The Secret Saddle_Anna Troy's Emancipation

by Dani Larsen

  Gus sat down on the rock that Jude sat on earlier, and happened to notice that the wheels on the buggy wiggled a lot while the items were being attached. When the young decorators were done they went back to the yard at the back of the house to await Anna's exit out of the back door. Gus went over and checked the wheels. They were so loose they would have come off a short way down the road. He quickly tightened the wheels on the buggy while wondering what had happened.

  Jude saw what he was doing and was angry that Gus had ruined his plan. He knew he couldn't loosen them again as he didn't have time. Anna would be coming out real soon. So he went over to Frank and decided to get back at Gus.

  "Frank, I think I need to tell you something. Please don't say anything to Gus about this, but I just saw him loosen the wheels on the young couple's buggy. It's okay, because I went over and tightened them again. He is kind of a prankster sometimes, sir. I just wanted to warn you to keep an eye on him. I'm sure he meant no real harm."

  "What? That is not funny. Those young people could have been hurt real bad if those wheels would have come off, especially if they were going fast."

  "No harm done, sir, I fixed it. I already had a talk with Gus about it. He felt real bad. Don't say anything, because he'd know I'm the one who told you, and I told him I wouldn't say anything. I just thought about it a little more, and thought I'd best tell you to keep an eye on him."

  "Okay, Jude. Thanks so much, you really did a good turn here. I appreciate it." Frank gave Jude a pat on the back, and scowled at Gus as he came around the house. Frank went to get Sylvester to help him hitch the horse to the buggy for the young couple.

  Twenty minutes later, Anna came out of the house. The boys loaded her trunk in the buggy next to George's carpetbag, and the girls brought them a basketful of cookies, candies, and snacks for the next couple of days. The young couple hugged everyone, thanking them for the lovely day and headed for the buggy. Everyone threw rice at them as they ran toward the rig. At the last minute Anna turned and threw the bouquet of flowers she was carrying toward the girls, and Ida Hempe caught them, happily clutching them to her bosom.

  George helped Anna get into the buggy then climbed up beside her. They waved to their friends and family as they rode off toward Baker City and the start of their new life together. A loon's haunting lonely calls echoed off of the pond that lay east of the ranch. Jude grinned, knowing they would soon be at the ranch where he worked.

  Chapter Three

  "Married life on the Hempe Ranch"

  1908 ~ 1909

  George and Anna began their married life living with the Hempes on their ranch. George managed the ranch for his father, as Frank was going on sixty, and not able to do all that he had done when he was younger. Frank loved his son and did his best to help him get a start on his life with his new bride. He was a good man, who was highly regarded as one of the kindest men in the Grande Ronde Valley. A staunch Catholic, he was head of the Knights of Columbus at his church, and was a member of the Fraternal Organization, Tribe No. 22 of the Red Men of Union. This was an organization that dated back to the Sons of Liberty during the Revolutionary War. Members dressed as Indians, which was a tradition started back when the Sons of Liberty dressed like Mohawks when they dumped three hundred forty-two barrels of English Tea in the Boston harbor in 1773. Frank was a busy man and needed a good foreman on his ranch. Jude wanted the job badly, and it was his fervent wish to get rid of his competition, one way or another.

  Jude was angry when George was given the job of foreman at the ranch after the untimely death of Tom Carroll. Jude had thought he was in line for that position, especially since he was older than George. Frank knew that Jude wanted the job.

  "Jude, I'm sorry, but I have put George in as the foreman of the ranch. I know you were hoping to get that job, but George needs to learn how to run a ranch now that he is going to get married. They will eventually be getting a place of their own, and he needs to get in some practice before they start their new life. It won't be long before you get that position. I appreciate how hard you work, Jude. Your time will come."

  "I guess I can wait, Mr. Hempe. I hope he and Miss Troy will be very happy."

  "That is very nice of you to say, Jude. Thanks for understanding."

  George and Anna had just announced that they were getting married, so Jude had assumed he would get the job. Jude was angry as he had assumed that when they got married the couple would move somewhere else leaving him in line for the position. He was surprised and disappointed when he realized they were going to live at the ranch.

  Tom Carroll had been electrocuted by a live wire that had fallen after a wind storm, not too long after Jude arrived. The other ranch hand had quit shortly after the accident, and Jude was sure the job was his. He hated George and did everything he could to make things hard for him. He hated Anna too, especially when he realized she was pregnant within six months after their marriage.

  Anna could no longer teach school after she was married. It was an unwritten law that married women couldn't be school teachers. Only single or widowed women could be teachers, so Anna stayed at home with her mother-in-law and did the work that was expected of her. Although Caroline was ten years younger than her husband, she was nearing fifty, and welcomed the help of her daughter-in-law. Her daughters helped too, but they also had their own jobs on the ranch. Most of the time Caroline and Anna worked together to prepare the meals for the family, but Anna would often tell Caroline to rest, and she would prepare the Sunday supper with the help of her sisters-in-law.

  She wanted George to know that she could cook, and that she could manage a home of her own. It was difficult for her to live with her in-laws, even though she had lived at the ranch while she was teaching school. She had shared a room with the girls then, now she wanted some privacy with her husband, as the walls in the ranch house were thin and she was embarrassed when George wanted to make love to her. It was difficult for her to relax, as she was sure everyone in the house could hear what they were doing. She also didn't like that ranch hand, Jude. He always seemed to be leering at her. When she served him his meals she could feel his eyes on her, and he always seemed to be evilly grinning at her. One time when she was hanging up the clothes on the lines in the yard, the wind blew her skirt up, and she suddenly got a cold chill and a feeling that someone was watching her. She turned around to see Jude sitting on his horse by the barn just staring at her. She had tried to talk to George about it, but he seemed oblivious to Jude's faults.

  Jude put on a good act with George, acting like he admired him, and that he was his good friend. He only did things to sabotage him behind his back. He told George how "lucky you are to have a wife like Anna. She is such a lovely proper lady. You should be so proud to have her as your wife." Jude would often blame Gus or one of the other ranch hands for things he did to make George look bad.

  He carefully planned out his treacherous acts. The ranch hands spent ten days on the roundup, bringing in all the cattle from the open ranges so Frank could cut out the ones he wanted to take to market, and they could brand the new calves. Jude got up in the middle of the night, quietly opened the corral gate, and shooed some of the steers that were headed for market the next day out into the pastures. When Frank found the gate open the next day he was furious.

  "George, get out there and round up those steers. I can't believe you left that gate open. I thought you were more responsible than that."

  After George mounted his horse and angrily headed out to find the escapees, Jude rode up next to Frank.

  "Don't be too upset with him, Mr. Hempe. He was just excited about his pretty little wife expecting a baby and all. He was probably just in a hurry to get back to her and got a little careless."

  George had been the one to latch the gate after they had corralled all of the animals the day before, so Frank tended to believe Jude, never suspecting that he was the real culprit. Another time, he took ranch equipment that had been put away properly, and put it ou
t in the pasture when he knew a storm was coming. By the time the tools were found they had rusted. George was dumbfounded about how they got there, but Jude told him that one of the newer ranch hands had used them and accidentally left them out in the field.

  "Frank will probably fire him if he finds out," Jude said. "I feel sorry for the boy, because he tries so hard."

  George didn't want his father to let the ranch hand go, so he told his father that he had accidentally left the tools out.

  "George, how are you going to be able to run your own ranch if you can't even manage mine?"

  Frank shook his head as he wasn't used to his son making big mistakes, since he had always been able to rely on him. He gave George the equipment to take back to the barn to put away and let him know how disappointed he was.

  Jude was listening as he saddled his horse and smiled broadly. He often spent his free time thinking of things he could do to make it rough for George. He wanted to push George to get his own place so he could manage the ranch, and besides; he harbored a hate in his belly toward the man who had everything while he had nothing.

  The Hempe Family had moved west after they sold the steamboat landing they had owned for years on the Mississippi River just outside Tipton, Illinois. Frank and his brother, Anton, had heard reports of how great things were out West, and they decided it was a good time to head in that direction. They brought their elderly father with them. Frank bought one half section of land, three and one-half miles northwest of Union. The brothers were partners for a while, until Anton decided he wanted to open a saloon in town. Anton kept half of their first purchase for his family when Frank decided to expand.

  Frank's estate grew to one thousand, seven hundred and twenty acres. They used much of the land for pasturing his growing herd of Hereford beef cattle. Frank also had pigs, milking cows, goats and chickens, which he raised primarily to keep the household in milk, eggs, butter, cheese, chicken, bacon, and ham. He also grew wheat and sometimes oats and barley, and he had a five acre orchard where he primarily grew Italian prune plums. It was a big ranch, and there was a lot to do to keep it going. Frank often hired extra hands at round up time. Frank was a busy man and needed a good foreman on his ranch. Jude wanted the job badly, and it was his fervent wish to get rid of George Hempe, one way or another.

  Anna went into labor on November 8th, a little over a month after the couple celebrated their first anniversary. They were visiting Anna's family, at the Troy Ranch, when she started feeling pain down low in her back. She didn't expect the baby would arrive for another two weeks, but the ride in the wagon on the way from La Grande had been rough on her. George had been upset with his father, which was rare as he adored the man. Frank had given him quite a lecture after Jude had pulled another trick on him. George told his father that he was taking a couple of days off, so that they could visit Anna's family. Jude couldn't have been happier, as everything was going just as he planned.

  "Do ye think the baby is coming, Anna?" Mary Sweeney asked her daughter.

  "I don't know, Mama, but I'm not feeling so good. My low back has been hurting for some time now, and I am getting sharp pains low in my stomach."

  "There is a brand new hospital in Baker City, Anna. It is a good thing ye are here. Maybe George should take ye there and have ye checked out by the doctor. John, why don't ye drive Anna and George into town to that new hospital? I think we may have a new grandchild on the way."

  "Okay, Mary. I will get the buggy ready. Are ye going to go with us?"

  "Why yes, John. If it is okay with ye, Anna, I'd like to be there to welcome my grandchild."

  "Of course, Mama, please come with us."

  The four of them left Jerry and Margaret in charge of the ranch and took off toward Baker City, which was eighteen miles west of the ranch. John didn't want to drive too fast and make his daughter have more pain than she already was in, so he just drove the horses at an even pace. It took them nearly two hours to reach the Baker City Hospital.

  The doctor told them, "Yes, Anna is most definitely in labor, but as it is her first baby it will be awhile before the baby arrives. I expect he or she will arrive sometime tomorrow."

  John took George home with him and the two men came back early in the morning. Mary stayed by Anna's side all night, patting her daughter's head with a cool rag, and telling her that it wouldn't be long now. By the time the men returned Anna was close to delivering. George was upset and began pacing back and forth as he worried about his wife.

  "George, it will be okay, believe me." His father-in-law chuckled. "I've been through this a number of times, Son. I'll never forget when Anna was born in our first little cabin on the ranch. What a night that was! I don't know what we would have done without Kate Murphy there to help Mary through it. We couldn't find the doctor or the midwife and it was getting really close. The doctor walked in the door just before yer sweet wife arrived into this world. I was never so glad to see someone in me life."

  "I'm glad we are at a hospital, John. That must have been a tense night."

  "It was, but how rewarding when I held that little bundle in me arms fer the first time. It was all forgotten so fast. She was born on a Saturday night, and the priest was coming the next day to say mass, so we had a celebration and had her baptized the day after she was born. Kate is her godmother and Mary's Uncle Sean was her godfather. What a day that was!"

  "Didn't something happen to her Uncle? Anna said something about her godfather getting shot a long time ago."

  "Did Anna tell ye about that? That was a terrible ordeal! We were so worried about our little Anna. We thought we might never see her again!"

  Everything had gotten really quiet in the room where Anna and Mary were, when suddenly Mary came in beaming, holding a tiny little bundle in her arms.

  "Say hello to yer son, George. John, ye are a grandfather!"

  The two men peeked into the top of the blanket and saw lots of black curly hair and big dark eyes looking up at them as the tiny creature within sucked on his hand.

  "Oh, my!" George said, because he didn't know what else to say. Suddenly he was filled with pride. "This is my son? He is so little!"

  "He will get big quicker than ye can imagine. Now ye better go in and see Anna. I am going to help the nurse wash up this little fella and then we will bring him in."

  George and John went in to see Anna who was smiling even though she looked exhausted. The nurse was taking a pan with a bundle of rags out of the room, and the doctor was still talking to Anna.

  "Congratulations, Mr. Hempe, you have a fine, healthy son, and your wife is pretty brave and a healthy woman too. They both did just fine. You should be able to take them home tomorrow."

  "Home to La Grande?"

  "No, I meant home to the Troy Ranch. I would wait at least a week until your wife gets her strength back, before you take them on that long of a journey. I'd wait for a nice day too, since it is November. Wrap them both up real good as you don't want either of them to catch a cold."

  "Okay, Doc. Thanks so much." George shook the doctor's hand and then went to Anna's side just as Mary brought back in the bundle of joy. She went over to her daughter and put the wide-eyed baby in his mother's arms.

  John and Mary drove the little family back to the Troy Ranch the next afternoon, and Anna settled in on the sofa in the living room. The doctor had told her not to climb stairs for a couple of weeks, and as all the bedrooms in the ranch house were on the second floor, she decided to use the sofa as her bed. All of the family crowded around, wanting to see their new little relative. They all wanted to hold him, but Anna asked them to wait a couple of days until the baby was a little older.

  "What did you name him, Anna?" Asked Anna's sister, Margaret.

  "John Francis Hempe, Margaret. We named him John after father, of course, and Francis after George's father."

  "He is a beautiful little boy, Anna. You should be proud." Frances swooned over the baby. "I can say he was named after me too."

>   "Yes. Fan, you can." Anna laughed with happiness.

  George took his new son and sat in the rocking chair across the room, where all the Troy children had been rocked. The little boy closed his tiny eyes and fell sound asleep almost immediately.

  The family laughed and talked to Anna, until they saw that she was falling asleep too. They realized it was time to do their evening chores, and to give the little family time on their own. Anna lay her head down on the pillow that her mother had provided, covered up with the quilt and fell asleep, and George put his sleeping son in the cradle that had been brought down from the attic. Mary's father, Jeremiah Troy, had made it for Anna when she was born.

  The weather got a little warmer a week later, so the new family decided it was time to take little John home to meet his other grandparents. Mary bundled up her new grandson and handed him to his mother, who was also bundled up and sitting on the buggy seat. The cradle was tied to the back of the buggy, as Mary had given it to her daughter. When they waved goodbye, Anna got teary eyed.

  "What is the matter, Anna? Why are you crying?"

  "I'm sorry, George. I guess I have just been missing my family. I wish we could live a little closer."

  "Anna, I am planning on getting a place of our own, sometime in the next year, even if we have to rent a place. We can still make a profit if I plant some crops and we buy a few cows, pigs, and chickens. Do you think you will be able to help me with the livestock?"

  "Of course I can, George. I worked on our ranch all my life. I know all about tending the animals. I do hope we are able to get our own place soon. Nothing would make me happier."

  It was a long ride from the Troy Ranch to the Hempe Ranch outside of La Grande. Although it was warmer than the week before, the ground was hard and cold, the land was covered with frost, and the landscape was gray. Anna nursed her baby on the way home, and then held him close to her breast as she was overcome with a love she had never felt before. She decided Motherhood was wonderful, but she fervently wished she lived closer to her family.