pages 134-136

Pages 134-136

                About that time my father happened to look out of the window and there coming down that steep hillside heading for the canyon below was a man in a spring wagon with a black team of horses.  My Father knew that would be suicide.   Rushing out, he called at the top of his voice. Frantically waving his arms toward the road.  The man finally seeing him, stopped.  Father cupped his hands to his mouth, “Go back west to the road---you can’t make it this way.” The man headed in that direction, and it was not long until he drove up, his face white and his voice almost in a tremor.  And said.  “I’ve driven from Heglar to Malta, a distance of thirty-eight miles including to here, looking for Doc.  My wife was about to die when I left.”  The doctor went out to talk with him, told him he couldn’t promise when he’d get there, but he’d come as soon as he could.  That man had the most dejected look on his face when he couldn’t take the doctor with him.  But that was part of homesteading and horse and buggy days.

                While the doctor was talking, my brother came and said he was needed, and he hurried away.  So the twins were born,  May 1, 1913, the smallest about four and one-half ponds and the larger five and a quarter.  They decided to call the small one Ronald and the other Donald.  But the doctor noticed soon after they were born that the smaller seemed to keep his head sideways and didn’t take his nourishment well.  He grew worse as the days went by, finally twisting his head almost in the reverse.  The doctor and nurse said that he had come too soon and he wasn’t all formed.  I tried holding him.  He seemed so helpless.  Finally, he passed on after a week or more.  Father made the little white casket, and my sister-in-law asked Jim to say a few words for Ronald.  Then he was laid to rest just a few yards from their home in a grave over the hill by a large rock.  Since Ronald was gone, they decided they would call Donald, Parker Guy, Guy being his mother’s maiden name.

                We felt badly about this and it left a sadness we all felt.  My sister-in-law and the twin grew stronger as the days went by,  but one could see she carried a sorrow in her heart for some time.  But with her wonderful Christian spirit, she finally put it behind her and tried to act brave and cheerful.  It was an early, warm spring.  That alone would help to boost one’s feelings.

                Father had plowed the garden strip.  The wonderful new earth turned over dark and rich with each round the plow made.  How could anything help but grow in such soil with proper care?  My parents aimed to give it a try anyway.  The wild choke cherries added to the spring atmosphere with their bank of snow-like blossoms, as well as the sarvis berries, wild currants, and gooseberries growing on each side of Shirley Creek,  and wild strawberries in low, damp like places higher up in the hills.  Spring had really come to the valley.  Birds were singing in their sweetest tones, even the old magpie added his calls of “maggie” “maggie” every so often.

                The snows melting in the mountains made Shirley Creek a much larger stream and rushing somewhat faster on its way.

                Father had fixed a small milk house over the stream where Mother could keep and cool the milk. 

                Father and brother had finally gotten around to fixing the foundation and framing on our house.  Mother helped all she could in getting the garden in, for Father had so much other work crowding him.

                Jim went once again to Rupert to haul out more of his farm machinery.  Father and brother were being urged to start building the new ranger station so the ranger could move in.  So about a week later, when Jim again had gone to Rupert to get wire and haul the rest of his stuff, Father and brother had me go with them in the spring wagon and team to haul their tools and to bring the wagon and team back.  We left about eleven in the morning, going though from our place and up over the divide of the mountains and down on the other side to Fall Creek.  There we traveled through lovely big fir and spruce trees.  It was a beautiful trip and on up around the Sublett Dam.  The dam was quite full of water at this time of year.  People down in the valley around Sublett irrigated their gardens and hay fields with it.  It was about four in the afternoon when we reached the spot where the ranger’s cabin was to be built.  The lumber was all stacked close by.  Father built a campfire, and I made coffee and fried potatoes to go with the sandwiches and jar of beans Mother had sent.  That was our supper.  Night settles down early in the mountains.   We put op the tent and fixed our beds, then sat around the campfire until we became sleepy.  While sitting there, two small balls of fire seemed to be looking at us.  Finally , a second form shorter than the first appeared and sat beside the first.  As my brother said, “a mother coyote and her pup.”  A third small one with gleaming eyes sat at the other side.  “another coyote pup.  They smelled the food and are curious to know what the fire is.”  We sat quietly and so did they.  For some little time, this went on until one of us moved or broke a stick beneath our feet.  Off they went, disappearing into the darkness.  We had not long to wait to know if our guess was right , for in minutes after they vanished into the night,  a weird howling cry came back to us from some distance away. 

                It was a quiet, desolate, remote place, and it was not long until the cry of a wild cat pierced our ears, and out of the brush came a deer and a fawn, almost dashing into the fire.  We figured the wild cat must have been after or stalking the fawn.  The deer, and with the fawn at her side, paused for a moment in flight, then dashed away.

                My brother put more wood on the fire, and we sat for a while longer, wondering what next would appear.  The wild cat had no mind for giving up the fawn.  With another furious scream, he lumbered out of the brush in pursuit.  The fire was dying down once again , and we started to bed when a bunch of curious whiteface cattle stopped for a call.  We just scared them off by clapping our hands, and they went on about their business. 

                We were trying to get some sleep when along about midnight a bunch of range horses came calling to bet acquainted with our two.  My brother got up and hollered at them, but upon seeing him, they took off like a thundering herd.

                Well, all was well until about five a.m. in the morning when the Boomer pheasants or sage hens set up such a racket, it sounded like they were beating the air with their wings or grumbling deep in their throats.  Whatever it was, that was the last straw.  We got up, Father made coffee, fried potatoes , and cooked eggs and bacon.  My, how good that tasted.  That mountain air made me as hungry as if I hadn’t eaten for a week.  After breakfast I washed up the dishes and put things away.  My Father and brother went to sawing frame work and fixing on the house. 

                Father said, “When you are through, you better hitch up and start for home and go back by the dam,  Sublett Creek and Sublett.”  “Okay,” I answered.

                “A much longer way, but best for you.”

                After hitching up, I climbed into the wagon and was soon on my way, applying the whip.  I was moving along at a fairly good rate of speed.  I had gotten around by the dam now and heading for Sublett Creek when a fellow passed me on horseback.  He stopped, and I pulled up and from the looks of his clothes, I knew he was the ranger.  I said, “my father and brother are working on the ranger station. I just left from up there.”  “and did you drive around the dam by yourself?” he asked.  “why sure, why/” “Oh,” he said, “the road’s so narrow.  They dug out of the mountain around the dam.  My wife doesn’t even want to ride with me.  She’d rather walk.”

                I whipped up and was off again.  Looking back, I could see the ranger going on in a gallop, over the road to the ranger’s station to be there when they stared building.  Passing through wild meadows and by a lonely cabin at the foot of the mountain where an elderly couple spend their summers away from the heat and dust of the city streets, I found it quite a lonely-looking spot, but healthful and solitude was there.  They no doubt liked seclusion, or they wouldn’t have picked that.

                I was getting into farming country now, hayfields, grain, gardens, fruit trees, and lots of shade trees.  So many of the ranches set out those slim, tall Lumbardie poplar trees for windbreaks, planting them pretty close together.  People were out in the fields irrigating, plowing, harrowing the ground, making a seed bed, all very interesting.  Soon I began to see people now and again,  I knew and waved to them as I drove along.  I was at the Post Office now,  so stopped to pick up the mail.  There was a paper, a letter from some of my sister-in-law’s folks, and one from Jim’s parents.