The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [92]
The challenges made me more stubborn. No one was going to tell me what I couldn’t do. I didn’t take the time to listen for Isaiah’s words about what way to walk. That season I didn’t collect enough prime pelts, so I offered the Warrens good prices for theirs. I took all of the furs to the Spokane auction myself instead of having Franklin come west. No sense cracking muddy waters best left frozen. The pelts brought an average price, but I made little over what I’d paid the Warrens. My paltry contribution of my own pelts added a small profit, but I wasn’t going to become financially independent this way. I’d have to consider livetrapping to begin fur ranching, and I needed to let Olea and Louise know what I had in mind for the farm.
The boardinghouse earned us additional funds, and we split it three ways. Olea furnished the rooms and Louise cooked and I provided the house, so it worked. I added my profits to a fund I had for buying land. In 1905 I found sixteen more acres along the Spokane River bordering my three hundred twenty. It had timber in addition to river frontage, and I thought it a good investment. It came with an apple orchard. My cash reserve grew smaller. With trepidation, I took out a small loan at the bank for wheat seed, a few apple starts, and twenty chickens.
“Don’t overextend yourself,” Olea warned.
“But you said one has to invest in order to get a return, right?”
“Yes, but caution is essential.”
“I’ve studied yields and expenses. I’m diversifying,” I said, remembering Olea’s brother-in-law’s advice. I didn’t add that I thought her latest enterprise promised less return than my wheat fields. She and her sister, Priscilla, had begun importing European furniture into America. Olea used a few pieces to furnish the boarders’ rooms and our living quarters; some she placed in the Spokane house she still owned, where she met monthly with society women looking for the perfect settee or that English burl elm Chippendale flattop desk (which she told everyone came from a royal estate). I was surprised by the prices people were willing to pay for secondhand items and wondered if they were moved to spend by the romance of the stories Olea spun.
Fortunately, we had bountiful rain that year. The grain harvest not only allowed me to repay my bank loan and interest, but it made all my expenses, the labor I hired, and feed and seed for the next season. We butchered several chickens and sold them in Spokane, but I knew that when I was ready for raising my fur-bearing animals, chickens or their eggs would meet the protein needs. I used a little of my small profit to buy Louise a new Monarch stove and Olea a signed first edition of Audubon’s 1827 The Birds of America, published in France. If I could repeat my success each year, I’d have a nice little nest egg soon. I was doing what I’d set out to do, making my way with sound decisions that hurt no one else. I still wished I could tell Olaf of my success, but he’d made his choice. I’d made mine. Louise and Olea and even Franklin—at arm’s length—were my family now.
“I wish you’d stop trapping,” Louise said. I readied my kit for the months I’d be on my timberlands. “I worry about you there alone for so many weeks in the snow and cold.”
“I have the Warrens,” I assured her. “And Lucky.” She handed me a pair of gloves, furry sides in. “It’s not only danger that concerns me.” She didn’t look at me when she spoke, so I wasn’t sure I heard what she said next. “I like your company. I miss you when you’re gone.”
“You miss Lucky,” I teased. I couldn’t recall anyone suggesting that my absence brought them even the smallest heartache. I assumed my brothers and sisters missed my mother while on our journey, but I’d already worked away from the Mica Creek farm for five years by the time Mama and I left for