Amish Blacksmith , livre ebook

Other Books by Mindy Starns Clark
The Men of Lancaster County Series
By Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner
The Amish Groom
The Amish Blacksmith
The Amish Clockmaker
By Virginia Smith
The Amish Widower
The Women of Lancaster County Series
By Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould
The Amish Midwife
The Amish Nanny
The Amish Bride
The Amish Seamstress
Other Fiction by Mindy Starns Clark
T HE M ILLION D OLLAR M YSTERIES
A Penny for Your Thoughts
Don t Take Any Wooden Nickels
A Dime a Dozen
A Quarter for a Kiss
The Buck Stops Here
A S MART C HICK M YSTERY
The Trouble with Tulip
Blind Dates Can Be Murder
Elementary, My Dear Watkins
S TANDALONE M YSTERIES
Whispers of the Bayou
Shadows of Lancaster County
Under the Cajun Moon
Secrets of Harmony Grove
Echoes of Titanic
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture verses are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Cover by Garborg Design Works, Savage, Minnesota
Cover photos Chris Garborg; Yanika / Bigstock
The authors are represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE AMISH BLACKSMITH
Copyright 2014 by Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, Mindy Starns.
The Amish blacksmith / Mindy Starns Clark and Susan Meissner.
pages cm.- (The men of Lancaster County ; book 2)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5736-6 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5737-3 (eBook)
1. Amish-Fiction. 2. Blacksmiths-Fiction. 3. Lancaster County (Pa.)-Fiction. I. Meissner, Susan. II. Title.
PS3603.L366A76 2014
813 .6-dc23
2014007403
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author s and publisher s rights is strictly prohibited.
D EDICATION
In loving memory of Robert Irwin Dickerson 1907-1977
Loving grandfather, amazing horseman, wonderful man
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to
Everyone at Harvest House Publishers, in particular our lovely and gifted editor, Kim Moore.
Chip MacGregor, the literary agent who helped bring us together in the first place.
John Clark, for brainstorming, help with research, and so much more.
The Riehl and Fisher families of Lancaster County.
Elam Stoltzfus and Elias Stoltzfus, for sharing your Amish blacksmith shop and your friendship and patiently answering our many questions.
Meg Selway, for your insights into all things equine.
Emily Clark, Lauren Clark, Tara Kenny, Adam Sullivan, and Suzanne Scannell, for being so helpful throughout the process.
C ONTENTS
Other Books by Mindy Starns Clark
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part Three
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
Discussion Questions
About the Authors
Lilies on Daybreak Pond
The Amish Groom
The Amish Clockmaker
The Amish Widower
The Amish Midwife
The Amish Nanny
The Amish Bride
The Amish Seamstress
More Books by Mindy Starns Clark
Ready to Discover More?
About the Publisher
PART ONE
O NE
T he muscles under the horse s chocolate-brown flank rippled as I pressed my hand against his warm side.
Easy, boy, I said, my tone that of father to frightened child.
At my work station in the blacksmith shop, I shifted so the horse could better see me and continued running my hand across his body. Halfway down his left rear leg, I came to a stop when my fingers reached a puffy knob that shouldn t have been there. Bending closer, I gently palpated the hock. I d already scraped out the dirt and turf imbedded around his shoes minutes before, but this swelling told me to take a second, closer look at the hoof.
I flipped on my headlamp and gave the horse s fetlock a tug. In response, he nervously shifted his weight but allowed me to hoist up his leg. Crouching, I studied the hoof s surface in the glow of the beam, noting how it was worn on the inside edge. I turned to Trudy, the young teen who stood nearby, her arms crossed as she watched.
I think Patch s knees are swollen, she told me solemnly. The back ones, at least.
Actually, they re called knees in the front but hocks in the back. See how the joints bend differently? A hock is more an elbow than a knee. But you re right. There s some swelling here for sure.
She nodded, cupping a hand around her own elbow. Ordinarily, I wouldn t have corrected a customer, but Trudy was different. She wanted to know. She wanted to learn. Trudy s family lived in a neighboring Amish district in Gap, and they had been coming to this blacksmith shop-as had my family and I-for years.
This looks worn and uneven, I continued. I d say he s been favoring the inside of his leg.
He s been pulling to the right. Sometimes I think he s going to take us both straight into the ditch.
I lowered the horse s hoof to the concrete floor, and he tossed his head and nickered. I reached up a hand to remind him with a gentle touch that I was still there, that all was well. On the other side of the shop, my friend and coworker, Owen Kinsinger, was at the forge, pounding a flaming-red shoe against the rounded cone of an anvil. The horse rotated an ear toward the sound.
Is there anything I can do for Patch? Trudy asked. He seems so sad.
I stifled a smile, thinking how much she reminded me of myself when I was her age. Like me, she had a fondness for horses and seemed to think of them as more than just a means of transportation. Also like me, she often lingered at the blacksmith shop, watching as the family horse was shod, rather than leaving the animal in the morning and returning for it later in the day the way most folks did.
The difference between us was that Trudy usually left once the work was done, while I d always stuck around afterward for as long as I could, peppering Owen s dad, Amos Kinsinger, with a thousand questions about what he was doing and why. Growing up as a worker in my father s buggy shop, I had always gravitated toward the tasks that involved welding, learning so much over the years that eventually folks thought of me as the resident blacksmith. But there was one big element of the blacksmithing trade I d never had the chance to learn: the task of being a farrier, or an official shoer of horses. Ironically, that was the only part of smithing that I really cared to do.
That s why Amos had always held such fascination for me. Though he, too, could weld with skill almost any item that came his way, what most impressed me were his skills as a farrier. Watching him, I d always longed for that to be my job as well.
Now, at twenty-four, I d finally achieved that goal, though it hadn t been easy-especially the part where I d had to break the news to my daed about leaving the buggy trade. Once I managed to do that, I set about making it happen, first by spending four months at a farrier school out in Missouri and then returning home to step into this apprenticeship at Kinsinger Blacksmith and Welding. I had already been working here, mostly under Owen s guidance, for a year. That left one more year to go, at which point I should be experienced enough to take on pretty much anything that might come my way as a blacksmith or a farrier.
I shifted to the horse s other side. Funny how a person could put off doing something that really interested him, I thought as I ran my hand across Patch s flank, like how I delayed the switch from the job of building buggies to that of shoeing horses. But when you grow up in a family of buggy-makers, it s tough to be the first one to decide to do something different.
Once I did, though, I couldn t believe I d waited so long. Sure, the work of shoeing was hard-and now and then my back ached something terrible at the end of the day-but I really enjoyed spending my hours working with horses. It also helped that my daed s buggy business continued along fine without me, sparing me from feeling as if my departure had created a hardship for him or the family.
When I reached the horse s hip, I again ran my hand down his leg, only to find that this hock was swollen as well. A look at the hoof revealed that it was even worse than the other, and I pointed out the damaged, uneven area along the hoof s quarter to Trudy. No wonder the animal was having trouble. I couldn t imagaine how long it had been since this horse was shod, surely a lot more time than the recommended eight weeks for a driving horse.
Where did you say you got him? I released the leg and stood up straight.
He belonged to my uncle s neighbor, but then Patch started rearing