Read Online No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk by Tamar Myers - Free Book Online Page B

good hiding place or two around the inn.
    Stayrook sighed. “Of course the public could tell the difference. Sales started to drop, but not as fast as you would think. A good reputation is a hard thing to overturn.”
    I certainly hoped so. I planned to be in business a long time. “Well?”
    “Well, although sales had begun to taper off, Mr. Hem was still making more money than his uncle ever had. Of course, it wasn’t honest money, and that bothered us. Some of us talked about not selling any more milk to Daisybell Dairy. We even took the matter to the bishop.”
    “And?”
    “The bishop said that we should stop selling our milk to Mr. Hem unless he agreed to age the cheese at least four months. Even that would be cutting it close.”
    “And did he?”
    “We never got a chance to see. Before the four months were up, Mr. Hem made improper advances to one of his factory employees. A young woman named Elsie Bontrager.”
    “Amish?”
    “Yah. A good woman. Elsie had just been baptized, but she wasn’t married yet. To put it frankly, Magdalena, I have three Holsteins with faces prettier than Elsie Bontrager.”
    “Tsk, tsk,” I chided. “There is no correlation between marriage and looks. Some of us have simply chosen not to tie the knot.”
    Stayrook coughed politely. “Yah. Anyway, when Mr. Hem bothered Elsie, that was the last straw. All the Amish that worked for Daisybell Dairies quit and we formed our own cooperative.”
    “Aha. But did Elsie Bontrager press charges against this Mr. Hem?”
    I could see Stayrook squirm. “She has gone to live with an aunt in Indiana.”
    “I see,” I said, but I didn’t. If Mr. Hem had laid one finger on me, he would now be missing it. In jail, if possible. Perhaps it was just as well my branch of the family was no longer Amish; even as a Mennonite, my attitude was an anomaly. Perhaps I was really destined to be a Presbyterian. I would have to talk to Susannah about it sometime.
    “Anyway,” Stayrook went on, eager to move the story away from Elsie, “we elected Levi and Yost to head the cooperative, because the actual processing was going to be done on their farms, and because they were younger and had more knowledge of the way things worked.”
    “With the world, you mean?”
    “Yah, with the world. And things worked very well. Since we had eliminated the middleman, we were able to age our cheese the proper length of time, and still sell it for less than what Daisybell was selling theirs for.”
    I sat up straight. “Daisybell continued to make cheese? How could they do that when you stopped supplying them milk?”
    Stayrook shrugged. “Other farmers, English farmers from outside the county, they trucked their milk in to the dairy. But I heard it wasn’t the same.”
    I had to stifle a chuckle. “Amish milk is somehow better?”
    Stayrook nodded. “Amish milk in Farmersburg County is.” He was quite serious. “Some say it is the richest in the world.”
    That was quite a claim, coming from an Amishman. Unless it was absolutely true, Stayrook was guilty of pride, the worst of Amish sins.
    “Perhaps it is something in the soil,” I suggested.
    “Yah, perhaps. Anyway, Mr. Hem was not happy with our success. Twice he came to see Levi at the farm when I was there delivering milk, and once I saw him at Yost’s place.”
    “Did you hear what he wanted?”
    “Yah, and it was always the same. He wanted to buy out the cooperative and for us to start delivering milk to him again. Of course, we refused. Even after he apologized for what happened to Elsie, we refused.
    “Mr. Hem didn’t understand that. ‘You Amish are making a big mistake,’ he said. ‘You are in far over your heads.’ We told him that we could all swim and would have to take our chances. ‘Then you’ll pay for this,’ he said. That was the second time I saw him at Levi’s farm.”
    “Sounds like a threat to me.”
    Stayrook nodded silently.
    “You have, of course, told this to the