The Traherns #1

by Nancy Radke

  “I don’t see him.”

  “I did. Come on.”

  “I’ll wait here,” I said.

  He shrugged and walked away, down the street.

  I watched him go. Was he a worker here? Or had he just known about Gage and Travers from seeing them on the street? Or the newspaper picture?

  I opened the door into the building and whistled. If Travers were anywhere around, he’d hear me.

  Nothing. I could hear men working out back. The temptation to walk through and find out for myself was strong.

  “Ruth,” I spoke to myself, out loud, like I used to do in the hills. “There’s bravery and there’s foolishness. You’ve faced wolves and bears when the emergency ‘rose. But you’re in no position to face a handful of men with one bullet and no dog. This is not the part of town for you to be in, so get yourself to a cab and go wait for Gage at the boarding house.”

  I turned and looked down the street. There were two cabs, waiting to pick up workers.

  Also, a wagon coming in with a big dog setting next to the driver. Travers looked right proud of his position. I waved, Gage waved, and that dog came flying off with one bound, past the startled horses and up the street to me.

  Both Gage and Travers looked purty good to me, right then. I guess I wasn’t comfortable starting off alone anymore.

  Travers ran up and thrust his muzzle in my hand, his way of greeting a person.

  “What you doing here, Ruth?” Gage asked, stopping his team next to me.

  “My company got sold and the workers paid off. I took a stroll and ended up here.”

  “That’s about a five mile stroll. Were those shoes up to it?”

  “Not like my traveling shoes, but these are purty comfortable.”

  “Get in and come around back with me.”

  Gage set the brake, jumped down and helped me up into the wagon. He joined me, and Travers jumped up on the other side so I was between the two. It was fun.

  Gage loosed the brake and started the horses. I could tell they were glad to be back at their stables, as they jerked that empty wagon to life and pranced around the corner of the building, down an alley and into the yard.

  “They don’t seem very tired after the trip,” I said.

  “They get new life on the way home. Going out, they’re loaded and pulling uphill. They act half dead when we get to the mines. But coming back they get a second wind and by the time we get home, they’re clippin right along.”

  “Travers looks content, riding with you,” I said.

  “He’s a help. If I have to leave the wagon a minute, for sure nothing gets stolen. Men just leave my cargo alone.”

  “Maybe they should pay him wages as a guard.”

  He laughed. “He’s worth it, but I doubt they’d do that. What do you plan to do next, Ruth?”

  “I was a-thinking about that as I walked down here. I’m wonderin if’n I should go see some of California before I start another job. I especially want to see those trees.”

  “Sounds good to me. I need to see my folks.”

  His comment made me happy. Sounds like I wouldn’t be making the trip north alone.

  He turned the gold dust over to the foreman, then went on to the stable area and unhitched the horses. I had on my work dress, but it warn’t made for this kind of work, so I just watched while Gage watered and fed them, gave them a brush down, and put the harness away. It were the most pleasure I’d had in a long time.

  We rode back together in a cab, with Travers sitting at our feet, looking out the window.

  “I worry some that someone will shoot him,” Gage said, reaching down to stroke the dog’s head. Travers looked up at him and licked his hand.

  “Most of the stuff people worry about never happens. If’n we don’t take chances, we’d never do anything, maybe never find happiness. I’d take him along just to get him out where he can run. He was a’frettin in that small yard. He’s happy with you.”

  “He was. But he’s eager to come back to you at the end of each trip, Ruth. As am I.”

  “This is a good place to stay, ” I said, motioning towards the boardinghouse. We pulled up and stopped.

  “Wouldn’t matter where you stayed. Tennessee or California. His heart is with you.”

  I smiled at Gage, not quite catching his drift. I got out of the cab and started to go inside. He caught my hand and held it.

  “So is mine.”

  I looked at him, puzzled. “So is your what?”

  “My heart, Ruth. I love you. I been hinting, but you don’t take hints.”

  Love? He loved me? Since when?

  “I don’t take plain talk either. I’ve heard you swear your love to every girl in every holler and then some.”

  He put his face in his hands. “Ahh!” He slapped his hips as he looked back at me. “Ruth, you never would let me get close. You were always working. You wouldn’t let me help you. You sent the boys off with Mary. I joined that group, hoping I could get close to you. “

  “Oh.”

  “I finally gave up and went around looking, but not finding. I come back to Mary’s wedding and you’re still all prickly and independent. Do you ever plan to get married?”

  “Of course.” To my Boaz.

  “Would you marry me?” He sounded right put out.

  My first proposal. It didn’t sound at all like I thought it should. Not sweet and flowery. More exasperated. Why ask me?

  “Gage, you can have your pick of any woman in San Francisco. Why would you ask a plain one like me?”

  “I’m like Travers. I want to be where you are. And you aren’t plain, Ruth. When you laugh, your whole face lights up, and your eyes dance. To me, you’re the prettiest girl in the land. You can run circles around the other women.”

  I looked at him skeptically. I couldn’t believe him. Me? Pretty? “I thought you already had you a girl in California.”

  “I do. You. I been chasing you all the way from Tennessee. And you been running so fast I could hardly keep up.”

  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

  THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE WEST

  By Nancy Radke

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  CHAPTER ONE

  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.