The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) Read Online Free PDF

there ever was about charms; you couldn’t say boo about one of her remedies, even, but I happened to know they didn’t always work; the strength went out of them now and then. Only the year before, the conjure man had brought in the Jackson County madstone, from way over in Illinois, for a white peddler that had been dog-bit, and the man went ahead and died just the same, howling and snapping at water, with the stone strapped directly over the bite, exactly as prescribed.
    When I got back to the house, everything was ready except that my father was trying to jam two big medical volumes—Andrew Fyfe’s
Anatomy
and Lizars’
Surgery
—into his knapsack, with my mother standing alongside, wearing an expression of scorn.
    “It’s the silliest thing I ever heard of—walking all the way to California carrying two heavy books.”
    “You never can tell, Melissa,” he said, using his knees with great vigor. “Some poor sufferer of the not too distant future, prostrateon the alkali plains, may owe his deliverance to these very selfsame volumes.”
    “The more I think it over,” she went on, “the more I’m convinced that I’ve agreed to a fool’s errand. I have a feeling I’ll live to regret this night.”
    There was such an earnest ring to her voice that I sent a curious glance her way, and I’m glad I did. She fitted into the room, you might say; the one seemed to go with the other, they were that upright and graceful. Maybe because of this last look, I find the room easy to remember: the black iron fireplace with its fancy marble mantel, the faded Persian rug—a family heirloom from New Orleans—the horsehair sofa and chairs, each with its starchy-white antimacassar, which last were supposed to keep off the Macassar oil that people had taken to putting on their hair, and the cheerful old wallpaper of steamboat and cotton-bale design.
    Just when I was getting into a nice sentimentally frame of mind, almost wishing we weren’t leaving, she said, “Sardius, before you go to bed, Jaimie is to have the caning he was promised yesterday morning, before all this came up. He was smoking catalpa beans again, out by the woodhouse.”
    Wouldn’t that show you? Her husband and son were preparing to enter the wilderness, probably to be devoured by wolves or red Indians, and she must insist on the regular rules of the house. Well, in itself the caning amounted to very little, as usual. My father viewed the smoking of catalpa beans as both harmless and dull. I had dried out a considerable parcel from last summer and stored them in a handy place in the cellar, comfortably removed from the rats, which seemed to favor them. According to custom, we climbed the stairs in silence, to all appearances mournful and low, and I went on into my room. From beneath a mattress in his, my father extracted his latest copy of
The Turf Register
, then brought it in, tightly rolled, and fetched the bed several noisy whacks, whilst I voiced a few piteous howls, meanwhile proceeding with the removal of my clothes.
    The sheets were cold, the wind howled round the eaves. I wentto sleep and dreamed a mixed-up sort of dream about bears and buckeyes, and cockleburrs and Mr. Parsons, and at one point, far out on the prairie, my father had Fyfe’s
Anatomy
open beside a sick Indian that was stretched on the ground, looking indignant, and he was saying, “There’s no need to argue—you’ll have to give up catalpa beans.” I tossed and turned, sleeping very shallow and restless, and it seemed like no time at all before my father was coming down the hallway with a lantern and shaking me by the shoulder. It wasn’t just a dream, then. Dawn was an hour away, of a clear, cool, sweet-smelling morning, and we were off to California.

Chapter III
    Cape Girardeau, Missouri

May 27, 1849
    Dear Melissa:
    I take up my pen for this first letter home with a very heavy heart. The temptation is strong to consider the events in chronology, but the suspense of