A Sweetness to the Soul

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  As a result, my interests on the ranch kept with the general operations more than the usual household activities. Oh, I performed many duties typical for a woman: provided medical aid to young buckaroos, even soothed a lost love wound or two. Only a few years older than me, most buckaroos still found any married woman reminding them of their mother and they let me advise them not knowing I had so little experience of my own. I mended and canned, helped Anna with the wash, organized the cleaning and the meals.

  But my greatest love, I discovered, was working with Joseph. Together, he and I planned the day’s events, the jobs that needed tending. After, I drew up the work lots, decided who would go with whom to do what tasks. I had a good sense of how long things would take, whose skills best suited the effort, and after very little experience, Joseph trusted that judgment.

  There were occasional encounters with buckaroos who disliked taking orders from a small woman. They either got over it or left. In general, both my husband and his men treated me with respect for my thinking and my mind. I found I liked the feeling. Joseph seemed to enjoy my ability to outline work for the men and handle conflict with their ways. “Better’n me,” he said. “Keep wanting to find excuses for them, give them one more chance. But you,” he told me with a certain pride, “you just clear the bunkhouse.”

  That, of course, wasn’t always desirable. We often needed extra help to rope and brand, take up the hay, make fences and repair them, assist with the fall round-up, spring shearing. Even finding available men who knew their way around a cow or lambing shed and were willing to remain sober long enough to demonstrate their skills proved no easy task despite the steady influx of men from the east, escaping memories of a bad war. We needed to treat the buckaroos well enough so they wouldn’t move on. My sharp tongue sometimes sent them on their way a tad too soon.

  The constantness of uncertainty filled our days: uncertainty about the weather, about the calving, about which bull to invest in, about which rams to let go. Little predictability entered our work lives, gave me small reason to know boredom. The constantness of the seasons and the ever-presence of our love were predictability enough.

  For diversions, Joseph and I sometimes took in races at the Indian race track on the east end of The Dalles. Next to the beach along the Columbia, men took out their brag on bets against their mounts. Joseph never shared with me how much he wagered, as he ignored my clucking tongue about wasting money. Instead, he’d cheer with me at the finish line when the Indian spectators would wave their blankets startling the mounts so unprepared. Those blankets brought many wins to Indian horses trained for such surprises.

  We traveled to Portland once or twice a year where we stayed in grand hotels, swirled in custom clothes beneath giant kerosene chandeliers and talked of investments with bankers who seemed awkward in my presence. Joseph introduced me to the financial world. I found I could step through it with dexterity and verve despite (or perhaps because of) the discomfort of most men. With the War Between the States over, the markets for wool had dropped dramatically. But people still needed to eat, and so cattle remained as steady as gold and took up much of our discussion with the men of finance.

  After our meetings, we would walk along the wharves to watch the line of drays waiting to load onto the river boats heading up the Columbia. “Settlement,” Joseph would say. “Look! There’s the Jason P. Flint, ready to steam up to The Dalles. Now there’s the evidence that the interior will burst open. Just need to complete the land routes that will work.”

  Over tea, Joseph and I would discuss what we had seen in the bankers’ meetings and at the wharves. Once we were even included in one of Ben Holladay’s parties at his lavish Astoria home near the ocean. But when Joseph saw the effort was to win us to his views on railroads and elicit our investments, we declined future invitations. We had our own plans for investments. We made a good match, we two, able to capture with four eyes and ears nuances that would have been lost with only two of each.

  While money was not a problem, we were still thwarted from accomplishing the work at the falls. We’d been unable to purchase the land beside the river despite several attempts, several changes in hands. Now O’Brien had his own ideas about expanding the bridge site, we learned. And he had instituted a toll as a way of paying for the upkeep, such as it was.

  “Toll idea is a good one,” Joseph told me a few weeks after our visit with Sunmiet. We walked up from the corrals to the house. “Unless he makes the roads accessible, not enough will use it to make it pay.” He poured water into the wash basin as I unstrapped the pistol bound to my hip, hung it and the holster on the branch.

  He watched me wash my face at the wash bowl shaded by the lilac bush that arched several feet over our heads. Then he washed his own. Grabbing the towel, he spoke through the linen so I almost didn’t hear. “The Dalles Military Road was approved in the legislature last week,” he said. “Going to be a land grab, that’s for sure. Money to create a road already been a trail for years. Crazy! I saw a team dragging a fir log and the rider told me he was ‘road constructing.’ If that’s what it’s to be, it’ll be money in someone’s pocket. Looked like the road meandered into fields it didn’t need to, into good soil.” He grunted his disgust. “That’ll become part of the Act we’ll all pay for. Be months before the inspection team decides it’s passable.”

  “Won’t the road at least be maintained?” I asked him.

  “Parts of it.” He wiped his face, stood behind me wiping his hands. “Enough so maybe O’Brien will get cold toes, want to sell rather than face the competition. But getting people—stages and wagons—getting them down the grade and across the river, that’s the key.” He wiped the back of his neck with the towel, hung it on the back rod, poured fresh water to rinse the bowl. “Look at Gordon’s site. Nix would never have sold to him if he’d realized what that place could be. Tom’s planted over seven hundred orchard trees at that bridge crossing!”

  “They have soil there,” I chided. “Not like all those rocks at the falls.”

  He ignored me. “It’s still too low, I think. The bridge’ll be washed out, you wait and see. And it only goes to that uninviting Military Road.” He ran a comb through his thick hair, pulled on his beard as he talked. “No, O’Brien’s site is the best.” He was thoughtful for a moment more. “He isn’t focused on the roads and he’s making enemies there, if his way with Indians doesn’t change.”

  Peter Lohomesh had reported a growing tension between residents at the falls and the Warm Springs people who camped beside the river each year. Sunmiet had spoken of altercations, too, between packers and the Indians. “We stay away,” she said, “from the people. They seek us out, walk up Buck Creek to pick at us as though we were some scab they will not let heal. They tell us to go back to the reservation, leave the fishing we do all our days. Sometimes they laugh at the eels we dry or maybe bring their faith words to us because they think we have no inner life.” It would not be long before such insensitivities resulted in more than emotional pain. Joseph thought that too.

  “Maybe that isn’t where we’re to build,” I told Joseph. I used my hands to smooth the hair back behind my ears and into the bun at the back of my neck. Freckles dotted my nose despite the hat I always wore and the grease I spread across my face. I could see Joseph’s reflection behind me in the mirror I looked into.

  “Obstacles don’t mean we’re on the wrong track,” he told me. In a quieter voice, “Think we’re not supposed to have children?” He kissed the top of my head, held my shoulders. “Didn’t mean that to be painful. Just a reminder that if it’s what we’re supposed to do, things’ll happen.” He released me, started walking toward the house. “No, the falls are where we’re to be,” he said with sureness. “Just not sure how or when.”

  I grabbed the pistol I’d taken to wearing and we headed toward the house, hand in hand. “No need to carry that,” he said. “You just imagine snakes out this time of year.” Joseph bent deep to kiss my cheek.


  “I’ve shot my imagination, then, on more than one occasion,” I said and giggled as we entered the house.

  “Like children,” Anna said with mock disgust as she placed platters before us. “Always playing.”

  Anna prepared the meals. In our years together, we had worked out the arrangement where she would cook most meals so I could work beside my husband. “Until babies come,” she’d told me, flour drifting over her ever-widening midriff. “Then the Señora will want en la casa, with them, not pushing boots in dust beside Señor Sherar. He will want that, too,” she’d added.

  I was beginning to think my boots would always be beside my husband’s, never have reason to slip beneath the cradle of a child.

  To be twenty, married nearly six years and childless was not what I had envisioned by becoming Mrs. Sherar.

  Any plans to bring Ella into our lives had disappeared with Papa’s death. He had been our fishing line Joseph set into troubled waters every now and then, seeing if Mama might nibble at our bait. She never did, wouldn’t now, with only Ella and Baby George to be with her. When Papa died, he took our life-line with him.

  I did my best not to think of my childless state, and so, of course, that was all that filled my mind when I was not engaged in work. Every late day of my flow held me captive with anticipation. Every time I rode too far or over did in the garden I would ask myself, did I do damage? I even gave up my whale bone corset believing that if I found it hard to breathe then perhaps an infant would have insufficient air to find breath too.

  Mama told me once before I married that to conceive I must behave like a lady. “Do the work God gave you to do. No riding and working like a man.”

  But my mind went crazy in the quiet house. Anna had her place in our home and liked that I knew mine. Even quiet efforts to whittle made little inroad on my constant thoughts of children, especially knowing that Joseph, the garden, cattle, the rolling grasslands, and deep ravines called just outside.

  Oddly, I also found myself sometimes moving physically away from my husband, a strange behavior I always thought. “I don’t understand why I’d want a child so much and then make myself so tired,” I told Sunmiet once. We gathered roots together, placing the tubers in her wapas.

  “Maybe is easier to be tired than face disappointment,” she said. “You work hard, enjoy your husband’s sweetness in the day and then fall asleep. He asks no questions of your sleeping, you work so hard beside him.”

  I knew that if Joseph thought my efforts on the ranch with him meant risking an infant, he would give up the time we shared, want me to, too.

  I was relieved when the newest specialist Joseph and I conferred with in Portland told me activity was best. He knew of no reasons why I had not conceived, told me to just go home, that I was young and healthy and would likely soon begin my family, that I was just doing it in a different way and with unique timing.

  That winter, when we learned of five children in need of a home, I thought perhaps the specialists were at last correct, that children would come to me in time, in another way than what I’d always thought.

  J. W. brought the news, riding with his string down the road past our claim. He’d become a puzzle for me. Not just because I could not look at him without wondering what my life would have been like if I had married him, but also because he appeared in my world at strange and opportune times.

  An open winter meant the packers and freighters could continue carrying supplies back and forth to Canyon City and beyond with little fear of snow or bad weather to prevent their movements. Even Indian raids along the trails had settled down so that J. W. was one of many—Heppner included—who worked their strings regularly along the road.

  J. W. complained about O’Brien’s toll as he stopped to talk with us. “Specially when that dugout road’s so poorly kept,” he said. He rubbed his fists in his eyes like a tired boy. “You folks looking good. Missus.” He tapped his hat at me, called me the title he’d helped me claim. Then, “If I can speak of something delicate,” he said, his voice lowering. “Know you have no young’uns yet. And I know Sheriff’s looking for someone to take in five children. They got parents, but not taking care of ’em, living in some tent. Heard about it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Five, they got.” He counted on his fingers. “Yep, Five. Youngest one just born last week. Folks irritated kids are left to rain and cold.”

  “Where are they?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s a case,” he said. “In a crumbled down arrangement near that Wamic place they call it, other side of Tygh Valley. Been there quite a time. Now, some are on their case saying the babies’ll die to exposure without better care.”

  “What ‘some’?”

  He fidgeted. “Oh, charitable folks. Don’t like the conditions they live in when they deliver goods. Think the young’uns should at least be in decent homes.”

  In the expansion and the settlement, more and more families experienced difficulties in locating housing sufficient against the Oregon winters, finding work to sustain themselves. Some were forced to accept food and shelter from people taking on airs with their good intentions.

  Tolerance of different ways was not one of the area’s strong points I noticed. Not ten years earlier Oregon citizens had voted to prevent entry to Negro people, an unenforced law. Once or twice in The Dalles, I’d even overheard snide words made about Benito and Anna. It was as though people who looked a little different could be blamed for the misfortune of many more who might have trouble making their way. People hired the Mexican families to pick apples and work the pack strings—perhaps because they moved on. Those that remained to make a living in the region that had once shared a border with Mexico itself, often found themselves sharing bad comments along with Indians and Chinese and even Negroes newly arrived from back east.

  “Is the family from here?” I asked J. W.

  “From South,” he said, “but white. Hit on hard times and now, just trying to make it. With winter coming on, and five little ones, parents might be willing to let their kids have shelter under someone else’s roof. Thought you might be willing to take one or two in. Can get ahold of the sheriff in The Dalles if you’re a mind to.”

  “We can’t take on five!” Joseph said when I brought the subject up. December waited in the wings and while it had been a mild winter so far, there were always promises of unexpected snows and a drop in temperature cold enough to freeze the water in the bedroom pitcher by morning. “Maybe one or two.”

  “I was just thinking of Ella and her brothers and sister,” I said. “She almost never sees them, being separated so. It seems criminal to break a family up.”

  “Maybe we could give the father work instead,” Joseph said.

  “Possible.” We sat by the fire, the spine of a book lying upright in my lap. “I hear he is a man of fragile temperament.”

  “Not so fragile he’d let others raise his children,” Joseph said, surprising me with his sarcasm.

  “It wouldn’t be something anyone planned,” I said. “And things happen. You know that. Look at Archibald’s state those years before and how they still found help for you.”

  Joseph was silent for a time, remembering. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m in no position to judge. I should be passing that kind of goodness on.”

  “I think the Lord is tapping me on my shoulder,” I told him, standing up, decided. “And I don’t want to disappoint him.”

  “I just don’t like to interfere,” Joseph said, cautious. I wondered if he was also thinking of Sunmiet.

  “We’re just offering help,” I said. “Temporary. Even St. Luke said we should give in order to receive.”

  My husband pondered that a moment more, stirred his Arbuckle’s, added sweet milk to the black. “Francis and Archibald used to quote that verse,” he said. He thought a while longer before he said, “Let’s ride over and see what we can offer up.”

  We took the buggy and loaded a second wagon full of food stuff
s that Benito brought behind us with the team. The road to Tygh Valley had good use and the frozen ground made the buggy glide across the usual ruts and ridges. At Staley’s store, we added cloth and thread and children’s gifts and five fresh oranges Art said were just delivered. Then we headed southwest, toward the mountains and the reservation and the settlement of Wamic on the way.

  Such a mixture of emotion filled me as we rode, my feet warmed on the foot box newly refurbished with embers from Staley’s fire, my hands holding themselves, coiled inside a fur muff. The air was crisp, nipping at our cheeks. A hawk stared down at us from its perch on a cottonwood tree startled free of its leaves. The wind lifted my bonnet, Joseph’s beard, almost to the rhythm of the “clop-clop” of the horse. Bandit lay panting at my feet, his breathing a comfort to my ears.

  Refreshing. That was the word to describe this bracing ride to give and perhaps, receive. Refreshing and clean, the very words Sunmiet used to describe part of the mystery of the sweat! The opening of oneself that resulted in cleansing, free from the inside to the out, free to give, and to receive.

  I leaned into Joseph, grateful for his generosity and God’s provision of it. “Will they want us when we get there?” I asked him.

  He shrugged his shoulders, his hands steady on the reins. “No sense wondering. Be there soon enough.”

  But I did wonder. Would someone else have already separated them, sent two children here, two more there? Would the children wish to live with us, total strangers? Were they girls or boys?

  With J. W.’s directions, we followed the Barlow Trail, twisting up the switchbacks out of Tygh and then across an open, wide expanse dwarfed by the white brilliance of Mt. Hood. There, on the edge of the flat, my wondering was interrupted.

  We approached a small wood and canvas structure one could hardly call a shelter. It sat back from the road without benefit of trees to break the wind that raced across the top of the ridge. It had no rock foundation. None at all, in fact, and three sides of the structure seemed to slide into themselves while on the fourth side, a canvas flap hung loosely. A small wisp of smoke made its way out of the top. I could see movement through the splintered walls and holes in the canvas.