pages 132-133

Pages 132-133

                My Father and brother, being busy, couldn’t get at it right away, so when Jim brought the last load, he went back again to bring his cows and calves.  And from then on, we had lots of milk for Father hadn’t bought a cow yet.  They were too busy carpentering and also having someone to clear the sage brush from their bench land so they could get in a crop of wheat.  Jim got canvas to cover the lumber with to protect it from the weather and worked day after day setting posts in preparation for putting up the five strands of bob wire. 

Mother continued the job of trimping and looking after her turkeys, and as each day went by, seemingly enjoying it more all the time. 

                Round-up time was in full swing.  The cowboys went by often to their rounding and branding corrals an eighty acres above us; and at evening, instead of sitting around their own campfire, they would come down to our home for a song fest.  Some of the boys would bring along their guitars to play for us and others could play the piano.  The boys seemed to enjoy it and so did we.  Mother always had refreshments for them.  They, in turn, would tell Father to come to the camp for some fresh beef.  They were such a nice bunch of fellows and seemed to enjoy our hospitality.  We liked their cowboy music and they liked the latest hits my sister and I had brought with us from Portland.  My sister had not as yet picked on any certain boyfriend.  I think they all looked alike and not any one of them impressed her more than the other.

                “They all were good company,” she stated to me one morning “and fun to be with, but no more than that.”  The cowboys continued almost their evening visits until they moved camp higher up and most too far to come.

                But neighbors came visiting and time went on.  The hillside, once just a snowbank, began to blossom forth in the most gorgeous garden of wild flowers that I couldn’t resist the temptation of climbing for one of nature’s prize bouquets.  I loved the out-of-doors, and that time of year had arrived when the hills and valley urged me on to explore them.  Jim and I would saddle up when he wasn’t too busy.  We’d ride and ride, ascending the highest peaks the horses could climb.  Once up there, we’d just sit our mounts, take out the spy glasses we had brought along, with our lunch in the saddle pocket.  Looking in all directions.  There was our folks’ home in the valley, our pile of lumber on farther down, and wherever we looked to the east, west, south, or north, the green wheat fields, cattle on a thousand hills, Heglar Valley, Sublett, Snake River, Raft River, the one we had camped at the day we came across the valley to our mountain home and there was Rupert in the distance.  We looked far and wide and long.  The view couldn’t have been more beautiful.   I never did forget the button I lost from my coat on one of these highest mountain tops. 

                April had gone out like a lamb, almost like a June day.  The sun still shone warm when we descended over the trail we had previously rode over.  “And tomorrow would be May the first.“  I said to Jim, riding a bit ahead of him,  for the trail was narrow and at times the horses seemed to be almost standing on their heads because of the steepness of the trail.  “Yes,” he said, “May basket day.  We could get a lot of pretty flowers here to fix one.”  He went on to say, “when I was a small boy and my Father was a minister, my two sisters and I used to fix and set these baskets at doors and knock or ring the bell and run.” “that must have been fun,” I said.  “and when I was a small child, well do I remember being all dressed in my best in those Maypole dances at school and church.

                The winding trail had brought us back to the valley now.  And both horses were on the gallop and continued so until we came into the yard.  The saddles and blankets were quite sweaty when we lifted them from the horses’ backs, for that was a pretty rough ride.  So Jim gave each a feed of oats with their evening meal of hay to re-pay them for the good ride we had had.

                Mother’s supper was so inviting for we were both hungry from the trips, and the mountain air so induces one’s appetite.  I had gleaned a lovely bouquet of flowers.  Jim would stop and get them for me as we rode along.  Mother admired them so, for she loved to cultivate and raise them.  She handed me down a vase to put them in saying, “this new vase will show them off well.”

                Father was sitting by the table thumbing through a pretty seed catalog.  He was already making plans for a garden on the narrow strip of ground beside Shirley Creek, for there in summer, no matter how dry, it would always be moist.

                My sister was playing and singing a very beautiful song, and everyone seemed happy.

                As darkness crept over the valley, Jim and Father talked late that evening, partly about our house and when they could start on it.

                Finally, all retired, but somehow Mother couldn’t get to sleep.  I could hear her turn now and then from the bedroom across the hall, and of course, I hadn’t gone to sleep either.  It must have been midnight when we heard someone come in the kitchen door and call,  It was my brother.  Mother arose quickly and went downstairs.

                “What is it Harry?” she said.  “Ida” he said, “we’ll have to have the doctor.”  “but it’s only seven months,” Mother protested.  Jim hearing them talking came from the downstairs bedroom, “I’ll go for you, Harry.”  “no,” Harry replied,  “I’ll go.  Just let me have your horse and buggy,”  Jim hitched up, faster he thought than he had ever done before and Harry was off to phone at Sublett to Malta for the doctor, and go on to Sublett Creek to get the nurse,  a short heavy-set elderly lady that had taken care of cases without number.

                Mother went up to stay with my sister-in-law.  It was early morning before the doctor arrived.  He was on another trip when called and thirty miles to drive with a team and buggy.  He came to our house first.  Mother gave him some cake and hot coffee.  Later he came back to eat breakfast with us.  He was in hopes of avoiding this “only seven months too early”  he said to Mother.  If I could have gotten here last night.  She’s resting now, and I hope this will wear off.” He said as we sat eating breakfast.

Across the Years pages 130-131

Pages 130-131

“I hope so”. Said Jim.  “But I just wanted to know, since I’ll be out here most of the time now, could I board with you until our home is ready so we can get married.”

“Why of course< “ Mother said, heading the way into the house.

Father’s and brother’s arrival home was not uneventful, for we had been looking for them.  They arrived on the train in Burley from Portland the night before.  Then took the stage to Sublett.  Mother was glad and my sister-in-law was overjoyed.  They were only home a while when people who learned they were carpenters suddenly seemed to need ranch homes, barns, granaries to hold grain, a church , and the Government needed a ranger’s station built.  There would also be our house to build.  They never lacked for work.  It kept them going to keep up with all of it.  They took on a ranch home first.  These folks had turkeys and geese, and knowing Mother’s love for these.  Father brought home one evening three turkey hens, a gobbler, and a pair of geese,  a goose and a gander.  Mother was so pleased but she was also afraid the coyotes would get the turkeys.  So father fixed a place for her to shut them up at night, then turn them out in the daytime.   This went on until the three turkey hens began to lay.  They always liked to steal their nests out.  This kept Mother busy.  About the time she’d find their nests, they would change them.  Then she wouldn’t turn them out until she could follow them.  They were cunning and sly.  They’d go everyplace other than their nest when someone was following, until they just had to dash to the nest to lay their eggs.  Then Mother had them. She would save and turn the eggs each day until one of the hens wanted to set.  They wanted to set out too.  But after they became broody, you could set them where they would be safe.  I thought Mother would tire of traveling those many miles each day.  But she loved it.  I never saw her look healthier and so cheerful.  The geese proved to be very little trouble.  When the goose had laid a setting,  she took to her nest, but the one bad thing about them was they liked to swim and paddle in Shirley Creek where we would get the water.  Until that was fixed, then they would go in the creek by the wild cherry orchard.  But coyotes could sneak  in among the brush and catch them.  One day they put up an awful racket.  Mother thought sure the coyotes had them, but it was the magpies,  a crow-like looking bird.  They had returned in a drove to the cherry grove for summer, flapping of wings and cry of Maggie, scared the geese to distraction, so Mother’s mind was relieved for once.  When Mother’s goose took to her nest to hatch her young, the gander never ventured far away.  And most generally, sat close by talking to her in gander language.

Jim made his trips back and forth regularly, hauling lumber, and each time hauling out some of his things to our place.  This was on of his days to return.  My sister and I had been going everywhere, with Beauty and the buggy.  So we went to the store and Post Office for groceries and mail in the P. M.  While driving along, a cowboy galloped up behind us.  My sister had gone with him quite a bit.  He said, “I hear your horse can really travel,  let’s see her go.”  I gave Beauty the reins and left him galloping behind in the dust at top speed.  When I pulled her in,  he caught up with us.  His comment was,  “I’ll say she can go.”

                 We drove on down by our place.  Jim had been there and left, had unhitched from the load of lumber, riding one of the horses on up to our place.  He would unload it later and return to Rupert the next day for another load.  This kept up for some time until finally , it was all hauled.  The following Sunday , my sister and I thought we would go to church.

We heard some folks from the homesteads in the valley were having church each Sunday in the school house.  Not knowing the people every well, only that quite a number of them were from the hill country of Kentucky and thinking it would be nice to get acquainted with them,  we dressed up in our (best bib and tucker) good clothes and went.

We were a little late, and thinking  the minister was praying paused at the door.  But when it kept up, we finally thought we’d better go quietly in, sitting down in a seat near the door.  To our amazement,  he was standing there singing his sermon in a chanting voice, not very well understandable.  When we went in, his voice rose to a higher pitch.  This went on for some little time.  Making use of the platform, he was jumping and walking in a running-like walk back and forth and mopping his perspiring face.  After some little time of this, we began to hope he would wear himself out and be quiet.  But nothing seemed to slacken him; then, suddenly he came to a halt, sitting down quickly and saying, “there it is brothers and sisters,  I’ve given it to you straight” and getting up again just as quickly, took a hymn book, started waving his hands, motioning to the crowd to stand up and sing.  We knew the hymn, but he didn’t go by the tune, just chanted it like he did the sermon.  Every one was doing the same.  They had no musical instrument.  My sister and I tried to sing it the way it was supposed to be sung, but found it useless.  So we just stood there.  Then stopping just as suddenly, he said a few brief words.  “There you have it, Sisters and brothers,“ then everyone started to leave.  I think we were about the first to leave and waited outside to shake hands with some we knew and others we didn’t know.  Mother wondered why we had been gone so long.  When we finished telling her, she said, “they must be what they call the “hardshell Baptist.”  She said she had heard of them.  (Well, whatever they were, My sister and I figured that once was enough,  for now at least.)

Monday evening, Jim came  again with a load of lumber.  He had just so long to unload the freight car, and said his length of days were nearing and he’d have to work pretty steadily this next week so he could release the car to the railroad.  Each load of lumber looked better when he piled it in stacks that were to be used first in building our home.

ATY pages 127-129

Page 127-129

And that fall when we first moved out to my folk's ranch. I would climb the hills and mountainsides in search of pretty flowers and rocks and just stand on its summit, gazing off into the blue hazy valley below and the grain fields, alfalfa fields and grazing herds.  All and I loved its clean, fresh air and mountain scenery.  

     My Mother loved it, too.  City held no charms for her, she seemed happier than I had seen her.  With all of the snow and cold, there was satisfaction that one didn't get from city streets, walls and house after house.  That ozone gave one an appetite and made you feel good.  All so different, so new to us, but we loved all of it, even to the hills that surrounded us.  It was almost like being cut off from the outside world.  

     Each week of February gone made February shorter.  It had warmed up again, and the winter snows were melting a little more each day and continued to as the days grew longer.

     My sister-in-law and the children kept well and happy with the thought that winter couldn't last forever.  Spring would come in time, and with the arrival of spring, her husband would be returning from his journey to Portland, along with his father.

     They had written that plans had been made for getting Jim's lumber, and they would have the freight car to arrive at Rupert about the first of April.

     "Well," Jim said in his last letter, "that would be odd, for he arrived in Rupert for the first time on April 1, 1911" and found it a place with a future, a place he said was wonderful to live in.  He loved too the hills on Shirley reek where our home would be even more so and the air worth paying for to breath.  Each deep breath seemed to affect one clear to his toes.  Of such was life in this new country of Southern Idaho.

     And, as my sister in law had said.  winter couldn't last forever, so February slipped into the past as had September, October, November, December, and January along with the rest.  But each month, as it went by, gave us something that could be remembered through a lifetime.  For instance, the momentary cry of the coyote in the wee hours of morn, his stealthily sneaking way of getting his food to satisfy his hunger.  Nature seemed to endow him with this instinct as a way of livelihood.  

     The little creek winding its way, flowing down the bed made by nature, flowed on indefinitely to its end.  And Jim asking me the most important question of his and my life by this same little stream.  And the day he brought me the diamond he picked for the "nicest girl in the world" he had said as he placed it on my finger, which indicated a lifetime of happiness.  Mother riding with Father out of the hills on a load of poles, their smiles to be remembered forever.

     Father with his broken foot and cherry tree crutches.  The bouquet Jim handed me the morning of my twentieth birthday.  We girls, first box social.  It was all so interesting to us, as was all the numerous things we witnessed and experienced. 

     March was next in line.  It came in like a lion with winds.  Seldom had there been such ones.  But Spring was on its way and destined to come to this little valley as well as the rest of Idaho.  The winds kept up through the day and night, melting the snow into rivulets every where.  This kept up for several days.  Then the temperature lowered in the night, and all the little rivulets were frozen.  The wind finally subsided, the sun shone brightly, and this the real March had arrived and Winter was giving way to Spring.

     Days and nights of winds and storms and winter's loneliness would soon be on its way out, for in a few weeks now, Father and brother would be home, wrote they were on their last house of the several they had built.  My sister-in-law was so happy she cried, for she was quite a ways along now and not feeling too well.  She cried easily though.

     My Mother said to her one day, "Ida, I thing you are going to have twins the way you have been showing up lately."  "oh Mom," she said, " don't say that .  One is enough"  and laughed a half-hearted laugh.  Then she and the two children started back up the path to their home.  

    I added wood to the front room stove.  The fire had died down, and the room was a  bit chilly.  My sister sat reading, as was her custom.  Mother came in with an armful of wood, for the wood box by the kitchen range.

    No one was looking for or thinking about Jim when I heard a "ho".  Looking from the window, there he was, with his team and wagon, I dashed out as usual.  He said, "I brought that load of posts I told you about and unloaded them on our ranch."

     "Fine," I replied, "that's a starter."  "The next trip," he said, "I'll bring more post and also wire.  It just might be I'll move out and board with your folks."

     Mother came out about that time, saying, "Jim, you must be cold and hungry,  I'm just fixing supper."  "Thanks, Mother,"  he said, "soon as I feed the horses."

     We went to the house, hand in hand, Jim's face was red with could.  He washed up and then went into the front room to warm up.  My sister went to get a bucket of water to fill the teakettle.  Then helped put the supper on the table while Jim and I stood talking by the warm quaken aspen open fire that kept crackling and popping as it merrily burned, throwing warmth into the room.

     Jim always enjoyed Mother's good meals, and when it was over, we gathered in the front room to talk and make plans for the days ahead.  I heard him say to Mother,  "I have sent the money for the carload of lumber to Father in Portland."  Mother nodded, smiling and saying,  "that's just fine."

     Jim was up early the next morning saying he wanted to start to line out and set some corner posts.  I did not go with him.  The ground was damp and somewhat chilly.  Mother and Jim were afraid I would catch cold.  Mother gave him a lunch, so he worked at this until toward evening.  Upon returning.  he fed and took care of his and father's horses.  By that time, Mother had supper ready.  We all enjoyed this good meal, as usual.  

     Then we went to the front room for the evening, and here we had a song fest.  Mother hoined in with us,  something she seldom did.  About that  time, my sister-in-law and two children came in, spending the time along with us until a late hour, when Jim and I walked them back up to their home.  "Well, it won't be long now until Harry will be here," Jim said,  "I hope so, " she replied.  "But the weeks seem to drag by for me."  "That's true,"  I commented, especially if one's loved one or one who is a part of you is away.  We went in, sat a while, and Jim put wood in the fire and brought ina  a couple of arm fulls for the next morning.

    Then he would be up and on his way across the fifty mile drag in a wagon.  He wanted to bring one more load before the car of lumber arrived.  And this he did , four days later, he was bac again, bringing with him more posts, wire and other things he would need, and a fairly good size load of baled hay on top.  I could see it all coming, but did not know what was attached to the end until he came closer.  Beauty all hitched to the buggy and being led behind!  I ran out to meet him.  He stopped. "Untie her,"  he said.  "get in and drive to the house."  I needed no coaxing.  He called when I drove by.  "she's yours, but you'll have to take care of her."  "I'll sure do that, "  I said driving on up to where I would unhitch.  That was fun , for I had always loved horses.

     Unhitching her from the buggy, I brushed and rubbed her down and put the blanket on, then walked her up and down to cool her off a bit.  as I had seen Jim do before, then taking her to SHirley Creek for a cold drink.  And into the barn with a manger of hay.  I was so excited and intent on what I was doing that I did not notice what Jim was doing or that my mother wans sister were watching with smiles on their faces.  That was the first horse I had had since leaving our home near Norfolk, Virginia.

     "I think she's in good hands, " Mother nodded, smiling at Jim.

     "Well, I wanted her to have Beauty, for I'll be busy from next week on freighting the lumber for our house."  "That's right" Mother commented.  "and Father and Harry will be home then."

     We walked on to the house, and Jim said,  "there's something I'be been planning on asking you."  "Whatever it is."  Mother said,  "I think it will be okay."