Summary: In 2018, BTR started a writing challenge call Sourdough Starters. A Sourdough Starter is the Yeast that will activate the Dough that will be Baked into Bread. This was used in the 1800’s and is still used today. BTR’s take was to use it as a “Starter” for a bigger story. A Sourdough story is not usually fully complete. It should leave questions – what brought the characters to that point? What happens next to the characters? etc. We continued running the challenge through 2020.
Rating: G, Word Count 2079
2018 January
Here is your small bit of Starter – what are our guys running from? (scene at the end of Hound Dog).
Add a bit of yeast and let’s see what happens.
“Joe, how was the meeting for the spring picnic at church? I want to thank you again for taking my place on that committee. I simply have too many things to do.”
“It’s all right, Pa. I didn’t mind at all. It was a pleasure actually.” Busy at work at a table on the porch, Ben smiled at that and Joe was happy to smiled in return. Glad to have evaded answering that first part, Joe would have snarled if he could have at Adam’s question that followed though.
Sitting in a chair at the same table and reviewing some contracts his father had given to him, Adam noted Joe’s evasion of the first question. “So, how was the meeting, Joe? What happened?”
Hoss had stopped by the porch to share the cookies and coffee Hop Sing had brought out for Ben and Adam. He was curious too especially when he saw how nervous Joe seemed first with their father’s question and now with Adam repeating it. “Yeah, Joe, what did happen at that meetin’ anyhow?”
On the spot and unable to evade now that Adam and Hoss had focused their father’s attention on him, Joe began with his prepared speech about the meeting, but his father figured that out in a moment.
“Joseph, I want to know the part that you don’t want me to know.”
“Well, you see, with only one man at the meeting, they kinda got around to teasing. They said that it was spring and a woman’s thoughts turn to marriage. They asked which one I was going to marry in June. I didn’t want to marry any of them even if they are pretty.”
“Yes, go on. Then what?”
“I didn’t want to insult them so I said I couldn’t get married because in a family, the oldest has to be married first and so on down the line, and I was the youngest. I said as soon as the oldest were married, I could marry someone.”
“Joe, you didn’t.” Adam had a look of horror.
Ben looked at his eldest. “Son, you don’t think?”
“Dadburnit, what’s that sound I hear?”
All four men walked out into the yard to see what was coming. What they saw was a caravan of carriages and probably every eligible woman from Virginia City. It was every man for himself to find a place to hide.
Ben and his sons were chatting in the yard after lunch when a questionable looking character came with a wagon loaded down with crates.
“This the Cartwright place?” The raggedy looking man drawled.
“Yes, I”m Ben Cartwright and these are my sons.” How can we help you?”
“Was told ta deliver this load o’ crates ta ya. But I gots me a bad back so you’ll have ta unload it yurselves.” The man pulled a large cigar from his pocket and gnawed off the end. It took multiple attempts and much spittle to expel the bits and pieces out in the yard.
Looks of disgust came over the faces of the Cartwright men. Joe was the first to recover.
“What’s in the crates?” Did you order something, Pa?
“Not that I recall.”
Ben and the boys shrugged at each other before Adam remarked with his head wagging back and forth. “Well I guess there is only one way to find out!”
As they moved closer toward the wagon, the labels on the boxes came into focus. At the same time the driver lit a match to light his cigar and haphazardly pitched it in the air.
“Yippee Trading Company?!” Hoss shouted just before the firecrackers and Roman candles were ignited.
The Cartwrights scrambled for the front door. The wagon driver, bad back and all, disappeared behind the barn as the horse dragged the wagon around the yard finally breaking loose from the traces.
Inside the house, heads bobbed where they stood peering out of the window behind the desk. They winced and ducked in unison as the fireworks exploded and plumes of smoke rose into the air.
When the commotion finally ceased, Ben stood with his hands on his hips glaring at his big son. “Hoss, wasn’t one fiasco enough!”
Myrtle Mae
It’s like being six years old again. Here I am, rolling around on the ground because my big galumph of a brother has no control of his body. And here She comes. Myrtle Mae Klumpfisch. Six feet tall, huge floppy hat, an even larger bosom, and the voice of a banshee. You know how you compare some women to a summer’s day? Myrtle Mae can only be compared to losing a wagon wheel in the middle of a flash flood.
Myrtle first set her cap for Pa and I admit that we razzed him about it. She’d sidle up next to him at church socials and he’d sidle over our way and even sit on top of one of us if he had to. Pretty soon, we noticed that he became sick every time someone had to go to town on business. I guess Myrtle caught on that love was never going to bloom in that garden so she decided to take a turn at Adam. That was pure entertainment. Hoss and I couldn’t help chuckling – just a little – when she had him flattened against the wall of the general store with that ample bosom pressed tightly into his chest. (And OK, we were acting out Romeo & Juliet behind her back, but heck, a guy’s gotta have a little fun.) Anyway, I never reckoned ole Adam’s face could turn so many different shades of red. Next thing you knew, he started inventing ailments every time we needed to go to town.
That left Hoss and me to do all the fetching, buying, and loading. There was no way out of it because we were the only two left. I don’t need to tell you where her attention turned then.
But here she comes. For all her size, Myrtle Mae can’t control those horses and they’re charging straight for me while my legs are flailing in the dirt, failing to propel me upwards. So, I do the only thing I can think of. I wrap my arms around myself and Roll. Backwards through the hitching post over to the porch where I scramble to my feet, hat in hand.
All at once, Myrtle pulls back on those reins with everything she’s got and the horses pull up short, but only after breaking the hitching post. The wagon lurches forward, then bounces backward and Myrtle Mae is launched head over heels into the back of the wagon, her legs in the air, petticoats arrayed. She rights herself, brushing off her dress and hat, endeavoring to appear dignified.
“Joe Cartwright,” she scolds, “you’re entirely too old to be playing in the dirt like a schoolboy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, running my finger over the splintered wood of the post.
“Is your father here, Joseph?”
“No, ma’am,” I lie, my throat tightening.
“What about your brothers?”
“No. They’re gone too,” I lie again, swinging the broken bar of the post. I look down. I know perfectly well they’re peeking out the windows.
Myrtle Mae turns and looks at the four horses tied to the corral. There’s no mistaking whose horses they are. I gulp.
“I suppose you’ll have to do.”
“Me?”, I squeak. Why me? I’m too young! Too short, for that matter. And I’m promised to Daisy Buckman. I stay frozen to the post.
“Here,” she says, extending her hand. “Your father left some papers at the Druther’s place.”
I slowly step forward.
“Well, don’t be all day about it,” she squawks impatiently. “I have a soiree with Gilroy McCroy.”
If only the hitching post was so lucky.
Oh Bull!
“What you have done to the territory of Nevada in one short afternoon will reduce 25 years of Apache raids to a footnote in history!”
That was the angriest I’ve ever seen Pa in a very long time. I cringed with each word as much as Adam and Hoss did. After he made that statement I thought sure he was going to disinherit all three of us. There was no talking to him, no working things out. AND to add insult to injury Hoss got the girl. No thanks, no apology, just that smarmy look he gave us as they walked away.
Well, that was yesterday. This morning at breakfast Pa gave us our marching orders – get that bull back to Jigger Thurman!! That’s all he said. The rest of the meal was in total silence. Well, right after breakfast our guests left and we saddled our horses. Adam suggested we get some drovers to help. It worked too. We got that bull to Jigger’s place but, can you believe it, he wasn’t there. So Adam, Hoss and the drovers wrangled that monster into the corral and I quickly closed the gate. We high-tailed it out of there and since we were closer to town than home I suggested we get a little reward for a successful job done. The drovers chose to go check the herd instead so it was the three of us heading to town.
After a couple of celebratory beers we got home about mid afternoon. Pa met us outside and asked how it all went. Proud that it all went so well I jumped in and told Pa about it all. Before I got the last word out we all froze. Something was just beyond the barn making a horrendous noise. Our horses got real nervous and raced toward the barn, kicking up a ton of dust. As the air cleared, there it was….Jigger Thurman’s bull staring us down, madder than heck. Adam, Pa, and Hoss beat a path for the front door. Hoss plowed me into the ground and I ended up eating everyone’s dust, barely getting the door closed behind me as that beast ran up and gored the door with it’s massive horns. I turned into the room and was shocked at what I saw. Why were three pairs of angry eyes staring me down?
The Return of Cousin Muley Jones
The Cartwrights worked outside doing some spring cleaning around the house and in the barn. They took a break and talked about how Cousin Muley Jones was still trying to make it as a professional singer. He had written to the family a week before telling them how he was still trying to get proper voice lessons to become a better singer.
“Nobody will take him. I’m not surprised when he wrote that in his letter,” Ben said.
“I wonder how many glass windows, bottles and other things he’s broken?” Hoss said.
“I don’t even want to think about that. It was bad enough when we had to pay for everything he broke in Virginia City!” Ben replied.
All four men cringed at the memory.
After their break, they worked a bit more. Adam and Hoss cleaned the barn while Joe chopped wood and Ben fed the stock in the pen. There was a noise they all heard. They couldn’t make it out.
“What is that?” Adam asked in confusion as he and Hoss walked out of the barn.
Joe joined his brothers and father. The noise grew louder and louder.
“Mulley!” Ben said.
The four men ran to the house. Hoss shoved Joe to the ground and ran as fast as he could. Joe got up and ran in the house joining his family. They locked the door and hid from Cousin Mulley. They plugged their ears as they heard him singing.
