A Covered Wagon Trek
As a teenager, my mother lived on a horse ranch along the
Oklahoma /Arkansas border. Her stepfather was having some success
raising Hambletonian race horses. Her real father had died when she
was a baby, and her mother had struggled to support herself and her
two children for 7 years before she had remarried. Her stepfather,
King, had tried first one farm then another in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas
and Oklahoma, with little success. But he seemed to have a gift with
raising trotters. He was finally making headway.
Then, one night, all that changed. The barn burned, and almost
all the stock with it. The screams of the horses were horrible as
they writhed and reared on the other side of the barred door that was
too engulfed in flames to go near.
In the morning, my mother and her parents, her two younger halfbrothers and the hired hands mourned the loss of the animals they had
known and loved, and the livelihood they had provided. Examination of
the ruins showed that their pet donkey, that could unbolt any gate and
untie any knot, had in fact untied all the horses and opened their
stalls to get them out of the inferno, but was stymied by the exterior
barn door, barred from the outside. A charred dune of horseflesh
stood testament inside the burned door. Everyone was devastated. The
family was essentially destitute.
There was nothing left for them here. They would lose the ranch.
They would lose everything. They would have to start over, and they
had nothing to start over with except their own spirits, and
determination. They took stock of what they had. The fire had not
reached the house. They would sell their furnishings, and just keep
enough of the essentials to survive. They had a good stout wagon,
with a canvas canopy. They had two team of oxen that had been in the
pasture during the fire, and a few cows, chickens and pigs. My
mother’s older brother, Albert, had left home the year before, and
gone to California to work for the railroad. He wrote that California
re ally was the land of milk and honey. They packed what they could
into the wagon, and turned their back on Arkansas. It was the spring
of 1914.
They traveled through Kansas and Colorado, and although they
didn’t have to contend with hostile Indians or bandits, their passage
was not easy, nor were they greeted kindly along the way. Unlike the
pioneers of the previous century, who crossed open plains, with
plentiful grazing available, they could seldom travel across country,
but followed rough roads and unpaved highways, hemmed by barbed wire
fences, with only patches of grasses here and there to feed their
stock. As they crossed the Rockies, the weather was hot, the water
scarce, and hospitality non-existent. They had to buy every drop of
water or morsel of grain or hay for their animals, and their own
supplies of food were nearly gone. As was their cash.
They had been traveling two days since their oxen had had a real
feed, and the poor animals, thin from the weeks of hauling the wagon,
were exhausted. The straggling cows had long since ceased giving
significant milk. King thought they had left Colorado behind, and was
glad of it. They had received not a civil word nor a helping hand
from a human in the whole state. Even the dogs were vicious.
They
were now proceeding down a steep canyon road, and could occasionally
catch glimpses and hints that a broad valley lay ahead and below them.
Then, downhill and off to the right, they saw an approaching wagon,
pulled by four horses, and driven by a bearded man in a dusty flat
brimmed hat.
The wagon was piled high with hay.
As his wagon
reached the main road, the man reined in and waited for their trudging
oxen to come even with him. King halted the oxen and climbed down
from the wagon and hailed the bearded man. He asked if he could buy
some hay for his stock.
The man removed his hat, wiped his forehead and neck with his
bandanna, squinted at the sun, hocked and spat, looked down at King
and said, ‘You sure as hell can’t buy any of my hay.’
The whole family thought, ‘Oh, no. Not again.’ This is the way
they had been treated for weeks. Biting his tongue, King turned to
their wagon. But before he could lift himself back to the seat, the
bearded man reached for his pitch fork, clamped to his rack and
climbed on top of the mound and began forking down huge loads of
golden hay to the ground before the oxen. ‘You can’t buy my hay, but
you can have as much as you need for that sorry looking bunch of
critters.’ Then he turned to my mother and her little brothers and
pointed behind him, ‘Young’uns, there’s a spring of cool water just
beyond those green willows. Lead your cows there and bring pails of
water back here for the oxen. It’s a little rough to take the wagon
there. We’ll just unhitch the team and give them a rest for a while.
They look like they've been pullin' a piece.’
The family was overwhelmed. After weeks of hardship, to be
greeted with this kindness brought lumps to their throats and tears to
their eyes.
After the cattle had eaten and been watered and were rested
sufficiently, the team was re-hitched, and the generous farmer asked
little Oliver and Frank to ride with him, which meant my mother could
ride in their wagon, instead of walk, as she had done for the last
thousand miles or so. He insisted that the family follow him down to
his farm. He would not hear of them going further, nor would he let
them camp outside, as they had done for these months. There would be
a nourishing supper and hot baths in the nickel plated tub behind the
screen in the kitchen. His wife and daughters scurried and clucked to
make them comfortable. His sons saw to their stock, corralling them
and feeding them extra grain. His children slept that night on the
floor so that tired strangers could sleep in good beds on clean
sheets.
This was Mona, Utah. Mount Nebo towered to the east. These were
the first Mormons my mother had met. This was not Colorado. This was
not California. But it would be home for a while.