Bendigo Shafter (1979) Read Online Free PDF Page B

along the path of my wishing. It was from her that I learned much of the world beyond the limits of our wilderness. I learned from her that a man's world need be no smaller than the mind of the man who scans it. And I learned from her and from Cain the beauty of building, and a hatred of all who destroy, of all who are heedless of the work of others.
    The village people called me Ben or Bendigo, but to her I was always Mr. Shafter, and when I spoke she listened as if every word were important.
    Eighteen I was, and a man grown these three years, but I had worked my life on an Illinois farm, and only gone to school a few months at a time. I had learned to read, to write, and to cipher, and the books of which I have spoken I had read over and over again. Ours was a house where people stopped, and when my chores were over I listened to the talk of the travelers.
    When Ruth Macken spoke of the floor I knew I was in for it, and there would be more hunting and exploring to be missed, yet she was not one to settle for anything but the best, so I set to work splitting planks from large logs, using wedges and a beetle, which was a heavy wooden sledge borrowed from Cain.
    One day when the floor was half completed she went to her chest. Now Mrs. Macken's chest had been a much talked of thing while the wagons rolled west, for it was heavy, and there were some who believed it was filled with gold, one of them being Neely Stuart's wife.
    A time or two when her wagon bogged down we'd had occasion to lift it down, and four good men were needed for the lifting, unless one of them was Cain. Nobody had seen the cover lifted, although Ethan Sackett surmised what it contained.
    That day in my presence she opened the trunk and what lay within was better than gold, for it was lined with three layers of oiled-cloth and tightly packed with books and a store of paper for writing.
    There are fifty of these books, Mr. Shafter, that would give you an education if you read them and no others. Many who consider themselves educated have not read so many or so well.
    She took several books from the chest. Some of these books my husband brought because he thought they might teach him something of the land to which we were coming.
    The rest were chosen carefully because of weight and because he wished to bring those books that would prove the greatest value to Bud and to himself.
    He often said he might have chosen another list that would be equally valuable. However, I am going to let you read first the books about the western lands. They may prepare you and help you.
    She handed me books I'd not seen or heard of before, and I'd no idea people had written about the lands to which we had come, or those similar. She handed me Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, the Journals of Lewis and Clark, A Tour of the Prairies by Washington Irving, and one but lately printed, Three Years Among the Comanches, which was the personal story of Nelson Lee, a Texas Ranger. This had been published in 1859, so was very new.
    The books filled me with excitement, and, tucking them under my coat, I took them home. When supper was over I settled beside the fire with the first of them. I chose Nelson Lee's book and was soon lost in its pages.
    Some of the men he mentioned I'd heard talk of about the fire, men such as Jack Hays and Ben McCullogh, for their names were well known. There was much about riding and shooting, fights with Mexican bandits and Comanches, and finally his capture by the Indians.
    None needed to tell me how much the Mackens had sacrificed to bring these books, for no item was taken without its displacing some other, possibly equally important. Clothing and food made up much of the load, although wiser travelers carried a small sheet-iron stove with a boiler, for it was often windy, and fuel was scarce along the way west. Dutch ovens, skillets, plowshares, axes, saws, and augers, all these were necessary.
    My brother and I had brought two wagons and Ruth Macken