Hearts West by Chris Enss Read Free Book Online

pinch of arsenic is the best way to handle such a beast.” And as promised, he provided her with a small bag of arsenic at their next visit.
    â€œWhy can’t my folks see that I love him?” she noted in her journal. “I’ve got to make them see how much he means to me . . . or die trying,” she vowed. No amount of talk or tears would change her parents’ minds. “You’re too young,” they insisted.
    On the day Mary felt she had no choice but to take her own life, she watched her mother head out the front door and cross over to the neighbors’ home. With tears streaming down her face, she poured half the arsenic Calvin had given her into a glass of water and drank the poison down.
    The news of Mary’s demise devastated Calvin. After attending her funeral, he locked himself inside his cabin near his claim. When his friends dropped by to check on him three days later, they found him dead. A mixture of water and arsenic was spilled next to Calvin’s body. Nearby, the note he left behind revealed what had happened. “I’m sorry,” the note read. “But I’ve gone to be with Mary.”

BETHENIA OWENS-ADAIR & LEGRAND HILL
The Doctor and the Farmer
    On May 4th, with only our old friends, the Perrys, and the minister present, beside our own family, we were married. I was still small for my age. My husband was five-feet eleven inches in height, and I could stand under his outstretched arm.
    Bethenia Owens-Adair—1854
    F ifteen-year-old Bethenia Owens-Hill stared out the window of her husband’s aunt’s farmhouse, rocking her infant son to sleep. A brisk wind pelted the glass with sand and dust. Drought-twisted sagebrush tumbled past her bleak, hazy view and continued on. Bethenia’s baby whimpered a bit and she kissed his tiny forehead. Tears drifted down her face and she brushed them away with the back of her hand. Her Aunt Kelly entered the room from the kitchen and placed a pot of stew on a neatly set table. Bethenia turned away from her aunt, hoping she wouldn’t be caught crying, but it was too late. The concerned woman gently walked over to her distressed niece and put a comforting arm around her.
    â€œNow Bethenia,” she said kindly, “You just give him to me. I’ll take him, and educate him, and make him my heir. I’ll give him all I have, and that’s more than his father will ever do for him.”
    â€œMy baby is too precious to give to anyone,” Bethenia replied in a hurt voice. “You seem to think that will make things all right.” The young mother sobbed into her child’s blanket. Her aunt apologized and tried to persuade her to eat something. Bethenia declined, choosing instead to pace the floors with her baby boy.
    When Bethenia’s parents arranged for their daughter to marry Legrand Hill, a farmer who had advertised for a bride in the Oregon newspapers in February of 1854, they never imagined the union would turn out to be such an unhappy one and that Bethenia would be left to raise her son alone.
    Bethenia Angelina Owens was one of nine children born to Thomas and Sarah Damron Owens in February 1840. When Bethenia was three, her father moved the family from Van Buren County, Missouri, to Clatsop, Oregon. The Owens crossed the plains with the first emigrant wagon trains of 1843. Thomas came west to acquire a large parcel of land the government had encouraged pioneers to claim on the new frontier. Settling at the mouth of the Columbia River, the Owens entered into the cattle ranching profession.
    As the second oldest child in the family, Bethenia was given the job of babysitter for her younger brothers and sisters, while her mother and older sister helped work the ranch. According to her memoirs she often had one of her siblings in her arms and more clinging to her.

    Where there is a baby every two years, there is always no end of nursing to be done; especially when mother’s time