The Mother Lode by Gary Franklin Page A

without help and if no one will buy my eggs, milk, or vegetables, I’ll have no income and they’ll force me under.”
    Joe didn’t doubt that she was telling the truth. “Well,” he said, “I’ll help you starting tomorrow. I’m about ready to get out of this shed and move about. My hip feels half-mended and my foot is a trial, but I can use a crutch and still get from here to there. Say, you wouldn’t have a little whiskey to ease the pain of it would you, Mrs. Johnson?”
    She almost smiled. “Joe, you know that I wouldn’t.”
    â€œYeah,” he said, trying to hide his disappointment. “But it never hurts to ask, ma’am.”
    When Mrs. Johnson was gone, Joe dressed and eased himself out of the bed. His broken hip hurt so bad he nearly passed out, and he could only put a little weight on his foot, which was still swollen and purple.
    But he’d had his fill of lying in bed as an invalid. He would get to work and do whatever he could to help this woman, and he’d not once complain or whine about it, either. Because as long as Joe Moss was around, Eli Purvis might as well suck rope rather than think he could bully or force Ellen Johnson into becoming his fourth wife.

6
    I N HIS FIRST few weeks upright, Joe had to rest more than he worked. But he did his best to help Mrs. Johnson, and he could split firewood pretty well standing or seated on a log. Within days of his decision to get up and get to work, Joe had made a crutch from an aspen and Ellen padded the crosspiece that went under his arm with a piece of lamb’s wool. She did that despite Joe’s protests that he didn’t need things to be sissified.
    The Johnson farm was 160 acres of good, flat land, and it was cross-fenced and irrigated from a gushing stream that came down from a canyon and ran right through Genoa. The stream was used by every family and the amount of water was fairly allocated. Mrs. Johnson, for example, was allowed all the water that she could use for eight hours every fifth day. When it was her turn to use water, Joe and Ellen would go out into the fields and open and close wooden gates flooding the farm’s ditches and pastures.
    â€œMighty good water and grass,” Joe said one fine afternoon as they watched the mountain water pour across one of the pastures. “This is a fine piece of land, Mrs. Johnson. You ought to grow corn and more hay like your neighbor Purvis.”
    â€œHe’s got a lot of help given his wives and all those children,” she said. “It’s all that I can do to raise a big garden, feed the livestock, pigs, geese, and chickens.”
    â€œI suppose that you could sell this place for a good amount of money.”
    â€œNo, I could not,” she countered. “Only a Mormon would buy here. Anyone else would be frozen out and their water would be stopped. And no Mormon will buy from me because it is understood that I am to be Eli Purvis’s wife.”
    Joe’s mouth turned down at the corners. “God didn’t give this land to the Mormons or anyone to hold forever. The Paiutes had it first, and long after Purvis and the rest of us are dust, this land will be used by others. We can’t really own land, ma’am; we can only just take care of it while passin’ through life.”
    Ellen’s sunbonnet was pink as were her cheeks this day, and several strands of her long hair had slipped loose so that she cut a fine and pretty picture in her fields. Now, she smiled and then laughed. “Why, Joe Moss, I declare that you are a bit of a philosopher!”
    â€œIs that bad?”
    â€œNot at all. It shows me a part of you that I didn’t know existed. Are you reading those words that I asked you to learn in the evenings after we take supper?”
    â€œYes, ma’am.” He felt sorta proud about it. “I can spell dog, man, woman and run, jump , and bone all fine, thank you