Chapter 8

I had many things to take care of at our home. The first thing was to plan a way to set up the windmill and showers. My girls were busy giving presents to everyone, and telling everything what they had seen at Momma's house. Everyone loved the shoes and clothes they had gotten.

I gave Mac some ammunition for his rifle and pistol. I gave Lamar and Eldon the Savage rifles I had bought along with some ammunition and told them it was for them and their brothers and their families.

I showed them about the shotguns, they were impressed with what a shotgun would do.

After all the gifts were distributed, I had a talk with Mac and told him about the windmill and shower plans that I had. He said that he would help and we set the plans for mill placement and shower placement, as well as drainage.

We broke out the tools and staked out the placement. We set the windmill up and placed the pickup in a pool that we made a small rock dam to keep full. We built a platform from logs and set two of the plastic drums up to hold the water on a high enough level for the water to flow well, about 15 feet above the level of the shower. We set up a metal drum above the shower to be a warm water reservoir for the shower. I was still trying to figure out a hot water system. For now we would just heat water in a big pot and warm up the water in the drum above the shower.

I set up a showerhead and a valve to turn it on and off. After about a week of mostly working on it, we had a working shower. We rigged up a dry well for the shower drainage. Those new shovels were really coming in handy.

We also rigged up a spigot near the houses to allow for less water carrying.

I got kisses from all my wives and mothers-in-law as well as my wives sisters-in-law. Maggie looked at that and said, "Don't you go looking at those other women."

I laughed and said, "I can barely take care of my own women and you are worried about me looking at more."

Betsy said, "I don't feel 'barely taken care of'." The others nodded agreement.

"I love you all," I said as I hugged them.

I went to work on the farm, and planted about a third of my corn seed, as well as some peas and tomatoes and a few native grains. I wanted to increase the number of apple and pear trees that we had in our grove. I had to keep the stock from grazing on the small trees, but other than that I had little trouble starting more apples and pears from the seeds we had.

Pet was the only animal we had that was young enough to really work, so I had a talk with Mac and we decided to make a try at getting a couple of the wild horses to use for farm work.

Eddie died that summer.

Lena presented me with a beautiful dark haired daughter after about 5 hours of hard labor. I hugged her, kissed her sweaty face and asked what she wanted to name my beautiful daughter. She said that she wanted to name her after my Grandma Vincent, so Lucy got her name.

Neither Betsy nor Sherry had gotten pregnant, and were a little sad about it. I apologized to them and explained that I knew it was my fault and hoped that they could give me a child sometime in the future. "You are both still young and beautiful. I know that I will not tire of trying to give you my child," I said. They both smiled at that.

My brothers-in-law kept us in meat that summer while learning about their new rifles, so I didn't have to hunt. I took all the new autoloaders out and tried them out, and set the sights. They were not as accurate as the bolt actions but would place a bullet very close to the point of aim out to about 250 yards. The Hi-Point pistols that I had bought the girls were very dependable and simple. They were not target guns, but were accurate enough for self defense, and shot every time.

Mac, three of the girl's brothers, Lamar, Eldon and Joseph (Joe for short), and I went on our horse capturing expedition. Mac took us where Ollie and he had caught Mel their old mare, Bossy and Pet's mother. We set a snubbing post into the ground, and waited to try and catch a mare or two.

Everyone practiced roping so we might stand a chance to get a horse.

Early the next morning, a herd of what I presumed was onagers came into the water hole. These animals were large, and weighed around 1000 pounds. We decided to try to catch a Jenny.

As they were leaving, Joe and Eldon both managed to get a rope on a Jenny. We quickly went to their rescue as they both thought they had roped a tornado. We got a couple of ropes on each of the Jennys and tired them off.

Mac had broken a horse or two and we relied heavily on his experience. We made a halter for each of the burros and then snubbed the biggest one off. She choked herself down and we got a halter on her and let her calm down for about a day while tied to the post. After several false starts we got her calm enough to work with and finally got her to lead, while we let the second one calm down. The smaller of the two was bagged up and we figured we might find a little one shortly.

The next morning, sure enough, a little one was sucking on his momma. She was tired and thirsty and was fairly easily taught to lead so we took her down to the water for a drink.

The little one was a jack so that became his name. His mother was Jenny and the larger of the two was named Alice. After camping out for a week I was ready to go home so we led our new livestock to the house.

My girls all thought Jack was very cute, and had him very tame in just a few days. I told them to quit spoiling him with fruit, but they ignored me.

We came to find out that the sun would warm up the water in the big drum if we let it sit all day, so I put a second drum up there for a little bigger supply of warm water. So we had warm showers in the afternoon. At least until fall.