“Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? It’s a man’s duty to protect his wife and his daughters.”
“Yes,” Beth said sitting up and leaning against his solid chest. “My father was very protective of me. A girl is supposed to find a husband to support and take care of her, love is rarely considered even though marriage is for a lifetime. I realized, despite our marrying under unusual circumstances, I love you. I’m not staying with you because I have to out of duty. I’m staying because I want to be with you. I’m not sharing a bed with you because it is expected. I want to make love with you. You are my man, Garret.”
“All the bawling was about you figuring out you love me? I could have told you if you had asked. A woman doesn’t respond to a man like you do to me, unless there is love between them.”
Beth nodded thoughtfully. “It’s a gift, a very precious gift. Most women marry because their parents pick a suitable husband for them. They marry for wealth and security. The best a woman can hope for is to find a decent man who will treat her well and give her children to love. Most women don’t have the luxury of marrying for love. With so many men losing their lives during the war, a lot of women are applying to be mail-order brides. Don’t you see how wonderful it is? I married a man I love?”
“Well, I’m glad you came to appreciate it, Beth. I believe I’ve loved you from the first day we met. I sure spent an awful lot of time thinking about you. I still don’t see any need for all this bawling and carrying on.”
Beth giggled. “No, you wouldn’t, but I love you anyway. I’ll be glad when Marie comes for her lessons. Sometimes it’s hard not having another woman around.”
Her husband scratched his head, and Beth knew he was still baffled. Most men found it difficult to comprehend a woman’s need for love since their wish list for a woman was much simpler: pretty, pliable, and obedient. The rules of love and marriage were unequal between men and women, and men made the rules.
Garret's stomach growled, and he grinned. “Are you finished with all this female foolishness? Can we eat?”
“It is not foolishness. I don’t see things from a man’s point of view any better than you see them from a woman’s point of view. However, yes, I am through bawling.” Beth went to scoot out of the bed only to be hauled back as her husband kissed her.
“I may not understand female foolishness, but I do love you.” Garret declared. “Now heat up my supper. I’m starving.”
***
Beth decided if she had to carry a gun with her, she might as well put it to practical use. Since Garret and Jasper were busy planting crops, they had little time for hunting game. On the other hand, Beth saw deer and elk nearly every time she went to the creek to wash clothes. Rabbits and game birds were plentiful, too. She also saw moose and bear, thankfully at a distance.
She had long since gotten over an initial queasiness of killing game for food. During the war years, the wild game became scarce with hungry soldiers scavenging for food. Even so, when she had found herself on her own, she discovered she was capable of hunting and cleaning small game and fish. Hunger had the ability to toughen a woman's sensibilities.
Her first foray into hunting with a rifle was a rabbit. She had been surprised how true her aim was with the rifle. She had been even more surprised when Garret and Jasper came crashing through the woods to rescue her. Jasper had held the rabbit by the ears, grinned, and took it behind the cabin. By the time she arrived, the animal had been skinned, dressed and was waiting for roasting. The evening meal had been a success and a welcomed break from the constant beans and cornbread.
Beth was getting used to making do. She still missed the companionship of women, even though her husband tried to make up for it by spending part of each evening talking with her. Being a settler’s wife was lonely, though. She smiled and changed the wording to her thoughts. Garret insisted they were ranchers, not settlers. She personally couldn’t see a difference, but if Garret wanted to be called a rancher, that made her a rancher’s wife.
Garret had promised they would return to Denver except he could not say when. However, he and Jasper had completed most of the needed work of planting crops and fixing fences. It was nearing time for him to buy cattle. He had promised Beth a milk cow and chickens if he could find them.
Marie Chardon rode into their homestead the next week bringing along three small boys all of whom were tow-headed and blue-eyed. They were dressed in white children’s clothing except for their buckskin moccasins. Marie also brought a precious packet of coffee and two tortoiseshell hair combs in exchange for her lessons even though Beth insisted payment was unnecessary.
Marie and the children sat at the table quietly listening and absorbing every word Beth said to them. When Beth went into the barn and came out with primer books for all of them, you would have thought they were gold plated. Tears came to Marie’s eyes as she ran her hands reverently over the book covers.
“This is too much,” she protested.
“It’s not enough,” Beth said. “Please come back. I need a friend…a woman friend.”
“You are a friend,” Marie said. “I want my Pierre to meet you.”
Marie came nearly every week bringing her three sons with her for their lessons. Her husband still had not visited and Marie explained he was running trap lines for beaver.
Beth settled into her new life with her husband and Jasper. Her little world consisted mostly of the six feet surrounding the kitchen stove. She spent most of her time in preparations to cook and bake, and then cooking and baking. There was always bread to knead, potatoes to peel, beans to soak, and clothing to mend or wash. She was content with her life, though she thought it could do with some variety. She thanked God every day for the books she had found in the barn.
She was walking down to the creek with her washboard and a basket of clothing under one arm, and the Spenser rifle under the other, when a noise above her head startled her. She dropped the laundry and looked up. There, sitting on a tree branch over her head, was a turkey. She raised the rifle, fired, and was knocked to the ground by the falling bird.
Garret no longer came running as he initially had when he heard her fire the rifle. They had decided unless she fired the rifle twice in quick succession, he would know she was not in danger.
Beth stood up and looked down at the dead bird in surprise. Since she had no time to aim, she was surprised she actually shot it. As she stared down at the large bird, she realized she would have had to be half blind to miss it. The turkey probably weighed more than sixty pounds!
She tried to lift it and was unable. She took their clothing out of the laundry basket, rolled the turkey into it, and tried to drag it. It was impossible to drag the basket over the uneven ground. Her next attempt consisted of removing one of her petticoats, tying the narrow waistband together, and rolling the fowl into the petticoat forming a sack. She tried to lift the heavy sack onto her shoulders and fell backward on her butt from the weight of it.
She was frustrated, yet not about to give up. She would not disturb Garret or Jasper from their work. Regretting the loss of her petticoat, she began dragging the bird toward the cabin. As she entered their clearing, three horses arrived at the cabin. Recognizing Marie, Beth waved and shouted to her. It was Marie, a man she assumed was her husband and the children.
“Beth, this is my husband, Pierre Chardon. Pierre, this is my friend, Beth Wakefield.”
The man approached and held out his hand. “I thank you for the friendship you have offered my wife,” he said with a heavy French accent. “What are you struggling with?”
“I shot a turkey,” Beth said. “I think it weights almost as much as I do.”
Pierre laughed, untied the makeshift sack, and held the turkey by the feet at shoulder height with no effort.”
“You go and chop off its head,” Marie ordered. “Corral our boys, and make them sit and wait for their next lesson. I will help Beth.”
Pierre mounted his horse still holding the tu
rkey in one hand and rode toward the cabin.
“It’s so big! It won’t fit in the oven. How will I cook it?” Beth asked.
Marie laughed. “We will show you.”
The next hour was a learning experience for Beth. She watched as Pierre gutted the bird. Meanwhile, Marie made several trips to the creek with a bucket and then slathered mud all over the turkey—feathers and all. Pierre dug a pit, filled it with wood, and set the mud-covered turkey into it, covered it with wood again, and set fire to it. Then he covered the pit with green leaf branches, leaving areas open so the fire would continue to burn underground.
Smiling broadly, the couple faced Beth. “By evening, you will be feasting on roasted turkey.”
Jasper was the first to notice the smoke. Garret ran for the horses, and they raced to the homestead. When they reached the cabin, they could see the smoke was coming from behind it. Garret burst inside to find Beth teaching Marie, her children, and a strange man.
“I thought the smoke would bring you home,” Beth said with a smile.
The man rose quickly and introduced himself. “Pierre Chardon, I thank you for allowing your wife to teach my family.”
“You are welcome. What’s on fire?”
“Continue with the letters,” Beth said to her students pointing to the slate being passed around the table. She hooked her arm through her husband’s and led him to the back door as she whispered. “I shot a turkey, and it was a big one. I was trying to get it home when they arrived. It’s buried in a pit Pierre dug and apparently roasting. After all the help they gave me, we have to invite them to share it, except I don’t know how it will turn out. They covered it with mud and buried it.”
Garret hid a grin. “Do your best, we not only have to share it, we also have to eat it. We can’t insult our guests,” he whispered in her ear.
Garret invited the Chardon family to join them for dinner.
While her husband went outside with Pierre, presumably for men talk, Beth put Jasper in charge of watching the younger children while they practiced their ABCs on the slate. She and Marie took the clothing and her muddied petticoat to the stream to scrub them clean. Then, Beth took Marie to the barn where she found a box of dishes and removed eight plates, and then found additional forks and knives for her guests. They carried a long empty trunk inside for the children to sit on, along with the piano stool and a small empty barrel to use as chairs around the table.
“We might be crowded, but it’s wonderful to have guests,” Beth admitted while she and Marie prepared for the meal.
“Living in the mountains is a lonely life for a woman,” Marie agreed. “It won’t be so lonely when the little ones begin to come.”
“We are looking forward to them,” Beth agreed, smiling.
They put away the school primers and then placed one of her small tables at the end of the bigger table. It was tight, but everyone would fit around it. Beth baked biscuits, which would be a treat as they used their wheat flour sparingly. Marie had brought dried beans, so they were soaked and cooked, and Beth opened one of their store-bought cans of condensed milk and added water to it for the children. She cooked the last of the wild yams they had bought in Denver. It would be a feast, but she still worried the turkey would be inedible since it had been covered with mud.
With the women and children standing around watching, Pierre and Garret raked and shoveled through the smoldering fire to find the turkey. Beth was surprised to see the clay had hardened and Pierre had to use his hatchet to break through it. The smell of cooked turkey had all the children licking their lips in anticipation and Beth had to admit it smelled wonderful.
Pierre chopped a hole in the top of the clay-encased turkey. He took a grip on one side while Garret got a grip on the other side and they pulled it apart. As the hard shell split, Beth was surprised to see the feathers and skin adhered to it. A beautiful, if not brown, bird lay among the chards of dried mud.
Pierre picked off a piece of meat and dropped it in his mouth. “Perfect!” he declared.
“Enough of that,” Marie exclaimed shaking her head and smiling. “Next, you will be teaching our children bad manners!” She moved forward, and Pierre helped her transfer the bird onto a length of a board, which they carried inside.
“It smells delicious,” Beth whispered to Garret.
“It will be,” he agreed with a smile. “We had better get inside, or Jasper will inhale half of it before the rest of us get there.”
The evening meal was delicious. Not long after, Pierre said they had to leave to make it to their camp before nightfall. Beth wrapped half of the leftover turkey to send home with them. They waved goodbye to their friends as Marie promised to return the following week for another lesson.
“It was a good day,” Beth said leaning into Garret and waving.
“It was,” Garret agreed. “Pierre has agreed to keep an eye on the cabin when we go to Denver. He also told me we should bury the silver we found. Some of the men scavenging on the trails don’t stop there. There have been rumors of missing gold shipments both during the war and since. The tales claim a whole shipment of minted coins was being sent across the country by wagon train and disappeared. Those stories are still circulating, and men are searching for it.”
“It would weigh too much,” Beth protested.
“Exactly, but there is a certain kind of man who always wants to believe in buried treasure. Some probably think the story is true and would be happy to steal it or anything of value they found while searching for it.”
Chapter Six
Hanging onto the edge of the wagon seat, Beth bounced so hard she cracked her elbow against the wooden side and cried out.
Garret gave her a concerned glance, but he had to concentrate on keeping the wagon out of the deeper ruts. “Climb into the back!” he ordered.
Beth squeezed herself in between a large bureau and a stack of trunks and ducked every time something shifted. Garret had wanted her to stay at the cabin with Pierre and Marie, but she had argued her point, and she was unwilling to miss a chance to return to even a small remnant of civilization. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if Jasper was still onboard, or if he had been bounced off and left behind.
They were going to Denver, and Garret hoped to return with a herd of cattle. He would sell off the items in the wagon for extra cash and hire drovers to help him herd the cattle to the ranch. Jasper would drive the wagon back to their place.
The silver items they found among the things in the barn had been wrapped carefully in deerskin, put into an empty trunk, and buried. The locked trunks and boxes were stacked in a corner of the barn loft until they could get around to finding out what was in them. Sorting through other people’s belongings was not high on her husband’s long list of things needing to be done. He said they would have plenty of extra time during the winter months. Meanwhile, Beth was busy with her gardening and all the other chores which by the manifest of males in her household were jobs only done by women.
A smaller stash of greenbacks and gold coins had been buried in the corner of the root cellar. Only Beth and Garret knew of the second stash. It represented years of Garret’s hard work as a scout and what he considered their future. Beth had put two-thirds of the money returned to her from the wagon train in the stash alongside her husband's money. Garret said it was hers to keep, but she knew by law, anything that had belonged to her became the property of her husband as soon as the vows were spoken.
Beth sat on the front seat as they drove through Denver. There seemed to be a lot more people milling about since they had been there only a few months before. There were many new buildings in different stages of construction. She counted six new buildings in various stages of construction on one street alone. She was delighted to see one of the buildings had a steeple.
She stood to the side as Garret negotiated prices for the large pieces of furniture. The men shook hands, and when her husband whispered the total in her ear, she was shocked.
/> “Mr. Tolliver, the man who bought the furniture, said once word gets around these pieces would be sold in no time. He was going to the bank when I left. He wants to sell the grandfather clock to the bank president,” Garret said pleased.
“Jasper.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered.
“I’m giving you a five-dollar silver piece to do with as you please, only don’t get yourself in trouble with it. First, though, we’re going to the mercantile where Beth will help you get outfitted with some new clothes. You’re growing clean out of what you’ve been wearing. When we finish buying what we need, I’m taking you to the bank and opening a savings account for you. A boy your age doesn’t need to be walking around with a pocket full of spending money, especially since there is nowhere to spend it out where we live. We can squirrel away your wages and your part of the proceeds for the furniture until you do more growing. Do you have any objections to this plan?”
“No, sir,” the boy answered with a grin still inspecting the silver coin.
“Good. I’m going to take the wagon down to the campsites by the river. You go with Beth, and I’ll meet you both at the mercantile.”
Beth and Jasper walked to mercantile. The store was under a different name, and the prices on goods had been raised considerably. She gave the new proprietor, Mr. Smith, their order, and then before he would even begin to fill it, he told her he only accepted cash.
Beth had Jasper try on some trousers and shirts, and she made sure there was plenty of room for the boy to grow into them. Since he had been eating regular, Jasper was sprouting straight up and had already gained an inch on her. Beth nearly embarrassed the boy to death by holding a union suit in front of him for measuring before adding it to the pile of clothing to be purchased. When Beth was finished with him, Jasper escaped her clutches wearing a new set of clothes and a new pair of boots. She had a second set of clothing wrapped to take with them.
A Path Worth Taking Page 10
