate,” she teased. She already had stacks and stacks of seeds she was bringing, harvested from her best plants and carefully labeled and folded in tissue paper.
“I’d like that, but I think one wagon is all we can afford, if we can find one,” she said sadly as she enjoyed the sandwich.
“I can drive,” Molly asserted stoutly.
“I don’t doubt your drivin’. It’s the others I worry about. That letter was pretty particular that it has to be a Con-a-sto-ga wagon,” she enunciated. “I don’ know where I’m gonna find one of ’em.”
“Well, the good Lord will provide.”
Erin didn’t want to hurt Molly’s feelings. Her retort would have been, “The good Lord helps those that helps themselves,” but she didn’t want to argue with her. They were going to make this dream of theirs a reality. They’d been planning it practically since Molly moved onto the farm. They knew, once they realized they were in love and not just merely friends, that they couldn’t stay. They wanted to start over somewhere else. Wagon trains were crossing the Great American Desert to the west all the time now, and she had written to someone she faintly knew, asking about being included and wanting to know who she needed to write. She was later given a list of what she needed to bring. Buying a new Conestoga wagon was beyond their current budget. They needed all their money to make this move. In the meantime, they were saving everything they could towards the move.
On Sunday, they went to church as usual. Several of the women ignored the masculine-looking Erin and spoke to Molly, trying to set her up with one of the single men in the area. They didn’t realize that she simply wasn’t interested.
“I could hear you singing out proud today in church,” Molly commented to the now embarrassed Erin.
“Well, I think the horses appreciate it a lot more than they do,” she jerked her head, gesturing back towards the church where the church ladies had ignored her. She was used to it, but she did hate that they were so earnest in their efforts to marry Molly off.
“I can’t whistle as good as you either,” she sighed after making an attempt and seeing the horse’s ears twitch at the sound. They knew the difference between Erin calling them to come in from the field and her soothing whistling of songs that showed she was happy. They certainly could recognize Molly’s unskilled attempts at the same. Sometimes, she was sure they laughed at her.