Dusty Books, Frontier Librarian

Chapter 14

People on the trail... Thaddeus' past vices and his story... A regrettable ending to the Johnson's personal story... Home and Tall Tales galore... stories added and stretched. Retelling the robbery attempt...

I realize after reading a bit of the preceding document that it might seem that we were alone most of the trip, but that is not the case. We did seek solitude and anonymity in order to make things smoother, but we did see many folks along the way. Some from a distance watching us silently, Indian riders on bareback only seen for a second, turning on the wind so quickly you thought for a moment you were seeing a spirit. Sometimes we felt eyes watching us, unseen and unknown, and undetermined whether human or animal.

Some who had hard luck with their wagon that Thaddeus would help mend, accepting almost anything in payment. That's how we got the Oak bookcase, which he presented to me saying he had little need for it, but the folks he helped would have been insulted if he hadn't taken anything for the job.

We mostly saw folks in a good deal more hurry than we, who would pass with a wave and be on our horizon shortly. We did catch up to a few who had troubles, but there actually was less of that than one might think there would be. They mostly possessed that one very hard to cure affliction, Gold Fever, though I suppose some were bound for new lands to farm. I see things in the terms I understand, and greed is one of them. Some I suppose were seeking refuge from the war. We did see a family of Quakers, who were all 'Thee' and 'Thou' when you talked to them. They seemed nice enough folks, but a little too peaceable for my taste. Some will take advantage of folks like that. But I don't mess about with the sober or industrious, and when found in combination, I find the atmosphere a little uncomfortable. There is room for them in the west. It is big enough for us all to separate.

Thaddeus was an interesting fellow, and a series of contradictions. He seemed to me to be a person of few vices, who was sober and industrious. But in our many campfire talks when I truly got to know him and he me, I found he was reformed from a past if not shady, at least full of all sorts of vices. He had been known to drink to excess, and was in several fights a week because of the excess of liquor. He had found a religious notion to be pleasing for a time, and pursued the sober life with equal vigor under the tutelage of an itinerant preacher, who proved to be more corrupt than he, going to the depths of depravity even he in his most dissipated state would not even contemplate. He left his presence in a sudden midnight departure, not a fugitive but a disgusted victim.

He had learned carpentry while in service to another fellow. He had not been a slave, having been born in the North, though he was captured by a group of slavers, who let him go only when the Carpenter intervened in his favor. He worked with this fellow for 5 years, and he was taught well. But he always had a wanderlust, and this was fed by the West. He wanted to be rich, and no amount of sober talk would dissuade him from believing the same claptrap I had believed, until I saw the light.

He had met his present wife, or so his story goes, since I don't think he stretched the truth any more than social conversation would allow, after she had been shunned from her tribe, for breaking some mysterious code or other. She had been attacked by several rough men, waylaid and ravaged, causing her to become pregnant. That baby she lost at the hands of her tribe, according to him. Never heard of such a thing, but it is his tale.

Tad is his child, a mix between the blood, conceived and born out of love and trust. He had found her wandering about in a very distracted state in the plains country right towards winter, which can be very harsh.

He had fashioned a dugout style house and they burrowed in for the winter. Nature took its course and Tad came about 10 months later. They had been married by a reputable justice of the peace in a small town when the baby was a month old. The Justice was a decent sort who performed the ceremony in his own parlor with his wife as a witness. Thaddeus had done some carpentry for him in exchange for the ceremony and so it seemed a good deal all around to both parties. This was not unknown or thought scandalous per se, since often prairie romances preceded the legal union. I do suppose the fact of a Negro marrying an Indian might be a bit dicey in some circles. I'm happy for the both of them that this didn't enter into their obviously compatible union.

I am very glad the trip was peaceable for us, with so much that could have gone wrong both with equipment and people. I think we had a providential star guiding us for the trip. I thank whatever powers there might be that I met this couple at their zenith, and benefited from their company.

Time was not to be kind to them. He sank deeply into an abyss not of his own creation about a year after we got to Nevada. A tragedy was that Teama and the baby were both carried off by a fever that raged through the camp closest to where he was prospecting. In just over two days he lost both the now toddler Tad and what I sincerely believe was the love of his life, Teama. He was hit by the fever as well, but I learned he survived the ravages of the distemper and was physically weakened.

He sought refuge in drink, losing the Conestoga and then selling his tools, the ultimate sign of his decline and fall. When he finally got back onto the right path, he was a shell of his former self, but sober at least. He had left the set of tools Teama had scavenged when he went off to work the gold fields and find his fortune. I presented him with them, not knowing whether he sold them for drink or was able to use them to make a living. That was the last time I saw Thaddeus. It was just a sad commentary on the vagaries of life.

Our return was not marked by any great occasion. I suppose the band forgot to come to play at this momentous occasion. But it was a welcome sight to see my library, to sleep off the ground without very much chance of being bothered by snakes, and to get a good restaurant meal. I bade a fond farewell to my companions and went back to work. There was a lot to be done with my new stock. My fellows deserved a great bonus for the way they conducted my business in my absence. I gave them a paid vacation of one week, which was unheard of in those times, after we put my new stock in circulation.

I knew that everything was normal with the world because of the simplest of events. When I went to work the next morning there was old Dennison ready to read yesterdays paper.

I had lots to tell him about my travels, including a story made up out of whole cloth about travelers left by the roadside, one of them burned after having been lashed to a wagon wheel. We had found this unfortunate still spinning on the wheel. All about him smoking, his grieving family strewn about him also dead. Oh it was enough to bring a tear to the eye. All out of the air this story, completely made up, but it was expected of me, so I told it as truth. As an example killing the deer, as simple and quick as that was became a whole herd to feed starving people stranded in the snow. The fact that it was dead summer never entered into the tale. The last count was 14 dead, and all on one salt lick pan.

And there was also the treasure we found on the road side that our Indian Princess by now had scavenged. Oh what wonderous things we found in piles of abandoned stuff. I did have my Oak Bookcase as evidence, and thus had something to point to give credence to my tale.

And of course not to be forgotten was my hand to hand mortal combat with Jack Dayton, after the demise of his partner Bill Stout while I read the immortal bard to him. I often used this tale as an introductory to my Hamlet readings.

There is much more to tell, but now I pause in my reveries to try to figure out how to make the rest of my life half as interesting as the stories so far have been. Allow me to pause Dear Reader, and I suggest you do the same, for when you see this I will have finished the document, or at least written what I could before I too have shuffled off the mortal coil and joined other story tellers in the clouds. That was poetic wasn't it? I have no idea of seeing heaven at this juncture, but it sounds nice, doesn't it?

(End of Part 2)

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