Claim 227

Claim 227

 

A Tale of the California Gold Rush

 

 

Ron Lewis

 

© Copyright 2014, 2019 by Ron Lewis

All Rights Reserved

 

 

This is a work of fiction and not intended to be historically accurate, but merely a representation of times. Names, characters, places, and incidents used in this story are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental and unintentional; however, historical characters are used strictly for dramatic purpose. This story contains some violence.

Claim 227

 

Johan Bain stopped his plowing at the end of the row. He pulled the plow from the ground and turned his mule around, pointing back in the other direction. He set the plow into the dirt, kicked the blade down into the soil.

 

“It’s goot dirt,” he told the mule. “Only problem is not our dirt.”

 

Pulling his wide-brimmed hat from his head, he hung his topper on one of the plow handles, pulled a kerchief from his pocket, and wiped the thick sweat from his brow. Johan peered west toward the horizon.

 

Bain longed to go somewhere, anywhere, other than here. To a place Johan Bain would call his own. But deeper than owning property, he wanted to be somewhere else.

“Johan,” a voice called to him.

 

Bain turned back toward his house and spotted his wife plodding toward him, a water bucket in her hand weighing her down. Johan pulled the rigging from his shoulders and strode toward his wife.

 

“Hilda, you shouldn’t be doing that!”

 

“You need water,” she said. “This isn’t so heavy.” Hilda Bain smiled at her husband. Setting down the bucket, she drew a dipper full of water. She handed the dipper to him.

 

He took a long draw from the dipper, followed the first drink with another from the bucket, retrieved another full cup, and poured the water over his head. He returned the ladle to the bucket before taking his wife in his arms and hugging her.

 

“Your best wife ever a man had,” he told her. “Well, love, I should go back to my work.”

 

“Yah,” she said. “I’m making stew for supper.”

 

“What meat did you use?”

 

“That scrawny runt goat.”

 

“Mmm, your goat stew. Yah, the best stew in all of Holland,” Johan said. “Have I ever tell you how much I love you?”

 

“Not often, but enough, so I know.” She turned, walking back toward the house. She turned back to him, “Bring bucket back when you finish for day.”

 

The fact that Johan Bain loved his wife seemed odd to some, considering their beginning. But in truth, no two people ever loved each other more than Johan and Hilda Bain. Things weren’t always this way; their marriage had been an arranged marriage by a matchmaker. Complete strangers, the pair never set eyes on one another until their wedding day.

 

This was something unheard of in America, but in those times, in Europe, an arranged marriage was common practice. They were married on a sunny day in May. It took a month to become familiar with each other, where they relaxed around each other. Longer still to adjust to each other’s idiosyncrasies. After three months, they grew comfortable. But being content with a person isn’t love.

 

After a year together, the love happened. Hilda stared at Johan one day in the field, breaking his back, plowing the land. His broad chest and back so muscled, the plow held in his massive arms and oversized hands. His body’s sweat covered him in beads as Johan, and he and the mule dug the furrow for the seeds.

 

Johan stopped his plowing and wiped the sweat from his brow as she took stock of her man. Like a lightning strike, Hilda realized she loved him. She fell in love in one solitary moment, a love which never dimmed through the years.

 

Johan couldn’t tell you when he fell in love. A realization sprang in his mind one morning, sipping coffee from a saucer while he glanced at her.

 

“How is the coffee?” Hilda asked.

 

“It’s goot, my love,” he said without thinking.

 

“Would you like more?”

 

“Yes, Hilda, and …” He didn’t finish the statement. He didn’t understand how to finish, didn’t have a clue what he wanted to stay.

 

“I love you too,” she said.

 

Taking the cup and saucer, she washed them, dried them, filled the cup. Sitting hot coffee in front of Johan, Hilda tipped out some coffee into the saucer.

 

“That’ll cool her for you.”

 

“Ya, best-blasted wife a man can have,” he said. Picking up the cup and saucer, he sipped his coffee in his unusual manner, pouring more into the saucer as he sat them down on the table. Johan didn’t say he loved her often. Most of the time, he called her ‘love,’ and which was all she needed.

 

She often worked the fields with her husband, putting in as many long hours as he did. Johan voiced his disapproval, but Hilda worked alongside him. Determination ran deep in the woman, a trait she’d pass on to their offspring. Johan was less dedicated than she was and far less enamored with the land than Hilda.

 

He stood and, for a moment, rubbed her neck, walked to the door to don his hat. He smiled, turning to her. “If this isn’t too much trouble when we have a child, I’d like a boy.” She laughed, recognizing his desire for a son. “Well, we live, off to the fields,” he said, and with this pronouncement, he left.

 

Her husband didn’t surprise her on the day Johan announced they should move to America. He was not happy where they were and longed for a different life. When he asked her if they might save money for the trip and to buy their own land, Hilda stood and moved to a cabinet. She pulled a jar from a cupboard. Opening the lid, she displayed the contents to her husband.

 

“Do you think this would be enough?”

 

Johan smiled. He should have understood she’d always have money for emergencies. She was this kind of woman.

 

“It’ll do for a start, I think,” he said. “You’ve been holding out on me, ole girl. You’re a smart woman,” added with a shy hesitance, “my love.”

 

“Well, if this is not enough, I have a little more hid away over here,” she said, moving to another place in the cabinet and finding another jar.

 

“No, no love, keep us a raining day fund.”

 

She smiled, putting the jars back in their places. “So, you need to tell Franz, ya?”

 

Johan contacted his brother, and before long, the two families packed up and headed toward what they believed was the promised land, America.

 

Surprise filled Hilda in America when Johan followed through and bought a farm. He did so because he loved her with all his heart. He understood she loved farming as much as he hated it, but he would have his wife happy.

 

Johan Henrick Bain and his brother Franz Albert Bain immigrated to the United States from Holland in the early 1840s. Both men moved their families and possessions to the New World with dreams of better lives. The Bain family had always been close knit, so it came as no surprise when the two brothers settled next to each other in Ohio.

 

Family ties are fragile things, often destroyed over the most trivial issues. This was especially true for the brothers Bain. In 1842, a package arrived from their homeland with a letter telling them about their father’s death. The box contained two other items, two musical instruments, the sum total of their inheritance.

 

With no instructions on who to disburse the instruments too, Johan offered Franz the guitar. Johan played both instruments; Franz played neither. Devoid of a semblance of musical ability, Franz tenaciously clung to the idea he had a right to both.

 

Therefore, a violin and guitar proved to be more critical to the two men than their kinship. In the end, Johan kept the violin, letting his brother have the guitar. Franz sold his farm to his brother at a higher than market price. Moving his family away, angry with his brother for keeping the violin. Franz and his family settled somewhere in the southern states to grow tobacco. The two men never again communicated with each other.

 

Over 20 years later, Samuel Bain, the last of the southern Bains, met his fate at the Shiloh Meetinghouse, run through in the final hours of the Battle by a union soldier’s Bayonet. If God does have a plan, there is an odd thread of his work in the event.

 

Some years later, the man who killed Samuel Bain on the battlefield befriended one of the sons of Johan Bain, the two men never knowing their strange connection.

 

Johan Henrick Bain was a poor farmer. In point of fact, this is not quite true; Bain was an excellent farmer, but hated farming. He was also not poor financially. What made him poor was dissatisfaction with agriculture. His farming skills and his wife’s acute business acumen combined to make them wealthy. His wife, Hilda, was a lovely woman with a soft smile. Her accent sounded harsh, but she was anything but. She pampered her boys without spoiling them.

 

Her habit of wearing blue dresses made one think she had only one dress. Hilda liked blue so much, she always used blue fabric to make them. Everyone in town knew who you meant if you said, “I saw the lady in the blue dress today.”

 

Their own land was essential to Hilda, and the fact they owned the property was of fundamental significance to her. In the old country, they were tenant farmers, with the landowner taking far more than a fair share. In America, they were landowners, well thought of in the community. These things mattered to Hilda a great deal.

 

In truth, Hilda was the business side of the family, while Johan was the dreamer. He dreamed of getting up here and going to bed somewhere way over yonder. Rising to repeat the whole thing the next day. And oh, by the way, in his mind, he would make a fortune for them while he traveled.

 

In the middle of plowing a row, Johan stopped the mule. Gazed west, dreamed of what was beyond the next hill. And the one after, the forest in the mountains out there, somewhere, toward the setting sun. After spending much time pondering what was over the hills, he’d return to the tedium of the plow, planting, or harvest. Always, he wished to be moving from one place to another, never able to do so. This frustrated him.

 

Despite Johan’s dislike of farming, the farm prospered so much, they employed workers. As Bain’s hired on help, they expanded the size of the farm. Buying more and more land. A few workers lived off the farm with their families. Several lived in a bunkhouse, which Bain and his hired help built. But unlike other wealthy business owners, Johan worked in the fields side by side with his hired men.

 

One day, when the men worked a field at harvest, they saw Johan stop, gaze off to the west, and stand motionless for several minutes. They glanced over, checking on him, the hands returned to their labors. Every few minutes, one or the other would check on Boss Johan.

 

“One of these days,” one of the men said, “he’s going to drop his scythe, walk away from here.”

 

“He’d never leave Mrs. Bain nor them boys,” a second man said.

 

“Yeah, he would,” the first man said. “Might not walk away, but he turns awful antsy every day.”

 

“I can see him bolting,” his foreman said. “Whiles he’s here, even taking them breaks to dream of wandering. He works harder than all of us. So, I suggest we do some harvesting.” The men had a good-natured laugh about his wanderlust, shook off the humor, and returned to their work.

The surrounding community considered them wealthy. The town liked the Bain’s; they went out of their way to greet them and ask about their day, how the crops were, or some other thing. One might perceive folks liked their wealth. After all, they possessed much land, but, in truth, their own affable nature that drew others to them.

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