These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901

by Nancy E. Turner

  He said thank you to me for writing Captain Elliot, as the Captain grinned for a week and was in an amazingly good humor after hearing from me last time. In my head I think he should have got his eyes scalded from reading what I wrote, but there is no explaining that Captain Elliot to anyone. Then Ernest told that man that I was marrying Jimmy Reed, and so there is a little folded up paper inside Ernest’s letter from the Captain to me.

  I figured it might be a kind note of congratulations, which The Happy Bride says I will get many of that sort from friends and acquaintances, but it says only this:

  Dear Miss Prine, I sincerely regret to inform you that The Duchess of Warwick and Her Sorrows By the Sea is no longer for sale.—Fondly, Captain John Edward Harrison Elliot, U.S. Army, 10th Cav.

  Low down dirty ornery rotten skunk of a cussed mule-headed soldier! What’s he want with my book anyway? And what kind of a way is that to write a congratulations? I am so mad I could walk clear to that fort and take him on single handed.

  August 16, 1882

  Jimmy is building us a house, and every day I walk over of an evening and listen to him tell about it. He asks me where to put this and that, and do I like a porch all the way around, foursquare, like he does. It is too big, I think, but he said, Well, maybe there will be children to fill it.

  He has gotten done with most of the heaviest parts with the help of my brothers and Mr. Maldonado. The Maldonados are always there to help you and are good friends. Mrs. Maldonado showed me how to cut ocotillo sticks for a fence without getting cut to ribbons by tying up pieces with a string so when it is cut it snaps away from you.

  Tomorrow, Mama and Jimmy are going to Tucson with the whole Maldonado family, and they will not let me go no matter what I say. Albert is to check on Jimmy’s horses for horse thieves, but I have to stay home.

  When I got peeved, they all accused me of being touchy and sulking. Let them go, I say. It is hotter in Tucson than here, and heaven knows it is hot enough here to bake bread without an oven. There is no reason I cannot go, they are just being selfish.

  Savannah said Stay here and let’s make a new batch of lye soap, she has a special recipe that is real fine. So in this wretched heat I am going to go outside and start a big fire and boil a kettle of fat and ashes. This will be hotter than Tucson, and a sight less fun than traveling with all of them and singing songs on the way and such. I wish the Lord would just knock me over with kindness and goodness and simple purity, because I don’t seem to be getting the knack of it on my own.

  August 20, 1882

  There is a Presbyterian preacher in Tucson who will come out to marry us the third week of October, and Jimmy has arranged it. I don’t know what a Presbyterian is, and I told him couldn’t he get the Methodist preacher to come, and why don’t we go to the church for it? but Jimmy didn’t answer. It was what he has arranged, and that’s that.

  Then I figured out the reason myself is that it would take at least two days to go to town to wed, and all would want to be there, and he will not leave his horses all that time in this wilderness.

  He has made a huge foursquare porch, roofed all around with the biggest roof I have ever seen. Jimmy said it is exactly like the MacIntoshes’, and they had a good house. The first room he had with the cistern will be the kitchen, and he has built better shelves and a cooking table, and made me stand and pretend I was kneading dough to get the height just right for me. The porch is much bigger than the house, he said, because when we want to add a room, all we have to do is put up walls. The roof is suspended by the posts all around, and will cover space for four or five more rooms easily.

  He made steps up to the front porch, seven real wide, shallow ones. When I asked him why so many small steps, when four would have done the job, he said, Well, children have short legs, and he grinned. Luckily I was standing really close to him when he said it, because the idea of it made him want to kiss me again and I was glad to be handy.

  August 23, 1882

  I have started sewing, making new things for my new life. I have to get busy and copy over all Mama’s receipts for baking and cooking. She says some are Jimmy’s favorites. And I have to copy down my patterns so I am using my newspapers glued together. Harland said that is sissy stuff until I said, Well, it takes a skillful artist to make a precise drawing, then he got interested and even fussed at me for not gluing the papers straight enough for precise work.

  Albert shook his head and said, Sarah you read too many books and say words like you are putting on airs to us. Then Savannah told him to hush he would wake the baby.

  Seems to me they are not happy about something and touchy this morning, but I have things to do, so they will have to mend their own fence today.

  August 30, 1882

  When I went to see how the house is coming Jimmy wouldn’t let me inside because he said the varnish gas is still bad. There are windows in every wall, and real glass in all of them, with shutters to pull up when it storms to keep out the gale. He is changed a little, kind of gruff today, just real busy trying to finish the house, I suppose.

  There has been a cooler spell, and although we know summer is not over, the heat is gentle today and things are growing everywhere, not looking so scorched as they did in June. I am making a rag rug with scraps the Maldonados gave me from all their children’s old worn out clothes. I told them what a happy rug it would be as it carries all the children’s laughter with it, and Mrs. Maldonado cried and hugged me and made me eat two huge tamales.

  I wrote another letter to Captain Elliot, this time much nicer and more sweet, trying to convince him that I do want that book back but we should come to a reasonable agreement about the payment. I suppose I could take Terry or Dan back to him, but I’d rather not.

  September 12, 1882

  Jimmy is building furniture. It is rugged and not refined, but solid and will last a long time. Meanwhile, I am piecing a quilt, making it really big for us both, and I have gotten started on a tick mattress that will fit inside the bed frame Jimmy has built. When we get a roost full of chickens I plan to start saving feathers to make a bed.

  There has been shooting and a stage coach robbing. Some lawmen and a posse are after them and stopped here to water up. They said there is a cave nearby where the outlaws are hiding, and to keep our doors locked and our stock penned. Well, we don’t own a lock, but we know what to do with horse thieves.

  My letter to Captain Elliot came back from the fort, unopened. It was found in the dirt where the stage coach robbery had been, along with several others. I will send it again.

  Jimmy said I should forget it, it is just a stupid book, but it is not, and I can’t.

  October 2, 1882

  I received a letter today from a Major I. A. Thomas at Fort Huachuca, with my letter enclosed. It seems Captain Elliot’s enlistment was up, and he retired from the Army, saying he was going home to Texas to be a Texas Ranger and has taken up residence near Austin.

  Major Thomas then wrote: it is sometimes wiser to let these things be, and not to pursue a lost cause. He surely couldn’t know what I want from that man is to pay to have my book returned. I wonder if he thinks the letters I have written were friendly in nature and not business? If so, then the Army is surely made up of a mighty foolish lot of men, with a few exceptions like Ernest.

  October 9, 1882

  Our wedding is going to be held on our own front porch, on the side away from the sun which has no rooms yet and so is large enough for many people to be in the shade. It is hot again, and I have been at work for two days on a new dress. Jimmy went to town and came home with some handsome yardgoods for me in dark blue.

  Savannah has made a stitched and cut out collar that looks almost like lace, and gave it to me today, and it will look wonderful on the dress. This will be my wedding dress, so I am taking my time. I am making rolled trim cords of the scraps of light blue from my other town dress, and tucking that in the edges of seams, and two rows of tiny buttons down the front. It is the grandest
dress I have ever seen, and will have a sweeping gather in the back with a bow on it like the Sears and Roebuck dress, but I will not have a shaper to wear it with. Then I am making two skirts and blouses, both of which can be let out later if needed for babies.

  If anyone had asked me when we were struggling on the road to San Angelo would I be settling down next year with Jimmy Reed and a herd and a big house of my own, I would have plum laughed my head off.

  Albert has built a big stone wall around their well, and rigged a block and tackle up to run the bucket up and down with. Jimmy asked him about it and Albert was rude to him, and I don’t know why.

  But Jimmy said, Aw, it’s just old Albert’s way of saying he doesn’t want to lose his little sister. Maybe that is why he is so cross lately, he can hardly sit across the table from me.

  I asked Mama, isn’t there anything else about marriage I need to know? I can make a cake, and butcher a hog or chickens, and plant a garden, and drive a team. But it seems like there is something she should be saying about other things about men.

  Mama just looked off at the hills, and said, Be sure to bathe regular and make him, too, if you can. And pray every day.

  I went to find Savannah, but she was so busy cooking and tending the baby that it didn’t seem like I could get a word in edgewise. Every time I started to talk, she would say, Pass me that flour bowl, would you Sarah? or Take this for me? Hand me that, please, no the other one. There’s the baby fussing, just a minute Sarah, would you set that down there? until I just gave up. I never have seen her in such a stir, as if she was more stirred up inside than out. There are lots of questions I want to ask about marriage, but no one to ask them, so I will have to be patient and wait and wonder on my own.

  October 20, 1882

  Yesterday was our wedding day. In the morning, Jimmy told me to come see the inside at last. Lo and behold, he has bought me a wedding present, and there in the kitchen is the biggest finest stove, all white with steel handles and lifters coiled up so they don’t get too hot to touch, and hanging on a rack by little rings are three iron skillets and four big pots, in the corner is a big washtub, and standing over it is a real wringer set up for washing clothes better than with a rub board alone. There are shelves on the walls, a big table, and a line of knives stuck in little slots at the edge of it. These are things he bought when they all made me stay at home that time, he said, real proud of himself for hiding them all this time.

  Never in my life did I expect to see such a fine kitchen, much less have it be mine. I had to touch everything and lift everything, and feel it all, and look inside the stove from every little door and opening. The other pot belly stove is in the sitting room, for warmth in there. This is a rich house, I said, and it makes me want to cook something. It also made me want to kiss him some, but I didn’t say that, I just smiled.

  I had made him four white shirts and two pairs of wool pants for a wedding present, but it doesn’t seem like much compared to this.

  All the Maldonados came, and brought us a cat to get at the mice around, and seven glazed pottery plates, and a wagon load of food. I could have eaten myself sick on corn tamales and roasted chilies and chicken paella. Albert and Mama brought us two big calf skins to use for anything we want, and a kerosene lamp, and a pen full of chickens, and a little machine like Mrs. Maldonado uses to make tortillas, a wooden thing with a hinge to make the little corn cakes flat and thin.

  The preacher was a tall, thin man who came with his wife and stayed all day at our house before the ceremony. He and his wife turned up their noses at all the good Mexican cooking we had. Mama has brought a pot of squash and corn and roasted a piece of beef, and it had cilantro and chili in it too, like the Maldonados make, so the parsons went home hungry. The only thing they could manage to get down was Savannah’s butter cake, and luckily she had made four of them, because I think the preacher and his wife ate a whole one themselves. They got in their buggy and left long before sundown, as they were afraid to travel after dark.

  Well, I have found out the other things about marriage. And it wasn’t at all like I thought, either. Mostly Jimmy was real embarrassed and quiet, and couldn’t look me in the eye. I kissed him and said, Jimmy, I love you, honey, do you love me?

  He said to me, Are you mad at me?

  And I told him No, not a bit. But I wished he’d have said he loved me, too. It seems that now we’re married and alone and after what just happened, he could feel free to speak his mind, too. But he rolled over. Goodnight, I said, and he didn’t say anything.

  I listened to that old familiar snoring for a while, then I went to sleep myself.

  This morning, he was gone from the bed before I woke up. Out to tend the horses. So I got up and dressed quickly in my new skirt and blouse and apron and went to start the coffee. There was a fresh stack of wood and a box of kindling next to the stove waiting.

  December 25, 1882

  We have roasted a turkey, not a goose as I promised Harland and Savannah last spring, but Christmas dinner at Mama’s house is a fine one, with the weather so pleasant and mild that we set up tables out front and spread out such a bounty it was a wonder.

  Whatever had been bothering Albert toward me seems to have lifted, and he is his old self. We all miss Ernest dearly and sat together and wrote him a long letter with words from every one. Pretty soon everyone talked so fast I couldn’t write to keep up, but we laughed and had a wonderful time.

  Jimmy said just to show Ernest how big Baby Clover is, he wanted to paint his little feet in ink and stamp them on the letter. Well, everyone else thought it was a grand idea except for Baby Clover, and he began to cry with everyone fooling with his feet and stamping him up and down.

  When they were done his Mama made a frown and went in the house to wash his feet off, and came back with him under a blanket, nursing. Then she said, Albert, I want you to know your son has a tooth! Ouch! And everyone laughed.

  January 9, 1883

  I have prayed and prayed, and it seems I may be expecting. I don’t know whether to tell Jimmy yet or wait until I am more sure. I finally asked Mama how to know. And she grinned at me real hard.

  All is cold and clean and the horses have put on winter coats. Rose is too big to ride, and I spent all this morning with her, talking to her and smiling at our shared babies. I put my hand on her and felt her colt wiggling. Then I patted my own belly and said I Love You for the first time to my baby. I think tonight after supper I will tell Jimmy. This will surely set him thinking. I have tried every way I can think of to get him to say I love you to me. Now he will. It is a fine thing to have a baby. He will be right proud and happy, I am sure.

  January 12, 1883

  Jimmy said he will buy more lumber on the next trip to town and start a nursery room. I told him that was a fine idea, and we will need a cradle and cloth for diapers, and he just grinned like a goose all day.

  With a little dry weather I have been stacking up my adobe blocks and making a little outbuilding. Mostly I just wanted to see how it was done and there’s no lesson like one you learn with your own hands. Ruben Maldonado has helped me moving adobe. Jimmy said this adobe building is nonsense, but I feel it is worth a try, and if this one falls down, it will be a lesson from the mistakes.

  Coyotes have been after my chickens, and got one today. They dug right under my ocotillo fence. So today I am digging a trench all around the chicken pen and filling it with cholla burs which we collect with a piece of string and a forked stick. Then I bent some loops of wire and hammered them into the ground, just like pinning batting down to a quilt, and pinned those burs in place.

  January 14, 1883

  Jimmy says it is dangerous to the baby. He lays there tossing, and sometimes goes and sleeps on the floor in the kitchen. It doesn’t seem like it has to be but there is no convincing him and since he knows horse breeding, I thought, maybe he is right. I told him I’d like to sleep together anyway, and just hold hands and be close, but he says that makes him nervou
s.

  I got most of the roof on my little adobe shed. Good time, too, as it looks like it will come a rain. No coyotes have been able to get into the chicken coop, but I hear them sniffing around. It is hard to keep Bear from going after them. One at a time they would be no match for him but they are traveling in packs and I’m not sure he could take them all at once, and I doubt Toobuddy would be much help.

  I have named my kitty Speckles as she is spotted with colors like a crazy quilt. She brought me her first mouse this morning. Bear decided he wanted a piece of that mouse too, but she told him No in no uncertain terms and his nose has a big deep scratch to prove it.

  Jimmy had to go to Tucson for some business today. Went over to Mama’s this morning, and Albert and Savannah have finally moved into their own little house, so Bear and I walked over and said hello and admired Baby Clover. Then I told them all my news about expecting. Savannah cried. Everyone seemed overjoyed except Albert acted strange again, and had a hard time to smile. I have known him too long and something is in his craw but he isn’t telling. Well, that’s just too bad, as Jimmy and I are real happy, and building a fine ranch, and I’m not letting a cranky brother spoil it.

  January 26, 1883

  In the middle of the rainy night one of the mares has delivered a wobbly little chestnut colt with beautiful white boots on all four legs. Jimmy is just so happy he could bust. This morning he has asked me to make a written record of all the horses, and name them all, and note the sire of all the new foals that will come, like a chart. So since it is still raining hard, I will be working on a ranch record which he says is really important for breeding in the future. He says my papa only had a few head and let them pretty much go wild, but he plans to do some special breeding and wants a line of first quality horses to sell, especially with the next generation in about five years. This will be a business, I can see, not just a living. So these records are very important and I am going to enjoy naming all the pretty horses. I named the yellow colored one Honey after Rose’s mama.