The Cross Timbers (19 page)

His amazing energy had enabled him to carve a productive little farm out of fifty-six acres of land covered with timber. He had cut all the timber except a ten-acre wood lot, used as a hog pasture; had split rails enough to enclose the fields; and had built, largely with his own hands, a comfortable log-and-lumber house of four rooms. In addition, he had built a cellar, a good barn, a corn crib, and a shed; had enclosed lots for the horses; and had planted a large orchard of peach, apple, and plum trees plus a quarter of an acre of blackberries and a large grape arbor.

All of this he had accomplished in about twelve years, for he had done considerable work on this little tract of land before moving onto it from the rented prairie farm. Now that he had done about all that he could to improve this farm, he doubtless felt that it was time to go farther west to a raw prairie land and repeat on a far larger scale the task of building a new farm home.

Some events and changes in the situation in the Navajoe region seemed to make our removal to that part of the Prairie West
almost inevitable. On April 19, 1892, the huge Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Reservation had been opened to settlement by homesteaders. Its southern boundary was only thirty miles north of Navajoe.

My brother Jay, who was always ready for any venture that promised excitement, made the race on horseback and staked a 160-acre claim on a little creek called Trail Elk. Unlike the rush at the opening of the Oklahoma lands three years earlier, in which almost every desirable 160-acre tract was occupied the first day, much of the western part of this reservation was not settled by homesteaders for three or four years.

Jay looked over the vacant land nearby and found a beautiful 160-acre tract only about a mile from his own claim. It was nearly all fertile valley land and had a small lake of perhaps an acre near the northeast corner, which may have been the reason why it had not been occupied by some homesteader. Due to Jay's urging, Henry had come to look at this tract of land and was so pleased with what he saw that he promptly filed on it as a homestead.

Henry was eager to get to work improving his new property as soon as possible. For this he would need some money. By this time he and his wife had a baby daughter and he did not like to leave them alone in their present home near Navajoe until he could get a new home built, a well dug, and other improvements made. He therefore offered to sell Father the place near Navajoe for $375 and proposed to bring Virginia and Baby Ora to stay with us on the Cross Timbers farm for a few months.

Father replied at once ageeing to buy the Navajoe claim at the
price suggested and saying that we would gladly take care of his family for as long as necessary. It would be wonderful to have someone to cook and keep house for us again. Obviously we could not leave for the new home until the crops had been harvested, the livestock sold, and the farm either sold or rented to a good tenant.

Henry did not delay coming to us with his little family. We loved his wife, Virginia, whom we soon learned to call “Virgie” as Henry and apparently her own family did. Baby Ora was a lovely fat baby about five months old, who was very good, almost never cried, and required little attention.

Virgie was a very pleasant person, who quickly adjusted herself to what must at first have seemed a strange situation. Henry stayed only three or four days, as he was eager to get to work improving his new land. Father paid him part of the purchase price before he left and assured him that he would pay the remainder any time he needed it.

While $375 seems a small sum to pay for 160 acres of land with a three-room house, fenced fields, lots and sheds for the animals, plus a large orchard, it must be remembered that we were paying only for the improvements. There were many 160-acre tracts of equally good land upon which anyone could settle as a squatter, just as Jay had done soon after his return from Mexico.

That summer of 1892 was a busy one for all of us. Virgie came in June, when the blackberries were ripe. I remember that George and I picked forty gallons one day in ample time for our father to take them to town. The price of fruit and berries was very low as compared with that of today but so were prices of
everything else. This included farm labor, for a good farm hand could be hired for a dollar a day or fifteen dollars a month, plus board.

We sold blackberries for twenty cents a gallon, peaches for a dollar a bushel for choice ones, and sweet potatoes for fifty cents a bushel. Because we had a very large peach crop that year, during threshing season Father was kept busy selling peaches to the wives of the prairie wheat growers. The small freestones and some of the smaller clingstone peaches that could not be sold, we dried. As a result, we had a thousand pounds of dried peaches when autumn came.

Virgie was an excellent cook, who also kept the house spotless, and washed and ironed all the linens, as well as our clothes and her own and Baby Ora's every week. As we had never been able to find good water on our farm we hauled water for household use from Uncle Jack Clark's well about a quarter of a mile east of our house. On washday in the summer, however, we found it easier to take the soiled linens and clothing to the well and wash them there.

As she had the baby to care for I usually helped Virgie with housework all I could by drying the dishes, churning, and doing other chores, including helping with the washing. In the summer, washing took a full half day in spite of the fact that Virgie had a great deal of energy and worked fast, although she was hardly more than a kid herself.

One washday in August will always remain green in my memory because it was my first, and last, time in my life to get gloriously drunk! Father and George were going to Keller, but before
starting had taken Virgie and me together with the soiled clothes, washtubs, boiler, and such equipment over to Uncle Jack Clark's house. Here we set things up in a shady spot near the well.

For some reason we needed another tub and when Uncle Jack said there was one in the cellar I ran down the cellar steps to get it. The cellar floor felt refreshingly cool to my bare feet and in the dim light I saw that the tub had about four inches of water in it. As I picked up the tub a big copperhead snake coiled under it and struck me squarely on top of the foot.

I yelped, “Ouch! He bit me,” and hastily carried the tub up the steps and set it down on the ground. He had hit me squarely on top of the foot and the blood was streaming up several inches high. I plunged my foot into the water in the tub and began to wash the wound.

Uncle Jack stood by helpless to do anything but heap maledictions on his snakeship's head, but my young sister-in-law was quick to go into action. She recalled that my father had recently bought a quart of whiskey, put it in a gallon jug, and added wild-cherry bark, bitter apple, stillingia roots, and prickly ashberries, among other ingredients, to make a vile-tasting bitters. He believed that a swallow of this every morning would help to ward off malaria.

Having always heard that whiskey was a sure cure for snakebite, Virgie ran like a deer for home and raced back with this jug. Gasping for breath, she called for a teacup and poured it nearly full of this horrible mixture. “Now drink this right down, Ed,” she ordered as, with a shaking hand, she passed the cup to me. I gulped it down, bad as it was. Then on the theory that if one
cup would do
some
good two cups would do twice as much, she filled it again and once more I downed the evil-tasting liquid.

She and Mrs. Clark then demanded that I go into the house and lie down on the bed. Of course, in a few minutes the room began to whirl around. I dimly recall that Dow Taylor came into the room and I muttered to him, “Dow, I'm drunk.” Then came complete oblivion until about sundown, when I awoke to see my father, George, and two or three other persons sitting by the bed.

Someone had gone to Keller to tell my father that his youngest son had been bitten by a deadly copperhead. He had brought a doctor out posthaste and rode with him in the buggy, leaving George to drive the wagon home. The medico took a good look at me and said, “Well, if the whiskey doesn't kill him, I'm sure he will be all right.” The doctor was correct. They hauled me home in the wagon and my foot was sore for two or three days but that was all.

The remedy, however, probably affected my entire future life. It gave me such a distaste for alcohol that there has never been the slightest danger of my becoming an alcoholic or of my drinking too much. At a cocktail party, or any party where liquor is served, I will take one drink and sip it slowly all evening if possible.

It is my firm belief that if every thirteen-year-old boy could be induced to drink two cups of the type of bitters my father had in that jug, those who
lived
would never need to be warned to shun the “demon rum!”

When I was only about five years old someone had told me that my grandfather had been bitten by a snake when he was a small boy and that he carried the slow poison in his blood as long
as he lived. The poison supposedly made the wound on his foot break out afresh every summer on about the date he was bitten and eventually caused his death! I recall feeling very sorry for my granddad until I learned that he died at the age of eighty-seven; the slow poison must have been very slow indeed!

Some six or seven weeks after my adventure with Mr. Copperhead, Henry wrote us that Virgie's mother was not too well and wanted Virgie to come back to her parents' home and stay with them until Henry could get their own home completed and they could move into it. He added that this would not be for several months. If we would put Virgie and Baby Ora on the train he would meet them at Vernon.

We missed Virgie and the baby a great deal at first, but since we were accustomed to running a “bachelor's hall” it was not too difficult to resume the practice of doing our own housework and cooking. Moreover, there was so much work to do that we had little time to be lonely. The corn must be gathered, the cotton picked, and the sweet potatoes dug. All these crops and the cows, pigs, and chickens must be sold. We shipped by freight to Vernon a few hundred pounds of dried peaches.

No buyer for the farm could be found, but it was at last rented to Mr. Beal, an elderly tenant farmer, who lived a few miles east of us. He was to pay a hundred dollars a year in cash rent instead of a share of the crops. Half of this was paid in advance, with the remainder to be paid the following autumn. He could not move in with his family until a few days after we had left, but our neighbor, Jake West, gladly agreed to look after the place until Mr. Beal came.

Because by this time the old musket was useless it was left in
the attic, and George had sold the Kentucky squirrel rifle to one of the neighbors. This left us without a gun of any type, which to me was almost tragic, especially since were were starting for the West in a few days. I was therefore delighted when our father returned from a trip to Roanoke bringing me a twelve-gauge, single-barrel shotgun. Someone had left it at the grocery store to be sold and while it was far from new it was in good condition and the price was low.

Father could not have given me anything which would have pleased me as much as this gun. It was of the type called “Zulu,” although just why is a mystery. Probably it was made from an army musket cut down about one half and fitted with a breech block, a new lock, and a shell ejector. If so, the idea may have originated in Europe and such guns traded to the Zulus of Africa for native products.

Obviously, this did not concern me. It was enough to know that I had my first breech-loading gun with a box of twenty-five cartridges and a complete reloading outfit. There was no doubt in my mind but that it would be possible to do a little hunting along the road west and that once we had reached our destination we would find prairie chickens, quail, and, on the Indian Reservation, wild turkeys and even deer and maybe bear that could be brought down with buckshot!

At long last came the day of departure. The day before the bows and canvas sheet had been put on the wagon, which had been carefully packed. Enough food had been put in a grub box for a couple of days, while a separate box held cooking utensils and dishes enough for the journey. The tools, bedding, surplus
bedding, dishes, kitchenware, clothing, and jars of fruit, honey, and preserves had been packed in boxes and put in the rear of the wagon box.

I recall feeling glad that we were not leaving Texas, since Greer County had long been organized as a county of that state. Moreover, I had read Mrs. Pennybacker's
History of Texas
and had been thrilled by the deeds of Travis, Bowie, Crockett, Sam Houston, Deaf Smith, and all the other heroes of the Lone Star State. This heritage made me proud that I was the only one of my father's children to be born in Texas, the biggest state in the Union.

Old Turk could go west with us, but the cats were given to the Clarks, who were pestered by rats and mice. We could not take them and, besides, “it is bad luck to move cats.” We had said good-bye to most of the neighbors the day before, but the Taylor boys, Paul and Dow, came over just as we had finished breakfast to bring us a “going-away gift” and wish us a happy journey.

We had known so long that we were going to our new home in the West that it is doubtful if any of us felt as much emotion in leaving the old one as he would if the decision to move had been a sudden one. Yet when the last package had been placed in the wagon I noticed that our father paused a moment to look over the entire little farm. Perhaps he was seeing in his mind's eye the fifty-six–acre tract of woodland which he had bought a dozen years before and was seeking to appraise what changes his labor had wrought.

Then we all shook hands with Paul and Dow, and Father climbed to the spring seat and picked up the lines. George
climbed up beside him and I took a seat on a roll of bedding just behind them with my cherished old Zulu carefully wrapped in a blanket beside me. Perhaps I had a little lump in my throat but I swallowed it as Father slapped the lines on the backs of the horses. Then with old Turk jumping about and barking gayly at the prospect of going somewhere, we headed westward and left the Cross Timbers forever.