Chapter 15
August rolled around, and the weather was dreadfully hot. In fact, if there had been no ladies around, the men might have worked in the mine wearing nothing but their underthings.
It didn’t seem to matter how many air shafts they sank; there simply wasn’t enough air in the mine and that was a real problem.
Troy was working on the elevator again. He had help this time from the lovely Lizzy, who had made a nice recovery. It turned out she had an incredible mind for mechanics, and she and Troy had become fast friends.
Andrew had nothing but a little scar on his head now, a reminder that he should take his own advice and duck if bullets were flying anywhere close by.
Today was Sunday, and that meant there would be no working in the mine or in the clinic for either of them. Today, Andrew and Julie had another task in mind.
It seemed that honey played an important role in Julie’s medicines. She was always adding it to teas and putting it on burns and things like that. It did a masterful job, but she was running out of the stuff.
To find more, she had been scouring the fields. There had to be a hive in the area, or where did the frequently seen bees come from? Now, she had roped Andrew into the search.
He didn’t mind. It was time spent with Julie, and that was always precious to him. They walked along the fields, hand in hand, heading to a copse of trees they hadn’t been to before. Perhaps the bees had made a home there.
“They have to be here somewhere,” Julie said. She carried a bucket with her and a sharp knife.
“Let’s say you find their hive,” Andrew said. “What will you do? You didn’t bring anything to protect yourself from the bees. Won’t they sting you?”
Julie shook her head. “They don’t sting me.”
“You’re stealing their honey; of course, they’re going to sting you,” Andrew said as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. “That’s what bees do.”
“Actually,” Julie said, smiling, “they don’t want to sting you. It kills them. They would much rather not die.”
“Fine. But how will you stop them from doing what bees do naturally?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” she said. “If we ever find the hive.”
Reaching the trees, Andrew breathed in the smell of the leaves. It was a little cooler under the green canopy, and he wiped his sweaty brow with his sleeve.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” he asked.
“A tree that buzzes,” Julie said and then laughed. “It will be quite obvious when you see it.”
It was lovely to hear her laugh. They had both been very tense lately, since there was so much to do and they were responsible for the running of pretty much everything.
Almost all of Timothy’s people had decided to stay at the mine and work. Although that was wonderful for the mine as they were pulling the ore out at a good pace, the problem was building everyone a place to stay. That was taking time out from all the other things that needed to be done.
Also, there were some less than friendly feelings in the camp, especially between Kyle, Walter, and Timothy.
It seemed that the two adult men had taken offense to Timothy stealing their chickens and felt he needed to be punished.
No amount of Andrew and Julie insisting that life had punished him enough seemed to dissuade them from their feelings.
There were a hundred other little squabbles and disagreements that took place daily, and it was all getting to be far too much.
Andrew was beginning to recall how much he had disliked living in a large city with all those people around him, jostling and vying for the same things as he was.
It had felt as though the city would crush the life from him and now his little mining town, so new and underdeveloped, was beginning to feel like that too.
He wished that he had started building his and Julie’s dream home already. Then he would have a place with an actual door that he could shut and leave everyone else outside.
Although, come to think of it, they were all alone now. Andrew turned Julie to face him and wrapped his arms around her. She giggled happily and dropped the bucket as he began to kiss her.
Nothing interrupted their time together, and Andrew reveled in the feeling of holding his wife. They were still living in separate houses, but he suspected that would change before too long.
When they broke apart, Andrew sighed. “I’ve been waiting all day to do that.”
Julie nuzzled his neck. “I’ve been waiting all day for you to do that.” Then she set her face in a mock stern expression. “You know, I think this is the only reason that you agreed to come honey hunting with me. Is that the only reason?” She folded her arms across her chest.
Taking a step back, Andrew considered this.
“Yes,” he said, nodding, deciding that the truth was always better than any fabrication he could come up with.
“I wanted to spend time alone with my wife. You have to admit there isn’t a lot of alone time in the camp at the moment. It feels very small and overcrowded.”
“It will turn out all right,” she said. “It has to. We’ve put in a lot of effort and this place will grow. You’ve ordered the building materials, so things are going to start happening soon. The mine’s producing ore, and we’re shipping it out. You’ll see, soon we’ll be a real town.”
She paused, frowning. “What are we going to call this town? Cartersville?”
“Heavens, no!” Andrew blanched. “We don’t want to scare people away.”
“All right, how about Andrewsberg?” she asked with an impish grin.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m serious, I think Andrewsberg would be a wonderful name for this little town,” Julie said laughing.
Andrew shook his head. “That’s it. You’re going to be punished for that.” He chased her and, laughing all the while, she ran.
They dodged around bushes, running through the trees and trampling grass and flowers as they went. She was deceptively fast, and Andrew never quite got a grip on her, not until she clearly wanted him to. Then she sank into his arms and kisses, and for a while they were lost in a world of their own.
When they surfaced again and lay on the soft ground, staring up at the canopy above them, the sunlight glinting down on them, Julie turned to him and propped herself up on her elbow.
“What do you think of the romance developing between Lizzy and Troy?” she asked.
That threw him for a loop.
Andrew frowned. “What romance? They’re building an elevator together. There’s no romance there.”
She gave an incredulous look. “Honestly,” she said, shaking her head. “Anyone would think that you know nothing about love, and yet here you are with me.”
“But Troy was writing to that Emily person,” Andrew said. “Did that fall through?”
Julie shrugged. “I only know what Lizzy tells me, and it seems she is quite smitten with Troy. She seems to think that he’s only got eyes for her too.”
Andrew sighed. “We don’t need love troubles here. Not on top of everything else we have to deal with.”
“We don’t know it will be trouble,” Julie said, lying back down in the grass. “It might be nice not to be the only couple in town.”
For a while they lay in the grass, listening to the breeze in the leaves. Then Julie frowned. “Hey, do you hear buzzing?”
Andrew listened for a moment. “There are bees in the grass.”
“No, it’s more than that,” Julie said, getting to her feet.
With her ears cocked and her eyes bright, she took off through the trees, stopping now and then to listen. Andrew hastily regained his feet and followed after her. He tried not to make a noise because it was clear that she was onto something.
As he followed her, he scooped up her bucket. She would most likely need it if they did find this hive she was convinced was somewhere close by.
They came to a halt in front of a dead tree. It still stood tall, but there was no doubt that it was dead. There were no upper branches at all, and the lower ones were bare of leaves. However, the tree seemed to be quite alive in another way.
Swarming in and out of a hole in the trunk were bees. Thousands of them. They teemed over each other, and as Andrew watched in shocked awe, golden tendrils of honey dripped down the gray, flaking bark. It was quite something.
“See, I knew we would find it,” Julie said, grinning. “They’ve grown too big for this hive,” she added. “See how they’ve started building honeycomb on the outside of the bark? I think they need a new home.”
“What?” Andrew asked. He wasn’t totally at home with bees. All that buzzing and stinging tended to put him off the insects. “What do you mean they need a new home?”
“Well, I asked Troy to build me a hive. It’s a new design that should be very comfortable for the bees and should make it easy for us to harvest some of the honey and wax.”
“Don’t you need to bring the hive here then?” Andrew asked. He recalled something about having to have the old and new hives close together for a transplant to work. He knew she didn’t have a hive with her, so what was she talking about?
“Oh, I won’t do it now,” she said with a laugh. “We’ll just cut some of the extra comb off on the outside and then we should be fine. I’ll come back with a hive in a day or two and transplant them. It will work better with some of their wax in the hive to start with anyway.”
Andrew watched as Julie took the bucket and pulled her knife from her bag. Then she walked slowly toward the hive. The bees came at her initially but soon rested on her or flew away. None of them seemed to be interested in stinging her. It was like magic.
She cut the comb from the hive and when she had enough in the bucket, they walked away from the bee tree into the fields. The bees left them alone, not seeming to care that Julie had just stolen their honey.
“How did you do that?” he asked, still mystified.
She shrugged. “I’m magic, didn’t you know?” She winked at him.
Andrew laughed. She was certainly something, and his life had improved greatly with her in it.
He was so glad that she had decided to take a risk and answer his advertisement in the paper.
If she hadn’t, things might not be as good as they were now.
And some of his friends might be dead. He might have died too.
Andrew wondered what each new person would bring to their town, whatever they decided to call it. Would they all be as accommodating, sharing their skills and knowledge as freely as Julie had done? He could only hope and pray that would be the case and that their little mine would grow and grow.
Stopping beside the creek, he took the bucket from Julie and set it aside. Then he drew her into his arms and smiled down at her. “You know I love you, Mrs. Carter?”
Julie’s smile was brighter than any he’d ever seen from her yet. “I love you just as much, Mr. Carter,” she replied, leaning up for a long, slow kiss that tasted sweet with hints of stolen honey. And even sweeter with the promise of all the joy to come.
Thank you so much for reading our book. We sincerely hope you enjoyed every bit of reading it. We had fun creating it and will surely create more.