Oregon Bound

OREGON BOUND

By

Sandy Grissom

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 by S.K.G. Haag

Cover image by: Roger 469 used under Attribution of Public Domain

Prologue

Twelve year old Kinley only asked her mother where she got her unusual name.

The lady smiled.

I’ll be right back, she promised.

Moments later the lady handed her daughter several old journals.

Your name comes from back, I think, four generations back. Grandmother wrote it all down. I’ve been wondering when you’d ask. I’m delighted you are old enough to understand all that you will learn in these pages. School’s out until after the New Year. You have time to learn about your namesake. She was a remarkable woman.

Kinley shrugged. She was bored with nothing to do. It was snowing out but she didn’t feel like going out in the cold, though most days she had no problem with that. Kinley loved the snow. She probably wouldn’t if they lived up in the Cascades but down here on the Inland Empire plains they didn’t get all that much snow at all. Usually only enough to cover the ground, rarely enough to make a snowman.

Kinley loved her life and the big house where her family lived. It was just that she felt lazy today. Looking over the journals would be like reading a good book, she thought. So she settled down onto the sofa with an afghan across her knees. She smiled in happy anticipation when her mother brought in a cup of chocolate.

It’s hot, the lady warned.

Her daughter nodded.

Kinley opened the first journal and began to read. A preliminary note said this first section was added by Sarah Rogers, the wife of a grandson of the first of their family to settle in Eastern Washington State. She said the story of that last day had been told so many times that she was sure she had written it down accurately. Her mother-in-law had put down the rest of the story years earlier. She felt it was important enough that it should be saved.

It must be a good story if it needed to be preserved, Kinley thought. Even if it were only family history, it might be interesting,

She settled farther into the corner of the sofa. Kinley began reading the rest of Sarah’s addition and noted that it recalled a conversation.

June, 1929

I’m so tired, the old man told his wife.

I know, my love, she replied.

The ninety five year old man lay in the four poster bed he had built many years before for his beloved Lee. His wife, only a few years younger than him, sat close by his side.

It’s best this way, Adam went on. I couldn’t have gone on without you.

And how do you expect me to do the same, Lee asked.

You have the children, he assured her. Will you hold me as I go? Tell me once more about our life.

Lee smiled. She stood and dropped off her clothing and crawled into bed next to her husband. Lee wrapped her arms and legs around his cooling body and sighed in contentment that they were together like this one more time.

Outside the room, their children to the fifth generation sat around in various rooms of the old homestead. Some were in the parlor or the second bedroom now set up as a playroom for kids, but most of the adults were in the kitchen. They sat at the kitchen table or stood around it drinking coffee while generations of children played happily on the floor in the other rooms.

They’d all come together this year as they did most years for a family reunion. Some of the family still lived nearby but others made the trip regardless of the distance. They especially took the time to come this year for they planned to celebrate the old couple’s seventieth wedding anniversary, too, thinking there might not be many more of them.

Then after the excitement of the party, the old man took to his bed. Perhaps it was all too much for him or it could have been that he’d seen something eternal in one of his descendant’s eyes. His wife, as was her practice, went along to be near him.

A grandson recognized the inevitability of what was happening and knew the devoted couple would want to be alone to say their goodbyes. He shooed everyone away from the bedroom and quietly shut the door, then moved off to the kitchen where he joined the great number of adults crowded in there.

It’ll be awhile. Grandma’s telling the story again, he said.

He won’t go until he hears the whole thing, his sister agreed.

Chapter One

February, 1864

Kinley Collins Bergstrom could usually reason with her husband. John normally wouldn’t fight with her, especially if she had a strong reason to support an issue. He’d give in, almost as if whatever Lee, Kinley’s shortened name, wanted was of so little importance to him that it wasn’t worth fighting over. She was skilled at making good arguments and used them whenever John let his emotions rule his head. Lee could usually make him see reason. So it pretty much took the wind out of her sails when he didn’t follow that same pattern this time.

John arrived home from the bank at his usual time, though he often went back out afterward. Lee had come to realize that if it weren’t for the evening meal, John might not show up until bedtime. Not that a bed with him in it was any great bundle of joy.

The point was that John wanted this bad enough to fight for it. At first it surprised Lee but then it angered her. Perhaps it was the way he began the argument that caused the hit to Lee’s emotions so badly.

Jessie and Adam are joining a wagon train going to the Oregon territory, John spat out.

Relief ran through Lee until her husband finished what he intended to say to her.

We’ll be going, too.

Lee couldn’t get a handle on how she could be so uplifted one moment and then so plunged down in despair the next. She loved the idea that her sister, Jessie, would be moving away, the farther the better. Taking Adam with her only added to Lee’s relief. Therein the joy came to her. She wanted the couple gone, away from her sight and maybe at some point out of her thoughts as well.

Then just as quickly as joy had come, Lee was cast down into a black pit of disappointment, along with a great deal of anger and even anxiety. They were to travel on the same wagon train with that couple. John, who never once spoke of wanting to travel to the Wild West, announced that they would be moving all the way across to the opposite side of the country. He decided without so much as speaking to Lee. He didn’t consider the hazards they might encounter with such a trip, not the difficulty of traveling with their young daughter, and certainly not what Lee wanted. They were just to go because John declared it.

If that weren’t enough, Lee was to be subjected to long months of travel with the two people in the world she despised being anywhere near. Long months, close to a year, Lee imagined, with only a handful of families in the same party. There would be no way to avoid Jessie or Adam. So as usual, it would be up to Lee to get along with the two people who had so bitterly betrayed her. She doubted they would go out of their way to try to get along with her. No, Lee would have the make the adjustment while everyone else did not. It would be expected that she would do it.

Lee sighed unhappily for she knew that she had no choice. It would not be long that the people in the accompanying wagons learned that Lee and Jessie were sisters. They would expect to see a loving relationship between them. It would appear as if one sister could not possibly move so far away without the other. They would be shocked when they discovered the two women barely spoke to one another. In truth, Lee could barely tolerate being in the same room with Jessie. Yet now she might have to be close to her, not just on the journey, but for long years to come. If she couldn’t change John’s mind, that is.

Jessie had no problem sounding as if she had any concern for Lee’s feelings. She was such an actress. She had a way of making comments that sounded as if she cared for Lee while at the same time, and obvious to anyone who paid careful attention, she was putting Lee down. Lee never seemed to win around Jessie, no matter how big or small the disagreement was. It had always been that way.

The revelation that Lee would have to put up with her selfish sister all that long way across the country was what began the unhappy discussion between her and John. The argument quickly turned into a screaming battle that woke up the baby. John departed the house while Lee was out of the room seeing to the scared six month old Sarah. He didn’t return until late in the night. When he did, it was as if the argument had already been settled.

Oh, John gave her reasons they should follow her sister and husband to