Authors: Nancy Radke
Time to defend myself. “I been looking for my Boaz.”
“Who? Boaz?
You’ve already got someone?
”
Now, if’n I had any doubts left about Gage, that took care of
them. He looked like someone had pole-axed him. I’d never seen a man collapse
as completely as he did, except when a man would get news of his wife or child
dying. The disbelief, followed by complete anguish, over the loss of a loved
one, couldn’t be faked.
Gage loved me! Here I’d been praying for my Boaz and he’d been
a’chasing me clear across the country.
God must think I was dumber than a block of wood. Here He had
been trying to answer my prayers, and I couldn’t see it. He must be laughing at
me right now.
I started to chuckle, bemused.
Gage just shook his head in misery, and turned and walked away.
“Gage. I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at me. I was too
blockheaded to see what you were up to.”
He stopped. Turned around. “But this other man. This Boaz.”
“I’m Ruth, Gage. Like in the Bible. Preacher Rowe told me to go
find my Boaz. My other half. I been looking. Just not behind me. There is no
other man.”
“Then I got a chance?” He looked so happy, I wouldn’t have been
able to tell him no, if’n I’d have wanted to. Besides, this was Gage, the man,
talking to me. I’d come to know his qualities during our trip out here.
“If you don’t mind a girl who can’t read sign,” I said.
“Then you will? Marry me?”
I barely hesitated. I trusted him and knew he wouldn’t betray
that trust. Did I love him? I wasn’t sure. But I was already starting to
picture little boys with Gage’s eyes and way of laughing. Gage would back bring
the sunshine into my life that I’d lost with Mary. “Yes.”
He took and kissed me. I’d never been kissed like that before,
like I had pushed him to the end of his rope, and he was going to tie a knot in
it before I took off again.
I decided I liked it. So this was what Mary had been doing.
My heart started thumping and I kissed him back. Love? It was
swooping down on me like a chicken hawk on a chicken. I wanted Gage. I wanted
to be married to him. And I wanted to join with the man that God had picked out
for my husband.
My Boaz.
Thank you, God.
We got married that weekend. Lila helped me pick out a fancy
white dress and did my hair. She was my maid of honor. I have my wedding photo.
I was so extremely happy, I looked beautiful. And Gage looked prouder than I’d
ever seen him.
Gage quit his job and took me north to where his pa and ma
lived. I wasn’t disappointed in the trees. They looked like they could sweep
the sky clean, pulling the clouds to the earth. And Abigail beamed that she
would finally get some grandchildren from Gage. She’d given up hope on him.
Jacob had a place by the ocean, where the soil was deep and
black, but I told Gage I’d prefer the hills, if’n he didn’t mind.
After spending two weeks with Jacob and Abigail, we went on to
Walla Walla where Trey and Mally lived. It overlooked the valley, a well built
place that Gage had helped him start. Trey and Gage had brought logs down from
the mountain slopes last fall, long straight Ponderosa pine, and Trey had taken
off the bark and flattened the sides, ready to build.
The wood had cured out, but he was waiting for help to put up
the home he planned. He had several neighbors who were coming over. They could
raise a house, or barn, in a day, if the material was ready. Trey had even cut
some planks to make a floor, splitting the wood with wedges, then finishing
them off with an adze. He’d made nails during the winter, cutting the metal to
length, then hammering on a head and a point.
Smaller poles formed a corral, and a temporary home had seen
them through the winter.
My brother welcomed us and just about doubled over laughing.
“You two? Married? I’d never have guessed.”
Gage grinned at him. “You should have. I spent a lot of time at
your place.”
“We all thought you were sparkin’ Mary.”
“Ruth wouldn’t pay me no attention, so I had to have some reason
to come around.”
“I’m glad you won her.”
“So am I.”
They shook hands, and Mally and I just smiled delightedly at
each other.
“I figure on getting us some land around here, if it’s still
available,” Gage said.
“Yes. It’s now about ten dollars an acre. I know an area close
by that no one’s considering yet. I’ll show it to you. Do you have money?”
“The bank gave each of us a reward for saving their money for
them, that’ll set Ruth and me up pretty well.”
“We read about it. In our paper. Is that Travers?”
“Yes,” I said. “He sort of brought us together.”
So we had to tell them about the trip, correcting the spots the
reporter had exaggerated.
“Also,” Gage said, “I was best man at your cousin’s wedding.
Matthew’s.”
“So he made it, then. Good.”
“He says, “Thank you for the horse. And his life.”
“He’s welcome.”
“He’s planning to send you some of Hero’s colts.”
“I’d like that.”
“Matthew claims that Hero is the smartest horse in Texas.”
“He is smart, for a horse.”
“And Mary wed a Yankee. A captain of a ship,” I added.
“How ‘bout Jonas?”
“He asked Josephine to marry him.”
“I wondered when he’d do that. Cousin Mark?”
“He and Luke are leaving the mountains soon. They were going to
help their folks a little first.”
“Who else?”
“Well, cousin John came back early from the war, without an arm.
He’s going to stay with his folks for a bit. On our side of the family, other
than Jonas, y’all left and never came back. So I don’t know about y’all.”
“Any other news?”
“Yes,” Gage said. “My pa showed up and took Ma to California.
They got them a sweet spot near the ocean. So I won’t be bringing her here to
live. We saw them on our way. Our families are scattering out.”
“Building a country,” said Trey. “One people will be proud to
live in.”
My brother had filled out with Mally’s cooking. He was right
handsome now. And Mally told me she was five months along with their first
child.
“Mally’s been riding all over the countryside, taking care of
sick folk and delivering babies,” Trey said. “She’s getting a reputation for
being quite the doctor. People see her pony outside a place and know someone’s
either sick or having a baby.”
“Gage said you used to care for your mother,” I said.
“I did,” she replied. “We don’t have a doctor around here, and
if we did, we couldn’t pay for him. My aunt had a doctor book in the wagon,
Doctor Gunn’s work. So I go and help.”
“She hasn’t lost a baby yet,” Trey said. “She’ll have to stop
for a bit while she has ours.”
“Stay here with us,” Mally said, her eyes sparkling as she
looked at me. “Trey and the neighbors plan to put up our house this coming
week. You can look at the place Trey is talking about, buy what land you can
now, and then we can do your home. We help each other here, and log houses go
up quickly. We’re building strong,” she said.
“One home at a time,” I agreed.
I liked Mally. I liked this
part of the country. And I loved my Boaz.
THE
END
People are strong. Life is fragile.
My pa and I left Missouri and headed west to the Willamette
Valley, in early spring, 1867. We didn’t wait for the wagon trains to form. We
didn’t take a wagon. My pa had been a fur trapper before he had married,
settled down, ran a store, and raised a daughter.
I was a storekeeper’s daughter, but I didn’t look like it. Pa
had me put my hair up under my hat so that I looked like a boy, dressed in
boy’s clothes.
Before we left Missouri, we made our plans. Pa wanted to go to
Oregon and get him some farmland. He wanted it close to the mountains so he
could hunt and trap food for us if he turned out to be a poor farmer, since
he’d never done it before. But my grandparents were all farmers, and he’d been
raised on a farm, so he figured he knew how to do it.
The raiders hit our town soon after the end of the war, gangs of
them, killing and burning and thieving. What the war hadn’t taken, they were
determined to steal. Pa got out his Henry rifle and a big shotgun and loaded
them. Then he took down the guns he had for sale in the store, and loaded them,
too. We had plenty of ammunition, and Pa wasn’t going to let the raiders get
it.
He rounded up the people, young and old, in our little town,
offered them the guns and ammunition, and got them to work together. They
posted a lookout up on a nearby bluff. When the raiders came riding in, they
were met with armed men and women who shot them off their horses. A couple got
away and spread the word. Leave that town alone.
Later that fall, my ma was driving a team of old horses, who
took it to mind to run away. They flipped the buckboard, throwing her against a
tree, killing her. It killed my Pa’s spirit, and I worried that he would die,
too, only of a broken heart.
When he decided to move west, I decided to go with him. The only
ones I would really miss was my grandmother, Mahala, whose name I bore, and my
best friend, Beulah.
Beulah tried to talk me out of going.
“There’s Indians out there, Mahala. And wild beasts. And thieves
and robbers. You and your pa will never make it. And what will I do, with my
best friend gone? I won’t have anyone to talk to.”
“You can marry Dan,” I said. “He’s been looking at you all goggle-eyed
for over a year now.”
All grandmother said was, “Send for me when you get there and
get settled down. I’ll come out by stagecoach if I can.”
We saddled up, Pa on Pride and me on Rosie. We had two good pack
mules and the pick of the store, although Pa said we should travel light and
fast.
He also made sure we didn’t put everything on those mules.
This was a good idea. We traveled light and fast, but we
travelled even faster when one of the mules pulled up lame.
We were passing the last of the homes in Missouri at that time,
and Pa looked through both packs, pulled out what he wanted, then took the mule
to the house and gave it and the pack to the homesteader. He repacked more
lightly the second time.
“We’ll follow the Missouri River all the way to Helena,” Pa
said, “then cut across the Rockies to the Columbia River. There are a lot of
Forts along that route, on the Missouri. We’ll use a boat for the first part of
our trip.” We put the horses and mule onto the boat and were able to go a good
distance, as the paddle wheels did not draw deep. Pa had hoped to go all the
way to the Cheyenne River by switching to smaller boats when necessary, but we
weren’t able to. We did get a good start that way.
Like Pa said, there were forts all along the Missouri. Ft.
Randall, Ft. Pierre and Ft. Rice, along with a town that was growing up here
and there. Then, as the land grew wilder, we reached Fort Buford, then Fort
Galpin and finally Fort Benton in Montana.
We were climbing as we traveled, and the nights grew colder even
as the early spring days grew warmer. Thunder and lightening storms crashed
around us, and I wondered if maybe Pa should have waited that extra month, like
everyone else did, before starting out. We had to dismount during thunderstorms,
because a horse draws the electricity, and you didn’t want to be the highest
object on the almost flat plains.
We could have gone south to Helena, but Pa was retracing the
route he had taken to come east, following an old Indian trail the trappers had
used.
From Fort Benton, he struck out almost due west towards Flathead
Lake, planning to follow the Flathead River to the Columbia and then down to
the Willamette River valley. By staying north, we avoided the troubles some of
the wagon trains had encountered.
But spring runoff had made the rivers treacherous, and we no
longer had places marked where it was relatively safe to cross.
We rode to the edge of one river, and stopped at the water’s
edge.
“That’s deep and swift, Pa. Shouldn’t we look for a better
place?”
“This is where I crossed coming out. The footing is pretty good.
The water is a lot higher, but I was walking then. The horses should handle it
all right. Make sure you keep your ammunition dry.”
The horse he was riding, Pride, had long legs, and managed to
walk across, but my horse, Rosie, had shorter legs, and lost her footing. The
current quickly swept us downstream.
“Pa!”
“Coming!” He dropped the mule’s lead rope and turned Pride
downstream, riding to Rosie and me. He grabbed Rosie’s halter, which she wore
under her bridle, and hung on while Pride took us both towards the shore.
It was a steep bank, and we just barely got out.
“Oh, no!” Pa shouted, and I turned to see why.
Our mule had not continued on to the other side, but had turned
and tried to follow Pride down the river. She was struggling with the heavy
pack she was carrying, as the water forced her into the rapids just below us.
“No, Pa!” I shouted, for I could see he was about to put Pride
back in the water. The rapids were too close, too strong, and they swept the
mule away in seconds. Pa would have been swept away, also.
“Stay there,” he told me, and put Pride to a lope as he
paralleled the river, trying to see if the mule would make it. The rocks were
enormous, and I figured a person in a canoe would have a tough time running
those rapids, much less a mule with a bulky pack. We had loaded up with
supplies at Fort Benton. Now these were all gone down the river.
About an hour later, Pa rode back. I could tell it was bad news
by the look on his face.
“No sign of her. The river drops fast, and the current is
strong. It’s deceptive. It looks milder than it is. Once she stumbled, the
force of the water against the pack just knocked her over.”
I had grown fond of that mule. She was friendly, and so
sure-footed, I had thought I’d end up riding her. The swiftness of her loss was
hard to take. Also, we had almost all our food and spare clothes in her pack.
Because there was always the danger of losing everything, we carried certain
items, like flint fire starters, on our persons, and other essentials in our
saddlebags. We each had a bedroll and rifle. Pa carried the axe on Pride, and I
had a short shovel on Rosie.
So it was tragic to lose our mule, but not so much that it
threatened our lives.
We rode on for the rest of that day, following that river
upstream, then camped at the point we had to leave it.
We didn’t camp right on the river, but instead on a tiny stream
that flowed into it, where there was less chance of being spotted by passing
Indians.
Pa pointed out that the rivers on this side of the Rocky
Mountains all flowed south and east. “When we cross the Rockies they will
generally flow west. You can never get entirely lost if you follow a stream
down. It will eventually lead you to people. People only live where there is a
water source.”
I nodded. People. Out here it could also include Indians.
“I’ll hunt early tomorrow morning when the animals come out,” he
added. “A deer or antelope would give us enough fresh meat to travel a week. If
we carry more, we’d have to smoke it. Or cook it.”
All our flour had been on the mule, as well as our salt. We had
some jerky in our saddlebags, and some dried beans, but Pa said those were for
emergencies only, to keep from starving to death.
This was not an emergency. He brought back an antelope across
his saddle, a tiny little thing that looked like the grazing had been hard to
find that winter.
I built the fire back up while he cut off some meat. We had us a
meal totally of roasted meat, which was filling and very strengthening.
Pa left extra skin on the haunches, so he could wrap them up,
then we each took one on our horse.
“We’re going to have to ride careful,” he said. “I saw bear
tracks. Bears are like people. They eat both plants and animals. They’re
starting to wake up and come out of hibernation. They’re hungry and extremely
dangerous this time of year. Keep your gun ready. Take it out of the scabbard.”
“Wouldn’t you have time to get it out, Pa?” I asked.
“No. They can charge faster than a horse can run. You don’t want
to be in bear country without a gun in your hand.”
He mounted, pulled out his rifle, and I did the same. We rode
the next five days, eating our fill of meat. Then one night we had to make a
dry camp, without water. We finished up the meat and it had some moisture in
it, but we still were thirsty.
“I’ll hunt us some food tomorrow,” Pa said. “You stay hidden.
This camp is off the trail, hard to spot. Keep your fire low. Don’t drink all
the water in your canteen, just sip it. As soon as I get back, we’ll go get
water. I know where there’s a spring about a day’s ride from here.”
“Shouldn’t we go there first, Pa?”
“No. Game is plenty. It shouldn’t take me long to get something.
I figure Indians will know where that spring is. We’ll have to go in careful
like. I don’t want you camped anywhere near it.”
The next morning he left, just at sunup. “See you shortly,” he
said. “Stay hidden. I should be back before noon.”
Noon came and went, then evening. I kept the fire low and my gun
ready. Sometime during the night I fell asleep.
I woke up cold. The fire had gone out and my one blanket wasn’t
warm enough to keep the freezing weather from chilling me to the bone.
There was dew on every blade of grass, and I put one in my
mouth, found moisture there, so did it again and again, putting the blades in
my mouth as fast as I could, because the sun was coming up and would quickly
dry it out. Rosie was grazing on the wet grass, getting moisture also.
I found some grasses wet enough, I could squeeze a few drops
into my canteen, but directly into my mouth worked best.
As I gathered water, I worried. What had happened to Pa?
He’d done this once before on the trip, going longer than he
thought it would take. That time a buffalo herd had come between us and he had to
wait for it to pass. It took almost two days.
The herds were massive, with thousands of animals in each herd.
And the buffalo themselves were massive, with heads around two feet across
between their horns.
I hadn’t seen any buffalo lately, but I knew they were in the
area by the spoor they left behind. Buffalo chips. They made good fuel when
there wasn’t anything else to burn. So I “drank” my grass until it got dry.
Then twice during the day, I took a drink out of my canteen.
Pa had showed me many of the plants the Indians used, and I
picked those I found and laid them on rocks near the fire. When they got dry, I
put them in my poke, wrapping each type in paper before placing it carefully in
the bag.
That night, I slept warmer, letting the fire die down to coals,
then putting enough dirt over them so that I could sleep on top and still get
some warmth.
I was wide awake come sunup.
No sign of Pa. He was a big man, a strong man, astride a big
horse. He was an excellent shot and had taught me how to ride and shoot, making
sure I had those skills before we started out to Oregon.
If I went out looking for him, I could easily miss him, for one
thing I wasn’t very good at was tracking people. He expected me to be here, and
would come back if at all possible. He knew where the spring was, but I didn’t.
How long should I wait?
I had always prayed at night, but now my constant thoughts were
prayers. Prayers for Pa’s safety. Prayers for direction if he didn’t show up.
I would have to leave tomorrow to find water. My canteen was
empty and the dew on the grass wasn’t enough to keep me alive.
The third night, I heard a sound. Then another.
Pa said that Indians didn’t like to travel at night, but that
now and then some did, so you couldn’t count on it.