Chapter 25

Day 109 - Tuesday, August 17, 1847

We got on the road early, after another of Mina's wonderful breakfasts. We let Rawhide ride the horse Tommy had been riding and Tommy rode behind Mindy. I don't think he or Mindy either one minded that.

The road was mostly down hill today and we made a lot better time than we had in a while. I think we probably made close to seventeen miles for the day. M & M rode on either side of Rawhide for most of the day.

Every once in a while, I'd hear Sam and Rawhide bantering back and forth with each other. It seemed like Sam sparked the irascible cowboy and he did the same to her. Her insults would have inspired a fight if she had been a man. His would have called forth my ire if I hadn't known Sam was enjoying the exchange.

I asked Sam about it later and she said, "I don't know what it is, Ed. In some ways he reminds me of my grandfather and that's the kind of relationship we had before he died."

I really didn't care what the reason was, Sam seemed more animated than I had seen her in a while. I liked that.

As we were eating supper, Rawhide said, "So you guys are planning to start a ranch in Oregon. Do you have everything planned out?"

"Not really, Rawhide. We plan to do a lot of talking with people this winter and we hope to be a lot better prepared by the time we're ready to leave next spring."

"Are you gonna go with 'em?" Rawhide asked Stu.

"I don't know," Stu said. "They haven't asked me."

"Stu, would you like to go to Oregon with us?" Andy asked.

"I think I'd like that, Andy. What about you, Rawhide? Are you gonna go with 'em?"

"They haven't asked me," he said.

"Why you cross eyed old sidewinder, you know we'd want you to go with us, if you're not too tied up with your ranch in Ohio," Sam said.

"Well, since you asked so nicely, little missy, I just might take a notion to see what Oregon is like."

Sam's eyes were shining when she looked at him and said, very seriously, "We'd love to have you along, Rawhide."

The older man looked embarrassed, then asked, "How many head of cattle are you thinking about taking through with you?"

"Well, it depends. We can afford to take quite a few head and still outfit ourselves very nicely. How many would you recommend?" I asked.

"There's a lot to think about. How many people are gonna be living on the ranch? How much are you expectin' ta get for your critters?"

"I think there's about thirteen of us here right now. The ranch would have to support that many people."

"Let's talk a mite about that. I've worked on enough trail drives and the like to know about what it takes to feed a crew. For that amount of folks, it'll take six or eight hundred dollars to feed them for a year, even figuring us supplying most of the meat. It'd take another hundred for powder and lead and another hundred for clothes. I have no idear what it'd cost for notions or for fancy women's stuff."

"From what I hear, cattle are selling for a hundred dollars a head in Oregon," Andy said.

"I've heard that too," Stu said.

"Yep. I've heard them yarns too. Trouble is, Them kind of prices ain't gonna last. I'd say you were gonna need at least a hundred head of cattle to support you with new calves ever year," Rawhide said.

"I was figuring on taking more like five hundred to a thousand head with us," I said.

Rawhide and Stu sat there in stunned silence for a while. Finally, Rawhide said, "It'd take a heap of money to buy that many cattle."

"Yeah, we could do it. How many men would it take to drive five hundred cattle from here to Oregon?"

"Well, on the ranch I worked on, we'd have had at least a dozen men for a drive. You might get away with less, but I wouldn't bet on it," Rawhide said.

"We've got five men right here," I said. "We've also got three or four spunky girls that could help. Sam's not going to be much help as she's going to have a new addition to our family by then and she'll be tied up taking care of the baby."

Rawhide looked over at Sam and grinned. "She wouldn't a been much help anyway," he said.

Day 110 - Wednesday, August 18, 1847

We got a nice early start and traveling was much easier, but we still only made fifteen or so miles for the day. We passed through Charleston and stopped to stock up on food. Of course the women all had to look at everything in the general store as well.

Rawhide, Stu and I talked a bit more about people and supplies as we rode. "So," I said, "If we have five men and three women now, we'd need about six more men for a trail drive?"

"That'd about do it," Rawhide said.

"Okay, I figure it's going to take around three hundred pounds of food per person. That's three wagon loads for just food, then there has to be three drivers, which ups it to four wagon loads for food and four drivers. With that many people, Andy is going to be hunting full time, so add one more drover," I said.

"You're gonna want at least one wagon for furniture and a chuck wagon, so that's two more drivers. It just keeps growing," Stu said.

"Add another wagon for tools and things like seeds for planting a garden. The chuck wagon can haul all of our cooking utensils and the drovers' gear. We might even need one more for just odds and ends," I said.

"That makes fifteen men we'd have to hire," I said. "That'd make eight wagons. We'd probably need a guide as well."

"I just don't see how you could afford to do all that," Stu said.

"Well, Andy has some money, and Sam, Cassie, Delia and I have quite a bit in a bank in Boston. I'm sure we could finance it."

"I closed out ma and pa's bank account before everything went to hell. I'd like to buy in to that extent," Stu said.

"If'n I can get anything out of this ranch in Ohio, I'll throw that in," Rawhide said just as Sam rode up.

"I knew you couldn't be all bad, old man," Sam said with a big grin. Rawhide grinned back at her.

"Well, you see folks, I left home neigh on to forty years ago. There were a passel of us kids and I don't rightly remember all of them. I was the youngest of the bunch. Most of them had left home by the time I was old enough to remember," Rawhide said as we were eating supper that evening.

M & M had been bugging Rawhide to tell them about himself. "I guess I was around fourteen or fifteen when I ran away from home. I was a young pup that thought he knew it all. I was gonna make my fortune before I was twenty and I'd go back and show them that living and working on a farm was just a way to grow old."

"Did you make your fortune?" Mandy asked.

Rawhide laughed and shook his head. "Child, that was around 1807. There were fortunes to be made, but not for a young sprout who only knew how to work on a farm. That's what I did for most of the first year I was on my own. I worked on someone else's farm."

"What did you do after that?" Mindy asked.

"Well now, let's see. I spent two winters trapping furs. At least I made enough at that to buy myself a horse and saddle. I hunted one year and supplied meat to an army post up in Ohio. I worked on a steamboat as a deck hand for a while. It must have been nearly thirty years ago when I went with a group of men to Texas."

"Texas must have been really wild country back then," I said.

"Not as wild as you'd expect. There weren't all that many white men there, but the Spaniards got along just fine. The group I was with looked around a while and decided to head back east, but I liked the country and I liked the way the people lived. I met a man by the name of Don Diego Alvorada. He owned a big ranch and when I told him I wanted to stay in Texas, he offered me a job."

"Is that where you were the whole time you were out there?" Sam asked.

"Pretty much. Don Diego died about ten years ago, but his son, Don Eduardo took over and ran the place just as well as his father had."

He sat, lost in thought for a few minutes, then he continued. "I had written home several times and ma had written back to me. Several years ago I got a letter from some preacher saying ma and pa had died. Either he didn't know about my brothers and sisters or he just didn't say."

Sam moved over beside him and put her arm around his shoulder. He smiled and patted her hand.

"Did you work on a Spanish ranch, Stu?" I asked.

"No, I worked for a guy who hadn't been in Texas much longer than I had. He went there not long after the Alamo. He started out rounding up wild longhorns. As a matter of fact, we still did a good deal of that even now."

"Did you like the Texas country?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, I liked it okay. The work was hard and the brush would tear you to pieces when we were rounding up cattle, but I liked it."

"Most anything we do now days is hard work," I said. "I'm sure ranching in Oregon isn't going to be easy, but it shouldn't be as hard as Texas."

Andy looked almost like he was dreaming when he said, "Yeah, I know this one valley that would make a beautiful ranch. It's about twelve or thirteen miles long and about two miles wide. Grass grows waist deep and there's plenty of water. The only problem with it is that it's a long way from any settlement."

"That wouldn't bother me." I said. Everyone else agreed with me.

Day 111 - Thursday, August 19, 1847

Everyone was in a good mood this morning. Sam and Rawhide were going at each other and were keeping the rest of us laughing. Another reason for our good mood was that we knew we were only a couple of days from the free states.

We made sixteen miles for the day, even though we were delayed at our nooning. We were all eating lunch when a group of four men rode into our noon camp. They dismounted and accepted our offer of coffee.

"I'm Jim Higgins," the leader said.

"I'm Ed Hill. Where are you boys going?" I asked.

"We're just checking people who come through. We're looking for runaway slaves."

"We got stopped several times a week or so ago," I said. "It seems there had been two males and a female who had run away."

"Oh, they caught that bunch," he said. "They got them a couple of days ago trying to get across the river up around Pomeroy."

"What'd they do with them?" I asked.

"The males got thirty-nine lashes each and the female got nineteen. One of the males was shipped to Alabama and the other was shipped to Georgia. The female was sent back to the plantation they escaped from."

I shook my head and said, "You'd think they'd learn."

"Where are you folks headed," Higgins asked.

"We're on our way to Missouri. Our farm, down around Richmond, just played out. We couldn't get a good crop to save our lives. My brother has a farm in Missouri and he says there's plenty of land for the taking."

Higgins nodded and said, "Yeah, I've heard that. There's a lot of talk about outlawing slavery in Missouri though. You might be careful or you might lose yours."