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

by Nancy E. Turner

  Nevertheless, he went on, This is surely your property, as there is no one else in the entire town with a shaggy red dog. Then he tipped his hat, and smiled really nice, and seemed just as happy as could be. He said, I’m sure you’ll do the right thing, Ma’am. Good afternoon to you. Then he whistled a real happy sound as he turned and left.

  I stepped out on the porch. There by the door he had left a crate without a lid, and inside the crate, like a bushel of furry pumpkins, was a passel of red, Toobuddy-colored puppies. Only one had some black spots and shorter hair, but all the rest of it was red. And he was right, I have not seen another dog anywhere around that remotely resembles Toobuddy. Five puppies. They were whining, but their eyes were open, and they were bushy with fur and smelled clean and healthy. He had surely taken care of them and the mother dog, for which I am thankful, as I know lots of people would not care for unwanted puppies. Oh, what will I do with five puppies? Then I heard tiny Gilbert start to cry, and I felt my milk come, and I knew I had to put the puppies aside for a while. A three day old baby will not wait.

  I have been trying to think of how I will find homes for them all. I will write a letter to Albert and Savannah, and ask Mason Sherrill, too, and even Mama if they all could use a puppy. And I will put up a little sign on our front porch, as maybe there is someone around the post that would keep a dog. The only thing I am worried about is that usually when I have seen a sign like that, people will say, Free, Good Kittens: excellent mousers, or Cow Dog: strong herder, or something like that. Well, Toobuddy doesn’t have much going for him in the way of talent except personal charm. He is playful and clumsy and will chase a rabbit or a mouse but only if it’s not too hard, and he gets into as much trouble as he saves me, so he is an even balance, not a big help. At least, he is patient with children. That I could honestly say. That will have to be their selling point. Nice puppies, good natured and friendly. That will do.

  March 22, 1888

  There goes the last of the three puppies we will be giving away. We kept the black spotted one for a house dog, and her name is Shiner. Then we kept one of the really furry red ones, and named him Rusty. I am hoping he will live at the ranch, and we will only keep one here, but that won’t be for a few months, until he is big enough to watch out for coyotes on his own. I declare if there was something I didn’t need after having a baby it was having five puppies, too. But Anna is just wonderful. She is slow and patient, as loving as a grandmother.

  I sat this afternoon to read during the boys’ nap. I was going through the botanical theory book, and while I was reading I remembered something Blue Horse said to me back before Gilbert was born. He said wisdom is not a path, it is a tree. At the time I was too busy to give it much thought, so I nodded politely but didn’t pay much attention. Now I see that he was surely right. I have been sad almost a whole year, thinking that taking that test was somehow the end of my learning and that not having that as a possibility in my future left a big empty spot in my life that the children and the ranch didn’t fill. But my life is not like that, it is a tree, and I can stay in one place and spread out in all directions, and I can do more learning shading this brood of mine than if I was all alone. I declare, it is like some other part of me made up some rules about happiness and I just went along with them without thinking. My heart is lightened so much that I am amazed at how sad I felt for so long.

  I have donated a box of books to the library of the university, and paid for a tree to be planted near the fountain which will be built by the front steps. Someone even wrote about it in the paper where they were listing all the names of people who gave trees, saying the books were a gift from “the extensive library of Captain and Mrs. J. E. Elliot.” What a hoot. I figured it was a good resting place for the Expositional Sermons.

  September 1, 1888

  April’s first day at school. I walked with her almost all the way there, and promised her I would be waiting to walk her home again. The pups went with us, and wanted to follow her right up into the school house. They are hardly pups anymore, big red reminders of their silly papa dog. April has got a brand new slate and a McGuffy’s First Reader, and a little chalk and a new pencil tied with a string. She holds these things out carefully, in one hand, as if she knows they are real important. In the other hand she is carrying a little shiny new lunch pail with a sandwich of jam and butter and a couple of apples from Albert’s place. She is walking as solemnly as she knows how, and I want to laugh at her seriousness, but I mustn’t or she will think I am laughing at her.

  Although these things are required by Mrs. Fish for all first grade students, April can already read well beyond the McGuffy’s First, because I have taught her to read straight from some other books. After this first week of school, I will have a talk with Mrs. Fish and see if she will allow April to progress into another reader. What a glorious day to me, to see my daughter step up that walk and wave goodbye from inside a school house.

  When she was gone, a strange feeling came over me, and I sat at my kitchen table and put my face in my hands. I am terribly envious of my own child. She has no idea what a blessing is being handed to her, and I can only dream of what I might have learned if I had ever lived near a school. While the little ones were playing, I got out my copy of The Iliad, which I found on a tinker’s wagon, battered and falling apart, tied together with a string. It cost nearly four dollars.

  April 6, 1889

  This morning as usual, I let April and Charlie out of the buggy in front of the Feed and Grain store. I left Gilbert with Anna at home. It is only three blocks to school, and April’s friends Carrie and Opal Rae usually meet her there at the corner. Charlie likes to walk along pretending he is old enough for school. Old Toobuddy often goes also, and sits by the school house door until I drive by and call him to jump up and ride home with me. When school is out, Toobuddy heads back through town to the school and waits for them, so to the children it is like he has sat there all day, rain or blistering sun, waiting for them. For such a silly dog, he has got the lay of the town smartly.

  After handing them their lunches, I left them to go into the feed and grain store. They always check to see who got the biggest apple, and I saw them trade buckets. I smiled and went to pick up a sack of oats and some chicken mash. Not twenty seconds had passed when I heard April and Charlie both let out blood chilling screams. My heart felt stabbed at the sound because I knew it was them. I dropped the sack of mash and it burst on the floor as I ran to the door. I ran all the way down the street, with my bonnet blowing off and a wagon stopping short to let me pass.

  There in the street was poor Toobuddy, run over by a wagon. April and Charlie were shrieking, with tears running down their faces, hovering over their dog. Up the street aways was a boy I recognized from school—one of the oldest ones who was having trouble finishing the last grades. He had turned around in his wagon and was laughing, pointing at my children to another boy sitting bareback on a horse. Both boys laughed loudly. People started to gather up and I felt sick at the sight.

  I lifted Toobuddy’s head, and his eyes opened, but he didn’t even whimper. I could hear him breathing hard between the children’s cries. Suddenly beside me is Blue Horse, who must have been standing nearby when it happened. Get buggy, Ma’am Elliot, he said. I took my children’s hands and we hurried to it, and drove back there. Then Blue Horse lifted Toobuddy into the floor of the buggy for me, but he said, There isn’t much to do but save him from pain, now. April and Charlie wailed louder at that. I just looked at the man, feeling helpless.

  Blue Horse climbed into the buggy seat beside me, and we drove back to the house. There he took the dog out, and Toobuddy drooped, limp. Blue Horse put his head against Toobuddy’s body, and said, The spirit is gone. Then he looked at my whimpering children and got a real sympathetic look on his face, and said, Little ones, bring shovel, come quickly.

  They looked at me, and I said, You do what he tells you. The shovel is in the lean to.

  From the back porch
I watched as Blue Horse told first one child then the other to dig, and finally he took the shovel and made a bigger hole. They laid Toobuddy in it, and then stood by and Blue Horse put a big handful of dirt in both the children’s hands, then he started to sing. He motioned to them, two or three times, and then they started to sing too. Mingled from the back of my house were some Indian words in a soft, wailing sound, and April and Charlie singing in their childish voices some mixed up words to Blessed Assurance. They dropped their dirt on the little grave, and made a great ceremony of filling it and piling rocks.

  By the time the funeral was over, the morning was near gone, and I told April she could stay home from school for the rest of the day. It remained a somewhat somber day, but later on, when Blue Horse had taken his usual chair on the porch, I saw April walk up to him with a wild flower and kiss his cheek as she gave it to him.

  April 7, 1889

  Today I drove April right to the front door of the school and picked her up there, too. When she came out to go home, she said those two boys were not in school at all. Maybe they are being kept away by their parents, maybe they are truly sorry for what they did. I will be glad if it is their repentance that troubles them, and there will be an end to this hatefulness.

  Jack came home just as I was pulling the buggy into the shed. He asked me if I had seen Blue Horse, but I told him about what had happened, and said I had not seen him since we went to bed last night.

  April 9, 1889

  The paper today reports that the doctor has seen two young men in his office, one of which will be spending a few days in the doctor’s home, recovering. They are the two boys missing from school, who killed our dog and laughed. They had been asked by the Marshal if they fought each other, but both said no, and when asked who beat them, they would not answer but gave each other frightened and threatening looks.

  Blue Horse has not come to our porch since the day Toobuddy died. He did not report to his duty at the post, either, and has been listed as Away With Out Leave. All are speculating about the turn of events. However, I will not join in to even raise an eyebrow over it. I know Jack’s hands had no bruises because I looked for them. Blue Horse has not been seen or heard of since that day. The last picture in my mind of him is sitting on the porch in that old chair, wearing the checkered shirt I made him, and April tiptoeing to kiss his cheek.

  May 26, 1889

  It is commencement day at the Tucson School. April is going to wear a new dress I made her with a ruffled pinafore. Must hurry, baby is crying and I have to get the hem in April’s dress.

  December 25, 1889

  A new decade will be upon us soon, and our family will greet it with another baby. This one was planned, but I told Jack I think this will be enough. I feel like I have been taking care of children my whole life, and unless there is an unforeseen slip up, I’d like to stop after this one. I think four children is a nice size for a family. He said that was fine with him, although he didn’t mind having as many as I could manage. Gilbert will be over two years old when this one comes, and with any luck there will only be two of them in diapers for a couple of months then. Savannah and Albert have a houseful, now. Besides Clover, Joshua, Rachel and Rebeccah, there are Esther and Mary Pearl. That doesn’t count one that was lost early in the fall, and Savannah thinks she may be expecting again already.

  May 18, 1890

  Another child has blessed us, little Suzanne, born May 14, 1890. I missed Blue Horse. I gave Suzanne Gilbert’s blue luck bead to wear for a few days. My days begin before reveille and end with the coyote’s hunting songs. It is a bustling, crowded house now, and somebody is wet at one end or the other all the time.

  Christmas Day, December 25, 1891

  I turn around and I cannot believe that six years have past since Jack and I married. What busy times these have been, too. Weeks turn into months without sitting to write my journal, and I am so thankful for all four of my children but equally thankful there are not eight. They have all put down for the night at last, and Suzy is cuddling her prized gift, a little china doll, the way April used to hold Mrs. Lady.

  Jack tucked all the children in bed tonight and stoked up the fire in the Franklin until it was nearly glowing. Then he held me close and said he thanked God for our family. He pulled up two chairs side by side, and we sat and held hands and watched the fire go out.

  I have bought Harland some leather gloves for his birthday, which I will send up to Tempe where he is attending Tempe Normal School. He will graduate next year, and says he wishes to become an architect of houses and bank buildings and bridges and such. Ernest has made a long career of the Army now, and has been made a Sergeant through several close scrapes and his good and willing service to his country. He has not married so far, but he is young, and maybe his time will come to settle down a bit, soon.

  Mr. Sherrill calls on my Mama every Tuesday without fail. They sit and talk, or sometimes he brings his guitar along and sings some tunes, and she brings him a cool drink in the summer and coffee in the winter, and he keeps her in firewood and other things now that Harland is gone. Melissa is a pretty much grown girl now, and is wishing she had a fellow, and I know she writes to Harland every week.

  It’s lonely here in the fort. Mrs. Page comes by for coffee now and then. Mostly I just raise my children and cook and clean, flirt with Jack and enjoy his company, and read aloud the books he gives me for silly holidays he makes up. Like, Oh, here’s a gift for The Third Tuesday in October, didn’t you know that’s a holiday? Well, I bought you a book. He is amazing.

  I sent Mason money to buy a few new brood heifers last spring, to get new blood into our stock. Almost every cow on the place is carrying a calf, and I can’t wait to see the new strain come through. I have enlarged my ranch land by another three hundred acres to the east plus a straight out purchase of the six hundred-forty acres that was the old Raalle homestead. I deeded the best quarter of that homestead to Melissa Raalle, so she will have a legacy of some sort, seeing she is an orphan and utterly alone in this world.

  I have tried to write some letters for her, to retrace her family and see if there is any kin anywhere on this continent, but the name Raalle seems to start and stop with her, and no one in the state of Louisiana has the name or knows of them. She was so little she doesn’t remember where she lived before that, only that it was a white house near a green field, and that they had a brown cow that her mother milked twice a day. I have written a letter addressed to a Bureau of Missing Persons in the Kingdom of Norway. It is where I remember Mr. Raalle saying he was from the very first time we spoke. I have no idea if there is such a bureau there, but I am hoping that with time it may fall into the hands of someone in an official position who may be able to help us locate some of Melissa’s kin.

  January 7, 1892

  This morning we took a look at a piece of land on which to build a house. It is close in to town, on the southern tip, down by Sixth Street near where the Apaches used to have a regular horse race from a big mesquite tree to the fort. It apparently doesn’t take much prodding to hold a horse race, as they are always eager to wager a bet on their favorite horse and rider. Anyway, this piece of land is not too big, barely half an acre, but Jack says people don’t go for huge spreads in town, otherwise it wouldn’t be a town, just a gathering place. As far as I’m concerned, that’s town enough for me, and I don’t care for the closeness of people or the new fashioned sewer system they have put in, or the taxes you have to pay each year either, for that matter.

  We are going to draw up some pictures of a house, and Harland will convert them into real drawings he says will get us a grand place like we want.

  January 8, 1892

  That Jack Elliot is a low down cussed mule headed skunk. This is not Army business and he has no reason at all to be headed off on some bandit roundup the town Marshal has cooked up. This is just pure disregard for all reason. Why he thinks he has to go, there is no explanation, and he has not given it any thought himself either
. Just that the Army is giving him leave to take some men and head off after some banditos or whatever they call them in the north of Arizona Territory, and see if they can round them up. It is one thing to be at the mercy of the U. S. Army. It is entirely another thing to take off on a whim, with me home with these four children, left to worry and now to see to the starting of a house.

  I am packing up my children and going to spend a week at the ranch. That new house will have to wait until there is a man to see to it. I suppose I should be thankful for the time he does spend here, and I am, but this time I know he could refuse if he wanted to. January in Cottonwood was always a cold and wet month, and I’m sure all of the north territory is cold and wet, and he will be miserable. It aggravates me that he laughed and said, I’m glad to know you’ll miss me.

  You have responsibilities here, I said. Missing you has nothing to do with it. But even as I said those words, I got that old hurting feeling I have always felt when he is too far away.

  January 21, 1892

  We had been back in town three days when Jack came home this time, thin and ragged looking. He got angry when I brought the doctor in, but was polite to him. He stayed in bed for one full day, and then pronounced that he was well, and indeed his mood at least was improved, although he still carries a terrible cough.

  Tonight Jack told us the oddest story. It seems while they were riding through some rugged country full of strange rock shapes they stopped at a trading post called Hubbell’s. It was all that was left of an old Army fort on the northeastern plateau. There he spotted Blue Horse, dressed differently, with his hair grown long and acting like he didn’t speak English. Jack watched the other men around to see if they recognized him, but they didn’t seem to at all. Jack was going to tell Blue Horse that he understood why he left, but he went quickly out a door and disappeared.