The Garnet HillsA Story by Nila M.
They all went west, the Bakers, the Shortfields, the Sanders, and even eight tenths of the Morris family. They even brought their terrier, Chester. You could find him, tongue lolling, in the back of the wagon, dust in his fur.
The allure of the big sky, big hope and plentiful land was more temptation than they could resist. They stowed their belongings, emptied their accounts and made haste. They felt free amidst the land. The ochre hills and the eternal blue above. They were at peace in their small camp, awash in violet dusks. Nearly worshipful of the setting sun. A dispatch from Fort Merry describes an encounter with the travelers in the summer of 1844. Cpt. Aldritch June the 7th 1844 "Met a fine group of homesteaders heading to the Washaw Valley. Shared supper and invited them to sleep the night behind our gates. They demurred and made their way down the Shepard's pass in evening toward the Garnet Hills area". The Garnet Hills, they couldn't have known, would be their last camp. And as they left Fort Merry Chester lept from his perch in the back of the wagon and high tailed it back to the safety of the fort. The Morris family arrived in those hills just a few hours before the rest. But as the Bakers, Shortfields, and Sanders filed into the camp they could tell right away that something was amiss. Papa Morris, the de facto leader of the expedition was gone. Not gone to do his business behind a tree or something, but gone. Vanished like a magic trick. Mama Morris who everyone called June bug didn't seem to notice, or to care. The Morris children had climbed up the rock scrabble to its highest point and stood like sentries, staring west at the sunset, stiff as boards. Mama Morris, June bug, didn't seem to mind that either. Tom Baker took such a fright at this strange situation, and the uncanny look in June bug's eye that he gathered up the Baker clan and went for the wagon. Imagine his surprise when he saw everything but the horses sinking into a stew of wet mud. The Bakers stayed, the Shortfields and the Sanders. Only if just to collect their thoughts. Mama Morris began to fix supper. No one ever heard from the intrepid pioneers again. No letters back to kin, no applications for land grants and no homesteads. In the year 1849, a surveying team dispatched from Fort Merry traveled near the Garnet Hills. They complained of problems with their gear. Compasses spinning every which way. And every one of them, in private of course, described a strange type of irritation, even aggression towards their companions. One man claimed to have seen a woman and what looked like children staring out to the west on the large outcropping of stone in the Garnet Hills. When he turned back there was nothing there. Captain Aldritch heard these stories with some amusement. He chuckled and threw a bone to his terrier, Bonaparte, who once was called Chester, and told the men that wide open spaces have a way of getting into your head. © 2018 Nila M.Reviews
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