TOLD by the PIONEERS - Washington Secretary of State

Told by the Pioneers
front of the building where my husband, Frank, and two men printers
were working. They immediately came to the back part of the
building. Frank waited until the fellow was running once more down
the incline and then he opened the door. He had his six-shooter, and
asked the fellow what he wanted. The man replied, "I am waiting
for your wife to give me something to eat," his manner being very
ugly and hateful. Frank took him by the nape of the neck, turned
him around and bounced him. He picked him up again and bumped
him all the way down town to the railroad tracks, where he told him
to keep moving. He was about the meanest looking fellow I have ever
seen.
·We homesteaded in East Wenatchee on February 14, 189:2. My
husband, Frank Reeves, had filed on the claim the previous year. As
we went to Wenatchee by ·wagon or horseback, we had to ford the
Wenatchee river at ,\7enatchee and go eight miles above that town to
the ferrv and then come back ten miles to our homestead across the
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Columbia river. We seldom did this, ho\venr, as we usually crossed
the Columbia in a row boat. The current was so swift that in rowing
from one bank to the other we often drifted a mile down the ri"er.
A neigohbor of mine whose husband was in business in ,\7enatchee
suggested that we take a baby buggy to haul my baby, but we found
that it ,"as so sandy we could scarcely push it. We conceived the
idea of taking' a wash boiler to carry her. This worked very nicely,
because we could put in the condensed milk we had for her, as well as
other gToceries. On one occasion we had her in one end and a ham
in the other.
I had the thrilling experience of cooking a meal for a man at the
point of a gun. He acted like a bold, bad man, which we read about,
riding up to the door on horseback, knocking on it with his whip. He
cried out that if I did not open the door he would shoot. I tried to
persuade him to leave, telling him that my husband would be home
very soon. The baby, who was sitting in a box on the other side of
the stove, never made a sound nor stirred. I prepared the meal, and
when he was just finishing he noticed my baby, saying: "Why, you
have a baby, I am sorry I frightened you." He threw fifty cents on
the table and ran out. I saw this same man later at a dance, and we
came face to face during a quadrille. When I saw him I exclaimed
to one of the men that this was the man who had forced me to cook
him a meal. My dancing partner said he would tell Frank, who was
playing the violin. When the music stopped the fellow could be found
nowhere. He had just faded away, and was never seen again. I believe
he must have feared what would happen to him if those men
there had ever gotten a hand on him.
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