Deep Trouble

Deep Trouble

Book Four of the Baker Family Saga

By

Allison Kohn

Copyright 2014 by Allison Kohn

Published by Allison Kohn at Smashwords

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Look for the first, second, and third books in The Baker Family Saga – The Road West Dianna’s source of Strength ,and Angles, Eagles, and Fire at http://www.smashwords.com

http://www.allisonkohn.com/

****

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement

Ferndale, Oregon, 1856

Ray

Darlene and Mary

Nat Thomas

Motion Sickness

Across the Divide

Fruit Trees

Jacksonville

Back in Ferndale With Linda

The Reality of California

The Evangelist

A Letter from Linda

No Angels Here

Back in Ferndale

Richard Meets Jacob

The Real Trouble Starts

Stephen and Joanna

Back to the Hotel Room

The Wrong Direction

Stella Thomas

Out of the Desert to Deseret

Rose and Levi

Not Happy Briddes to Be

Sr. Pidal and Mr. Ed

Back in Ferndale

Ray

The Other Men

Alice, Donna, and Rose

Darlene and Isaac

Decisions

A Long winter in Dereret

Jacob and Ray

Alice, Donna, and Rose

Ferndale

Providence

Darlene and Mary

Ferndale

Worry and Peace

More Decisions

Misunderstandings

Sr. Pidal and Mr. Ed

Ferndale

Visiting Around Ferndale

An Island Off the California Coast

Search and You Will Find

Preparing For the Future

Preparing for Christmas

A Party Inside and Fire Outside

Reunion

Baker Family Tree

Location of families in Ferndale

About Allison Kohn

Other books by this author

Contact Allison

****

Acknowledgement

With thanks and praise to my King and Wonderful Counselor I dedicate this book to my little sister whose encouragement kept me going through the years. Thanks to the many readers who have given me good reviews – always encouraging and uplifting

****.

Baker Family Tree:

Jonathan and Margaret – married 1799

Jonathan died 1846

Margaret married Marcus Cromwell 1853

Son Miles born 1800

Son Stephen born 1802

Son Daniel born 1807

Daughter Evelyn born 1814

Daughter Julie born 1817

Miles married Jane Smith 1825

Son Eugene born 1835

Daughter ‘Alice Mae born 1838

Daughter Linda born 1844

Stephen married Joanna Cromwell 1829

Son Richard born 1830

Daughter Dianna born 1833Dianna married Clayton Harrington 1851

Daughter Rose born 1840

Son Jonathan born 1851

Daniel married Abigail Townsend 1836

Daughter Darlene born 1838

Daughter Mary born 1839

Evelyn married Lawrence Brook 1830

Son Lawrence born 1833

Daughter Donna born 1841

Twins Paul and Pearl born 1842

Evelyn marrie Daryl O’Riley 1845

Daughter Rebekah born 1847

Twins Laura and Leslie born 1848

Son Andrew born 1849

Twins Rachel and Richard born 1851

Dsughter Anna born 1851

Julie married Adam Colter 1835

Son Wayne born 1924

Son Robert born1844

Twins Micah and Matthew born 1850

Son Micha died 1850

Dianna and Clayton

Son Joseph born 1853

****

Ferndale, Oregon

West road

Ray, Dan, Marcus, Dan, Larry, Richard, Chad

Center Road

Clayton, Adam, Daryl, Stephen, David, Elizabeth, Jacob

East Road

Jed Colter, Joe Lane, Daisy Smith, Gramn, Theadore Martin, Scott, McDonald

Further east

Colens, Murdock, Sanford, Benson, Farley

East of there

Woods, Sam, John, Charles, Sophia,Greta

North east of there

Dan, Daniel, and Chad’s forest property

****

Prologue

This is the fourth book in the Baker Family Saga. The Baker family is living in the Willamette Valley – Ferndale, Oregon to be precise. Way back in 1842 when Alice Mae was only four years old, Donna was two years old and Rose was not even old enough to walk, their grandfather, Jonathan Baker, decided his whole extended family needed to move to the west coast.

He bought, what he thought was, a house big enough to house them all (he was wrong, it turned out to be a shack) and began the work of convincing his children and their spouses his plan, to plant a town with them in Oregon Territory, was a good idea. That was before Oregon was even a proper Territory; it belonged to the country that could populate it first.

Jonathan and Margaret Baker had five children and ten grandchildren when they left for the disputed part of the Louisiana Purchase. The family didn’t want for money or land but Jonathan had always been an adventurer and being among the first families to settle in the west coast would be his ultimate adventure.

Not all of his fellow travelers were as fortunate as the Baker family and didn’t possess the biggest and best wagons for traveling. Most of the families either had nothing because of the crash or because they just had never had anything go right for them.

The Thomas family was an example of the later families. But Mrs. Thomas had a scheme that was surely going to pay big dividends – this time. She wanted Jonathan to join her but he wasn’t interested. She took his attitude as a personal insult and had a life-long grudge against that snooty Baker family She used one of her sons, the poor Chester mentioned in the first chapter of this book, to get even with them but so far the only plan that had succeeded was the slow murder of Jonathan.

*That wasn’t much of a victory since the Baker family didn’t even realize their beloved patriarch hadn’t just died of old age. But Chester kept trying until, in Angels, Eagles and Fire, the third book in the saga, his obsession drove him into a mindless deviant who did nothing the rest of his life but suck his thumb.

*It was in the second book, Day by Day that Mr. Ed, as he told the girls they could call him, came into the story. Eduardo was the law in the Spanish town in Californio where Sam robbed and killed a business man. The lawman tracked Sam to Ferndale and was there when Chester and Sam kidnapped one of the Baker girls. When Alice Mae followed, with the intention of saving her cousin somehow, Chester tried to shoot her and the lawman got there in time to save her.

*In The third book, Day by Day, Dianna gave birth to her first child, Joseph, Chester Thomas tried to kill Alice, and Richard returned to the valley with his future bride.

*The family has grown and expanded and the town Jonathan established has attracted other families so Ferndale is now a good sized town for that day and time. The boys in the family are all encouraged to go back east and finish their education so they get a taste of cultured society but the girls are not so fortunate.

The Baker family decides to remedy the situation by exposing three of the oldest girls, Alice Mae, Donna, and Rose to the culture they have heard is in California.

The other two girls, who are old enough to be exposed to society, will be going east with their mother to find husbands in another year so they are not allowed to go to California with the others.

No one would have believed, in their wildest dreams that Alice, Donna, and Rose would end up in a desert, or as potential wives of a kind Mormon - or doing washing from a boiling pot, over a fire and bouncing a fretting baby on a hip clothed in itchy wool instead of the satin and silk the girls are used to.

***

Ferndale, Oregon 1856

The air was fresh and sweet in the Willamette Valley. Lighted windows looked like scattered fireflies in the sky until a sheet of lightning whipped across the heavens revealing houses where rain washed down panes and splashed off porches. The tracery, with its slender molded bars and geometric combinations, sparkled from the reflection of the moon in the drops of water clinging to the doctor’s Gingerbread Gothic.

Inside, Alice Mae Baker and her little sister, Linda, took tiny stitches by the light cast from oil lanterns. They were putting the finishing touches on the garments Alice would be wearing in California.

It’s not that I’m complaining, said twelve year old Linda, the scowl on her forehead and the droop to her lower lip belying this statement, but I do think it’s quite unfair of Mother to expect me to help you finish your clothes for a trip I’m not allowed to go on. Linda flipped the skirt she was hemming with an angry twist of her wrist. Especially when I want so very much to go sob – hiccup, "and I don’t see why we can’t have the Kanakas make our clothes for us. After all isn’t that what they’re for?"

Alice Mae tried to look disdainful and sniff like her Aunt Abigail, but it sounded more like the laugh she was trying to hide from her little sister. After all she was going to go on this trip and she was looking forward to the adventure with joy. I prefer to do my own sewing, thank you, she said with a smile. "Don’t you want to be like the woman in Proverbs thirty-one ?"

No I don’t, Linda snapped with asperity. And frankly I wish Mother and Father would get tired of that particular passage of Scripture. Why should I want to support my family and do all the work around the house? The servants should be doing the work and my husband will do the supporting. Am I supposed to be doing it while my husband sits around, with the other lazy men of the town, and makes decisions for the women? I think not!

She’s a very honorable woman and one any girl should strive to emulate – a woman worth more than rubies, Alice reminded her sister.

Well I don’t think I even like rubies, and anyway, I shall always have good servants who will get up and do the work while I sleep.

Alice laughed. Perhaps you would like the servants to dress and feed you too? Then of course you would be too weak, from doing nothing, to go to the stables. You know very well you never slept later than sunrise in your life.

Linda liked to sneak out of the house before anyone else was up and go to the stables to harass the stable boys. She had talked one of them into saddling her horse once, and rode alone, but after the first time it never happened again .

You’ve twisted everything around to get my mind off what I’m upset about, Linda said, thrusting out her chin. I’ve never been out of Ferndale – except for the cabin and that doesn’t count – and I don’t see why I wasn’t invited to go. I shall probably never get to California and I don’t like it a bit!

Alice was getting a tad impatient with her little sister and she snapped, Well you haven’t been invited because you’re too young. You might as well stop complaining. It’s not doing you a bit of good to complain and I’d like a little peace.

Alice’s irritation disappeared quickly. She smiled, trying to soften her words a little. She understood Linda’s desire to go to California and sympathized. Alice had a real affinity with her little sister. She knew Linda’s impatience was as hard, for Linda herself to bear, as it was for her family. Alice’s own impatience got her into trouble a few times, in the past.

I shall stop complaining, Linda said cheerfully as she knotted her thread. You’re right; complaining isn’t doing me a bit of good.

If Alice wasn’t thinking of her upcoming trip, a statement like the one her little sister had just made, along with the look on her face, would have worried her – at least enough to cause her to investigate. However, Alice was too excited about the morrow’s trip to notice anything except Linda was more cheerful and had stopped pouting.

When Alice was still a little girl and heard of California, it was unknown territory to explore besides being the home of Eduardo (Mr. Ed to Alice and her cousins), the Mexican law man who saved her life when Chester Thomas kidnapped her cousin Dianna. Mr. Ed became a friend while he was healing from a bullet wound, and told stories of his beautiful home in California.

Then Ray sent a beautiful silver studded saddle to her from that delightful land. It was a magical land where the language was like a song. She had images of people who wore crucifixes around their necks and made the mysterious sign of the cross with great emotion. Ray tried to keep Alice out of trouble since she was younger than Linda was now and the two of them become friends before he left for California.

Of course there was another side to the territory. When Ray came home to the Willamette Valley he shook his head and said how glad he was to be home. Alice’s cousin Richard, who rode a wide circuit up and down the west coast, was very serious when he talked about California. Both men said the area had changed since Mr. Ed grew up there on an idyllic ranch.

But Alice wanted to see it for herself. Her mother and father both agreed it would be a wonderful opportunity for her to see a little of the world outside the Willamette Valley, in order to broaden her vision and understanding

Even Uncle Daryl, who was her pastor as well as her uncle, and Aunt Evelyn thought seeing California would be a good education for their daughter, Donna. They wouldn’t send Donna anywhere unfit for a nice young lady. Suprisingly, Ray admitted it was very exciting for so many people to have arrived in California almost overnight and change the face of it from the lazy farms and missions Eduardo told them about, to the bustling cities it was by the time he saw it.

When gold was discovered at Sutter’s sawmill the news spread like wildfire and people from all over the continent and Europe went to California to get rich. Alice’s own family gained from the gold rush because all the people in California were panning for gold and didn’t seem to have time to grow crops or cut lumber; so the Baker family did it for them and shipped it down to California at a good profit. The Harringtons too, who started out with nothing but land, made themselves a good profit from the California gold rush.

Richard argued that California was not a good place for the girls to go and Ray, being his very close friend, agreed. Richard told the family about some of the people he met on the wagon train headed for California.

As far as I could tell, he said, the men had all left their morals in the east as though they could leave them at home and pick them up again when they returned for their wives and families with wealth in their pockets. He admitted some were families and some, but not many, of the women were the honorable kind he would want his little sister Rose to come in contact with.

Alice didn’t think a proper or virtuous woman would stay in a place where there were so many of the criminal type Ray and Richard insisted were populating California.

I saw examples of the many men who went to California for gold and didn’t care what they had to do to get it. Ray said. They made life hard for the native Spanish and even murdered some of them.

That frightened Alice but she decided the law would have gotten rid of those kinds of men a long time ago and told Ray so.

It has been a few years since you left it all behind and come home, and things will have changed for the better. After all how could there be a civilized population where evil abounds?

The girls won’t be seeing that side of California at all, said Uncle Stephen confidently. He heard things were changed for the better and San Francisco was now a city to be proud of. He and Aunt Joanna were taking their daughter, Rose to California and they invited Alice Mae and Donna to go along. They had no idea it would turn out to be anything but a pleasant excursion to a civilized big city. The future’s not ours to see, so they would go and

***

Ray

The same rain, bouncing off of the roof line of the doctor’s house, slid down the window panes of a small two story frame house across the road. Ray ran his fingers through his blond hair and stretched his long legs as he paced the floor, muttering.

She’ll get into trouble – I ought to go along – those three girls will be too much for just one man, especially since one of them is Alice Mae. He stopped long enough to laugh. I better find me a wife and raise my own daughters – let Miles take care of his daughters.

He forgot he had never been concerned about Linda and she proved, in every way, to surpass Alice for getting into trouble.

Ray wasn’t sure being married to just anyone would guarantee him a daughter like Alice. He wished for the millionth time he was Alice’s age or she was just a tad older herself. Though, if that were so, he would have missed watching her grow up, and that was something he didn’t think he wanted to contemplate.

He turned, abruptly, and blew the candles out in preparation for a peaceful night’s sleep. He was determined to put the morrow’s trip out of his mind, but couldn’t seem to get any cooperation from his active memory.

Ray remembered how shocked and hurt Eduardo was when they reached the law-man’s home in California. The population jumped from one to nearly thirty thousand while he was gone tracking Sam, a man who robbed and killed a business man in California.

The land is over-run with greedy men and women, who don’t have the slightest regard for private property or individual rights, Eduardo said as he tried to clean up his property after throwing squatters off of his ranchero. He shook his head as he smoothed out the dirt for re-planting.

It sure seems that way. These men are possessed by the gold they are digging up the land for – and yet they think they will be happy if they find gold by digging up another man’s property. It is a sad situation when men get taken over by greed. Ray said, shaking his head sadly as he smoothed out the gutted land that once grew crops for his friend and his family.

Ed crossed himself and said woefully, These men will ruin the land for the lesser riches of a shiny metal and then they will leave the bankrupt earth for others to salvage.

Ray stayed and helped his friend defend what was left of his acreage until they both had to give up and leave the country – Eduardo for the south, and Ray for the north and home.

Ray heard recently from some of his customers that San Francisco went through three fires in six months, but was rebuilt. Ray tried to think positive, hoping the situation was improving.

When Richard came home from riding the circuit to the south he said the inhabitants of the horrendously depraved Sydney Town were making the citizens of San Francisco miserable.

The squatters are swarming all over. They take anything they want without a thought for the rightful owners. Richard’s forehead was creased and he his speech was uncharacteristically loud and rapid.

Ray nodded. He saw that for himself while he was there, and wished it were not so.

Now, as Ray tried to settle to sleep, he found his bed was not conducive to rest. He got up and smoothed the covers before he lay back down.

Ray tossed around for a while until he had the bedding in a knot again, and then beat the stuffing out of his pillow for a while. That didn’t help either, so he slipped from the bed to his knees, and went to the throne of grace to pour out his heart to his Father.

"California is no place for nice young ladies, Lord. Stephen isn’t prepared for what he is getting into. Oh, Lord, why don’t you stop them?

"But am I wrong, Lord? Would you let them go if it weren’t going to be all right? It seems like sending five sheep into the lion’s den. Well you got Daniel out of his lion den unharmed and you have rescued Alice from death without my help in the past.

I guess maybe I just don’t want Alice to go, because I’ll miss her so much, Lord. I don’t like the idea of being separated from her again. She sure hasn’t gotten any less lovely over the years, and I guess I might be falling in love with her – if I’m not already.

When he climbed back into bed, he still tossed and turned for some time without sleep.

Then as the moon rose higher in the sky, he was finally able to say, Well, Lord, I know you don’t fall off of your throne every time I get upset – and of course I know you never will fall off that high and lofty throne Alice described so well years ago. I can honestly say, ‘Thy will be done’ and leave the results to you.

After a few moments he added drowsily, Because the Lord is my mighty tower I can lay me down to sleep in peace.

Darlene and Mary

I wonder what California is like, Mary said as she missed a stich while she absently watched the rain slid down the window pane. I wish I were going.

Darlene and Mary Baker were also sitting and sewing, in the house a mile to the north of the Gingerbread Gothic where Alice and Linda lived. They lived in the house next door to Ray.

Darlene and Mary’s mother did not feel young girls of their breeding should encumber themselves with the duties of dressmaking, so these girls sat up straight in their chairs and wove colorful silks in and out of linen, creating decorative embroidery.

Shame! Darlene said. You know California is a barbaric land. You surely remember the stories Ray told us when he came back home. We shall be going to Boston next spring ourselves, and it is quite civilized. That will be much better.

Mary tossed her golden head. Rose is going to California, she said as though that would make it all right for Mary to long to go there herself.

So are Alice Mae and Donna, and you have known very well for months Ray doesn’t think they should.

That’s just because he’s afraid they will get into trouble, and he will have to go after them.

Don’t be waspish, Mary.

I want to see California, and I just don’t see how it could be as bad as you think. After all, Uncle Stephen and Aunt Joanna are willing to take the girls there for an education in civilized culture.

You’re just restless, Darlene’s stitches were even and her hands were relaxed. You will feel better when we leave for Boston next year.

It’s not that I don’t want to go to Boston to see the city, but I don’t want to stay if I find a husband who doesn’t want to come to Oregon to live.

Well, I don’t think you will feel that way after you see Boston. A major Atlantic sea port and center of rich historic interest isn’t something that can easily be repulsed.

"Well, what about Mr. Evert?"

Yes? What about Mr. Evert? What has he to do with us? Mother and Father know what is best for their daughters.

Mary looked at Darlene. Are you sure?

Quite sure. Drop it please. She rose gracefully from her chair and put her sewing away. Come, it’s time we were in bed if we want to wish the travelers God-speed in the morning.

The morning brought a steady drizzle to accompany the travelers as they put last minute additions in the baggage vehicle. Ray