Chapter Three

Margaret was nervous as they stood in front of the minister at Angus’s small church a little later that morning. Angus looked like he might be, too. The two of them joined hands at the minister’s urging and repeated their vows. The entire ceremony took less than ten minutes until they were announced man and wife.

“You may kiss the bride!” the minister said. Angus looked at her a bit awkwardly before leaning forward and giving her a light peck on the cheek and withdrawing. She blushed as she stood there looking at her new husband. There was no going back now. She was officially Mrs. Angus McCord.

“Thank you, Brother Anderson,” Angus said to the minister before turning back to her. “Ready to go home, Mrs. McCord?” He smiled.

“I am, Mr. McCord,” she replied, still feeling a bit jittery.

“Let’s get going, then,” he replied.

All the way back to the farm, Margaret wondered if he would expect relations with her immediately. She was now his wife, but he still felt like a stranger to her. It seemed wrong to be so personal with someone she didn’t know. She felt relieved when they reached the farm and he showed no inclination toward rushing into such things.

“Let’s change and go out to the fields. We have a lot to do before the weather comes in tonight,” he told her.

“Okay,” she replied, hurrying upstairs to get into a work dress.

Angus went out to the shed where he had been staying so that he could get changed and then met her in the field a few minutes later. He quickly showed her what needed to be done and then left her to work her part of the fields. It was hard. The sun beat down on her as she tried to make quick work of what she had been asked to do. Instead, it was an all-day toil, stopping only for a brief lunch of salted pork sandwiches she had managed to put together from the meager contents of Angus’s kitchen.

The work didn’t just end once the fields were tended, either. By the early afternoon, the kitchen was heavily laden with a variety of fresh vegetables that she would have to tend to rather quickly so they didn’t spoil. She had no experience with canning or drying vegetables, so Angus was going to have to help her with the finer points of storage. Margaret marveled at having a man teach her how to do women’s work, but that was certainly the case here.

Outside, Angus continued working to get the acres of corn they had been pulling put away in the bins that lined a back portion of the field. It would be safe from the weather there. He stopped only to eat the food she brought out and then they both returned to working in the fields as the skies began to darken much earlier than usual.

“The rain is coming in, Margaret. Let’s put everything we can into the sheds before it gets too bad,” he shouted across several rows toward her.

Margaret knew that the rain was not what worried Angus. She didn’t have to be an experienced farmer to know that some water wouldn’t hurt corn. What would hurt it was water pouring from the skies in buckets, accompanied by high winds. There would be a good chance of a tornado, but even without that, it could rip the stalks of corn right out of the ground. They had salvaged much of it, but he was still looking at a heavy crop loss if he couldn’t get the rest in before it got bad. The rain was already beginning to fall, stinging her sunburned skin as they hurried to get what they could put away.

“Margaret, get in the house. I’ll do what I can with the rest alone,” Angus shouted at her.

“No. I’m not leaving you out here alone. I’ll help,” she shouted back.

“It’s not going to safe for you,” he yelled back.

“It won’t be safe for you either, Angus. It’s just corn. We’ve done all we can!” she called out.

Angus shook his head in resignation, pushing the wheelbarrow of corn he had over toward her and adding hers to it. The wind sounded like a train as they stood there between rows of corn, the stalks whipping around and striking their skin.

“Do as I say, Margaret. Get in the house! I’ll get this to the shed and be right behind you,” he yelled.

“Okay, Angus,” she replied, quickly helping him to get all the corn moved over before staggering against the wind toward the house.

She stood watching from the porch for a bit as his shadow moved around in the rapidly descending darkness. Angus was barely visible through the heavy rain now, even though he was not really that far away. A loud crash caught her attention as she stepped inside and she ran toward the kitchen window in time to see the shed in which Angus had been staying the night before have the tin ripped from the roof. There was no sign of Angus.

The injured dog whimpered at her feet. She hadn’t even noticed that he was up and about or that he had followed her in from the front porch when she had come inside. Reaching down, she scratched his ears and continued watching out the window as the wind seemed to pick up even further. Finally, she could see Angus walking along the fence posts that stood between the house and the field beside it. He was holding onto them for dear life as the rain pelted him and the wind blew him sideways.

Margaret watched as it nearly picked him off his feet and he clutched the post to keep from being violently thrown across the yard. It showed no signs of letting up and she couldn’t think of what to do to help him. She screamed as he lost his grip and went flying sideways, his body slamming against the side of the porch beside her. Wind or no wind, she was going out there. Throwing open the door, she ran out, holding onto the porch railing as she made her way down the steps and toward the side of the porch. Angus lay crumpled in a pile there. At least the high porch protected them somewhat from the wind.

“We have to get you inside,” she yelled at him. He seemed barely conscious as he blinked up at her, blood gushing from his head where he had hit it on the porch. “Come on, Angus. Crawl!”

The two of them made their way around the edge of the porch. Margaret guided Angus’s hands upward to grip the rails as they rounded the edge and the wind once gain threatened to pull them away. The porch was rattling and Margaret became afraid it would tear loose and take them both with it as they tried to get inside, but it held and they managed to crawl up the steps and into the wide open back door as the dog barked at them. Margaret helped Angus to a nearby chair and quickly closed the door before grabbing a cloth and dampening it to clean up the blood running down his face and see how badly he was injured.

“It’s not so bad,” he mumbled.

“I’ll be the judge of that!” she told him, cleaning the wound.

Fortunately, he was right. It seemed that it was fairly superficial, but the bleeding continued for quite a while before she could get it to stop. Outside, the storm continued to grow, the wind picking up everything not nailed down and dragging it along as it passed.

“We have to get to the cellar,” Angus told her.

Margaret nodded and they headed toward the hatch that led to a set of narrow stairs leading to a large area beneath the house he had shown her yesterday. The dog ran through just as Angus was about to close the door. Angus hobbled around, lighting a lantern that he kept there and grabbing some blankets from a nearby shelf. Though it was warm outside, they were still chilled in their wet clothes in the cooler area below.

“You’ve hurt your leg,” Margaret observed.

“It’s okay, Margaret. Probably just bruised from hitting the porch,” he told her.

“I hope so,” she replied.

“Well, if I’ve gone lame, you could always put me down like a horse,” he replied.

“That is not funny, Angus,” she said, smiling despite herself.

“Then why are you smiling?” he asked. “I know you couldn’t put me down, anyway. You couldn’t even let that worthless dog there be put down.”

“Look at him, Angus. He is going to be fine. He just needed someone to care about him,” she replied.

“Don’t we all,” he said, looking at her thoughtfully.

Margaret’s smile broadened as she returned his gaze. As husbands went, she had the feeling that Angus McCord might be the smartest choice she could have made, even if she had taken a shot in the dark. Her smile quickly faded as she thought of her secret. She should tell him. She knew that, but not today, maybe not ever.