The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-01-14
CHAPTER V.

The house became mournfully still.
A cat purring in the corner, or bevy
OF crickets singing upon the bare, adobe
hearth, would have been a relief to the
. lone watcher by the invalid's rude bed.
True, the babies in the rough cradle
breathed audibly now and then, OF
stirred beneath their covering as if q
busy dream possessed them; and the
sick wife sometimes moaned family in
her sleep, despite her dreams of home
and the mother whom she was destined
never again to meet in earth-life; but
the solitude was oppressive, and the
pain-muf1ed sounds that occasionally
disturbed the stiffness grated upon the
widows nerves, and weighed upon her
heart like a premonition of some i'm
pending evil.
Mrs. Morrison was not q literary
woman. Like her invalid charge, she
had become q wife and mother while
yet a child, and the hard struggle OF
maintaining, or assisting in the mainte-
nance, Of q constantly increasing family
had precluded the possibility of adding
culture to her limited stock of crude
knowledge. She was unused to episto-
larry effort, too, and the task Of writing
cramped her hand, and aided to perplex
her thoughts. But the promised letter
must be written ere the babies should
awaken, she thought, or the other chill
dren would return from the woods and
interrupt her; so there was no time for
hesitation, still less for preface or apOl-
ogy.
"Leps see," she soliloquized; tpm
to imagine that Pm sick among strang-
ers, with husband that's cross, whom
I mustn't blame for any of his wicked
ness, lest my mother will imagine that
Pm sorry 1 ran away to marry him.
But I'll want my mother to forgive me
and love me, and if don't live to rear
my children, why she must 1 want
her 10 know love her-bye-bye, baby,
darling" shaking the trough cradle
with her foot, and thereby breaking the
thread of her thought, which stubbornly
resisted all of her efforts to mend it
again.
The waking baby refused to be COM
forted, and it was long before she could
coax it into quietude. When, at length,
its powers of resistance to further sleep
were overcome, the other baby was
awakened, and the older children had
returned from the forest, bearing their
bundles of sticks, and clamoring, after
the usual manner, for their regular sup
ply Of food.
To prepare food, even in primitive
ways, without conveniences of any kind
for the work, for family so large as the
Morrison-Andrews household, was no
light task; but the voracious bipeds
must be fed three times daily, and Mrs.
Morrison was duly thankful that they
were supplied with plenty of food and
were amply able to regularly partake of
1t. She was patient, too, under her
many privations, revealing such hero
ism as would everywhere receive due
guerdon, were it not SO common in al
most every household as to cease to ex-
cite general comment.
"The brindle steers down with the
murrain," was the cheerful news i'm
parted by Jason Andrews to the busy
woman, as he came stalking in with a
gun on his shoulder, without pausing
to free his boots from the black loan
that adhered to them.
Depositing his gun in the corner,
with an admonition to seven or eight OF
the children not to touch it, he dropped
himself heavily upon a stool at the
humble table, and began a vigorous on
yslaught upon the roast venison, which
now constituted almost wholly their
regular bill of fare. A few bushels OF
wheat had been purchased from some
nomadic Indians a short time prevl-
ouSly, but boiled wheat was not to be q
staple article till after harvest, as it
would be necessary to reserve the most
Of what they had for seed.
Mrs. Morrison carved briskly at the
roast and made no answer to the gloomy
commencement about the ailIng steer.
Jason Andrews continued: "If one
steer gifts the murrian, they'll all take
It, an the COWS III die; then We'll all
starve."
Troubles never come singly," said the
widow, and the shadow Of a new terror
dawned upon her senses, as she dropped
wearily upon q stool, half deafened by
the clamor of the hungry ones, in their
eagerness for food.
"Don't worry, mother r' cried Madge,
her eyes flashing with wierd briIliance,
that lit up her homely features with q
CLEAN Of beauty. 'tMr. Andrews ia
never happy unless everybody else is
miserable. Cattle will not generate in
fictitious diseases when they have pure
water and clean rich grass to live upon.
One Of the oxen's little stiff in bis
joints, that's all. Eat your dinner and
don't blubber."
81 hope you're a true prophet
Madge," said her mother; "but have
my doubts"
''of course you havep'
"Why are you 80 saucy, Madgs