Stories from Juniper Falls

By A.T. Butler

1882, Juniper Falls, Wyoming Territory

 

In this first collection of short stories from historical western author A.T. Butler, love blooms and mysteries are solved. Strong men learn to be patient and cowed women lean into their strengths.

 

For more adventures with characters you love from Hawke's Revenge, as well as introductions to new favorites, download Stories from Juniper Falls today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Mountain Media
• Release date: Nov 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223451242

Book preview

Stories from Juniper Falls

STORIES FROM JUNIPER FALLS

A.T. BUTLER

CONTENTS

An Unwanted Visitor

Unexpected Blessing

Desperate Hope

FREE short story

Also by A.T. Butler

About the Author

AN UNWANTED VISITOR

Though it was not what she had hoped for her life, Martha did not mind being a spinster. As she rolled out her dough to make the doughnuts her nephews so dearly loved, she realized that she had been keeping house for her brother for more than twenty years already. When she was twenty-two and Bertie was twenty-four, he was able to—after several years of working for others and saving—purchase his own sprawling farm a little bit outside of Juniper Falls. Martha, at the time, had gotten so tired of their parents’ dejected comments about her not having a beau, not having a family of her own yet, that she went with him.

He had been grateful to have her, and she had settled in easily to keeping house on her own. Getting out from her mother’s hovering and her father’s subtle critique had given Martha space to blossom. They fell into an easy rhythm, and a few years after that Bertie got married. While that had been a trying transition, Martha and her sister-in-law, Jennie, had always been friends. No one had even implied Martha should return to her parents’ house.

The children came in the years after that—Albie, Micah, Ellen, Otis, and Susie—and Jennie needed all the help she could get.

And now, twenty years later, Martha was just as much a member of the Wright family as any of them. She was never left out of holidays, never asked to make herself scarce when guests visited, the way other hired girls might be. She had a bedroom to herself, was afforded time off when she needed it, and was depended on by the children nearly as much as were their own parents. For Martha, this arrangement had turned out to be just as good as marrying and having a home of her own.

Truthfully, perhaps better, Martha reflected as she floured her cutter and began to cut out the doughnuts from the rolled dough.

Bertie and Jennie were still very much in love almost twenty years after marrying, but like all couples they fought occasionally. Bertie watched what Jennie spent closely, and that could become an argument. Jennie resented Bertie going to the Golden Saddle Saloon too often, and that could become an argument. But Martha did not have to deal with any of that. All she had to do was retreat when the tension was high and wait for it to blow over while she kneaded her bread or hung the sheets to dry on the clothesline.

She had space when she needed it and support when she needed it.

No, whenever she thought about it, to Martha’s eyes she got all the benefits of being a married woman without any of the headaches she associated with men. What more could she want, really?

Aunt Martha!

Otis came dashing into the kitchen from outdoors, seemingly unable to arrest his momentum. At six years old, he was not yet going to school every day with his older siblings, but Martha and Jennie were running out of ways to keep him entertained for hours at a time. He missed his older siblings, his primary playmates, but Bertie had decided that his youngest son was still too restless to be able to sit still indoors all day. She would be grateful when he was out of the house and under the tutelage of Mrs. Frye come the fall.

Aunt Martha, he repeated when she waited too long to respond.

What are you up to, young sir? she asked as she wiped her hands on her apron.

He had been going so fast he ran into the back of Martha’s legs, but he bounced off and was now standing somberly with his back to the counter. He pushed his strawlike hair out of his face and looked up at her with wide eyes.

I have three things I wanted to say. He held up three fingers before scrunching up his nose as though trying to remember them.