Mail Order Josephine - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides) Read Online Free

when they trundled through the town. Curiously, she never took any particular interest in such things back home. Only now, in the novel territory of the West, she suddenly experienced the revelation of their importance to her future life, and she understood the urgency of learning as much as possible about everything around her.
    As Josephine anticipated, Aunt Agatha’s motivation to continue poking into doorways and comparing prices dwindled the farther they went until, by mid-morning, she mopped her brow with her handkerchief and declared her intention to return to the hotel. Josephine readily accompanied her aunt back along their route. After moistening her face at the wash stand, Aunt Agatha took off her hat and boots and stretched out on top of the bed. Josephine removed her own hat and outer cape, took a book out of her valise, and sat down in a willow chair by the window. She read half-heartedly, waiting patiently, until she heard her aunt’s breathing slow to a smooth ebb. Then she tossed the book back into her bag, pinned on her hat again, and silently left the room.
    She hurried down the stairs, eager to grasp as many of the experiences forbidden her by her aunt before she returned to the room. Long acquaintance gave her a good idea of how long Aunt Agatha would sleep, and she was determined to see all the sights she wanted to see before coming back indoors. As soon as she exited the hotel, she dodged around the corner of the building to the blacksmith’s forge. Of all the objectives on her agenda, this one seemed the most temptingly forbidden. Not only had the mention of a visit to the forge elicited the most hostile reaction from Aunt Agatha, but Josephine had never even heard of a woman visiting one, let alone visited on herself. Extreme curiosity, in addition to her more specific goal of learning about her new environment, forced her to seek it out and see it for herself. She stepped off the wooden veranda of the hotel and her feet sank into drifts of saw dust in front of the barn. Already the clamorous strikes of the hammer on metal echoed through the barn yard and she followed the sound to the forge.
    The forge stood next to the barn, a low roof supported at its four corners by stout wooden posts but without any walls surrounding it. Its open structure allowed Josephine to see the blacksmith swinging his arm above his head and driving his hammer down onto the anvil from a significant distance away. As she approached the forge, she realized the severity of her fantastic breach at venturing here, and her pace slowed to a falter. As she drew closer still, she noticed the blacksmith’s hair hanging down around his face, greasy with soot and sweat, swinging with the rhythm of his hammering. Ash and grime streaked his face and trickled through the rivulets of sweat down his cheeks into his beard. Cotton threads hung from the frayed hems of his trousers and the elbows of his shirt, visible under his heavy leather apron. Two boys, similarly dressed scuttled around the smith, shoveling coal into the furnace, operating the bellows, and otherwise responding to their master’s shouted orders. Three men in heavy work clothing and wide-brimmed hats hung around the periphery of the forge, discussing horses tethered to the rail nearby and observing the blacksmith at his work. Even from several yards away, the stifling heat of the furnace blasted across the yard, burning Josephine’s face.
    The unvarnished soil of the place and the men occupying it arrested Josephine in her tracks. Although she originally intended to barge right in and observe the activity of the forge up close, she stopped a good distance away and stared in fascinated horror at the sheer brutality of the scene. The smith and his boys took no notice of her whatsoever, but one of the other men outside the forge scrutinized her with his head on one side. His own trousers bore the evidence of hard wear and heavy dirt, while his boots carried deep scratches,