Chapter 45

Prudence and Clell showed up right after supper again. We had done the shuffle on the wagons when we circled up, so I knew she didn't want to complain about the Jamisons again.

"Mr. Hill, after the Jamison kids finally quieted down last night, Clell and I thought we were gonna get some sleep. It wasn't to be though."

"What disturbed you, Mrs. Hankins?"

"It was them Jefferson people. Mr. Hill, we could actually hear them fornicating in their wagon. That woman is too old to have babies, so they got no business fornicating."

"Mrs. Hankins, people don't make love just so they can have babies. Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson are a married couple. They have every right to make love whenever they want to."

"Humph. You sound like one of those God forsaken Atheists. God said in the bible that a man and a woman should lay together so that they could have children. He didn't say one time that they should lay together just to have fun."

I'm afraid I had had it. "Mrs. Hankins, God didn't say one damned thing about anything in the bible. The bible wasn't written by God. It was written by men. Even in the new testament where some words are attributed to Jesus, the words were what some man remembered Jesus saying. Jesus himself never wrote down anything and said he wanted it put in the bible."

"Mr. Hill, you are a Godless man."

"No, Ma'am, I am not a Godless man. I'm afraid I don't believe as you do though. I believe in treating others the way I'd like for them to treat me. I know you don't believe in that since you treat everyone around you so badly. Would you like it if your neighbors came and complained to me about everything you do? I don't think you would."

"Come on, Clell. I think we should have a talk with Mr. Lester about this man."

Before she could get away, I said, "Mrs. Hankins, I don't want to hear any more complaints about the people around you. Learn to live with the people and their differences."

Prudence harumphed and walked away. Clell obediently followed her away from our camp.

Tuesday, May 9, 1848

Ed: Day 7 - On the Oregon Trail

Mark found me as I was riding along side the coach this morning. He fell in beside me and we rode in silence for a while. Finally, he asked, "What's going on with Prudence Hankins?"

"Prudence Hankins is a bitch," I said.

"Agreed, but what got her all fired up?"

"She's been around to complain to me almost every night since we've been on the trail. First it was the Caldwells, so I moved them away from her. Then it was that the Jamison kids were too noisy in their play in the evenings. I moved the Jamisons away from her. Last night she came to complain that the Jeffersons were, to quote her, fornicating in their wagon."

Mark laughed. "How did she think that was any business of hers?"

"She said the noise they made kept her from sleeping. She said the Jeffersons are too old to have babies, so they had no right to be fornicating anyway. Then she started trying to tell me that God doesn't want people to fornicate unless it is to make babies. I'm afraid I lost it a little. I told her that God didn't say any such thing and that she should mind her own business and learn to live with other people."

"I can't say I blame you for losing your temper. She came around this morning and demanded I throw you and about half of the other people on this wagon train off."

"This woman is getting to be a real pain, Mark."

"Yeah, I told her I couldn't throw you off because it is your wagon train. She got mad at me and stomped off. Her husband follows her around like a puppy."

"I've noticed that. He's never said a word to me. I wonder if he can even talk."

Mark laughed. "He's probably forgotten how. I don't think she lets him say much."

"So, what do we do about them?" I asked.

"Well, she may straighten up now. If not, we'll leave them at the first place we come to that we can."

"I hate to do that, but it might be our only recourse. We can't let her disrupt the whole wagon train."

"How is Tizzy doing?" I asked Sam a little later.

"Tizzy is doing just fine," Sam grinned. "M&M have adopted her and they're trying their best to corrupt her. She's such a shy little thing that she isn't getting into half the mischief that M&M does."

"She is shy. I don't think she's said five words to me since we picked them up. With M&M leading her on, I think she'll get over that pretty quickly though."

"We need to talk about Sally and Tina," Sam said.

"Okay."

"Both of them seem to think of me as the matriarch of our clan. Both have come to me and asked about becoming members of our marriage. I've talked to Cassie and Delia and Kate about them, but I haven't talked to you."

"What do you women think?" I asked.

"You first, love. What do you think about them?"

"Awh shit. I knew you were going to put it back on me. Tina is one of the bravest young women I've ever met. She hid out when the men who had killed her parents were looking for her, then she lived off the land while she came over a hundred miles to try to find us. I'd have to love her for that, even if it wasn't for her personality and her looks."

"That's pretty much what Cassie and Katie said. Delia and I don't know her as well, but we both think she is a fine young woman."

"Sally got kicked in the head by that bastard she was married to. She showed me a lot of integrity by how she handled that. She has two fine kids that she practically raised by herself. Do I love her? Yes, I do. Do I want her to be part of our marriage? Yeah. I think she deserves some happiness and I think we could give it to her."

"Well, my dear, you said the magic word about both of them. If you hadn't said you love them, I might have been hesitant. Now, I'm not. All of us agree they'd make fine additions to our family."

"Okay. All that being said and agreed on, I think we should wait a while before we invite them into our marriage. Everyone, including Cindi, thought she was in love with me. She even made remarks about wanting to be my wife. Then, when the first man, who was nearer her age came along, she fell for him. I want to be absolutely sure that Sally and Tina love us and that we love them."

"That makes sense, love," Sam grinned. "Besides, anticipation can be very exciting."

"Strays!" I thought as I rode off by myself for a while. Sam was a stray. Cassie was a stray. Delia was a slave. Katie was a stray. Tina was a stray. Sally was a stray. What is it with me and strays? I guess maybe I was a stray myself.

I rode by myself for a long time. I thought of all of the things I knew that the people in this time period didn't know. If any of the twenty-first century people wanted to we could change the entire world. Did we want to?

I could invent a thousand things they didn't have in this time period, but that would just speed up the technological society we had developed by the twenty-first century. If I could change anything, it wouldn't be anything material. It would be in how people treated each other.

Was it fair for me not to try to improve things? I'll be damned if I know. First I'd have to know what would be an improvement. In this time period, men and women were hardy souls. Survival of the fittest was still the controlling factor. People were either productive, or they died.

In the twenty-first century, survival of the fittest no longer applied. Then it became survival of the richest. We had made so many discoveries in medicine that even the weakest could survive if they could pay for the necessary treatment. That made it so there were a lot more people, but was that an improvement?

In this time period, there was no such thing as welfare. People worked and took care of themselves or they starved. Was it better to have more people, even if they weren't productive, or was it better to let nature remove those who depended on others for their survival? God! I don't know.

Wednesday, May 10, 1848

Ed: Day 8 - On the Oregon Trail

Well, at least we weren't visited by Prudence last night. In a way that was scary. It made me wonder what she was going to do now. As we were cleaning things up after breakfast, I asked Tina if she'd ride with me for a while.

We took off away from the wagon train and just rode, side by side. "How's the hunting coming?" I asked after a while.

"Well, between Andy and me. We're managing to keep everyone supplied with meat. It's certainly not as exciting as it used to be though. Now, it's more like a job."

"I never did really like to hunt," I said. "I can see where there could be some excitement, but I just wasn't interested in it."

"When you were in the future, what did you like to do?"

"Oh, honey, that's hard for me to answer. Most of the things I enjoyed doing can't even be described now. Did you ever go to a play?"

"No, but I know what they are."

"We had machines that were like a picture, but the picture was sent through the air from far away. You could see plays that were being put on two thousand miles away. These machines were called televisions. Several times during the day, people would come on these televisions and tell us what was going on in the world. I didn't watch television much, but some people watched it several hours every day."

"That doesn't sound like much of a life. When did these people get anything done?"

"Some of them didn't get much done. You know what taxes are, don't you?"

"Yes, it's something the government adds on to the cost of something so they can pay for running the country."

"In the future they have something called an income tax. The government takes part of what you earn when you work. Actually, they take almost half. Some people can't or won't work. Maybe they're sick or maybe they just don't want to work. The government gives part of the money they take from you to these people so they can live."

Tina thought for a minute, then she said, "I don't think I'd mind so much if they were giving some of my money to people who were sick or injured. I wouldn't like it if they were giving my money to people who just didn't want to work."

"That's pretty much the way I feel about it too, Tina. That's one of the many reasons I was glad we got kicked back into the past."

Tina gave me a big grin and said, "I'm glad you got kicked back too."

We continued talking for quite a while. The subject of her becoming a member of our family never came up, but I know I was sure thinking about it.

I still hadn't gotten to talk to several of our drivers, so I rode back to where Davy Beale was driving one of our freight wagons. I had been introduced to Davy, but I couldn't say I really knew him.

"Good morning, Davy," I said.

"Mornin'."

Davy was one of those long, lanky guys, who would have looked right at home in a John Wayne movie. He was in his mid twenties with brown hair and blue eyes. "How's the wagon doing?" I asked.

"Jist fine."

"Good. So, what are you planning to do when we get to Oregon?" I asked.

"Trapping. Wanna buy a farm in Missouri."

"So, have you lived around Missouri most of your life?"

"Yep."

"What were you doing around Dayton?"

"Looking for work."

I didn't seem to me that Davy wanted to talk, so I left him to his driving. Jesse Cooper was driving the next wagon back, so I stopped to talk with him. Jesse seemed to be the opposite of Davy when it came to talking. He was a tall, handsome young man in his early twenties.