Excerpt from:
The Fourth of July Snowstorm
By Patricia Thelin and Bonnie Smith
While living in the state of Washington, we liked to hike and camp out often as a family. On the Fourth of July one year, my seven children and I went camping at Salmon meadows in the very northwestern part of the state.
My son Michael, 16 at the time, decided to hike over the top of the mountain with his friend to a lake located on the other side. He had a map, and with his Scouting experience, I thought he would be fine. I’d put the rest of the children into the car and drive the long way around and wait for them on the other side near the lake.
Mike and his friend had no sooner left than the other teenagers begged me to go too.
“If he can go, why can’t we?” they asked.
I thought about it and finally relented. Why not? If they hurried, they could catch up to their brother. Bonnie, Donna, and Gordon ran up the trail and were soon lost to sight in the heavily wooded mountainside.
I got into my car along with my younger children and began the long drive around to the lake. As I drove, I noticed the weather was clouding up. By the time I arrived at the lake, it was snowing! In July! In fact, it was coming down hard, even covering the ground in places.
I waited inside the car, straining to see through the swirling snow. I expected my children to come down the trail to the lakeside soon. Time passed. I began to feel deep concern. None of them had coats, and I worried that they were freezing cold and wet.
And could they find the trail in the storm?
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Excerpt from:
Snatched From the Jaws of Death By Bill Willson My father left our family when I was only five years old. He was an alcoholic, but I didn’t know that until later. He had been ordered by the court to leave his family until he could be free of his addiction. From that time on, I had a secret fantasy that Dad would one day come back—that he would be there for me. . . .
The bay was as smooth as glass, the sun felt warm on my face and arms, and it was a good day to go fishing. In no time at all I had my first fish, a fairly large Jack Smelt. I attached the fish to my stringer, a rope with wire clips that I used to hang my catch back in the water while I continued to fish. Because the stringer wasn’t quite long enough to reach the water from the top of the deck, I lay down on the edge of the barge to attach it to a cleat that was a foot and a half or so below the main decking. In order to do this, I had to hang my head and shoulders over the edge. Once the stringer was in place, I baited my hook again and tossed it over the side. I had barely settled down when I caught my second Jack Smelt. This one was bigger than the first, and I was excited to be having such a great fishing day. Too bad there isn’t anyone here to share the day with, I thought. I laid down on the edge of the barge, and after attaching the fish to the stringer, I began lowering it into the water. Just then a small ground swell, caused by a passing ferryboat far out in the bay, came in, and the barges slowly rose up and yawed apart as the ripple passed between them. I was intent on my task and oblivious to the danger of the two barges that were about to come crunching back together with enough force to grind my puny little body into jelly. |
Excerpt from:
Book One: Birth of a Legacy
Can a man really steer a middle course in life?
Especially when he’s got his eye on two pretty
young ladies—one from each side of a conflict?
From the journal of
Jedediah Lee Madigan
I quietly lifted the latch on the wooden door and headed toward the river. The water flowed in a sibilant hush through the night only a hundred feet from our frontier home. I was preparing for a dip when a noise, a soft splash, brought me suddenly alert.
I halted in mid-step. Trained in the ways of the river, I felt something . . . something not quite right. I ducked quickly behind the untidy tangle of growth that lined the riverbank and, keeping out of sight, carefully parted the bushes.
Suddenly, very close to me, a number of small boats appeared, quietly pushing upstream. I melted back into the shadows, hoping to stay unobserved.
A whisper reached across the water. “We’re almost past the Madigan place. Another hundred feet.”
Who would want to slip by unobserved? Unless . . . I had a bad feeling about this. After the last boat disappeared upstream, I ran for the house. Inside our neat, four-room framed cottage I knocked once on my parents’ bedroom door and stepped in.
“Pa! Wake up. There’re men on the river tonight. Sneaking past our place on their way upstream.”
Pa sat up. In an instant he was out of bed. “They’re going after the Chandlers.”
He reached for his britches, jammed his feet into his boots, and pulled on a shirt. “I was afraid of this. Come on. We ought to at least warn them.”
I thought so too. It was well known among the old settlers of the region that the Madigans took no sides and wanted no trouble with the Mormons. If there was mischief afoot, there were those among our friends who wouldn’t want us to know what they were up to. . . .
