Chapter 11

Reesa was getting heavier and heavier with the baby coming in the early spring time. She felt well most days and was able to keep up with the twelve children in the school house. She asked to have a replacement to take over teaching the students by March fifteenth. The school committee sent a replacement out from Ferris town and that teacher would finish out the school year. Ressa would again begin the new year in the fall. The woman teacher stayed in the room which had been Ressa’s until she and I married. She wasn’t there weekends, returning to her family on the other side of Ferris Town.

The six kids who belonged to the wood chopper families where exceptional students. The two mothers worked with their children every night after school so they could learn their lesions. It showed up in Margaret and Minny’s speech as well. Even the men were shedding some of their hillbilly language.

By this time Dean was up when Reesa was in the house full time. Dean missed having Reesa read to him, but she took care of that by making him, read his own stories from the books she supplied from the town library. “Here Dean,” she would say, “This books tells about different cattle breeds. Read up on them and maybe you will want to buy a couple bulls that will make our cattle heavier. Dave thinks it may pay off. You can talk it over with him.”

The baby was supposed to be born in the middle of May and it was. I was at the saw mill with the two men, Josh and Earl, from Kentucky. Bridget came riding in on a mule. “Hey Dave, your wife is having your baby. I grabbed Pa’s mule to come let you know.”

“How come you came. I thought this was your day to fry donuts for the town bakery.”

“Pa is frying the last ones. Nina and Mable tell me the baby will be born before you get there. Now you be careful, there’s not that of a much hurry.”

I did hurry a little more than usual. Behind me, Bridget had climbed onto the lumber pile and was helping her brothers stick boards as I mounted my horse. It was a good thing I was sticking pine boards today and not the dimension timbers. Still, boards 14 and 16 inches wide and 16 feet long were hefty enough.

I slowed down before I reached the house. Dean was sitting on the porch as I pulled up. “Dave, I got me a grandson. Reesa is making me proud. You could name it after me.”

“Sorry, Dad, Ressa has picked another name if it was a boy. We are going to name him Oliver after Ma’s maiden name.”

“Well I guess I can live with that.” I didn’t say anything about a middle name. I’d let Ressa tell Pa that there was going to be Dean after Oliver and before Ferris. I went into the house and into the downstairs bedroom where we had planned for the birth was to happen. Ressa looked a little tired but very happy. The baby was asleep in her arms.

“Dave, I had no trouble at all. I didn’t send word sooner for I knew you were busy, I sent word with Bridget. Mama was here and Mable was standing by to keep Dean from worrying, I’m glad you came, though. Do you have to go back to work today?”

“No, and tomorrow either. I’m staying home to see my son.”

“Good, tomorrow would be a good day to get Dean on a horse. Mama thinks he is ready. You can ride out with him to one of the closer herds.”

“I’ll plan on it. Bridget has her baking done for the week so maybe she will want to earn wages sticking lumber. She said she had done that before and I could see she has.”

“That will free you up to ease your father into taking over the cattle. He has been anxious to get back out on the range.”

“It will do him good if he doesn’t get too hot under the collar like he used to. I haven’t seen any of that since he was able to get on his feet.”

“I’ve been talking to him about that all the while since he got so we could talk and understand each other. He knows what he can and can’t do when Mama and the doctor explained what caused his stroke, I do believe he has learned his lesson.

“Reesa, I’ll get Pa to come in and see his grandson.”

“Too late, Mama showed Oliver to him right after she and Mable cleaned him up. I hope you don’t mind, but your Pa kissed me on the cheek and has congratulated me already.”

“And well he should.”

My father, Dean, was a changed man. He had given up losing his temper with the hands and stopped micro managing them. He usually went out and gave orders about the cattle on the range and returned for a second cup of coffee. Reesa had fed Oliver by this time and Pa would hold him for a few minutes and then leave for where ever the hands were working cattle. I commented on that fact just once. “Hell the men have been with me for years. They know the ranch and they know as much as I do. This sending cattle by the carload is what has improved ranching tenfold.”

This left me time to tend to the logging operation. I didn’t go into the woods very often, for there was no need. Matt talked to me about one change he wanted to make in our original agreement. He hit me with it, when he said, “You know those small trees and short top logs are a bane on our efficiency? Most of them we saw into railroad ties. It isn’t hardly worth bringing them down out of the woods rolling, that short log onto the carriage, and running the big saw through them four passes. Same amount of work for sixteen foot log with 400 feet of dimension lumber in it.

“Why don’t you see that Palmer fellow you know that has a handle on everything. Have him look for a small steam engine and you purchase a small mill to saw them out.

“You could use some of your men part time to run it. Pay them wages and they could make a little more than them cutting wood and selling it. You could learn to saw the logs into ties yourself. I can break Matt Junior loose to teach you to become a sawyer. The ties are all the same size, for the trains are standard width. My choppers in the woods have been stacking these small logs along beside the roads ever since we started.

“The older logs of that size where we first began cutting are ready to be picked up. Use two of your men to clean up where they find them by loading them onto a sled and bring them close by your lumber piles. Saw them and stack them and I won’t charge you a penny for them.

“We are getting into some really good timber now and there is an immediate sale where most of what we saw will go on railcars and be shipped. It is a waste to run the big saw to saw such small logs. You don’t owe me for too much of the lumber you have been stacking, and you’re getting a considerable amount of income for what we are shipping.

“You know, I might finish logging all your timberland in six years instead of the eight I quoted you. Think about it and talk it over with your Pa and Palmer. Get their slant on what changes you need to do to handle it. My wife is looking forward to when I finish this job.”

Randy Palmer was the person who was the one to help me decide what I needed for a steam engine to power the mill I needed. It came with the drive equipment I needed to hitch the mill and engine together, Pa thought it too expensive to buy, but I overrode his concern. It was a unit to last me a lifetime if I hired the right person to run and service it. Here again Matt found this man for me.

I didn’t explain to Pa that I had my eye on another three thousand acres of woodland that were adjacent and south of the acres that I had the logging permits for timber we were cutting now. This was of different make-up of trees than the mixed hardwood and softwood that we were harvesting now. The new timber lot I was looking at had been burned over 150 to 200 years ago all at one time. There were great stands of Oak and Hemlock growing on it.

There was a large section of pine that had been ready to harvest twenty years ago. The huge stand was seeded in from trees of from the old growth that didn’t burn. These old trees were well past their prime and when we cut one of them, the centers were rotten. This lot was going to be easier to harvest as the hills were lower and easier to get around on. We wouldn’t be doing as much work keeping the roads in because there would be fewer washouts.

My intent was to go through and thin the stands of trees that would make railroad ties and leave the stands to continue on to grow into more valuable timber. I figured I would still be alive for this to happen when my son would be old enough and of the age ready to take over from me. Matt Hodges planned his life that way and it seemed like a good plan for me and Reesa to follow.

But that was for the future. Reesa and I put that aside for now. We were enjoying our son and I often had time to play with him at the end of the day. Pa did too and Oliver would get excited when he had us both with him. It was difficult for me to understand the change in Pa. It took me thirty years for me before I could look on him as a person I could live comfortably with and like. I knew it was Reesa who had changed him to what he was now and I loved her much more for it. Yes, and she had changed me as well.

The Bruce clan spoke what I called a Hill-Billy patios, and I could drop into it when talking to them, and we understood each other. As the schooling of their children took hold, their language was not so grating on a person’s ears.

The steam engine came and I had it set up out in the open land near where we were stacking lumber. I sent wagons, drays, and sleds into the woods onto all the roads where the logs for the big mill were cut and brought down and sawed these short logs for the best size and use which was a railroad tie. I put both sets of Bruce men and the railroad wood choppers to retrieve the short logs that Matt Hodges crews had left for a later time giving him eight men to work with. They would spend a week at a time and we would have enough short logs for a month of sawing.

I leased mules from Randy Palmer and even asked some of the farmers from Palmer’s side of the valley for extra equipment. It took only a week to bring down the short logs off one whole section of the mountains. I’d plan to have most of them down by snowfall.

These roads often needed repair, especially where they were gullied by the rain and run off from the snow melt in spring. To get to the small logs we often filled these gullies with brush and were able to slide a loaded sled of logs over them. These hills might never be cut over again for a hundred years or more. The landscape was forever changed.

We piled hundreds of these logs on the skid-ways above my small steam powered mill. We brought some of the two year older piles of slabs that were dry, nearer the firebox to fire the steam boiler. I even found a person who had worked firing a steam engine before. He worked for a farmer part time and agreed to work two days a week working for me. This was all the time I could give to this sideline project, myself. Matt Hodges Junior took two weekends to teach me how to make railroad ties out of these logs.

Often I could use a couple of Pa’s cowboys to roll logs onto the saw carriage if he wasn’t moving cattle. Reesa kept track of all of the expenses it took to make the railroad ties. After our first shipment we figured that it was a fifty percent profit. I didn’t have to pay Matt Hodges any of this. Sawing these small logs was almost a loss to him if he cut them at the big sawmill.

There was often one or two boards, and even one piece of dimension limber, ten feet long from each log. Ties were sawn to nine by seven inches, and clipped to eight ft, five inches long. The boards, if any, were odd in length but I could sell all that I had to a farmer building a shed or a barn.

I considered this found money. The whole ranch was making money in one form or another. Most of the operations were going along smoothly. Pa was back from his stroke and with his changed demeanor due to Reesa during his time of recovery, it was a happy household. Mother was happy and Pa would even listen to her if she had something to say. Before the stroke, he would put both Mom and me down.

We had never had a married cow hand before, but there was a wedding in the offing. Bridget Bruce had been using the cook shack to make donuts and the hands hung around there when not out on the range. We all assumed that it was being able to get a donut, but we knew better when Buck, the ranch manager under Pa, now came and asked if he could build a small cabin to put his bride in.

“Buck, when are we going to meet this new bride of yours?”

“Dean, you’ve met her and you see her every day. It is the girl who makes donuts. I can’t really bring her into my foreman’s quarters and winter is coming on soon, and we need a place of our own. The hands said they would help me build something. I’m asking Dave to donate some lumber. We’ll use slabs if we have to, but the boys think he will give me the lumber.”

“Buck, tell Dave I said you can have enough to build something larger than a line camp. Mable and I will give you a stove for a wedding present. Christ before we know it all the hands will be wanting to get married and have their place to live. But I guess that is okay too. Are you married all ready or just going to?”