Huckleberry Harvest Read Online Free PDF

flatbed wagon parked in front of Mammi and Dawdi’s house. Again the team of seven was needed to lift the stove into the wagon. This was an amazing feat. That stove had to weigh at least eight hundred pounds. All the boys looked strong, but Noah was by far the most muscular, with arms as solid as good timber. In the tepid air of early September, sweat dripped down his face.
    Once the stove sat in the middle of the wagon bed, Noah wasted no time. He pulled a pile of ropes from a box near the wagon seat and started securing the stove to the wagon. No wonder Noah had brought a team of horses. It would take quite a bit to get that thing down the hill.
    With a bandanna, Freeman mopped up the moisture from his face. “What will you do with the old stove?”
    “Noah’s going to sell it,” Dawdi said, overseeing proceedings from the porch with Mandy and Mammi.
    Noah tied the stove to the wagon as if he’d done such a thing a thousand times. “If nobody wants it, I’ll sell it for scrap.”
    Davy ran back into the house and emerged with the stovepipe. Noah secured it onto his wagon with his seemingly endless supply of rope.
    “He’s got gute hands for it, don’t he?” Dawdi said as they watched Noah work.
    “Noah’s a gute boy,” Mammi said, paying no attention to what Noah was doing. She nudged Mandy with her elbow. “What do you think of Davy? His ears stick out a bit, but he has beautiful long eyelashes.”
    Mandy gazed with concern as Noah tied knot after knot. Was he making them tight enough? Would the stove slide off the wagon the minute it got going down the hill? What man was ever careful about such things?
    “Cum, everybody,” Mammi said. “Let’s have some of Mandy’s pie.”
    The boys began to file into the house. Unable to resist, Mandy leaped off the porch, dodged Adam and Melvin coming the other way, and went to Noah’s wagon. Starting at one corner, she tugged on the ropes and fingered each of Noah’s knots to make sure they would hold. The ropes seemed to stretch sufficiently taut to hold the stove in place, and she wouldn’t have been able to loosen those knots even if she had twenty fingers on each hand.
    Noah seemed to sneak up beside her. “Checking to see if I did it right?” he said as he secured one last knot. There was more of exasperation in his voice than resentment.
    “Just making sure,” she said, lifting her chin slightly so he knew he couldn’t intimidate her. So he knew there was at least one person who wasn’t fooled by his big muscles and clever mind. “I don’t know you very well. You might be careless.”
    Mandy glanced behind her. No one would hear their conversation. Everyone else was probably sitting at the table with their forks in the air, eagerly awaiting a slice of pie.
    Noah’s brows inched closer together. “You knew everything about me yesterday. Maybe you think a boy who treats girls like dirt is incapable of doing anything right.”
    She caught her breath when she heard her own words tossed back into her face. “You don’t have to confess your sins to me. I’m already fully aware of what kind of boy you are.”
    He pinned her with a piercing gaze. “Are you?” he said, scorn dripping from his tone.
    “You told me to get my hinnerdale off your porch.”
    He folded his arms. “You wouldn’t leave.”
    “You insulted my freckles.”
    He rested his hand on the wagon and leaned closer. She leaned away. “I like freckles,” he said. “It’s your nose in my business I don’t like.”
    They scowled at each other until Noah seemed to give up on the conversation. He gave the nearest rope one last tug and turned his back on Mandy. “You can be as indignant as you want,” he said, “but I’m going to have another piece of that pie. The girl who made it has a sharp tongue, but her pies are sweeter than honey.”

    After her fourth morning of bran flakes, Mandy repented of ever thinking an unkind thought about Mammi’s Eggs Benedict. At this point,