pages 256-257

Pages 256-257

                Just before retiring, Jim went out to look around, partially cloudy with the moon dimly shining behind them, as a furry figure dashed away from the corral.  “A coyote,”  Jim said to me as I put my head thought the open door.

                With some of the horses still eating at the rack, while others had drifted into the canyon for shelter from the night.  Jackie with his keen ears, came on the gallop from below the house, seeing Nig not there, let out a bray and took off.  “that’s it, Jim said.  “I am quite sure he’ll find him.”  And off to bed we went.

                We had not been in bed long when our coyote friend let out one of his weird cries, almost  beneath our window so it seemed, then took off to serenade us again from a distant hilltop.  With that we drifter off, sleeping soundly for some hours. 

                Jim’s prediction was being fulfilled for outside the wind had begun its work of pushing things about, a rattling noise as they rolled here and there.  This continued throughout the wee hours of night until daybreak when the sun rose higher and higher with the wind subsiding to a calm.  This Jim liked for he never liked working in a wind.  The sun warmed the valley and all around.

                We spent that day fencing about a fourth of an acre for a yard.  This plot would be our fist garden.  We could watch it grow through our kitchen window or each time we ate a meal from the table my brother built for us, it would be fascinating to watch neat rows of vegetable growing there for we had waited most of the winter for just that and this was a starter.

                At evening the horses came back for their feed, little Jackie seemed to be in the lead and after they had stopped to eat at the rack, Jackie came over to where we were, just curious, Jim thought, sniffing at the posts and new dug dirt from the holes.  I petted and rubbed his soft furry sides for he seemed to have an extra amount of fur for winter to keep him warm.  His legs too were small, but the fluffy fur from hoof to body made them look abnormally large while down on his hip my hand felt a scabby like scar that hadn’t healed very well.  Jim felt it saying he had been bitten or kicked by the others.  He took him over to the rack, and using a pair of scissors, clipped the hair away, anointing it with some linament.  He seemed to enjoy this attention by standing very still.

                The next morning though was much the same as others, for we had always had high hopes and aims from the first morning after we had arrived at our home in the night.  We talked long that morning after we had eaten and with hopes our wheat crops would turn out well and there would be plenty of money for all of our dreams, nice furniture, and a piano in the corner where I had planned it and of course just two children.  The one we were expecting had to be a boy and one other a girl.

                Cars were just coming in style then and even picturing ourselves owning one with cattle next in our thoughts.  We thought we would start with a few and developing them into a heard and we’d have someone to take care of the ranch in winter, while we lived in town so our children could attend good schools.

                Our thoughts though did not take in the fact that even though the soil was exceedingly a rich loam, we left out the main thought of rain, water vital to all crops.  We were forgetting that fact this was dry farming and crops grew according to the moisture beneath their roots, so our plans took on another thought.

                If we had enough moisture, crops could grow and fairly good by good farming methods even in years when moisture was scarce, so what lay ahead no one could foretell, and too how could one plan?

                Old timers said the years seem to run in cycles, some as long as a ten year period and extra good crops would be produced, we hoped that would be our luck for the spring of 1913.  Spring wheat on the bench lands yielded as high as fifty bushel per acre and fall sown wheat beat that.

                There were days when we thought no country could beat this and then there were days of doubt.  If, after all, we had done the right thing in starting our home here or would it have been better to have gotten land that could be irrigated.  Doubts and many more would beset us and at sometimes spending a whole evening planning on what was best, always winding up with high hopes for the future saying we really haven’t tried this land out yet, so let’s wait and see.

                Land was very good on the projects, but taxes and water were high.  We liked this country though and could see as the days went by we were becoming more attached to it, its quietness and loneliness and somewhat marooned in this small valley with a mountain stream in the canyon below our house.  And no where in all the world could life have meant more to us, our hopes, our dreams, our first home were all here.  Our land the first we had owned.

                There were days though when I would daydream of a childhood home several thousand miles away, the wealth of things I possessed as a child, the fun, day after day, never ending, a mother and a father’s love, a good home and all one wished for were there. In the shade of a big spreading apple tree whose fruit was small, but made up for it with its delightful shade that spread its branches more each year until it was like a huge umbrella.  What a grand place on a hot summer day.  Swinging in a swing or from its branches while eating ice from our ice house with the sunlight filtering through the pink apple blossoms, clinging to its top most branches viewing the countryside in all its pattern of beauty.  I continued to dream while my thoughts wandered back many, many years.