Chapter 8

March 29, 1845

We did manage to stay in bed until after daylight. It was mom, moving around, getting her cooking fire burning that awakened me. Tess stirred shortly afterwards and when I hugged her she leaned over and gave me a kiss.

"I hope you know I love you, Jase," she said.

"I love you too, Tess."

"What about me?" Millie asked.

"Tess loves you too, Millie," I said with a grin.

Millie started to hit me so I said, "I adore you."

Millie's kiss would have started a prairie fire. "We're going to have to do something, Millie. I don't know how long I can stand us firing each other up like this."

Tess giggled. "The obvious solution is to either get married or to say the hell with it and get married when Millie starts to get big."

"Tess!" Millie exclaimed.

"Well, just think about it, Sis. Every night you two go at it. Every night he rubs your butt or plays with your tits. Every night you moan and groan like you was coming down with the ague or something. Face it, something is going to happen. It's just a matter of time."

"You know she's right, Millie. There was a church in Huntsville when we passed through. That means there should be a parson. Maybe we should just go ahead and get married."

Millie thought for a few minutes then said, "Let's go talk to pap."

I wasn't looking forward to it, but I went along. We were holding hands as we walked up to him. "Pap," Millie said when we got there. "It's awful hard being close to Jase all the time, feeling the way we do, and not being married."

Caleb looked at her then grinned. That's easy to fix, girl, from now on, you can start sleeping in the wagon with me and your ma."

"That ain't gonna happen, Pap. Jase and I are as good as married now. That ain't gonna change. There's a church here in town and if they have a parson, Jase and I would like to get married today."

Caleb looked at me and asked, "What do you say about this, Jase?"

"Caleb, I love your daughter with all of my heart. I just want what's best for her and I think us getting married now may be what's best."

"What about what you said about not wanting to make Millie a fifteen year old widow?"

"We've talked about that some, Caleb. I guess I'll just have to be especially careful."

"Your mind's set on this, Daughter?"

"Yes it is, Pap."

"I'll tell your ma. You should see if you have a pretty dress to wear. I don't want you getting married in buckskins."

Millie threw her arms around Caleb and hugged him until I thought the stuffings were gonna come out. When her and Tess ran off to their wagon to look for a dress, Caleb said, "Take good care of her, Son."

"I'll do my best, Caleb. I'd cut off my right arm before I'd hurt her."

We shook hands and I went to mom and pap's wagon to get my good buckskins.

I told mom and pap what we were doing and they said they wanted to come with us. I changed into my good buckskins and went over to Caleb's wagon.

Caleb and Sally were standing outside. Sally came running to me and gave me a big hug. "You're making my daughter very happy," she told me. "She's been in love with you for at least five years."

"Well, Sally, I feel the same way. It was about that time that I realized I was in love with Millie."

"How are we gonna get all this bunch into town?" Caleb asked.

I was just going to answer him when Ab came walking up. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Millie and I decided we were going to see if there is a parson in town. We'd like to go ahead and get married instead of waiting until we get to Oregon."

"You don't have to go into town to get married," Ab said. "We have a minister right here on our wagon train."

I looked at Caleb and then at Sally. Both of them nodded. "That makes sense to me," I said. "I'll have to ask Millie what she thinks though."

Caleb laughed and said to Ab, "At least he's learned something about women already."

Both men got a good laugh out of that. When Millie came back out, she looked the prettiest I'd ever seen her. I didn't think I could even talk. She came over to me and took my hand. "Are you ready to go to town?" she asked.

I still couldn't get my mouth to work, so Caleb spoke up. "Daughter, Ab says there's a minister right here on the wagon train. Would you rather have our minister do it or would you rather see if there's a minister in town?"

Millie thought for a minute then said, "Pap, I think I'd rather have the minister from the train do it. It seems more like family that way."

We all nodded our agreement then Ab said, "I'll walk around to his wagon and see if he's willing to perform the ceremony."

Ab walked off and Millie, Tess, and I walked a little ways off so we could talk in private. We didn't really have a lot to say, but we did want to be alone.

Before long, we saw Ab coming back with a man dressed in the typical black parson's robes. We had all seen him a few times over the last week although he was not dressed as he was now. I hadn't really talked to him yet as he was toward the back of the wagon train. He introduced himself as the Reverend Nathaniel Green.

"So, you young folks are ready to tie the knot. I suppose you've given this some thought?"

"Yes, Sir," I said. "Millie and I have been in love for years. We were going to wait until we got to Oregon to get married, but we've decided it would be better if we went ahead and did it now."

"Well, um, yes. Okay, let's get set up over by the wagon there," he said, pointing.

He arranged everyone the way he wanted us then proceeded with the ceremony. He started out with a long prayer and then a long sermon. I was almost ready for lunch when he finally got around to the part about getting us married. When he got to the questions, we were ready for him and answered them the way they were supposed to be answered.

Finally, the Reverend Green said, "I now pronounce you husband and wife."

I grabbed Millie and kissed her. She kissed back as well as she received. While the preacher was speaking, there must have been twenty or thirty people who gathered around to watch. When Millie and I kissed, they all started clapping their hands.

When we finally broke apart, almost everyone there had to come up and shake our hands and wish us luck. It seemed like these people all felt like family. We hadn't even met some of them yet, but there was a closeness there that I'd never felt with outsiders before.

I slipped the minister a gold eagle before he left. He looked at it and gave me a big smile.

When all of the hubbub had died down, Millie and I changed back into our regular clothes. We kissed and I asked Millie how it felt to be a married lady.

"It feels right, Jase. It feels like this is the way it should be."

I had to agree. When we got out of the wagon, Caleb was waiting for us. "How would you folks like your own wagon?" he asked.

"That'd be nice, Caleb," I said and looked at Millie. She nodded and smiled.

"Well, I was thinking. Ab says there's a place in town where we could buy bows like hold up the cover on our wagons. He says the guy also has sail cloth for a covering. If we could put a cover on the farm wagon, it'd be just about as good as one of the Conestogas and it's even bigger than they are. It's a foot wider and just as long."

"Are you saying you'd sell us the farm wagon, Caleb?"

"No, I'm saying it can be yours and Millie's wedding present."

Millie was smiling and gripping my arm like she was trying to squeeze it in two. "Well, we thank you kindly. Do you think the bows would fit a wider wagon?"

"Yeah, they'll bend some. Why don't we go in and see the guy? Ab says he's the blacksmith. We could take the farm wagon with us and he can tell us if everything would fit."

"Okay, I think we should take our horses too. We may need to leave the wagon."

We got our horses saddled and the oxen hitched to the farm wagon. We were only about a mile out of town, so the trip in didn't take long. Caleb and I went into the blacksmith's shop to talk with him. I explained to him what we needed while he chewed on a plug of tobacco.

The blacksmith spit out a stream of juice that almost hit a bucket he had for the purpose and said, "Let's take a look at her."

He walked around the wagon and looked it over carefully. Then he looked underneath. "We can do it," he said. "The wagon looks to be in really good shape."

"Could you do it by tomorrow morning and how much is it going to cost?"

"Getting it done by tomorrow morning won't be a problem. I've a couple of growed boys that do all my carpenter work. It will cost a bit though. A regular wagon takes five bows. This'n 'll take six so the bows will cost you $4.00. The cover will cost you ten dollars. It's made out of sail cloth and is stitched all around the outsides. I'd say another five dollars for putting it all together. That'd be nineteen dollars all told."

I looked at Millie and she smiled and nodded. "Let's do it," I said. "Do you want the money in advance?"

"No, I know Ab Smith. He wouldn't have sent you in if you couldn't be trusted. You can pick her up right after sunup in the morning."

We thanked him and mounted up. "He seems like a good man," Caleb said as we rode back to camp. "When we get the wagon back, tomorrow, we'll shuffle some stuff around to give you some more room. There's a couple of barrels and a few other things we can move over to our wagon. Your pap says there's some stuff of his we can move too."

"We don't want to put you guys out, Caleb. We can just move some of the stuff around."

"It won't be putting us out, Son. Besides that, we'll be moving all of Millie's stuff over here and all of your stuff out of your pap's wagon."

When we got back to camp, I asked Millie and Tess if there was anything they could think of that we'd need if we were going to be totally on our own.

"I can think of a few things we should get at the general store," Millie said.

"Yeah, I'd like to look around too," Tess said. "Sometimes you don't remember you need something until you've seen it."

"You mean when you see something you decide you want it?" I teased.

Tess grinned and said, "That too."

We ate some lunch and were just getting ready to go back into town when Ab came by. "I was wanting to talk to you," I said. "We're getting the farm wagon converted into a covered wagon. The blacksmith says we can pick it up right after sunup in the morning. Is that going to hold anything up?"

"No. We probably won't be leaving until around noon anyway. Some of the people here have a lot more to do to be ready. I didn't realize how bad a shape a couple of the wagons were in."

"Well we just didn't want to hold you up. We're gonna go back in town and do some shopping at the general store. Is there anything we can pick up for you?"

"No, but you might want to get yourself a good coil of rope while you're in there. One thing I've learned is that you can never have enough rope when you're on the trail."

"We'll do that, Ab." I said. We shook hands and then we put a packsaddle on Jughead and headed for town.

I hadn't counted our money, but even after paying for the changes to the wagon, I figured we had another twenty-five dollars or so we could spend before we started using the money I'd found on the dead man's horse.

It's a good thing we had money. If you turn two young women loose in a store, it's amazing what they'll find to buy. I can't say they bought anything they didn't think we really needed though. They found some metal cans in sizes from as small as a pint up to five gallons. All of them had lids, so they would be very good to store stuff.

They also bought forty pounds of salt, two pounds of pepper, forty pounds of rice, two pounds of saleratus, and some dried peaches. I told them mom had all of that stuff, but Tess said she had dried apples, but no peaches. "Besides, this is ours," Millie said.

I got a one-hundred foot coil of three-quarter inch hemp rope. I also got an iron grate for putting over our fire for cooking. It had legs that brought it the right height above the fire for cooking. You could also lay steaks right on the grate and cook them without using any pans.

Caleb came around after supper and told us that Sam would still be driving his wagon and that John Ware would still be driving our wagon. "We all agreed we'd help feed him before we left and that hasn't changed either," Caleb said.

After he'd left, Millie asked, "Jase, would it be okay if we waited to make love until tomorrow night? When we're sleeping under the wagon, it just seems like there's too many people who could go by and see us."