Oh what a busy bunch we were when we moved to the new house . Daddy was building corrals and the barn after having fenced his share of the pasture off . I thought he seemed very satisfied about what land Mother had been able to persuade his dad to give him . Mother said , however , that Cecil who was now working for Grandpa was angry at having the pasture divided up . Mother said you would have thought it was his pasture . But I figure he thought that was only another way a rich man 's son got ahead while a poor hired man had to labor away on the King ranch hardly able to earn a wage he could live on . And how was he going to fatten Grandpa 's steers with half of the upper pasture foolishly given away to his alcoholic son ? Mother wasn 't very sympathetic . She was after all the rich man 's son 's wife , and Grandpa had given her the land free and clear she said in case she had to divorce his son . At least she thought that 's what he had done . Years later , it was discovered that the land had never been recorded at the court house as having changed hands , but since it had so long been in Clyde 's possession it was conceded . As far Mother , she seemed beside herself in a new situation alive with all kinds of possibilities . In fact , she could not get her store built fast enough and decided to open a one room store as had existed at the cheese factory in hers and Daddy 's bedroom down stairs . Daddy when he heard about this plan , shouted as was his wont when he heard something that greatly disturbed him . I was not happy with this plan either , as Mother and Dad were going to have to move upstairs where we girls slept . That was like sharing our sleeping space with two giant ogres apt to break into horrible roars at any given moment . Or even worse , have frightful sex barely down the hall way . In fact , I recall a most disturbing dialog taking place in their bed the night before Mother was to go out to Richfield to have some some sort of medical procedure . I heard her snarling to Daddy , " Hurry up and get it over with ! " She sounded like a demented tiger who would liked to have clawed him to death instead . Conversations about sex coming from my parents were very disillusioning but I hoped that the store building would soon be finished and they would move back down stairs far enough away from me that I could not hear any noises remotely resembling sex . In fact for years , if I woke up and heard any noise that sounded like sex to me I would not be able to sleep for hours even though it was very unlikely I could have heard anything from Margie 's and my bedroom coming from theirs down stairs . The noise was more likely coming from the wind blowing a branch of a tree strong enough against the window to make a rubbing noise . Once you have been traumatized by sounds of savage sex emanating from your parents ' bedroom accompanied by curses you are not going to recover very fast , probably not until you leave their home . And she also had to earn money to employ a local carpenter practically full time for the next three years . Mother decided she did not like the staircase ascending to the top of the stairs in front of her and Daddy 's bedroom , so she hired carpenters to turn it around ! Daddy could not believe his ears and protested mightily , so she just waited until he went to Salt Gulch , and told the carpenters to go ahead . The carpenters were weeks completing that remodeling job , with Daddy shouting protests every night when he came home to the mess . They also petitioned off the front room as Mother said the long open room into the dining area was too hard to heat . Eventually the staircase was completed starting in the dining room to the side of the bathroom door and enclosed instead of open . All the spaciousness of the big open room with a visible staircase was gone , but Mother was happy with her decision - - for a while . Daddy fenced in a garden plot and fertilized it and also an orchard spot , all with Mother prodding him . Mother ordered trees . They built a shed for machinery and tools , and a cellar to store potatoes , apples , and winter squash . I hadn 't lived there very long at all when I took a little walking tour of the pasture and over the fence saw a big hulking neighbor kid about four years older than I hurrying toward me as fast as he could . He hollered at me , " Do you want to fuck ? " I whirled around and hurried back home as fast as I could go . Another damned molester ! I was going to have to watch out for that fat leering bastard . I could not believe my bad luck in getting him for a neighbor . The worst thing about the new place was the fact that we had no water running into the house yet , and in order to wash clothes , we had to start carrying it from the ditch past the front yard to the black tub in back where we heated the water . Then we had to carry water to fill the rinse tub on the back porch . After we carried wood , made a fire , and heated the water , we would have to carry the hot water in to fill the washer . Grandpa Since Linda was still a toddler and Ann a year and half older than she was , and LaRae , two years older than Ann , it looked like Margie and I were going to get worked nearly to death before they were big enough to take their turns . What made me the maddest was Mother failing to wash the dishes from the big noon dinner . There they would be every day when Margie and I came home from school , and we would have to wash those before we could start supper . Mother cooked breakfast . I guess she washed the breakfast dishes when we went to school , but they were the only dishes she ever washed . And she would iron most of the clothes . Margie and I used heavy stove irons to do the ' easy ' flat stuff . She always ironed Daddy 's shirts . After a while Mother got so sick of the old stove irons , she bought an iron that ran on white gas . When she lit that thing a flame would shoot up clear to the ceiling . I would run outside ! I would not touch that iron , and Mother could not get me to , but she was willing to blow up the whole house to get an unpleasant job done a little sooner . She had gone clear crazy , that woman . Now other than doing those heavy chores right Mother was not a fussy housekeeper . In fact , we used to joke that the kitchen floor often looked as though chickens had the run of the house . Stuff would be spilled all over the floor , and apparently everybody was too tired to mop most days . Upstairs , after Mother and Dad moved back into their bedroom , would be one unholy mess with clothes scattered everywhere . Mother had this one storage closet where she stored trunks of old clothes the little kids loved to drag out to play dress - up . Mother never even looked upstairs most days . Once in a while she might go up there and scream and holler and threaten to whip everybody as she furiously cleaned it up . Eventually the carpenters finished the new store building enough for Mother to move her stock and the cistern really did get built in another year or so , only it was another big chore to fill it . Some kid had to sit up there most all Barbara and I set out to ride the 8 miles to King 's pasture . We forgot the matches and had to go back and get some , and then we stopped for some worms along a ditch bank Daddy had showed me . We were going to try fishing in the big stream in the pasture that was full of trout but hard to catch . I knew we were not fly fishermen like my dad , but maybe they would be tempted by some big fat worms . When we arrived I fell in love with the neat summer camp the Kings kept at the pasture that Grandpa said we could use . The tent was as big as a fair sized bedroom with a bed roll spread out covered with heavy camp quilts . We did just fine that night , cooking our meal in the bake oven over the camp fire . We talked until late into the night with the tent tied up tight in case of bears . To my great dismay , when morning came we discovering that Buttons had pulled loose from the tree where we tied the horses up as Daddy said to do so there would be no problem catching them . Now we would have to go roaming the big pasture to see if we could spot him . We finally found him down to the bottom of that 460 acre wooded pasture running around with some other horses . Buttons was not like Grandpa 's bay mares that would let you walk right up to them any where . We chased him and chased him but we could not get close enough to grab the rope he was dragging . I got really nervous . We were really sweaty and tired . I knew we couldn 't keep doing this all day , hoping Buttons would tire enough to let us sneak up on him . He was such a big strong horse , we would be sure to give out long before he did . I knew Daddy would be ready to kill me if we came back without Buttons . He would scream all night and say he did not have time to drop everything and go catch a damn horse 8 miles away . I finally thought to go look for some oats in the summer camp , and sure enough there was a noose sack there I filled with some oats from a gunny sack near by . Naturally Grandpa and his hired men were prepared for anything . Buttons just loved oats and let us walk right up to him when I shook the sack at him . I was so relieved I just patted Buttons when I caught him . I couldn 't even be mad at him . But after such a stressful crisis , we did not even feel like trying to catch any fish . The two tired young horsewomen just went on back home . I always thought my redheaded cousin Stewart was the most dashing figure on a horse of any of the Kings . He was taller than any of the uncles and with that shock of flaming red hair , white skin , green eyes , and his Stetson hat perched rakishly on one side he was cowboy poetry in motion . I loved the story Mother told about him after the upper road was done and they started carrying the mail in a two ton truck over the route from Escalante to Boulder . He bet the driver that he could race a horse over the Death Holler Trail , estimated to be about twelve miles over one of the most rugged trails in the west , and beat the mail truck to town . Yes , Stewart won his wager , reaching Escalante on his fast cow pony before the mail truck rocked around the Roundy bend . Well , Stewart knew that trail . He had probably ridden it any number of times after his father took over the Salt Gulch ranch in 1925 when Stewart was just six years old . I don 't know what their living arrangements were in the winter but it was likely his mother , Aunt Hazel moved to Escalante so the kids could go to school . His father rode back and forth to the ranch to take care of things , since they did not have cars in those days . Stewart and his younger brother Park must have accompanied his father , my Uncle Glen , on weekends , when he needed them on the ranch . I know one year Uncle Glen 's family rented the ranger station and lived there so the kids could attend the Boulder school , in order to get Uncle Glen away from temptation to drink , but the family was back living in Escalante after that year , and I never did know of them to live on the Salt Gulch ranch even in the summer , after that . Just Uncle Glen and probably his boys rode back and forth from Escalante , either by horseback or in a car as soon as they got one . When the family moved to Oregon after Uncle Glen 's trouble with the neighboring girl , Stewart and Park stayed with Grandma and Grandpa for a while until they could decide what to do . I know Stewart played Santa Claus one year at my parents ' behest . I recognized his tall slim figure . I thought this Santa was just too tall and skinny to be the real deal . I did not tell my parents I knew it was Stewart in order not to spoil their fun . I was only three or four but I no longer believed in Santa , being a too wise child at that age . I recall Stewart coming to Mother in great excitement to tell her he was going to get married . He had been going with Neta Alvey who was the youngest sister of Cecil , one of the hired men Grandpa had often employed . Stewart and Cecil were great buddies , Cecil was a little older , but they were both dashing cowboys , so they had a lot in common . Mother thought Stewart still wasn 't settled enough to get married with his family still upset over his father 's enforced departure under a cloud of scandal . Since Uncle Glen had never done anything but ranching for years everyone was worried that he would not adjust well to whatever job he could find in some other state . He had been his own boss a long time . Working for someone else might not set well with a King . At that time I never thought that a man named King ever acted any other way than royalty nor have I had any reason to change my mind since . Stewart hinted he might have to get married , so Mother said no more . After the marriage , Stewart said that he and Neta and Cecil and his wife , Alice , planned to go to Oregon to the town where his mother and dad had stopped and set up camp . There they would all try to find work close by . So Stewart and Neta went out and got married . I thought it was a good match for Stewart myself . I thought Neta was pretty and she came from a family of wonderful cooks , gardners , and housekeepers . She did not have much of a temper in case Stewart had a temper to match his flaming red hair . She would make any cowboy a darn good wife . Cecil left his wife , Alice , behind when they first went to Oregon . I was quite fascinated with Alice as she read a lot . In fact his sisters did not think Alice was as good a wife as hard working Cecil deserved because she sat around and read just too much , but I thought her love of books was wonderful . She also liked to draw and paint pictures . Even more fascinating she wore English riding boots and jodhpurs . With her long blonde hair , I thought she looked very fetching . I hoped I could persuade my dad to buy me some English jodhpurs and riding boots when I got older , but I doubted he would . Cecil had been one of a long parade of hired men that Daddy had hired on the Salt Gulch ranch in the summers . Alice even went over to Salt Gulch and stayed in the ranch house there with Cecil a year after we moved to Boulder , but Cecil preferred to work for Grandpa King rather than Daddy . Cecil resented the fact and didn 't mind saying so that Grandpa King agreed to sell the Salt Gulch ranch to Daddy for $ 4 , 000 which Cecil thought was a steal even in those days . When Glen heard about the sale , he was angry and asked his dad the next time he saw him why he didn 't sell him the ranch . Grandpa said , " You never asked . " I wondered if Glen did not ask because Aunt Hazel hated the Salt Gulch ranching life . Well , really , I thought she couldn 't stand Uncle Glen 's drinking . Stewart , Neta , and Cecil had been gone a few months when Neta came back to town to have her baby . She did not say a lot to anyone else but told relatives she was upset by Stewart 's drinking and had decided to come home to stay with her parents to have her baby . After that she did not know what she would do . Alice , Cecil 's wife , had gone up to Oregon to join Cecil . Cecil never did drink like the Kings who were known for drinking very fast and passing out . They just got really drunk . Such behavior would have upset any new bride not used to it . Arthur Alvey , Neta 's father , did not drink at all . In due time Neta went to the hospital and had her son and named him JohnnI am sure Aunt Hazel 's heart nearly broke just like Grandma King 's did when Max got killed only a few short years before , her youngest son , her brightest hope ! Max had vowed he was going to change his life by quitting drinking that winter , so he would not fail at the University of Utah as Daddy had done because of too much partying . Max said he was going to straighten up so he could marry the cute Mormon girl he had fallen in love with who told him she would not accept a drinker for a husband . Now Neta 's heart was broken , and Johnny King would never know his dad . Well , Neta did find a much calmer husband a few years later and had another child . But Johnny was her wild King son who never stopped taking terrible chances like he wanted to die just like his dad , in some equally reckless way . I remember when Johnny got married , the town cop called over to Boulder and said to tell everyone to get off the road as Johnny King had come home for his wedding and he just drove through town heading toward Boulder 100 miles an hour ! My dad just said humph and went out on the road in his new car . The story was forever told how Clyde King and Johnny King wrecked down in Calf Creek , half way between Escalante and Boulder , bashed in their fenders , but they both somehow lived . The story of Stewart King and his ride over Death Holler in a race with the mail truck passed into legend . I rode a poem about it . I have read about the Death Holler trail ride in other histories . Cowboys did not race across Death Holler Trail ! Stewart King did and that is why I wrote in my poem " My redheaded cousin Stewart King and Death Holler Trail were made for each other . " Posted by Mother announced to Father one day that she had secured the ' catchall ' as it was called from Grandpa King where she was going to move her homestead house . She told him she was never going to live in Salt Gulch again ! Father reminded her of her promise to live with him in Salt Gulch if he bought the ranch , and she reminded him that he had also made a promise to her to quit drinking , even to taking the Kiely cure , and he had not stopped . She was not going to be made unhappy anymore by him saying he had to go to Boulder for something and slipping off to Escalante to get a bottle Daddy seem quite surprised she had persuaded Grandpa to give her land in Boulder , but he thought to tell Mother he would have to have part of the upper pasture that belonged to Grandpa where he could pasture his horses , milk cows , and the steers he would be fattening for market in the summer if he was going to live with her in Boulder . Grandpa reluctantly agreed that Daddy would need pasture all right . The catchall property east of the big government corral , which land Grandpa owned , was enough for a smaller ' catchall ' , a garden spot and a place for an orchard , a barn , and corrals as well as the house and yard . Grandpa said Daddy could fence part of his pasture heading south from the government corral for his horses , steers , and milk cows . Mother hired Albert Coleman to tear down the homestead house and haul it to the building site and then Art McInelly , a carpenter from Escalante , and his sons were to do the reconstructing . In the meantime the family spent a few months of our last winters in Salt Gulch down to the old King ranch house and even a couple of months over to Grandpa and Grandma Wilson 's ranch house . All I remember about sleeping in one of the back bedrooms down to the old King ranch house was a reoccurring dream I had of an old model T grinding away in deep sand , unable to move forward . Talk about a dream of futility . I can still hear the dreary sound the engine made . I got so I dreaded that dream and that sound . I know it was about my father 's drinking that even after the Kiely cure , looked as though it was going to go on forever with our family making no progress toward stability . While we were living to the Wilson ranch home , I had a really alarming nightmare . I dreamed a man was chasing me and caught up with me in a pasture and took a very long plank , set one end on the top of my head , and with a big hammer , pounded a nail into the top of my head . I screamed so loud I must have awakened the whole household , but nobody said anything . For years I pondered the meaning of this dream . Just now I realiThis spelled disaster for our ranch . It was not long before my father realized no water at all was coming over the hill , and he and the hired man rushed up the road to see what had happened . The water went an amazingly long ways underground before it surfaced in a gully down below the ditch and flowed through the neighbors ' land . Well , I can 't tell you how many times that summer the men would fix the ditch with a wooden waterway of some sort and then the ground around it would inevitably give way and the water would disappear down into an even bigger sinkhole . I couldn 't help but have nightmares about that sinkhole , imagining if I had been there , I was not able to jump out in time for some reason . I would have gone down the hole with the water ! Well , thank goodness , I went to Boulder or I believe I would not be here today , and I told Barbara and Marilyn not to blame themselves as I was the one who insisted on swimming there . I don 't know if Daddy would have even forbidden me to swim in the ditch had he known what we planned to do . Finally in desperation Daddy asked the CCC engineer who was working on our roads to come and look at the sinkhole and see what he could suggest . He looked and told him to buy two of the longest culverts he could find that would hold the water , haul them home , and weld them together so they would cross the unstable ground entirely . The culverts were quite expensive , but that 's what Daddy did , and this solution finally worked . I was relieved to have the water running steadily over the hill into our ranch again without the sinkhole gobbling up more and more of the ditch . But still another emergency in our crisis ridden lives had been exhausting . I was reminded of the poor Ogden boy who had a nightmare event happen while trying to swim in a water tank over in Sand Creek . The Ogdens had run the Salt Gulch ranch before my Uncle Glen moved there . The boys found a water tank that was quite deep when it was full from a storm when they were riding over into Sand Creek . They took to diving into it . One Odgen boy came up in an underground passage they didn 't know was there and never surfaced . The other boys went in again and again looking for him but never found his body ! Needless to say that water tank was off limits to swimmers forever after and so was our ditch ! Knowing we were moving , I started saying goodbye to ' our hill ' which we children claimed in the middle of the ranch . I would never climb that hill again and listen to the blackbirds singing in the trees . I wouldn 't hear the coyotes howling at night just barely out there where you couldn 't see them , or watch the deer come in every night to feed in my father 's alfalfa fields . Well , my dad would see them , because he 'd still be farming over there , but I would never again live on this ranch as a child . Mother had even taken Barbara and me to Sand Creek to camp out . Margie and Gay , her sister , came with us , but Barbara promised me she knew where the Nine Room cave was over past the school house ledge and we would still go exploring over to Boulder as we had done in SaltDaddy said we would take old Don to Boulder , but he was so burned out , he didn 't know how long he was going to last . I knew if anything happened to him I could always go down to Grandpa King 's ranch for a horse to ride if I lived close . In Salt Gulch I never liked the fear that one of the cows just coming off the mountain would bloat on the alfalfa in the fields if we didn 't find them in time and put them in a pasture . Daddy had to stick a couple of them and they still died . But alfalfa was the richest hay for cattle in the winter . And Daddy loved his precious water so much in Salt Gulch he would hardly let a hired man tend the water . The only time he ever let the water run too long on his fields was when he was drunk . The rest of the time he was the most conscientious farmer you could ask for . Mother made me mad because she acted like Daddy didn 't do anything . It was hard work out there shoveling ditch . To my mind , Daddy actually worked harder than Mother did , and that is saying a lot . Mother was the kind of worker who would tear into some big job like bottling five bushels of peaches and about kill herself and all her helpers , but Daddy wanted order to his work routine . He wanted a nice dinner ready on time after the hard morning 's work was done and hot new bread for supper and he was satisfied . You never knew what Mother might do , work hard one day and not do a thing for days with the house left in chaos . She would be no where to be found . I got used to growing up with the house in a mess half the time . Mother wanted a homestead house . She got it , she didn 't like it , then she wanted the cheese factory house , and then the Salt Gulch ranch , and now she just had to have another Boulder house ! Would she ever be satisfied ? Daddy was afraid not . I heard him tell Mother he knew she would not come to Salt Gulch if she lived in Boulder to cook his dinner in haying time . Mother said I would be big enough , I could do it ! It looked to me like Mother was raising me to take her place in Daddy 's life . She was already refusinBut it was easier for people to tolerate Grandpa and overlook anything he might have been doing because he did not drink . Neither Aunt Hazel or Grandma King wanted to leave town to live all year on a lonely ranch . They jumped at the chance to live in town probably even when their boys would not mind them and they suspected they were coming home drunk . Aunt Hazel 's two oldest boys , Stewart and Park , were now very bad drunks . The same thing was happening to them that had happened to their father , Uncle Glen , when he lived in town . Started drinking something terrible . All the King males were very bad to drink when they lived in town . Grandpa King would come to town and crack the whip and take them in the summer to the ranch and work them as hard as he could . But it was too late , they had already become some of the worst young drunks around . I observed all the families around me . The Coleman boys did not drink ! Neither did the Petersen boys . The Wilson brothers did not drink . Their dad , my granddad , kept them very close to him , always doing big projects so they would not have time to get into trouble . What was the use of the wife moving to town so the kids could go to school if the sons were going to be lost to alcohol ? Grandpa King was a smart guy but I thought he was too willing to be parted from his wife . Yes , he had the problem , too , now I was almost sure . None of the other husbands and fathers acted like they could be separated from their wives overnight . The effect of his mother and dad 's problem with togetherness probably influenced Daddy 's behavior , too . Which was why I thought he had been so determined Mother should live with him on the Salt Gulch ranch . Oh strike me dead if you will because of a suspicious mind , but I felt these were the hard cruel facts of life . Alcoholics like my dad and his brothers were the worst thing that could happen to a family . Every week the same god damn dreary scene , Daddy coming home drunk and Mother yelling , hollering , cursing . Mother never cried . She was too hot tempered to cPosted by Daddy came back from a trip out over the mountain in the truck and told me quite casually that he had a new horse for me to try out . I ran out to the corrals to see him and was overjoyed . There couldn 't have been a more beautiful horse than Don . He was lean and well formed , brown with a long wavy black mane and tail . Daddy warned me he was an old horse but gentle . He would not be able to take him out on the range to ride because he had been ridden out . The gentleman who traded him to Daddy had been kind enough to tell him Don didn 't have the stamina to travel long distances anymore . But I knew Daddy had been looking for a horse gentle enough for us girls to ride . Don was that horse . He did not have one trait of ' acting up ' unless you counted the fact that he was hard to catch . Daddy said I might have to use an oat sack if I was alone and wanted to ride him . Otherwise I might be chasing him around the corral a long time trying to get a bridle on him . I spent as much time as possible riding the new horse . I told Daddy he had the most beautiful sound to his gait when he loped . It was the most rhythmical lope in a horse I ever experienced . I just loved everything about Don . I daydreamed about what a magnificent horse he must have been when he was young , about how many hours of pleasure he must have given his owner before he played out . Daddy knew a lot about overworking horses . He knew how to pace his horses ' working life so they would not give out for years . After all , he and other cowboys spent years training ' cow horses ' to work with cattle in this rough country . A well trained horse with a lot of stamina was worth gold . Daddy was an expert calf roper who always did the roping when they had to brand calves every year . He caught his calves so fast they got done with the work a lot quicker than if they had not had a top roper . Daddy and Grandpa King were known for their expertise in working with cattle . We used to laugh at how soon some of the ' tough ' cowboys in town would wear their horses down and out . One bunch of young brothers were known for their ' skinny ' cow ponies . They always rode their horses on a dead run . The horses didn 't last long , but the brothers got there sooner . But they were tough cowboys and when their ponies played out they just went down on the range where the wild horses ran and roped another cow pony , brought him home , and run him til he was very slim . I was always very solicitous about my horses ' well being . I observed my dad 's and granddad 's ways with horses very closely , and when I started school I found myself attracted only to the boys who loved horses . One boy and one boy only loved me and claimed me for his girlfriend but he did not love horses so he could not capture my heart . Instead I loved his cousin who was a horse lover nicknamed Dynamite . In fact , I was never to know another boy more obsessed with horses . But his nickname kind of gives you a clue as to his explosive temper . He had the worst disposition of any boy in school . His cousins had named him in self defense , but he was proud of his nickname and probably lost his temper all the more after he became known far and wide as Dynamite . Keep in mind that I had developed sexual feelings at a very young age , probably from being jolted ahead in my development by molestation , so loving a boy was agony for me , especially when he loved another girl . I think my passion for Dynamite just confused him since he was not nearly as far advanced in his passionate feelings for girls . What he did not feel he was bound to reject . I would day dream about us riding the range together on our horses , while he day dreamed about another girl who must not have been any more advanced in her passions for boys than he was because she hated his ' love ' for her . He carved their initials everywhere . He allowed his cousin to love me but Gordon was forbidden by Dynamite to carve his and my initials on any tree higher than his and Elaine 's . Neither Elaine noThere were a lot of obstacles in the way of Dynamite riding horses , too . When he first went to school he carved willows into horses he rode between his legs on a gallop . When he wasn 't busy he drew horses and pictures of a princess all day . Sometimes he would draw Barbara and me , too , but we would always be less beautiful than his princess Elaine . He would show me the pictures and ask me to give Elaine hers . I was almost afraid to give them to her she would respond with such chilly disdain , but I did not want to displease Dynamite . Finally Grandpa King noticed a horse loving boy if there ever was one and told him if he would come down and exercise his horses on the ranch , he would give him a horse to break of his own . He said he would have to wait until he was ten though . He couldn 't employ a boy that was any younger . Dynamite could hardly wait , but until then he had to be content riding his dad 's only horse , which was actually a big slow work horse not even close to a riding horse to RayL 's disgust . He probably expressed so much contempt for his dad not being a cowboy , they never got along . His dad became the local carpenter instead . He just had not taken to horses as RayL did . I figured RayL took after his Uncle Cecil , his mother 's cowpuncher brother . Cecil was one of the young cowboys who had learned the trade working for ranchers like my granddad . He was a horse lover and Rayl bragged that Cecil would help him break his bronco when he had earned him so he would be trained right . In the meantime I am sure that I talked about my horse Don and how beautiful he was , because Marilyn and I even rode to Boulder with me on Don , and guess what , Marilyn on one of her stepdad 's mules . We were used to the big burly Morias cutting a comic figure on his mules . He and his brother Merlin purchased the mules when they got the mail contract one year , and when the upper road over Hell 's Backbone made it possible for a truck to carry the mail and they lost the contract , Morias just went on riding the mules . Riding mules was pracGerry Her stepfather Morias was a rough old country bumpkin , and I think she was horrified by her mother 's years of staying pregnant by him until she finally had a child with severe muscular dystrophy who never made it out of his wheelchair before he died . Her mother moved herself and her children by Morias to Escalante and Morais was not even allowed to visit , I am sure , until she was past menopause . When he got old and his health broke down , his younger children persuaded her to let him stay there after he sold the ranch , until his death . Marie , her mother , told me Marilyn only came back once to see her in Escalante . I don 't think she ever had any children . Well , I understood because I was pretty traumatized by my mother 's inability to keep from getting pregnant too ! I found out another baby was coming soon after Ann , the fourth girl , had only turned one year old ! I knew Mother did not want or need another child this soon . Daddy always cussed when she got pregnant as though it was all her fault . Then he 'd finally act resigned and say it had better be a boy then to help him with all that work . Was he going to do put it up for adoption if it was another damned girl ? I thought our dad liked us girls , but that wasn 't the way he talked when Mother got pregnant . I remember Mother saying something about her diaphragm breaking when she was going to have Linda ! It certainly could not have been a very reliable means of birth control whatever she used , but she soldiered on through the pregnancy . I did not want another baby brother or sister to tend . I thought I might go mad myself with all these kids constantly arriving . You could put a molester in jail but a husband like Daddy who got drunk and demanded sex I feared you could do nothing about . I had heard him demanding his husband 's rights . But it sounded to me like he did not have to try very hard to get Mother to take a chance ! Well , Mother had the baby , another girl of course , which caused Daddy to treat her very badly as usual , Mother reported , but this time she went to Salt Lake to have the child because her very life was at risk . Ann had to be delivered with forceps and Grandpa informed Mother her life might come to an end if she stayed in the country to have another child . Daddy grumbled but was scared into paying the bill for her to go to Salt Lake . He even took her and deposited her to the hospital she told us before he went out and got drunk . Grandpa could not even tell her what to do to stop getting pregnant . If he couldn 't tell her I don 't know who could . Everybody in the country must have told I came home from school one day when we were living in Salt Gulch , the fall after Linda was born in June , and I couldn 't find Mother . I knew she was there somewhere because the car was there . I finally found her crying out in back of the house . She said she had gotten pregnant again with her ninth pregnancy in ten years and was having a miscarriage ! Somebody came and took her to Richfield . I guess it was Daddy since he was the cause . I don 't know where we five children were deposited , probably with Grandma King . The doctor had to do a D and C and Mother finally persuaded him to tie her tubes . He reluctantly agreed even though she was only 29 years old and he said it was a criminal act . It was obvious she could not control her child bearing situation , so he guessed he needed to make an exception in her case . Some women just were not made to have ten or twelve kids like a lot of women did in those days . She looked strong , but half way through labor she just quit having any meaningful contractions . I don 't think her heart was into having kids to tell you the truth . Daddy being the alcoholic husband he was . She was always uptight and mad at him . She just could never relax enough to bring another of his children into the world easily . Mother came home from the hospital looking considerably happier . And at last we could turn our attention to spoiling the last baby sister . I doubt if I even noticed her up to then we had so much work to do . Like gardening , bottling , washing the clothes with water heated outside in a big tub , making soap , cooking meals , making bread , all that had to go on no matter whether there were fifteen babies or not . I don 't know how Mother survived those years . I know she had a lot of migraine headaches , and she complained about being tired all the time . When I started waking up in the morning exhausted , how could I expect her to be concerned ? She had a worse case of fatigue than I did . In the meantime , Mother hired Leah and Fern Coleman at times to come and help us . They were godsends . But they grGerry After Bill quit working for Daddy I did not pay attention to what he was doing until I was eight years old and Mother or somebody else told me that he was ' courting ' the widow Baker . I was horrified , but it was true as I saw his old vehicle parked to the Widow Baker 's shortly after when I was riding the school bus home to Salt Gulch . Maggie lived just down from the rocks coming into Boulder , on what people called ' Sandy Ranch ' , as the widow did not have enough water rights to keep her fields green . Rattlesnake Bill had somehow got into her good graces enough to be allowed in her house among her whole flock of tasty children , three little girls , under ten , and three boys who were older . If he should get a chance I thought he would mess with either girls or boys , but who I figured attracted him the most was not Maggie , with her long stringy hair and her careworn face , but Cleo , her curly haired ten year old daughter who looked exactly like a brunette Shirley Temple ! I had not warned a single soul about what a bad character Bill was . If anything happened to one of those children it would surely be partly my fault . Cleo was best friends at school with Marilyn , who lived in Salt Gulch . Marilyn even stayed to the Bakers ' occasionally when there was some reason she wanted to stay all night in Boulder . Since I had also made friends with Marilyn and even gone to visit her a time or two , I decided I would try to talk to Marilyn and tell her what danger was lurking with Cleo 's mother allowing Bill close to her children . I got Marilyn 's attention at school at recess and then realized I would need to her tell what Bill had done to me in order to get her to believe she must warn Cleo . I started to tell her about the molesting but at the last minute I could not bring myself to tell her that Bill had done these things to me . It was just too risky a thing for me to bring myself to do , too full of the possibilities of dire consequences . So instead I found myself telling Marilyn that Bill had already molested Cleo ! She looked at me startled while I described everything Bill had done to me , only I said he had done it to Cleo ! Marilyn never uttered a word of protest . She just nodded and left . I was horrified at myself for telling such lies . As if Marilyn was going to believe me . She knew very well that Cleo would never have told me anything . She was picky about her friends and I was not one of them . While I was pondering the possible consequences of the ghastly falsehood I had told , Marilyn must have gotten a chance to tell Cleo what I said about Bill having molested her . Very soon Mother and Dad went to Boulder for the mail and some other business . They left us older girls home in Salt Gulch doing chores . Cleo must have seen them pass the Baker place and she got on the phone and kept ringing until I answered . When she got me on the phone she started screaming at me that she would tell my mother and dad and have me arrested for slander if I did not stop telling these horrible lies about her . IPosted by