Wanted: Miller (Silverpines Series Book 10) Read online

  Wanted: Miller

  Silverpines book 10.

  Cover design by JB Publishing

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental or used fictitiously.

  For Ian: Thank you for bringing my daughter back from places her mother and I couldn’t reach her. You are an example of how love can bring a dying heart back to life.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  About the Author

  Other Books By George

  Introduction

  Antonia (Tonya) Woodson lost everything in the quakes that hit Silverpines. Her father died trying to save miners, The majority of the men women and children who worked in her family’s lumber camp wiped away when the second quake sent the earth sliding into the river with her timber and all. Now six months later she’s done everything she can to survive but with no one to run her sawmill she can’t even provide for herself. In a last effort of desperation, she sends an ad out for a husband who has experience running a mill.

  Braylon Watts is a dreamer. The only son of a miller, he went to university and got a degree in manufacturing and science. Home now, his father refuses to allow any of the advancements Braylon could make to the family mill. When he sees an advertisement for a woman wanting a husband with milling experience he answers it looking for a fresh start.

  Can a woman just trying to recover what she lost and survive and a man full of dreams for innovation and bringing new progress to Silverpines ever make a marriage work? What happens when a woman still devastated by the past gets a husband looking to the future? Tonya doesn’t know. All she Wanted was a Miller. What she got was a visionary. Can their marriage last or is it like her life, doomed from the start?

  Prologue

  Tonya Woodson stood looking out over the logs stacked outside the sawmill. Every morning she stood looking at them knowing that they needed cut. But without her papa there was no one who knew how to run the saw. She knew how but she wasn’t strong enough to do the work; it took a man to load the logs and one with knowledge to guide it through the blade. Silverpines was quickly being rebuilt and she wasn’t making the money she should be because she had to order wood from the mill in Portland and have it delivered by the train instead of using her own logs that were just sitting there. It made her mad. Why had he gone to help rescue those miners? He owned the sawmill and the timber rights around Silverpines. He should have been here cutting mining timbers, not digging in the dirt like a filthy miner. So now she was alone, all alone with no one to help her.

  She’d been excited when the women of the town had come and asked her to go with them to see Betsy Sewell and ask her how she’d arranged to marry Alexzander. Then she’d asked and realized she didn’t want to order a husband in the paper. It sounded risky; you never knew if the man was telling you the truth about himself or what kind of man he was. Why couldn’t some good, decent, hardworking woodsmen make their way to Silverpines? All she needed was one handsome lumberjack who knew how to cut timber and run that blasted mill. She’d waited and she’d prayed and now she was left without a choice. She didn’t even have enough money left to keep paying the staff at the house, let alone order any more lumber. She’d have to place an advertisement in that Groom’s Gazette everyone was using. She sighed, “No time like the present.” She walked inside to her papa’s office, now hers, took out a sheet of stationery, and began to write.

  Wanted: Man for Marriage between the ages of 20-30 with milling or lumber experience. Must be sober, Godly, and kind at heart. I am 19 years old with red hair and green eyes. I’ve been told I’m pretty but strong-willed. If you meet my qualifications and are interested then send a letter of introduction to … She’d pay the extra for a box at the paper. After what had happened to poor Abby, she had no desire to say where she was living until she had a man she was willing to marry. Too many grooms was as bad as no grooms.

  She looked it over and decided that she was going to send it. What choice did she have; it was either that or sell the mill and move to Astoria to live with her aunt who was always trying to get her to marry some weak-willed man of the city. She was used to big, strong men who knew and loved the outdoors and the smell of fresh cut wood just like she did. He papa hadn’t let her court any of her aunt’s choices because he’d always told her, “You’re just like me, my pretty Tonya. You have sawdust in your blood.” And he was right.

  She slid the letter into an envelope, addressed it to the Groom’s Gazette, and headed out to the post office. She’d face Widow Wallace’s pinched face and harsh tongue then come back to oil the gears, file the teeth on the saw, and run the wheel just to make sure everything was well oiled and in working order. Because she was going to trust that God would send her a husband and the sawmill would open again.

  Braylon Watts was tired. Tired of the same old arguments. Why had his father insisted he go to college and learn new manufacturing and scientific techniques if he was just going to insist on doing the same old thing they’d always done? It was frustrating to have the ideas he was sent to learn and not be allowed to use them. “I don’t care what they said in that fancy college you went to. I told you this is how your granddad did it and his grandad before him and this is how we’ll do it.”

  “Then why send me to school? Why tell me to learn everything I can if you’re not going to use the things I learned?”

  “Don’t argue with me, boy. When it comes yer turn to run things then you can make changes all willy-nilly but while I’m in charge this is how it’s gonna be done. Why don’t you use that fancy education to find you a wife and start working on getting your Ma and me some grandchildren?”

  That’s what had stuck with him while he sat here in the pub, not finding a wife but the fact that even if he did his pa would still expect him to keep doing what had always been done. So here he sat, a mug of beer in his hand and the Groom’s Gazette in front of him. It had become a funny game he and his pals had played while in college: get the Groom’s Gazette and laugh at all the men out west trying to entice unsuspecting women to come help them turn untamed prairie into a ranch or farm or some kind of town.

  But this time it wasn’t funny. No, this time he could hear those men in his mind. Trying to make something new, willing to leave everything to be something more. No one to answer to but themselves and, if they were lucky, a good woman. He turned the page and an advertisement right in the middle caught his attention almost like it had been written just for him.

  Wanted: Man for Marriage between the ages of 20-30 with milling or lumber experience. Must be sober, Godly, and kind at heart. I am 19 years old with red hair and green eyes. I’ve been told I’m pretty but strong-willed. If you meet my qualifications and are interested then send a letter of introduction to Groom’s Gazette #237815.

  His father’s two sentences kept ringing in his head as he couldn’t take his eye off the ad. “When it’s your turn to run things” and
“find you a wife.” Here just might be a chance to do both. What, he wondered, would make a young lady of nineteen so desperate to run an advertisement like that? He liked that she hadn’t had men contact her directly. It showed she was smart enough to realize some less scrupulous men would just show up at her door expecting the desperate girl to marry the first man to appear.

  Perhaps this was the answer he was looking for. A chance at both a family and to get out from under his father’s control and at least try some of the ideas he had from his college education. He drained the rest of his beer and, tucking the paper under his arm, hurried home to send an inquiry and letter of introduction to #237815.

  Chapter One

  It had been three weeks since Tonya had panicked and sent off an advertisement for a husband. Three weeks and the logs still sat there mocking her. If something didn’t change soon she didn’t know what she would do. She was in real danger of losing everything she ever loved. The only letters she had received so far had been from her Aunt Clara in Astoria urging her to leave that dirty mill and come find a suitable husband before she was too old to capture a man’s attention.

  She would have been gone, too, if not for Alexzander Sewell. He’d been out a few days ago to check on her since she hadn’t been to town for a while and had caught her crying as she looked out over those logs. “Tonya, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m going to lose it all, Alex. I can’t do it. I can’t keep the mill running; I don’t have the strength.”

  “What do you mean? You’ve been selling lumber; everyone needs what you’re providing us with.”

  She looked at him and laughed. “But I’m losing money. I can’t afford to bring any more lumber in from Portland. It costs more than I’m selling it for.”

  His face said he didn’t understand. “How can that be? Aren’t you charging for shipping the lumber in?”

  She shook her head. “No, of course not. That’s my expense; I’ve just been charging what we always charge.”

  “But you should be passing that expense along to those buying the wood. It’s not fair that you’re making less money. How much have you made on all the wood you’ve brought in since the railroad opened back up?”

  “Nothing. I’ve lost money.”

  Alexzander looked appalled. “Tonya, are you telling me you’ve been paying more than you’re making?”

  “Well yes, it’s expensive to have lumber shipped in. That’s why Papa opened the mill to begin with.”

  He’d left after that and came back with money. He’d gone to everyone who’d purchased wood and explained that she had basically paid them to buy wood from her and all of them had sent back extra funds. She’d had enough to pay the household staff and buy a few groceries with some left over to place one more order for lumber.

  But that lumber would come today and then what? She still had to see all this millable timber every day, knowing that she had the skills to cut it and produce her own lumber but not the strength. She’d prayed every night asking God to let a good man, any good man, answer her ad for a husband. She’d give the last of her funds just to get someone who had the strength to load the logs into the saw if someone would just answer her ad. Maybe the problem was her. Maybe she wasn’t what men were looking for in a wife. Her aunt often told her she’d have trouble finding a husband as it was with her red hair and stubborn nature. That men want women with soft comforting hair and pleasant natures and she had neither.

  She looked up when she heard Betsy calling her name. There, standing on her back porch, were her two best friends and the only reasons she really had at this point to stay in Silverpines. Betsy Sewell and Maude Jones. She waved and wiped her face as she turned and walked from the mill to her house. Time to put on a happy face.

  She should have known that those two would see through it. Maude took one look at her and pulled her in for a hug. “Tonya, sweetie, you’ve got to stop now. I know it’s hard but standing around all day staring at those logs isn’t going to fix your situation. It’s just making you miserable.”

  “Yes, so miserable you didn’t even let us know you’d sent for a husband. What kind of best friend doesn’t share that with her two almost sisters?”

  Tonya blushed; she’d hoped to keep the fact that she’d sent for a husband quiet until she’d found the right one. “How do you know I sent for a husband?”

  Betsy smiled. “Well, why else would you be getting a letter from the Groom’s Gazette?”

  She held up an envelope with Tonya’s name on it. “Come on, let’s go inside and have a cup of tea and you can read us your letter. Is this the first one you’ve gotten?”

  The three of them went inside and once the teapot was filled and they were seated in the parlor, Betsy handed her the letter. “I tell you it took a lot to get old Widow Wallace to let me have this. She was having too much fun showing it to everyone and telling them another misguided young woman had succumbed to the husband hysteria plaguing Silverpines. I reminded her that without that hysteria we wouldn’t have a mayor or marshal and that Millie would still be trying to run the mercantile all alone with all those kids. After reminding her that I was the Marshal’s wife and was coming to see you anyway, she finally let me have this letter for you.”

  Maude clapped her hands. “Tell us about him or any of them. How many men have written you.”

  Tonya smiled; this was why she loved these two. They were excited for her and she hadn’t even talked to them since her Pa’s funeral. “This is my first letter. I guess I could read it to you both.” She opened it and pulled out a letter and a photograph. “Oh! Oh my goodness!”

  The picture she held in her hand was stunning. The man was built like a lumberjack, except he was in a suit with dark hair and eyes. He was clean-shaven with a dimple right in the center of his chin. In a word, he was virile and all man. Her heart sped up in her chest just a little at the gaze from the photo that almost seemed alive. This was not a boy and not one of those dandies her aunt was always trying to set her up with.

  “What is the matter, Tonya? Is he ugly?”

  She couldn’t get her mouth to work so instead she just handed the photo to Maude. “Oh no, he isn’t hard to look at one little bit. Honey, if you don’t want this one, let me have that letter.”

  Unreasonably, Tonya felt a twinge of possessiveness at Maude’s joking statement. “Oh, leave her alone, Maude, and let her read us his letter.”

  Maude huffed. “That’s easy for you to say; you got your husband! I’m still living with the sisters and having to walk around town with those stupid books on my head.”

  They laughed as Tonya opened the letter.

  Dear #237815,

  That has got to be the strangest way I’ve ever started a letter in my life. Allow me to introduce myself and maybe next time I’ll know your name to write instead of this long string of numbers. My name is Braylon Watts. I’m twenty-three years old and recently returned home from university where I studied manufacturing and science, mainly the new study of the science of electricity as taught by Edison and Tesla. However, I grew up in a miller household. My father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and his grandfather have all been millers. From your letter I deduce that you are looking for someone with sawmill experience and I want to be honest with you. All my experience has been with a gristmill. However, I did study the principles behind a sawmill at university and believe I may be able to make that switch very easily. From my understanding, it’s all about accurate measurements and I certainly have the math skills for that.

  I will admit that I’d not really considered getting married yet. I wanted to try some of the things I learned at university at our family’s mill, especially since my father sent me to school. However, he refuses to even entertain trying anything new and keeps telling me we will do it the way we’ve always done it. Which left me wondering why he sent me to university in the first place.

  Again, in all honesty, at university my friends and I started getting this paper as a lark. It w
as entertaining to see what some of the men put as reasons a woman might want to come west and marry them. For example, right above your ad was a gentleman who lists as one of his qualifications to be a husband that he had “almost all his own teeth.” How is that something to entice a young or not so young woman to travel hundreds of miles on a train I ask you?

  Anyway, I was amusing myself with those sorts of thoughts when your ad caught my eye. I wondered what would make a woman as young as you put an ad in such a paper for a husband. Especially one so specific. All I could conclude is that somehow you’ve found yourself out west without the protection or provision of a husband or father and, based on your specific request, a lumber mill to man. Wishing to have the freedom to try some of the techniques I learned at university and (to be honest) bypass all the stress of trying to court some society girl here in my small town where I know all the girls of age, has made me curious and serious enough to write you.

  I hope that we can converse and even reach a satisfactory arrangement to marry if you are so inclined.

  If so, I offer you leave to write to me directly at the address enclosed.

  Sincerely,

  Braylon Watts.

  “Well, he has a sense of humor, experience running a mill, and is educated. And if this is really his picture, he wouldn’t be a bad sight to go to the mill to stare at,” Maude stated. “What are you going to do?”

  Tonya took the picture from Maude and stared at it for a moment longer before smiling at her friends. “I’m going to get married!”

  Braylon stood in his family’s parlor. He knew this was going to be an uncomfortable discussion but he’d made up his mind. The letter he’d gotten earlier that day had convinced him this was the right decision. He was in awe of Antonia’s courage and strength and, if honest, a bit enamored of her before he’d looked at the photograph she’d included. Her letter had spoken of the tragedy that had befallen Silverpines, Oregon. Of course, like most people he had heard of the terrible two days of earthquakes the western coast had endured but hearing how this one town had been affected so drastically had made it more real.