The Mother Lode (7 page)

Ellen's sunbonnet was pink as were her cheeks this day, and several strands of her long hair had slipped loose so that she cut a fine and pretty picture in her fields. Now, she smiled and then laughed. “Why, Joe Moss, I declare that you are a bit of a philosopher!”

“Is that bad?”

“Not at all. It shows me a part of you that I didn't know existed. Are you reading those words that I asked you to learn in the evenings after we take supper?”

“Yes, ma'am.” He felt sorta proud about it. “I can spell
dog, man, woman
and
run, jump
, and
bone
all fine, thank you kindly. And I've been practicing writing my name until it looks less and less like chicken scratches.”

“Good!”

Ellen leaned on her hoe, and they both watched the clear mountain water flow across the grassy pasture. She turned her face up toward the Sierras, which seemed so close and tall that they looked ready to fall right over the top of them. “I do love this land, Joe Moss. I was raised on a farm outside of Baltimore. The earth was rich and giving, but it was an entirely flat land with not a mountain or even a hill in sight. I would sometimes try and try to see the earth curve from our porch, but I never did. I sometimes thought the earth was flat rather than round, although I had been taught better. But here with the Sierra Nevada so big and close and tall . . . here you almost think you're halfway to heaven.”

Joe slipped his crutch out from under his arm and rested his whiskery chin upon it as he followed her gaze upward toward the peaks. “Have you ever been up to the lake, ma'am?”

“I have,” she said with a soft smile. “When my husband first brought me here, we went up to the lake and spent two glorious summer days. We fished and swam . . . oh, my goodness, is that water clear and cold! But I have never felt so clean and fresh. I would like to go up there and visit it again someday, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I have the livestock to tend and they depend on me. I couldn't just leave them.”

“No,” he said, “I reckon not. And I suppose your neighbors wouldn't be willing to feed 'em.”

Her eyes fell from the mountaintops and she stared at the grass with a sad shake of her head.

Joe hobbled over to a gate and diverted the water into the next pasture. “What is the date, ma'am? I have sorta lost track.”

“It's August. I think it is the tenth of the month. Why do you ask?”

“I need to go up there and start collecting my lumber,” he answered. “When will the first snows fall in this country?”

“They usually wait until October . . . maybe a little earlier or later.”

“Then I've got to get up there soon,” he told her. “And do you know what I'm going to do with the first load I bring down?”

“I have no idea.”

“I'm going to build you a fine two-seater.”

“Joe Moss!” She acted embarrassed.

“Not so we could sit side by side and hum ‘Dixie,' ” he said with a bold wink. “Just so you'd have a nicer one than Eli and all his wives and children. And I'll make sure it has no cracks or drafts. It'll be a thing of rare beauty in these parts. People will come from all around to admire your new two-seater.”

Ellen burst out laughing, and gave Joe a gentle push that almost sent him sprawling to the grass. “Joe, you are almost hopeless!”

“Almost is all right,” he said with a chuckle.

And then they went to work moving water and Joe could hear Ellen humming “Dixie” in the soft summer breeze.

“I would like to hitch up your wagon to the Palouse and my gray horse and then go up the grade and bring back some lumber,” Joe said a few days later.

Ellen just stared at him. “I don't think you are up to that, Joe. The mountainside is very steep and . . .”

“Well,” he said, a little irritably, “I've got to see it for myself and give'r a try. I just can't wait any longer to start collecting that lumber.”

“Very well,” she said, “but I'm going with you.”

“That's not . . . .”

“It is necessary,” she told him. “To have any chance at all, one person will have to be up on the road while the other goes down on a rope.”

Actually, that's the only way that Joe had figured it could be done. “I'll go down,” he said, “and when I tie some lumber up, you can get the team to drag it up the side. When we got a light load up on the road, I'll come up and we'll bring it down here slow and easy.”

“Are you sure that you don't want to wait a little longer?” she asked.

“No, ma'am. I have to start now. If it don't work, then it don't work. But I have to try.”

“All right,” she said, “then we'll rise before the sun and do chores, then leave. It's only a couple of miles up the grade and we can be there just after daybreak.”

“Good,” Joe said. “And I'll pay you for your help.”

“You already paid Mr. Purvis and the others twenty dollars. I think you should hang onto your money.”

“I never liked to hang onto money for long,” he admitted. “I feel that it is made to be spent, and I can't think of a better way to spend it than to give some to you for your kindness.”

She was pleased. He could tell that she was very pleased. “I could very much use some cash.”

“Then it's settled. I paid those Mormons each four dollars a day and I'll pay you the same, if that's agreeable.”

“It is more than fair. Thank you.”

Joe had to look away because, dammit, he was the one that owed Ellen Johnson more than he could ever repay.

“So we'll get to bed early,” he said quietly. “Because tomorrow will be hard.”

“Yes, but I still expect you to do your studies before you sleep.”

“But, ma'am!”

“Study, Joe. You promised me that you'd learn five new words every day.”

“I overreached,” he told her.

“No, you didn't. And tomorrow we can have a spelling lesson on the way up the mountainside.”

“Now that's a right fine idea!” he said, not quite managing to hide his sarcasm as he hobbled off to the shed.

T
O REACH THE grade, they had no choice but to drive Ellen Johnson's rattling buckboard through Genoa, and even though the sun still wasn't fully off the horizon, there were a few early risers who saw their passing. Ellen and Joe both called out a greeting, which wasn't returned.

“I didn't stop to think how much grief this is going to cause you,” Joe said with deep regret. “I'll be leaving before the month is out, but you'll have to stay and live with these stiff-backed people. From the feelin' I'm gettin', that won't be easy.”

Ellen sat beside him on the buckboard seat, her face wrapped in a shawl because of the early morning chill. “Don't fret about that, Joe. I was an outcast when you arrived and I'll be one long after you've left. It's your lumber up on the mountainside, and what we need to do is to worry about getting it up to the road and onto this wagon. The rest will take care of itself.”

“I expect that's true,” Joe said as they passed through the little settlement and then started up the steep grade.

Joe's Palouse and gray horse were teamed with a pair that Ellen owned, and even though the wagon was empty, it was a hard climb and they had to stop and let the animals blow every half mile. But at last they reached the place where Joe had been forced over the side. Joe set their brake and climbed down to gaze at the steep mountainside.

“Ain't much left of that wagon, that's for sure,” Joe said, shaking his head. “I can't believe any of my livestock survived.”

“
You
almost didn't,” she reminded him.

Joe studied the wreck and the lumber strewn up and down the slope. There was clear evidence that some of the lumber, which had spilled closest to the road, had already been scavenged by passersby. It was only the lumber that was scattered several hundred feet or more down the slope that remained.

“Have you thought about how you're going to do this?” Ellen asked. “Because it looks utterly impossible.”

“We've got rope,” Joe told her. “I'll go down and tie up some boards; then you ask that mule we've tied behind our wagon to drag 'em up. When we get a full wagonload, the mule will pull me up and we'll call it a day.”

“Are you sure that you're up to this?” she asked, making clear her skepticism. “I mean, your hip isn't fully mended and your foot is still swollen and purple.”

“I'll do it,” Joe vowed. “Let's quit jawin' about it and set to work.”

Without another word, Joe got the ropes out of the wagon and tied them together and then around his waist. “Wrap your end around the wheel a couple of times and just play out the slack as I work my way down,” he ordered. “It'll go fine.”

Joe went over the edge and started down. The slope was steep and rocky and the footing was awful. So bad that he kept falling, and he was glad that Mrs. Johnson couldn't see the struggle he was having. But foot by tenuous foot,

Joe was making his way down and using every shrub and little tree that he could grab to keep from falling more than necessary.

At last Joe came to a pile of lumber that was stacked about like if you'd tossed a pitchfork of straw into a loose pile. There were boards aiming in all directions, and he found it hard to untangle them and then get them pointed up and down the slope. When he had a half dozen eight-to-ten-footers lined up, he shouted, “Pull 'em on up!”

It worked just fine for the first part up the slope, but then the lumber got snagged on a big bush, so Joe had to fight his way back up the slope and get the tangle straightened out. He was gasping and in pain, but determined to get a load this day.

“Okay! All clear! Pull 'em on up to the top now!”

This time the lumber slid over the lip of the road above, and in no time at all Ellen Johnson was standing on the edge looking down. “I'm going to throw the rope back, but I don't know if it'll go all the way down to you!”

“Do your best.”

The rope, of course, didn't go all the way down to Joe, so he had to scramble back up to reach it, then drag it down for more lumber. It took them all morning to drag up maybe fifty boards, and some of those were splintered and probably not worth the effort.

“Pull me up!” Joe shouted when he was so tired and in so much pain that he could no longer stand.

The little Mexican mule was probably almost as weary as Joe when he was dragged onto the road and lay gasping in pain and covered with dust.

“I don't think this is worth it,” Ellen said, looking at the small number of boards she had stacked on the edge of the road.

“I'll do better tomorrow,” he promised. “But I think I've about done all that I can do today.”

“Maybe we could hire help.”

“Who in Genoa would help?” he asked.

“No one,” she confessed.

“Then we'll do it ourselves and I'll pay you for your time, Mrs. Johnson.”

“All right,” she said quietly. “We'll have to go up a little higher to find a place to turn this wagon around. Then we'll load the lumber.”

“Sounds good,” he gasped, biting back the pain radiating from his hip and crushed foot.

“No, it doesn't sound good, and I'm not a bit sure that the lumber is worth the pain and effort. But you know what?”

“What, ma'am?”

“I'm going to hold my head up high when we drive back through Genoa so that those folks don't know how tough it was this morning. And that we aren't going to quit until every last stick of lumber is retrieved.”

Joe had to grin despite his pain. “You've got a lot of grit and spunk, Mrs. Johnson. I like that in a woman.”

“I like it in a man,” she said. “And after what we've been through, Joe, I think it's high time that you just started calling me Ellen. To heck with what anybody thinks.”

“Does that mean I can move out of your shed into your bed?” he asked, barely able to keep from laughing.

“You try it, Joe Moss, and I'll put a whole lot more hurt on you than you're feeling now!”

Joe looked at her face, which was covered with dust-streaked sweat.
By gawd,
he thought,
I'd better get that lumber up and sold and then move on to Virginia City before I start thinking ungentlemanly thoughts about this spunky woman
.

For the next three weeks they kept to the same hard routine. Get up way before dawn and do the milking and the chores, then hitch the wagon up and saddle the Mexican mule and tie him to the back of the wagon. Then it was on through town with the same disapproving faces and expressions coming from the Mormon townspeople. Ignoring their icy disapproval, Joe then drove up the grade, and then climbed down the side of the mountain tied to a rope.

Joe fought the pain, and he went farther and farther down the mountainside each day, until he had all the lumber that he could reach by tying together every rope that they could lay hands upon. He supposed, if he spent a day and went to Carson City, that he could have bought more rope and gone deeper into the steep canyon, but the lumber down there had fallen and tumbled so far that it was mostly worthless.

“That's it, Ellen,” he announced one day when they'd loaded the last that could be recaptured. “Some of it probably ain't worth no more than firewood, but a lot can be cut and trimmed and will bring a good price up on the Comstock.”

“I'm sure that's true,” she said as they turned the wagon around and then loaded it for the trip back through town to her farm. “So when do you think you'll be leaving?”