Chapter 1

August 1, 1845

We walked up onto the rise where Millie said the house should be built, and just stood and looked out over the valley.

"Welcome to the Tackett-Ware ranch," I said.

The 'Ware' portion of the name came from my sister Tess, and her husband Jonathan Ware. The Tackett portion of the name comes from me, Jase Tackett, my wives, and our adopted daughter.

Wives? Yes, I have three wives. Millie is my first wife. I have been crazy about Millie since we were little kids in Kentucky. When my parents and Millie's parents decided they were moving to Oregon, I decided it was time to start courting Millie. We ended up getting married on the wagon train on the way out.

Lettie is my second wife. Millie and I took her in when her husband was killed by Indians. He wasn't much of a loss and he hadn't been much of a husband to Lettie. She was still a virgin when we married her, because her husband liked boys better than he liked girls. We fell in love with her very quickly.

Emma is half Indian and was married to a white man. He was killed by Indians, while guarding our livestock, on the way out. She needed help after that, especially after some of her husband's supposed 'friends' found out she's half Indian. We didn't have any problem with that, since Tess and I are half Indian, too.

Abby is our adopted daughter, and the light of our lives. We took her in when her father killed her mother (who was the camp whore), and then killed himself. We've never for a moment regretted taking her in.

We would have liked to have spent the entire day looking over our home site, and checking out our valley, but we knew Ab (the wagon master on the trail) had to get back to the wagon train as soon as possible.

We talked it over, and decided that we'd leave all of the wagons in the valley and that Millie and I would follow Caleb and Sally (Millie's parents), on over to the valley Ab thought they might be interested in homesteading.

The rest of my family - and John, Tess, and Ab's family - would use the time Millie and I were gone, to set up a permanent camp. We had decided, while we were still on the trail, that we'd use Emma's wagon as our 'farm wagon'. So part of setting up our permanent camp, was moving everything in Emma's wagon over to Abby's wagon. All of our drivers agreed to help with moving things around.

It was late afternoon when we reached the valley that Ab figured Caleb would want. The entrance to the valley was a little wider than ours, though the valley itself was not quite as wide. It was every bit as beautiful, though. Sally fell in love with it immediately.

We talked over supper about how we wanted to work things. Caleb said he'd like to spend a few days just exploring his valley, before we started any work.

"Then I think Sam and I will start cutting trees for a cabin, and gathering stones for the foundation. Matt doesn't know it yet, but he's going to be a big help in gathering stones."

"That makes sense," Caleb said. "We'll probably start doing the same thing, soon."

"When you get to the point you're going to start putting the logs in place, John and I will come over and help," I said.

"Yeah, we'll do the same for you. That'll make it a lot easier than for two people to try to get them raised up," Caleb said.

We all looked around Caleb's place a while after supper. It really was a nice valley, and I'd have been happy with it for our ranch if we didn't like the other valley so well.

Millie and I had forgotten to bring our tent with us, so we slept under the stars.

August 2, 1845

We got up the next morning and Millie helped Sally fix breakfast for everyone. At this point, it wasn't any different than being on the trail. Ab, Millie and I ate quickly, and headed back towards our new home.

Ab decided to stay overnight with us, and head out in the morning to rejoin the wagon train. Ab went exploring with John and me, looking for timbers for building a temporary house, and bigger timbers to build the permanent one. We made a circle around the entire valley before the day was over.

"Ab," I said. "Do you suppose we could impose on you to do us a favor when you come back from taking the wagon train on in?"

"How much lumber do you want me to bring back?" Ab laughed.

"How did you know what I wanted?"

"It only makes sense, Jase. I don't have a problem with doing that, as long as you furnish the wagon and the oxen."

"Okay, we'll clean out a wagon before you leave in the morning. I'm sure one of our drivers will take it on to the end of the trail for you. We'll give you enough money to buy the wood, and pay off the driver. Get as much good dry pine lumber as you think the wagon will haul."

"That reminds me," Lettie said. "We need to pay off all of the drivers."

I nodded and said, "Give Ab a hundred. Do you know how much to pay each of the boys?"

"Yeah, I've got it all figured out. I'm going to give each of them an extra ten dollars."

"You're reading my mind, woman," I said, smiling at her.

Lettie got up and went into our wagon. When she came back out, she went around to the drivers, and gave all of them their wages. She handed ten gold eagles to Ab, then she went around to the drivers again, and handed each of them a gold eagle. They were all thrilled.

August 3, 1845

We all got up early, and Ab and his crew got ready to take off. There was a tearful goodbye between Ab and Pris. Wanda and Lelah shed a few tears as well. I think Timmy was a little angry that Pris wouldn't let him go with Ab.

Millie, Tess, Lettie, and Emma went off to decide where they wanted the temporary house to go, and where they eventually wanted the big house set. It wasn't long before they called John and me to take a look. John and I agreed they couldn't have made a better choice.

"I think we need to make a shed. Then we can store everything out of the weather, before we do anything else," I said.

"We've got the canvas from two of the wagons, and several tarpaulins," John said. "Why don't we make a frame with some poles and cover it with the canvas and the tarps?"

"That sounds good. Then we can lay some poles on the ground for everything to rest on. That'll keep everything out of any rain water."

John and I started cutting poles from the areas where the houses were going to be. The women went off and started looking for sources for sand, clay, and stone. Timmy helped by dragging the poles over to where we were going to make our canvas covered shed.

We figured we were going to need less than twenty poles, total, for the shed. We'd probably need that many again, for our makeshift floor. John and I were both wielding axes to cut the poles, and trim off the branches. By noon we had enough poles cut for the frame, the floor, and the roof.

The women made us a nice lunch. We all talked as we ate it.

"There's plenty of sand and creek gravel along the stream right below us," Tess told us. "So far we haven't found any clay or many stones I think we could use."

"Jase, do you remember going by that place with all of the stones yesterday? It was on the other side of the valley and about a mile north," John asked.

"Yeah, you might try over there ladies. We're going to be wanting stones as flat as we can find them. We can use the hand sledges to shape them some, but I don't want to do any more of that than we have to," I said.

Lettie hugged me, and kissed me on the cheek.

"We're not totally dumb, Jase," she said. "We'd already figured that out."

After we finished eating, the women took off exploring again, while John and I started digging holes to set the four corner posts. We needed four holes about two feet deep and twelve feet apart. We had them dug within an hour.

We had selected our corner poles so that they had a good sized branch we could lay the front and back top poles in. We cut off the front posts so that approximately nine feet of the posts would be sticking out of the ground below the fork. The back posts we cut off at eight feet.

We positioned the posts in the holes, and tamped dirt in around them. We laid the front and back top poles in the forks, and tied them in with wet rawhide strips. Then we started laying the rafter poles into place. We tied them with wet rawhide as well.

Getting the canvas into place, and getting it tied down so the wind wouldn't take it, took almost as long as putting the frame up. By the end of the day, John and I were exhausted. But, we had a shed we could start moving things into tomorrow.

After supper, Millie told us they had found the rocks we were talking about, but they were still looking for clay.

"There looks like there are plenty of flat stones. I'm not sure how many we'll need, but there are thousands we can get to easily."

"We're going to need quite a few," I said. "We'll have to dig down about two feet to start the foundations. It has to be below the freeze line. The foundation will be under all of the outside walls."

Millie looked stunned. "That IS a lot. Well, I still think we'll have enough. Are you still thinking of making our temporary house twelve by twenty-four feet?"

"Yeah, we'll put a partition at the mid way point so John and Tess can have some privacy."

"Tess and I have been talking about that, Jase. I think we can get by with just a tarp separating things for this winter," John said."

"How many logs are you guys going to need to cut?" Tess asked.

"We'll need twenty at twenty-four feet, and twenty at twelve feet, for the walls. We'll need another six twelve-footers for the gables. We'll need six twenty four- foot ridge beams, and we'll need about two dozen fifteen-footers for rafters. That is over seventy logs, just for the temporary cabin. I hate to think how many we'll need for the big house," I said.

"That's a lot of work, guys," Emma said.

"Yeah. Then we have to peel the bark off of all of them, and a lot of them we'll have to square up on one or more sides."

"We'll do anything we can to help, Jase," Lettie said.

August 4, 1845

In the morning we started loading barrels of flour, sugar, corn meal, molasses, and dried fruit, into what was going to be our farm wagon. We hauled them up to our shed. We had four wagon loads of stuff to put in the shed. I was thinking we probably should have made the shed bigger, before we got it all in. We only managed to get it to fit, by stacking barrels on top of each other.

We grabbed a quick lunch, and continued through the afternoon. We finished long before supper;, but John and I were so tired, we decided to wait until tomorrow before starting anything else.

"You need to hunt in the morning," Millie told me as we were eating supper.

"Okay," I said.

"I'll do it this time, Jase. I think it's about time we started trading off hunting," John said.

"That's fine, John. I'll start cleaning off the area where our first cabin is going to be. Maybe I can get Abby and Timmy to help me."

"Lelah and I will help, too," Wanda said.

"Thank you, Sweety. I'm going to start cutting brush, and I'll need all of you to drag it off and make a brush pile."