Bess: A Pioneer Woman's Journey of Courage, Grit and Love

by Charles Cranston Jett

  Adjusting to being married will be challenging, she thought, but life is an adventure and my future—our future—looks bright.

  PART III

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Bess and Doc developed a routine during the fall of 1909. He would spend some days at his homestead tending his horses and she would carry on her routine at her homestead. Bess was successful in selling the wethers, which brought in some money, and she hired Ken Fisher to mow several acres of prairie grass and stack the hay near the shed where it would be convenient for the upcoming winter. A routine evolved so that Doc would be at his place from Monday through Thursday and with Bess from Thursday night through Sunday night.

  In late October, at about the time when the first hard frost came, Bess awoke one morning feeling quite nauseous. Like anyone, she suffered the occasional digestive upset, but this was different; it came and went with each passing day. The thought occurred to her that she might be pregnant, so one morning when she felt well enough, Bess went into Haley to see Dr. Poppe. He examined her, then said, “You’re pregnant, Mrs. Stewart. Congratulations.”

  Pregnant! Bess was speechless. She didn’t know whether she was happy or not. Having a child wasn’t part of her master plan and she barely knew what to say. Dr. Poppe told her the things that she needed to do, how to take care of herself, and that she should come see him if anything out of the ordinary occurred as the pregnancy proceeded.

  Pregnant! Bess thought again as she rode back to the homestead. Now what? What’s Doc going to think? Will he be happy? When she arrived and prepared to put Annabel in the stall, she thought of her sheep. Now I know how those old ewes feel, she thought.

  As Bess was going into the shed, she heard the unmistakable sound of one of her residents. “Hiss!” Bess smiled to herself and thought that her bull snake was congratulating her. He or she was neatly curled up in a corner on a small pile of hay, looking at her. Smart snake, she thought. Bess stopped and walked closer to the serpent. “Are you a boy or a girl?” she asked. The only reply was a loud and resounding “Hiss!” That made her laugh.

  Doc arrived home later that evening. Bess had planned to take her time giving him the news, but when he walked in the door, she blurted out, “Doc, I’m pregnant!” She looked at Doc, waiting for his reaction.

  Doc stopped stood up straight, paused, and with a broad smile on his face, said, “A family! Bess, that’s wonderful!” He walked across the kitchen to Bess and hugged her. “A family!”

  The winter of 1909–1910 was milder than the previous winter and Bess was thankful for that. Doc was thrilled at the thought of having a child. He told Bess time and time again that he would have a boy to help him with his horses.

  Bess was both happy and a little concerned; she had little experience taking care of a baby. She had helped Ken and Sarah Fisher when they had their child, so she knew how to feed a baby and had seen Sarah nurse her baby many times. Bess’s pregnancy was beginning to show and she used it as an excuse not to have sex. She didn’t know if not having sex was a problem for Doc or not, but she told him that they would have to wait until she had recovered from the birth of the child. Telling him that would most likely be unfair, but her distaste for sex had not abated. It seemed that nothing could match the thrill and memory of Linda and Martha’s magical touches.

  There weren’t any significant snowfalls, and when March came and it was almost time for lambing, Bess had outgrown her work clothing and had resigned herself to wearing loose dresses even when she worked, which was getting to be more difficult as the days came and went. Doc did nearly all the work during lambing and again they had great success, with about forty healthy lambs. Bess was able to be helpful herding the sheep and Bismarck had learned how to keep the sheep in a bunch without biting any of them, but soon she was not able to ride Annabel because of her condition. Doc built a fence that enclosed about twenty acres and they could let the sheep into the pasture created by the fence without fear that they would scatter across the prairie. Whenever Bess went out with the sheep on foot, she always carried the 30-30 rifle just in case she encountered any coyotes. She encountered none.

  On May 13, 1910, the same day as they were shearing the sheep, their first child, a healthy daughter they named Marion Josephine, was born. Helen Poppe, Dr. Poppe’s wife who was also a midwife, was in attendance.

  Bess felt that Doc might be disappointed that they had a girl, but he didn’t show it. Instead, when he held Marion for the first time, he said with a smile, “Now I have my own little princess!

  Bess and Doc’s lives had dramatically changed.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Bess’s transformation from being a single woman to a mother was sudden. She immediately learned that the priority of taking care of a baby trumped all her other responsibilities—day or night, and she quickly responded to that challenge. She learned that sleep was possible when Marion’s needs were met and that her chores such as feeding the chickens, and taking care of the horses and sheep could be done only when Marion was sleeping after having been successfully fed. Even then, Bess felt the need to check on her constantly. She wasn’t sure whether she actually enjoyed being a mother of a newborn—but there was no doubt that she was able to adjust to the change in her life.

  By late June Bess was becoming accustomed to Marion’s cries in the middle of the night, but this time she awakened to the sound of Bismarck’s frantic barking. It must have been near one or two o’clock in the morning, and she jumped from the bed to check on Marion, who was sleeping soundly. Bismarck was facing the front door and barking loudly at something he must have sensed or heard outside. Thoughts of the intruder gripped her immediately and she turned and grabbed the loaded 30-30 rifle. She went to the front door, hoping somehow that the intruder might be there. She had no fear and was determined to protect herself and her infant.

  She listened carefully for any outside sounds but didn’t hear anything unusual, so she opened the door and Bismarck raced out, barking with determination. Bess closed the door quickly and bolted it. She could hear Bismarck barking in the distance, so she unlocked the door and stepped outside, rifle in hand. In the distance she thought she could see someone riding away, but wasn’t sure. Bismarck came back in a few minutes and all was quiet.

  Bess rushed back into the house and bolted the door. Bismarck immediately ran over to Marion’s small wooden cradle that Doc had built for her and sat down, gazing at her sleeping baby. He’s a watchdog, thought Bess. Bismarck had totally accepted the little child as someone whom he wanted to protect. Bess went over to him, scratched his neck, and rubbed him on his head. “Good dog! Good Bismarck,” she said. The dog looked as though he were smiling with satisfaction.

  It had been dry for a week and the day was clear on a hot summer day in mid-July—and it was time for haying. The prairie grass had thrived in the moisture in the soil from the past winter, as well as the frequent rains through the month of June. Bess was finishing the dishes after making a hearty dinner for Doc when she heard, “Bess!” Doc was yelling at the top of his lungs. “Bess!” She ran and opened the front door.

  Doc came running to the house from the hay field just south of the place and on the level plain below the hill.

  “Ernie just cut off his finger! Bring some rags, quick! Get some rags! Bring ’em quick!” Doc said in a panic.

  Bess grabbed an old white sheet and followed Doc hurriedly as he sprinted back down the hill toward Ernie.

  Ernie Nordgren was a resident of Haley and had homesteaded north of town. He had purchased a mechanical hay mower that was pulled by a horse. Doc had hired him to mow about fifty acres of hay just south of the place and to help raking and stacking it up by the shed for the winter’s supply.

  “Cut it off with the sickle,” Doc panted as he approached Ernie, who was sitting on the ground and holding his bloody hand. “Struck rock.”

  The mower had a long sickle about five feet in length that consisted of a bar with stationary plates and
a sickle that moved back and forth between the plates to cut the hay. The plates had steel pointers about three inches apart, facing forward to guide the grass into the sickle. The forward motion of the mower ran a gearbox, which was solidly fixed to a rotating axle called an “eccentric” with its center offset from that of the axle. A long wooden arm was attached to the axle, and when the axle rotated, the circular motion would move the sickle back and forth to cut the hay or anything else in its way. Sometimes, pieces of wood or a small rock would jam the sickle, and when that happened, you had to stop and carefully remove the jammed object.

  Obviously, Ernie hadn’t been very careful, and when he removed a small rock that had jammed between the sickle blade and bar, he’d placed his unlucky finger the way of the stationary sickle. Something must have scared the horse, which moved forward in a jerk; the sickle blade cut off Ernie’s left index finger below the middle knuckle like a knife slicing through butter.

  Ernie was yelling and holding his left hand, but he wasn’t yelling about the pain. He was making all the noise about the blood—lots of it—spurting out of what was just a finger stump on his hand and onto the ground, coloring the prairie grass a bright red.

  Doc quickly tied a piece of cloth tightly around Ernie’s wrist and Bess folded the sheet and applied it directly on the bloody stump.

  “Put pressure on it,” Doc told Ernie. “Don’t take it off! Gotta get you into town.” He helped Ernie to his feet and they walked together slowly up to the house. “See Dr. Poppe. Maybe even go to Bowman.”

  Bess unhitched Ernie’s workhorse from the hay mower and led her up to the shed, where she took off the harness and stabled her. Doc and Ernie rode off into Haley, with Ernie riding behind Doc’s saddle. They left the hay mower in the field.

  When they came back from town a couple of hours later, Ernie’s left hand was heavily bandaged. They continued mowing the hay, but Doc had to do most of the work because Ernie could use just his right hand. Bess had to help too, because Ernie, besides feeling a little sick and looking a little more than pale, his face a chalky white, wasn’t able to handle a pitchfork to stack the hay. What happened to Ernie that day was a strong reminder that farming could be dangerous work, especially around machinery.

  The native hay was excellent in the large field that they mowed. It was a combination of blue gramma grass combined with native wheat grass, and Doc said that it made superb feed for the animals. Fortunately, Bess and Doc didn’t have any of the needle grass that was very common in the area. There was a lot of that west of their homestead and north of Haley. When the needle grass matured, it produced a lot of hay needles that sometimes stuck in the mouths of the sheep and resulted in sores that could become infected and pose a danger to the sheep’s health. Some of the homesteaders had planted alfalfa, which was excellent livestock feed and quite pretty when it bloomed with purple-blue blossoms in the early summer. With alfalfa, you could mow twice during the summer, sometimes three times if it rained a lot, and have a large supply of feed.

  Bess had thought about Doc’s business of breeding and selling work horses. It was a good business, but technology was introducing some threatening competition. That was a worry, but Doc rarely mentioned it. She noticed that with increasing frequency, Doc would come home and not say much. Most likely worried about the horse business, Bess thought.

  Most of the homesteaders still used horses to pull their equipment, although some were using the new tractors, which were much more powerful and could do more work in a day than even the best team of horses. The tractors were especially useful to plow the virgin prairie and break up the tough prairie sod. The increased use of power equipment such as tractors could negatively affect the work horse business.

  Doc raised two different kinds of horses: saddle horses, which were mostly quarter horses, and work horses. The work horses he was raising were Percherons—huge horses with good dispositions. “I think they’re the best,” Doc said. “Easy to work with and they’re strongest.”

  When Doc mowed hay, however, he used saddle horses because the hay mowers were not hard to pull and the saddle horses could walk faster and get more work done in less time. The work horses, however, were what the homesteaders used to pull plows and break the soil.

  Life in general was pretty good throughout the summer and into the fall, despite Doc’s occasional worries. “The prairie is really home,” Doc said to Bess one morning as they were having pancakes with the chokecherry syrup Bess had made. “Our family’s doin’ good, Bess.”

  Bess felt the same way as Doc, although she had begun to worry more about the horse business. The summer wasn’t dry, there was an abundance of good hay for feed, and the sheep were healthy. They had a good wool crop, Doc sold some of his work horses for a good profit, and for that, Bess breathed a sigh of relief. Marion was a lively baby who was learning how to smile at nearly everything, especially at Bismarck, who loved her. Almost to her surprise, Bess was enjoying being a mother.

  “Need to add on to the house,” Doc said casually one morning in August. “Getting kinda crowded and we need the room. Wood, though, and I’ll get the lumber.”

  “Is it going to cost much?” Bess asked.

  “We’ve got the money,” said Doc.

  “Horse business OK?” asked Bess.

  “About as good as can be expected,” Doc said.

  What that meant, Bess didn’t really know, though she was aware that the sale of the horses earlier had brought a significant amount of money to the bank. She felt a little uneasy, but she thought, Yes, we need the space.

  Among his other skills, Doc was a good carpenter and it took only two weeks until he had almost doubled the size of the house. He built the add-on to the side of the house nearest the shed. The sod house became the living room and kitchen, and the addition became two small bedrooms. It was nice to have a real house made of wood, but the rooms with the sod had better natural protection against the winter cold and summer heat.

  Doc also fixed up the addition to the shed and built another corral so they would have a place to keep the sheep and even more livestock in the future. Bess was happy with the addition. It provided much-needed extra room and was well-insulated—proving itself to be warm and cozy during the winter. Now we have room to grow, thought Bess, although she didn’t particularly want another child, and she could do no more than tolerate Doc’s lovemaking.

  He was such a pleasant companion that when he was gone, sometimes she almost fooled herself into thinking she could welcome his kisses when he came back. She liked the warmth and comfort of being close to him, but the moment he wanted more, she felt cold and distant. She felt guilty for being unfair to him, and then sometimes she felt a spark of anger that the requirement to take him into her bed was equally unfair to her. In the back of her mind she knew they were likely to have another child someday, no matter how infrequently they were together as husband and wife. That would be all right, she supposed—but she still continued to worry about their finances.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  In the late summer of 1910, Haley held a small rodeo. It was only a one-day affair, but quite enjoyable because many of the homesteaders from around the area came to join the fun. Haley didn’t have a rodeo arena or any fenced-in area like Doc had said were in some of the larger towns. All Haley had was a small field just west of town that had a little hill on which people could stand or sit and watch the cowboys demonstrate their skills.

  Most of the skill demonstrations centered on horsemanship and calf roping. Sheep weren’t part of the rodeo this year, but Doc said there were plans to demonstrate herding sheep with sheep dogs. There weren’t any rodeo chutes where cowboys could mount bucking broncos, but some of them did demonstrate how to break horses. Doc participated in the horse-breaking demonstration and even provided a couple of horses for the event. Before they did the demonstrations, the cowboys would stand up in front of the crowd and tell them what they were going to do.

  Bess was excited about
the rodeo—it would be the first time she ever attended a rodeo. She was interested in seeing how the cowboys managed the horses and was particularly interested in seeing Doc. “Daddy’s going to be riding horses, Marion,” she told the little girl. Marion smiled in her bundled-up baby clothes.

  “They aren’t gentle,” Doc said to Bess before the events began. “Gotta watch it when you mount ’em.” Doc went on to describe how to mount an unbroken horse for the first time. “You grab the bridle with your left hand and then stick your thumb in its eye. That hurts ’em and they stand still. Put your foot in the stirrup, poke ’em in the eye again, and then mount ’em. Once you’re on, you don’t know what they will do. Most of the time they’ll just stand there, but you don’t know. Anything might happen. Some of the time they’ll try to throw you off, but mostly they won’t.”

  Doc and several other cowboys demonstrated how to mount an unbroken horse, and only one of the horses started bucking and threw the rider completely off. He wasn’t hurt, but Bess could see that he was a little bit embarrassed that it had happened in front of a lot of people.

  One of the cowboys talked about how to understand a bucking horse. “Most horses buck straight ahead,” he said, “and sometimes go back and forth. You gotta watch their ears and where they put their head.” He explained how he had been a rodeo cowboy in some of the larger events that were held down in the Black Hills in Deadwood and Belle Fourche and sometimes as far south as Cheyenne, Wyoming, where they had the real bucking broncos. “The direction of the head,” he said, “that’s the way they’re gonna go. Puts his head over there—that’s the way he’s gonna go. Puts his head down, then he’s gonna buck.”