Shoshone journal. [volume] (Shoshone, Idaho) 1884-1931, 1917-12-21
CHAPTER l.

u
bowed to the yoke of patient
servitude, should really begin. this
story. But to follow the trail they
made would take several chapters
which you certainly would skip-unless
you like to hear the tale OF how the
! wilderness was tanned and can thrill
= at the stern history of those who did
= the tanning while they fought to keep
d. their stomachs fairly well filed with
food and their hard muscled bodies fit
for the. fray.
There was. a woman, low proved
uncombed, harsh of voice and speech
and nature, who drove the four oxen
forward over lava rock and rough
prairie and the scanty sage. / might
. tell you a great deal about Marthy,
who plodded stolidly across the desert
and the low lying hills along the Black
foot, and of her weak souled, shiftless
husband whom she called Jase when
she did not call him worse.
They were the pioneers whose lurch-
ing wagon first forded the singing
Wolverine stream just where it green's
the tiny valley and then slips between
huge lava rock lodges to join the larger
stream. Jase would have stopped
there and called home the sheltered
little green spot in the gray barrenness.
But Marthy went on up the farther hill
and across the upland, another full
days Journey with the sweating oxen.
They camped that night on another
r little, singing stream in another little
valley which was not so level or so
green or so wholly pleasing to the eye
And that night two Of the oxen, i'm
PEELED by a surer instinct than their
human owners, strayed away down
narrow. winding gorge and so discoy-
cred the Cove and Toasted upon it's rich
grasses. 1t was Marthy who went
after them and who recognized the lit
tie, hidden Eden as the place of her
dreams = supposing she ever had
dreams. So Marthy and Jase and the
four oxen took possession, and with
much labor and many hard years for
the woman and with the same number
Of years and as little labor as he could
manage on the mans part they tanned
the Cove and made 1t a beauty spot in
that wild land. A beauty spot, though
their lives held nothing but treadmill
toll and harsh words and a mental
horizon narrowed almost to the limits
of the grim, gray rock wall that sur
rounded them.
Another sturdy souled couple came
afterward and saw the Wolverine and
made for themselves home upon its
banks. And in the rough little log |
cabin was born the girl child l want |
you to meet-a girl child when she |
should have been a boy to meet her |
fathers need and great desire; girl
child whose very name was compro-
mise between the parents. For they
called her Billy for sake of the boy
her father wanted and Louise for the
girl her mother had longed for to light
en- that terrible loneliness which the
far frontier brings to the women who
brave its stern emptiness.
When Billy Louise was twelve she
wanted to do something big. though
she was hazy as to the particular ma
ture of that big something. She tried
to talk it over with Marthy, but Marthy
could not seem to think beyond the
Cove.
When she was thirteen Billy Louise
rode over with loaf of bread she had
baked all by herself, and she put this
problem to Marthy:
1--WE been thinking I'd go ahead and
write poetry, Marthy-a whole book
Of 1t with pictures. But l do love to
make bread-and people have to eat
bread. Which would you be, Marthy-
/ poet or a cook"
Marthy looked at her minute, lent
Ter attention briefly to the question
md gave what she considered good adj
yice.
"You learn how to cook, Billy Lou
Sc. Yuh don't want to go and get mo- "
ions. Your nav amt healthy, and
our paw likes good grub. Po'try is
III foolishness. There amt any money a
n it." a
walter Scott paid his debts writing k
,oetry." said Billy Louise argumenta- 4
lively She had just read all about 4
Walter Scott in a magazine which a Il
assing cowboy had given her. Per-
APPS that had something to do with 81
er new ambition. Il
.Mebby he did and mebby he didn't. b
d like to see our debts paid OF with ca
o'try. It'd have to be worth hull el
IT more'n what I'd give for it" o.
"Ohl' Have you got debts, too, Mar &
hy?" Billy Louise at thirteen was m
till ready with sympathy. "Daddy's p
OF lots and piles OF 'em. he bought W
,u,o coffIa and now ha Z lka fo rn0rn- III