Chapter 23

"Stop where you are, Arnold," I shouted.

"Right, and give you a chance to reload?"

Arnold was coming steadily toward me, so I stood up to meet him. When he saw me, he changed directions slightly so he was coming straight at me. "You are one dead Indian, Tackett," he said.

"I don't want to have to kill you, Arnold. Stop where you are and put down your gun."

Arnold was within about twenty feet of me now. I was just standing there, my revolver hanging from my right hand. When he started raising his single shot pistol to point at me, I didn't know what else to do, so I shot him. I just shot once. My slug hit him in the center of his chest and he fell forward onto his face.

The camp had roused from the time I had fired my first shot. I could see people running out from camp, so I holstered my revolver and walked over beside Arnold's body.

John was the first person to come running up. When he saw it was me standing over Arnold, he holstered his pistol and came on more slowly. Ab and Caleb weren't too far behind John. I don't know what I looked like, but I had that empty feeling that George Kent had described when he shot Abe Wilkes.

I explained to everyone what had happened. Ab looked at the pistol, still clutched in Arnold's dead hand, and said he thought it was obvious I was telling the truth. Everyone agreed.

Millie and Lettie had come up right after the main group of men. They said they'd go and tell Mrs. Arnold. "Tell her Timmy wasn't with him and that he's probably okay," I told them.

Millie told me later that Mrs. Arnold didn't seem too upset by the death of her husband and that she said she figured Timmy would show up by morning. She was right on that.

After all of the hubbub had died down, we snuggled together in our wagon. I laid awake for a while. Arnold was the first man I ever killed and I hoped he would be the last. Eventually exhaustion overcame me and I slept.

June 15, 1845

When I awoke, I almost panicked. I was lying between Millie and Lettie, but there was no sign of Abby. I started to get up, then I heard her laughing and talking with Tess, outside our wagon.

Millie and Lettie both grabbed me and pulled me back down, where they did a right nice job of kissing me. I'll admit I was kissing back. The only thing I regretted about Abby being with us was that I didn't have as much time to spend alone with my wives.

Ab came around before we had even started eating breakfast. "I've been talking with Mrs. Arnold," he said. "She says her husband doesn't deserve a funeral, but we're going to have a short one anyway. I had a talk with the Reverend Green and I told him if the ceremony lasted more than fifteen minutes, we'd start burying Arnold whether he was finished or not. Hopefully that will help."

"Since I'm the one who killed him, I don't feel it would be appropriate for me to attend," I told him.

Ab nodded. "Would you tell Mrs. Arnold I feel very bad about this?"

"Yeah, I'll tell her. I think she'll understand, Jase."

Pris was right about Timmy. He came riding in during the funeral, riding one horse and leading another one. Ab told me later that Timmy had heard the shots last night and that when his father didn't come back, he knew his father had been killed.

I took off before the funeral even started to scout the trail ahead. The route for the day was an easy one. I reached the headwaters of the Sweetwater and headed for the Little Sandy River. Grass was very scarce and I ended up having to go farther than I normally would have before I found a suitable place to camp for the night. It was a long day, but we made twenty-two miles and camped at a place Ab told me was called Pacific Spring.

Pris brought Timmy around after supper and made him apologize for the name calling and for all him and his father had done.

Lettie slept under the wagon with Abby and Millie and I made sweet, gentle love.

June 16, 1845

While the women were fixing breakfast, Abby came over and sat on my lap. "I heard you and Mama Millie last night after you went to bed," she whispered to me.

"Oh, you did?" I asked.

"Yeah, you were quieter than normal, but I still heard you."

"Maybe we should pour wax in your ears so you can't hear as well," I teased.

Abby giggled then said, "I like it when I hear you. It lets me know that you love each other."

"That we do, Abby. You know we all love you too, don't you?"

"I know that," she said and then she kissed me on the cheek. "Losing pa and ma was hard, but knowing you all love me has made it easier."

I hugged her close and just held her until Millie called us to breakfast.

We had another good travel day and made eighteen miles. This took us to the Little Sandy River. I found us a good spot to camp with plenty of grass, wood, and water.

Millie invited Ab to have supper with us that evening and we talked a while about the desert area we were coming up to. After supper, Pris came over again. I really like this lady. She's really a nice person.

"So, what are your plans now?" Millie asked Pris as the rest of us listened.

"Well, we're certainly not going back east," she said. "All of my family are dead. If we went back close to Sam's family, they'd want to get involved in our lives and I don't want that. They're all worse than Sam was."

"Do you have any idea of what you want to do in Oregon?" Millie asked.

"Not really. Sam wanted to start a farm. I'm not into farming and a woman couldn't do much on her own at farming anyway. I could teach school and that's what I may end up doing."

Millie told Pris about the ranch we were starting, then she asked Ab what he was planning to do in the long run.

"Well, like I told you guys before, I have a little valley all staked out for my own. I plan to raise horses and cattle after I settle down. I figure with two more years of trapping, I'll have enough money to buy the stock I'll need to get started."

"How old are you, Ab?" Millie asked.

"I'm twenty eight."

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

Ab laughed and said, "No, and I don't need your help in finding one, young lady."

We all got a laugh out of that.

Lettie and Abby slept under the wagon again.

June 17, 1845

We only had to travel six miles to reach the Big Sandy River. Since that was the jumping off place for our trip across the desert, we camped there.

When I rode back to meet the wagons, Ab was out front as usual. Riding beside him was Timmy. I pulled in beside them to tell Ab that the Big Sandy was just a few miles ahead.

As I was getting ready to go find my wives, Timmy said, "I really am sorry for everything I said before and for everything pa did, Mr. Tackett."

"I can understand it, Timmy. We all tend to think how our parents teach us to think. It must have been hard on you with your pa trying to teach you to think one way and your ma trying to teach you a different way."

"I guess sometimes it was, Mr. Tackett. I loved my pa, but I know he didn't give you a choice in what you did."

"Please call me Jase. I'm not that much older than you. No, he really didn't give me a choice. I'm still sorry it happened though."

"He told me he was gonna kill you, but he wanted to kill your wife first. He said that'd make you suffer."

I didn't tell Timmy, but now I was glad I had killed the bastard.

Ab said we wouldn't be moving again until the next afternoon, so we made the most of our leisure time. Millie said she wanted a bath and Lettie and Tess agreed, so we all took off upstream to see if we could find a suitable spot. The river was low and in most places not more than eighteen inches deep.

We finally found a place that was almost four feet deep, so we stripped and got into the water. We had all soaped ourselves up and were just enjoying the feel of the water, when something hit me in the back and knocked me under.

I came up with a laughing, shrieking little girl clinging to my back. I managed to pull her around in front of me, then I threw her as far as I could. I'll swear the girl is part fish. She burst out of the water and started toward me like a ship under full sail.

At the last minute, she went under water, and the next thing we knew, she had pulled Millie under with her. This started an all out water fight. We all had a ball.

We moved our livestock several times that day and the next morning to give them the best graze possible. Most people did the same. We also spent some time filling all of the water barrels.

Pris and Timmy came around again that evening. All Timmy could talk about was Ab. I noticed him and Abby talking. She told me later that he had apologized for what he had said to her. "He said that Ab told him that Grandma Tackett is a very smart woman and that she knows a lot about medicine," Abby told me.

We talked with Pris for a while, but she left before long. She said she was going to thank Ab for talking with Timmy.

I think we were all feeling the need for closeness. We all slept together in the wagon and cuddled together like a litter of puppies.

June 18, 1845

Well, the day started off well, with me snuggled with my two lovely wives and Abby cuddling with all of us. I would always remember this as the longest day of my life though. We got up as we normally would and the women fixed breakfast. I would be staying with the wagons today as Ab said the route through the desert was well marked.

We all talked for a while about the ranch and about the day ahead of us. Abby sat on my lap and Millie and Lettie snuggled to either side of me. I was worried about getting our livestock across the desert. We now had half a dozen hogs, 49 cows and as Millie liked to remind me, one very happy bull, fifteen horses, twenty-four oxen, ten mules and one milk cow with a calf.

"Has anyone noticed if the bull has been mounting any of the cows?" I asked.

"Yes, big time," Millie said. "I've seen him mount at least six of them."

"I've noticed more than that," John said.

"Then we should have calves being born not long after we get to Oregon," I said.

"Well, I think a cow takes around ten months after breeding," John said. "Hogs, on the other hand, only take around four months. If one of the sows Lettie or Abby had was bred right after we left Missouri, it's quite possible we'll have one or more litters of pigs before we reach Oregon."

"Let's hope not," I said. "I'd hate to think what we'd have to do if we had a litter while we were still traveling."