Just then the little baby kicked hard at his hand, and we both were startled, and I said, Well, looks like he’s pretty ornery. I wonder where he gets it?
Jack just shrugged and kissed my cheek, and then whispered in my ear, He gets it from his mother.
September 25, 1886
Fall is in the air today. I sent Mason with April to Mama’s this morning. I have felt small pulling feelings all night until now, although no pain at all yet. Jack has gone overnight with the men putting up fence, so he is not home nor anyone else, but Mason will leave April with Melissa and send Mama and Savannah here. I told him not to hurry, and stay for supper if she’ll have you, for if this is anything like the last one, I won’t be needing her until late tonight or maybe tomorrow.
So he has been gone for awhile, and I have stayed busy collecting things we will need for the birthing. All is ready, and there is no pain, so I picked some weeds in the garden, and fed the hens and brought in eggs. Still nothing happened, so I read some and put on a roast of beef to have for supper, and put some little pies on the griddle and fried them with fruit inside.
I sat on the porch for a while, just listening. Chickens and guineas in the yard were making their little quiet chucking sounds. My biggest Buff Orpington rooster is on the small corral fence letting the world know he is in charge, all puffed up and sassy. There is nothing more silly than a rooster taking over the world, but every day he thinks he can. I wonder if we are just a little part of the world, like that rooster, and that the real things go on around us while we strut in our own yards trying to take charge of things.
Well, it happened so fast, I hardly knew what was happening. Just after noon, I felt at last a tugging feeling that I knew meant I was about to have the baby. It started out regular and even, but I felt very little except the tightness, so I sat up in the rocking chair on the porch snapping long beans, intending to go inside later after Mama got here and all. All at once, I had a sharp, terrible gripping in my insides, and I doubled over and couldn’t breathe for a minute. Then there was a few more tight feelings, then another terrible pain. Suddenly I remembered everything about having a baby just as clear as yesterday. I couldn’t remember not remembering.
Just at that time, here came Jack riding up and calling out that Chess had stayed on the range with the men, and I tried to stand, but instead I half stood and half doubled up, and made a moaning and dropped the bowl of beans all over the porch.
His face got all worried, and he said, Are you here alone?
Yes, I said, Mason went to get Mama, but they won’t be back real soon.
Jack said he was filthy dirty, and he started stripping off clothes fast, and bathed real quick right on the front porch while I sat in the chair, kind of pained, but not too bad. He got dressed and then he said, Come on, honey, I didn’t want to touch you as dirty as I was.
So he took my hand and I made two steps and then started to fall. He scooped me in his arms, and another pain came real hard. Jack, I said, Mama isn’t going to come soon, and this baby is! You have to help me.
So he took a couple of deep breaths, and said Tell me what to do, so I did.
It was real strange how this peaceful feeling came over me then. I fully expected to be terrified like the first time, and to scream myself out for days and days. But Jack was here, and he let me pull against his hands and didn’t even flinch through the whole thing. I counted only five more pains. Five more, and into his waiting towel came a big baby boy.
Jack was grinning, but I said, He isn’t crying, he’s supposed to be crying. Shake him. And then I had another pain, and Jack shook the baby, and patted his back. The baby turned dark red and then blue. Jack! Shake him, spank him, something! I was yelling, when all of a sudden, the little fellow opened his mouth and coughed, and started breathing. He cried just a little mew, and then just went to sleep.
Jack said, Do you think he’s dead?
No, I said, he’s fine, now. I think he’s just tired like his Mama.
Jack told me what time it was his son was born, and it was only 2:45 in the afternoon. I was feeling pretty sore later, but happy, and Jack did as good a job as any woman I’ve seen with everything. It’s funny, because Jimmy would have delivered any animal on earth, except his own child. Jack just rolled up his sleeves and smiled and took hold of his son without a second thought, and was so tender with me, I’d rather have him tend me than anyone else.
Welcome home, little son. Little John Charles Elliot. Papa already called you Charlie after your Grandpa Chess, and laid you on my breast, and declared you ate like a horse for someone only a half hour old, then he said Charlie Horse, Charlie Horse, and rocked you to sleep.
September 29, 1886
Mama and Savannah were just as surprised as they could be that there was no birthing to be done by the time they got to my house. There was Jack, sitting on the porch steps by Toobuddy, and he led them to the room and showed off the little one just as pleased as punch.
Charlie is a good little rascal, and calm, much more than April had been as a baby. She is happy with her brother, except for yesterday when he had a crying time and she was plum fed up with hearing all that and told me to send him back to wherever he came from, he was too much nuisance.
Jack has a few more weeks here, and then will be going back to the fort, and he has asked me to think of moving the family there where there are houses for the officers, and rent is below cheap, and he will come home most every evening unless he is gone out of town. It is too soon after having a baby to do any driving to town, but I told him we will discuss it later on.
December 1, 1886
Chess left two weeks ago on a train for his home in Texas. I was sad to see him go, but I knew he couldn’t stay forever, and he didn’t want to leave his place over the winter. I hope I have learned enough about ranching from him in that short time to know what tools the hands need to do their jobs, and how to manage them, too. The cattle are not the orneriest part of ranching. For now, these fellows are working for their bed and board, as there will be no cash from it until next year. They have put up a bunkhouse and I have my hands full keeping two pantries stocked.
For my birthday this year, Jack gave me a book of twenty-three chapters—one, he said, for all my years—A History of the Americas, beginning with the settlers in the 1600’s. I can hardly wait to read it all. But it seems I don’t have three minutes to rub together. Some time soon I will take it on, maybe when Charlie is a few months older.
My biggest news is that Jack has made arrangements to move us into a spacious officer’s house at the fort if I would say the word, as there is one empty and waiting for us. Just as I have gotten the hang of this ranching life, I have to think about leaving it. There are just too many changes all at once, and all this week I have felt tired just thinking about it all. I wrote a letter to a patent lawyer in Prescott, and got his word that since this spring my claim patent will finally be done with, it will be okay to run these cattle and have all the men living here and only visit it now and then, too. Then, I took to thinking about how much I missed Jack, and how so much of the time when he is around, he has to spend in Tucson near the fort, and how I could be nearby instead. It would save a horseshoe or two to put a few less miles between us, I suppose.
I was ready to tell him I decided I’d rather be together as a family than always living separate like this, but when he said, You know, if we live in town, April can go to school. That was all it took for me. I want her to go to school more than anything, so we will pack up just after Christmas. I have to tell my family. We have asked the whole bunch to come for a picnic tomorrow, since the weather has been gentle so far this winter. During our supper we will tell them our news.
January 3, 1887
Although I have not seen the quarters we will move to, Jack has told me much about them, and so I am trying to decide who will sleep where and all. I do not know how I will like living with all those people around all the time. I suppose it is noisy. Every day I look at this ranch
, and think of all the memories soaked into the wooden walls and the dirt and the trees around. It will not disappear, but it won’t feel like mine, anymore, I don’t think.
Mason is staying on, and the ten hands that Chess kept around are willing to stay too. I have made an arrangement that one of the men will ride to Fort Lowell each Friday, and we will talk over business and such. And of course, it’s not so far that I can’t drive back here once a month or so, and stay, too, if Jack is going to be out of town. Then, whoever Mason sends to town can take back provisions and dry goods and tools if they’re needed. During roundup in the spring I want to come back and help, or at least watch, and maybe living in town I can get wind of cattle buyers sooner, and take care of business there. Jack just shakes his head at it all, and says I have a natural leaning for business, so he will let me take the reins if I choose.
I feel like I don’t much belong in a town. And I wonder what kind of life I will have, different than I have known before, of that I can be sure. Jack laughed and said I’d probably take a liking to it. Still, I swept over the little blue fingerprints in the floor, and got a hard place in my throat.
January 9, 1887
Savannah came over early this morning, and we talked a long spell over the heads of the children. She has made a quilt for Ulyssa, and embroidered flowers in each square, pansies, daisies, brown-eyed susans, and in the very center was a red rose on some dark blue, which I will take to her as soon as we get moved in.
She and I kept quiet for a while, and I made some coffee and gave all the little ones a cookie and set them in the parlor. I’ll miss having you close by, I said.
Savannah’s face got red and her smile turned down at the corners. Sarah, she said, you have to go where your husband is. The children need their father close.
I said, I just wish Jack would come live here instead. He doesn’t need to be in the Army, he wants to. Even with us living in town he’ll be riding off after first one thing and another.
Savannah just sipped her coffee. She said, You’ll just have to treasure the times you are together, to make up for the loss of time.
I told her I don’t know how I’ll manage being married to Jack, it angers me the way he takes off all the time. She held my hands, and said, The Lord gives us all gifts in the people we know, and that I was not the kind to need or want a man around all the time telling me every step to take, so having Jack was the best mix of independence and love I could want. I suppose she’s right. It would take more patience than I could muster to have someone underfoot all the time and trying to tell me what to do like some men do their women. Jack is about as ornery a man as I know. Yet, all I ever wanted was to be loved like Savannah, and I wonder if Jack does care for me that way, because I’m not much like her.
Mostly tonight I feel sort of lost and alone, like now I am up on a windy hill and looking toward a new direction where the wind never blew before. I am afraid to leave all that I know, nothing familiar will be nearby to keep me going. I will have to stand on the hill alone.
January 10, 1887
All is a flurry as we pack up and load crates. I don’t feel of much use and I am tending the baby and Little Bitty, and he has to do most of the work. It’s how it ought to be, Jack says. Then, about noon, he rode off to Albert’s house to ask for the loan of his wagon, because there is a train load of books here that must go.
The hands have loaded pretty much everything. Charlie is sleeping in my lap. In a little pile beside me is Jack’s saddle and outfit, which he is going to toss in the back with this rocking chair when we pull out. I picked up that old, old leather saddlebag and looked it over, wondering just why he never made a move without it. It was stiff with age and horse sweat, and it smelled bad. There was a big hole in it, too, and it was patched with clumsy stitches that looked like a child’s.
The more I felt of it, I saw the patch was thick and heavier on that side, and the leather tie was coming out. I squeezed it, and it had something sewed inside it. So I began to pull the thong out of the little holes and to unwind it, going around and around.
Finally the patch came off, and it had been sewed over a kind of pocket inside that was full of stuff. I reached in and pulled out a little raggedy book, and my mouth fell open. The Duchess of Warwick and Her Sorrows by the Sea. The gold edges were long ago worn to green and the cover was broken and creased, and just as he said, a bullet had pierced right through it. That man has had that book all along.
I opened the cover and found folded inside it each of the letters that I had sent to him asking for the return of it. Goodness, how bad my spelling and punctuation was! I thought, laughing at myself. Then I found there was another folded piece of paper, and I pressed open the creases and pushed the gunshot frayed place back together. It was a little letter all in Jack’s neat hand.
February 16, 1882
Dear Miss Prine,
I cannot hope that you would understand my forwardness and my poor manners in writing this to you, as it is unforgivable to be so common with a lady as to tell her your feeling so abruptly. However, life is so uncertain in this ferritories that I hope you will forgive me this impropriety for the sake of what I am about to say.
I lost my heart to you the moment you won that rifle from that blowhard and handed it back to him. Then I lost everything else to you when you stood up with a straight face and protected your family against what you thought would be a vision of horror. You have stolen my very heart away. I see your face, I hear your voice, I watch you walk, even in my sleep. You have my utmost admiration and fondest regards. If it were not for my own cowardice, I would have told you these things in person, and not given this letter in an Animal book, hoping you would turn the pages and find it some day.
I know that you want your other book returned so badly that you just ache for it, and for that it sorrows me that I cannot return it, but you must understand it is a matter of life and death that I keep it with me at all times. For you see, you have taken all my heart with you, and there is nothing left for me but the little piece of your heart that longs for your other book. So I must have it to continue breathing at all.
Please forgive the injustice of it all. I remain forever lost to you, and sustain myself only with a memory of one night when we shared a tenderness that went far beyond mortal bonds. You shared with me your fears, and most importantly, your trust as you slept quietly and safely in my arms. Unkind of you, to brutally expose a man to the sweetest thing a woman has to offer, her trust, and then to just slip away as if you cared nothing for him at all. However, it matters not what unkindness you show me, I have no heart any longer to feel it anyway. My dear, if there is any chance that you could possibly find a sliver of compassion for me, please write me in return. I promise
The letter stopped, unfinished. He had not enclosed it in the Animals of Africa book he returned to me as he had planned. Fancy words, too, all educated and clever, and he doesn’t even talk that fancy.
It seems I am bound to love this character forever, soldier or no. I just hope and pray I can put up with him for the next fifty years or so.
Tears were pouring down my face but I managed to thread the stiff and cracked cord back into the patch before he got back with Albert’s wagon. Then he packed up my books and it seemed to take just ten minutes or so. In that short time, everyone came to wave us off, even the Maldonados’ whole family. Jack whistled to Toobuddy and that silly dog hopped up into Albert’s borrowed wagon.
We are driving away, and I look back over my shoulder with a strange feeling of parting. It is not a lonely feeling, but just as I am always sad to close the cover on a book, I feel I have finished with this part of my life and will have to begin a new book. The last thing I saw was Savannah waving her bonnet toward us. Albert had his arm around her waist. Then I looked at Jack for a long minute, then I looked toward the horizon.
Jack whistled a little song, kind of merry and happy. He turned to me as we rounded the first bend away from my ranch and said, Mrs. E
lliot, what are you smiling at, are you happy to leave?
No, I said, I’m not so happy to leave. It isn’t that at all.
January 12, 1887
It is bitter cold here in Tucson, but this officer’s house is tightly built of adobe and wood. The morning came with a bugle call, and Jack was already gone before it sounded. The children didn’t wake because of it, though. It is a nice sound, and I expect it will start many a morning in my life from now on. The town has grown plenty but is still rough as a cob, although it feels safe here in the fort.
January 19, 1887
It seems this house is tightly built as long as the wind doesn’t blow or rain hit it. Rain started late last night. By mid morning the ceiling began to fall in. Water is running down every wall of this place. It turns out the whole roof is made of poles and sod, and there are even a couple of old army blankets up there with dirt packed on them. I feared all day the whole mess would fall in on the children in the big room, so we have stayed in the nursery room for safety. Someone had left curtains hanging in the windows, which I thought was because they were so soiled no one would bother taking them along. Now I see why they are streaked and stained, it has rained like this before and no one bothered to fix this blessed roof. Jack says that as soon as this wet spell lets up, he will get some men here to put on a real roof.
January 21, 1887
Jack said the post commander will not approve of spending money to fix the officers’ housing. I said to him I have no intention of staying in a place like this where mud drips on my babies and into the food while I cook. I can imagine in the summer it will be scorpions and spiders falling from that nasty ceiling. I’ve been saving soap money for a long time, and I just told him you hire some men to fix this here, and it will get paid for, and I don’t care what the commander says.
These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 Page 30
