The Amish Cowboy, page 1
The Amish Cowboy
Amish Cowboys of Montana
Book I
Adina Senft
Contents
In this series
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Glossary
Also by Adina Senft
About the Author
Copyright 2021 Shelley Adina Senft Bates
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at www.moonshellbooks.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover design by Carpe Librum Book Design. Images used under license. German quotations from the 1912 Luther Bible, with English from the King James Version.
The Amish Cowboy / Adina Senft—1st ed.
ISBN 978-1-950854-16-5 R011423
Created with Vellum
Praise for Adina Senft
“Filled with spiritual insights and multilayered storylines. At times readers will be chuckling and other times, misty eyed as the book unfolds.”
Amish Reader on Herb of Grace
“A heart-warming tale that celebrates the best things about being Amish.”
Christian Fiction Addiction on Keys of Heaven
“Adina Senft has once again produced a simply sweet and engaging Amish romance novel, filled with twists and turns, enjoyable beyond compare.”
Amish Reader on Balm of Gilead
In this series
Amish Cowboys of Montana
The Montana Millers
* * *
The Amish Cowboy’s Christmas prequel novella
The Amish Cowboy
The Amish Cowboy’s Baby
The Amish Cowboy’s Bride
The Amish Cowboy’s Letter
The Amish Cowboy’s Makeover
The Amish Cowboy’s Home
Introduction
The Amish Cowboy
An Amish cowboy’s unexpected reunion with the girl who got away could heal his heart … or break it forever.
* * *
Daniel is the eldest of the six Miller siblings helping their Old Older Amish parents run the Circle M Ranch in northwestern Montana. Daniel can handle a blizzard, manage a roundup, even birth a calf. But what he can’t do is forget Lovina Lapp, who broke his heart back in Lancaster County and married someone else. When their neighbors gather to help them bring the cattle down from the summer pastures, Daniel is staggered to see Lovina among them. His job is to keep the group safe for a week in the high country. But will he be able to protect his heart?
After a chaotic childhood and a romance with Daniel Miller that ended when he chose Montana over her, Lovina learned the danger of loving a cowboy. She married another man instead—someone who was safe. But after God took her husband in a freak accident, an invitation to go with old friends to visit the national parks seems like a gift. Until she finds herself unexpectedly at the Circle M Ranch, where one look at Daniel tells her there is nothing safe about her feelings for him …
The Montana Millers. They believe in faith, family, and the land. They’ll need all three when love comes to the Circle M!
Acknowledgements
Grateful thanks to ranchers E&J Nelson and to Captain Brent Kirk, rancher, firefighter and all-around hero. Your help has been invaluable in bringing the Circle M to life. Thanks also to Heather J. Graham for facilitating conversations, to Nancy Weatherley and Jennifer Skully for their encouragement and support, and to Jeff, for once again being willing to pack up the pickup and head off on the next research trip.
1
Mountain Home, Montana
“God is good, and northwestern Montana is the proof.”
Daniel Miller laid a hand on his mare’s neck as she sidestepped, and gazed out at the forests and meadows of the high country, with Siksika Lake set like a jewel in the cupped hands of the mountains. They had brought the horses to a halt on a knoll that Daniel knew was one of Dat’s favorite places to give thanks, as he was doing now. Above them, a hawk balanced on the updraft created by the looming bulk of the mountain, and off to the left, deer grazed on one side of a grassy clearing.
Behind them in the acres of the collection field, cattle milled and lowed, the females looking to mother up with their calves, calves bawling as they tried to find the mothers they’d been separated from when the cowboys had brought them down from the forests and meadows of the high country over the past week.
Daniel’s father, Reuben, pushed up the brim of his black winter work hat with one gloved finger. “We have a lot to be thankful for. That the gut Gott made this country. That He led me here when my brothers were determined that I follow them to Colorado and New Mexico. And that He gave me and your mamm a fine family to help us care for it.”
“I’ll agree with you on all but the last one. I think the gut Gott might have been distracted when it came to making the twins.”
Reuben laughed. “I must say that those girls are a handful—worse than you four boys together. But they seemed to have settled some now. Rebecca plans to start baptism classes and join church in the spring, she tells me.”
“Does she?” Daniel’s heart swelled, and the sun seemed to lie with greater warmth on his shoulders. “Let’s hope Malena takes her good example to heart.”
“She is in God’s hands, mei Sohn, and there is no safer place.”
Reuben gathered up his gelding’s reins and they rode down the path single file, the horses sensing instinctively that today’s inspection of the cattle was over, and it was time to go home. In Amish communities in other states, the elders frowned on riding horses, which were meant to pull buggies and to work in the fields. But Amish communities in other states didn’t sprawl across mountains with steep sides and narrow trails. If a rancher did not hold with gas-powered quad-runners—noisy, smelly things that only frightened the cattle—then using a horse for riding was certainly the lesser of two evils. So, the Circle M kept cutting horses for ranch work, and buggy horses for transportation.
Daniel patted Marigold’s neck again in appreciation. The twins had named the cutting horses after flowers, regardless of what their actual names had been at the time, and Dat had laughed and gone along with it. Daniel supposed he should be thankful they’d stopped before they got to Skunk Cabbage or Hydrangea.
He gazed up at the ranks of the Rockies marching into the distance, their jagged peaks white with new snow. “So, Dat, we start trailing them down day after tomorrow? Rafe Williams at the Bar Z has already taken his, and I expect John Mackenzie will follow soon.”
His father nodded. The trails were already trampled from the movement of their neighbors’ herds. “Ja, it’s time. The Bar Z and the Star are bigger outfits than we are, so it’s right they started early. Our neighbors and some in the church are just waiting for us to give the word. The weather isn’t supposed to change until next week, but it’s October. You know how that goes.”
Montana weather was notoriously unpredictable, and even though the last week of September had been warm, since then there had been a skiff of snow down in the home paddocks. Daniel was grateful for their neighbors, both Englisch and Amish, who considered roundup a community event. All the neighboring ranches ran their cattle on the surrounding allotments. They weren’t fenced, so the animals could get to the grazing land, and the animals often wandered on to the Bureau of Land Management land as well. Sorting one ranch’s cattle from another took place in the collection fields, where it was manageable, and now his family were ready for the final stage of the process: trailing their own cattle down to the Circle M seven miles away.
The steep trail widened out as they reached the open country. Daniel inspected the way, looking for washouts or mud holes that might snag an unsuspecting calf or cause a neighbor’s horse to throw an inexperienced rider or injure itself. But with the herds coming down so recently, the wide track was plain and unobstructed. At the gate that gave on to the county road, Daniel allowed his father to ride through first, then closed and secured the gate behind them both.
The law of the gate, he had learned even before he was old enough to reach the latch, meant that you left it as you found it. Always. No exceptions.
After four miles along the road, the horses broke into a trot when they saw the familiar fences and fields of home in the distance. His own half-constructed house lay just visible to the west, its roof and walls newly dried in and waiting for the many hours of elbow gr
Unbidden, her face flashed into his memory—those gray eyes, the pain in them as she told him she could not marry him. Lovina Wengerd Lapp had stayed in Whinburg Township where it was safe, and married someone else. Not a cowboy whose life on the ranch could sometimes be as difficult as it was rewarding, but a baker or a harness maker or something. A man who stayed inside to make his living.
Daniel shook away the unkind memories and allowed the beauty of the country to soak into his soul. His parents’ ranch house stood on a slight rise farther up the valley, facing south, to gather in as much light and warmth as possible during short winter days. Daadi Miller, and the teenage Reuben with his two brothers Marlon and David, had built it in the seventies when their family had settled here, an easy buggy ride to the town of Mountain Home. More and more families had come to settle, and now the Englisch tourists were coming to enjoy the homemade goods at the bakery, the variety in the general store, the handcrafted ironwork and quilts. Their own log house with its peaked roof jutting out over the front deck seemed to welcome visitors, and on church Sundays the front room held all the Gmee, with the view through the windows of the land God had created, to remind them of all they had to be grateful for.
The bunkhouse and cattle barns, and his own house as well, were constructed using the same methods, out of sturdy logs with corrugated metal roofs that would let snow slide harmlessly away. Even the chicken house fit the pattern, large enough for the fifty birds and the few speckled guinea hens that were cared for by Mamm and the twins.
After unsaddling the horses, currying them, and putting them in their stalls with the feed they’d been hoping for, Reuben told him, “I’ll make those calls. No sense wasting time.”
Other Amish communities might have a telephone hanging in the barn, or in a phone shanty out on the road. But here in Montana, life was a little more challenging than in the older, more established communities in Indiana and Pennsylvania and Ohio. Between high country and weather, and the distance between families, it had become clear to the elders both here and in Colorado that cell phones were necessary for safety. There was even a cell tower on the Stolzfus place that brought a little extra income from the phone company to the widow Rose.
So while Dat leaned on a post in the barn to make his calls, watching the horses enjoy their oats, Daniel walked up to the house.
“You’re back!” Malena met him at the door and then hollered over her shoulder, “Mamm, Daniel and Dat are back.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” He grinned at his sister, who was twenty-two, but whose merry eyes and small figure made her look still in her teens. Her prayer covering was neatly pinned on curly brown hair that never stayed quite as neat as Rebecca’s straighter hair seemed to, a fact that caused significant aggravation every church Sunday.
“I’m not surprised. I’m glad.” Malena hugged him, a brief, fierce hug that nearly squeezed the breath out of him. “When is roundup?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
She whooped and grabbed a barn coat off the hook. “I’ll tell the boys.”
“Dat is out there, he will—”
But she was already out the door, and here came Rebecca down the stairs from their room. “Tomorrow? Goodness, I’ve got to get Lilac ready then, and clean her tack, and—”
Another barn jacket vanished and the door slammed behind her.
“And they say there are no tornadoes in Montana,” he said into the silence. Daniel heard a quiet chuckle and turned to see his mother in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
Naomi Miller smiled a welcome, and tilted her head toward the kitchen. “Gingerbread whoopie pies cooling on the counter. One thing about your sisters—any job they tackle gets done in a hurry.”
“Even if you have to make them do it over again?” He took a whoopie pie and the warm scent of ginger and cream-cheese frosting filled his nose as he bit into it.
“Not so much anymore. Even Malena learned eventually that if you do something properly the first time, you have more time afterward to do your own things. Simple arithmetic. And at least they got the pies done. I only have to frost the rest and put them together.”
“These are good.” Daniel took another. “Dat’s in the barn making the calls. Day after tomorrow.”
Mamm nodded. “We’ll give everyone breakfast, as usual. We’ve got elk sausage, bacon and mushroom casserole, and a couple of pigs’ weight in pork sausage. That should hold you all until lunch.”
“You and the girls are riding out, too?”
“The girls wouldn’t miss this. But I’ll stay here with the women who aren’t riding.” She brushed a bit of frosting from the stubble on his cheek. “You need a shave if you’re going to catch a girl’s eye, mei Sohn.”
“Hey, I’ve been chasing cattle for two days,” he defended himself. As if she couldn’t tell by the smell of horse and the stains on his jeans. “Besides, all the girls in this neck of the woods have their eyes on someone else. I’ve got used to being the third oldest bachelor in the district.”
“Third? Who might the first two be?” She was trying not to smile, and failing completely.
“Josiah and John Bontrager.”
His mother’s laughter always delighted Daniel. It sounded like a rushing creek and birdsong and kindness, if that were possible. “Those old bachelors! They’ve got forty years on you and even yet, I know a widow or two who would light a candle in the window if she thought one would come calling.”
Now it was his turn to laugh. “I’m barely twenty-eight, Mamm. When God sends me the woman He means for me, I’ll be ready and waiting.”
His mother had crossed the kitchen and bent to open the propane oven’s door, which was why he thought she said, “He already did.”
But that couldn’t be right. Mamm had never met Lovina Lapp.
Daniel snagged a third whoopie pie on his way out the door. He had chores waiting, and an hour yet until supper.
2
Two days later, the entire Miller family was up and at work by four a.m. While the twins helped Mamm in the kitchen, preparing an enormous breakfast for twenty people, Daniel and his brothers went down to the barn to get the horses tacked up and ready. Well, Zach and Adam were helping. Joshua, who at twenty-one was the youngest of his brothers, had a gift for finding something to do that wasn’t the task at hand, and managed to skate out from under the work his brothers did.
Not today. Daniel set him to preparing trail bundles.
“What for?” Joshua wanted to know. “It’s not like we’re going to be camping up there like last week. We’ll be back by nightfall.”
“Never hurts to be prepared.” Daniel handed him a stack of waterproof stuff bags. “There could be a freak blizzard, like the one four years ago. What would have happened to you then if we hadn’t had tents and camping mats?”
“I’d be dead, probably. Frozen solid until spring.” That was one thing about Josh. Daniel could usually get him to see reason. Once he saw it, he was more happy to do what was asked of him. But if he couldn’t see the reason for something, he was as slippery as a calf in a mudhole and usually went scrambling off in another direction.
