Читать книгу The Bassett Women - Grace McClure - Страница 15

THE HARVEST

As the country opened up and more people came in, Brown’s Park was still at the end of the world. It was not until 1890 that a permanent post office was established there, replacing an unreliable mail delivery (which had ended completely two years before) to John Jarvie’s store at the far west end of the Park. Herb was appointed postmaster of “Lodore,” Colorado in January of 1890. The government’s mistake in spelling the name made the post office no less welcome.

Herb built a separate cabin to serve as post office and store stocked with a modest selection of supplies. The mail was brought in each week from May-bell, Colorado, a miniscule hamlet sixty miles away, delivered to Herb by a carrier who spent the night at the Bassett ranch before making his return trip. The carrier usually forded Vermillion Creek or rode across the ice during the winter. Since fording was dangerous during the spring runoffs, Herb devised a pulley system to be used at such times. The mail was transported across the creek to him by use of this pulley, and he in turn sent blankets and food to the carrier, who was forced to spend the night in the open.

Herb loved his post office. Gradually he moved in his books and newspapers, turning it into his own private retreat. It gave him a personal responsibility of his own, unconnected with Elizabeth’s ranching operation.

In that same year of 1890, Herb also applied for an Army pension based on his old “debility.” The records of the National Archives are not clear as to exactly when this pension began to be paid, but most probably the first checks were spent on school tuition for Josie. She had been sent to board in Craig to acquire the high school education not available in Brown’s Park. Then, in 1890, she was enrolled in St. Mary’s of the Wasatch in Salt Lake City.

Josie loved St. Mary’s and loved the nuns. Reared on the classics and good poetry and always a receptive student, she responded well to the educational standards and insistence on “social polish” in this excellent Catholic convent school. Both parents must have taken pride in her good record at the school, and Herb may have hoped that perhaps, given an understanding of potentials in life outside the Park, Josie might escape completely. He had never been happy there, and he wanted better things for his children. Unfortunately, Herb’s hopes were never to be fulfilled. His children were all given educations far beyond the norm of the times, but they were to love ranch life as much as their supremely contented mother.

In the autumn of 1892, as she looked at what she had achieved in their twelve years of homesteading, Elizabeth had good reason for her contentment. She and her friends had weathered the terrible blizzards of 1886 and ’87 that had wiped out Middlesex; the threat of Two-Bar was well contained, and Brown’s Park had been more or less converted into a cattle “empire” belonging to the ranchers who lived there. Herb had his post office and his pension, which relieved the constant search for hard cash that was the affliction of most small ranchers. And Elizabeth and her good friends Isom, Matt and young Jim McKnight had reached a level where they were all prospering. She must have looked at their comfortable home, their well-fenced fields, and their strong herd of cattle on the range, and reflected with pride that her labors had been fruitful and the future was secure. Being Elizabeth, she must also have had many more plans for the future.

But sometimes the unthinkable happens.

In December 1892, just as Elizabeth would normally have been starting her Christmas preparations, she took to her bed with an illness, the cause of which is still obscure. At the end of two weeks, Elizabeth—so full of vigor and boundless energy, at the height of her capacities, only thirty-seven years old—was dead.

Josie was to say later that appendicitis killed her mother, but Ann’s story to Esther Campbell, which seems to fit more closely with the available facts, was that Elizabeth had a miscarriage.

While still in bed, her favorite milk cow was caught up in a herd of cattle being rounded in the Park. In a fury, Elizabeth rose from her bed, saddled her horse, and gave chase. She retrieved her cow and cut it out of the intruder’s herd, but at the cost of her life. As Josie described it:

She went to bed at night all right, and woke up about four o’clock in the morning just deathly sick. Just terribly sick. Father was there and Jim McKnight was there, and—I don’t know—some of the cowboys. And they couldn’t get a doctor, of course. All they could do—all they thought of was hot applications . . . and that relieved her, of course, but she died.

So died a southern gentlewoman who had bested many strong men in a rough, competitive world. That competition had brought out the best in her, and perhaps some of the worst.

There is no way of knowing what scars were left on the Bassett children by the premature death of their mother, and whether or not these scars contributed significantly to their later development. Probably they did not, for their personalities and attitudes had already been formed when Elizabeth died.

The children had lived with a reversal of roles between their mother and father that was to form their adult attitudes toward the relationships between men and women. Elizabeth was, in effect, the breadwinner of the family, and their physical welfare had depended upon her. Herb had given his children laughter, tenderness, gentleness and the unhurried attention for which Elizabeth had never had time. As a result, Josie was to say, “We girls respected our mother, but we adored our father.”

Loving their gentle father as they did, they absorbed the lessons that he taught them by his own example: the necessity for honesty, charity and love of God and neighbor. These values were reinforced by everyday life in the community, where a man’s word was his bond, neighbor was loyal to neighbor, a hungry person was always fed, newcomers were assisted, and the sick were nursed and cared for. The Bassett children learned these lessons well and followed them in their adult lives.

Their mother had followed these same precepts, but from her and others in the Park the children had also learned to deal with the real world of survival. They learned that laws were to be disregarded if those laws favored lawless men; that Brown’s Park belonged to them and was to be defended against marauders; that one gave without question whatever was asked by a friend, but that the property of outsiders was fair game. These principles were of course never taught formally but they were universally understood. So arose the dichotomy that would be seen later in the standards of some of the Bassett children.

The Courier in Craig, Colorado, published an obituary of Elizabeth Bassett that hints at the controversy surrounding this extraordinary woman even during her lifetime:

A Sad Event

A messenger from Brown’s Park arrived Monday bringing the sad intelligence of the death of Mrs. E. Bassett. Her children, Sam, Josie [sic]* and Anna who have been attending our school immediately started for home, accompanied by Mrs. William Morgan.

Mrs. Bassett’s death occurred on Sunday after an illness of two weeks.

The deceased is one of the best known women in the country, where she has lived since the earliest settlement. She was a natural pioneer, possessing the most remarkable courage and energy.

She was highly esteemed by those who best knew her and commanded the respect of those who, from conflicting business interests, were her enemies. The most conspicuous and admirable trait in Mrs. Bassett’s character was her unwavering loyalty and devotion to her friends. She was only 35 [sic] years of age and apparently in the meridian of health and vigor. The sympathy of the community is extended to the motherless children.

Who were these “enemies” whose business interests conflicted with hers? Surely not her fellow ranchers, for to them she was a leader, loyal friend and a helpful neighbor in time of trouble. Surely not the men who worked with her. Her only possible enemies were the strong, important men who controlled the range in Colorado, who dominated the free grasslands—even fenced those grasslands in defiance of federal law—and who were quick to give the name “rustler” to anyone who opposed them. The only neighbor who ever damned Elizabeth Bassett was the bitter, greedy, sanctimonious J. S. Hoy, who had been thwarted, partially by Elizabeth, in his attempt to make Brown’s Park his own private cattle kingdom.

They buried Elizabeth on a hillside overlooking the home place, thus establishing a family cemetery that now holds most of the Bassett dead. For over thirty years, however, she lay alone, as her family contended with the difficult times and the changing fortunes that would eventually almost destroy what she had built.

Elizabeth’s daughters were to display in varying degree all her restlessness, ambition, unruliness and determination. They would be blessed by her dynamism and cursed by her strong will. They would always have her pride; it sustained them in bad times, and set the standards by which they lived. They would always think of themselves primarily as “Bassetts of Brown’s Park,” meaning that they were the daughters of Elizabeth Bassett, head of “the Bassett gang.”

NOTE

*Josie was actually in Salt Lake at St. Mary’s of the Wasatch school.