Angels, Eagles, and Fire

By Allison Kohn

Richard is ready to come home from Princeton and expects his cousin,Larry, to be there to start his collage years. He expects to travel back to the west coast with whoever escorts Larry to Maryland. Larry doesn't want to go to collage, but his mother is adamant that he will go. Mother nature intervenes in the form of an angry mother bear protecting her cubs and Larry doesn't go east at all. That means Richard has to travel back to the Willamette Valley by himself. He walks a ways in his stocking feet, but travels the rest of the way with a wagon train where he meets both Sam and Chester Thomas. Alice is growing up enough to be given the responsibility of keeping her little sister, Linda, out of trouble. Linda and her cousin, Pearl, set a house on fire. Pearl runs away and meets a panther and Eli Thomas. Linda feels her punishment is unjust; after all, she didn't mean to set the house on fire. Meanwhile, Chester Thomas is planning revenge again, but this time his target isn't Dianna.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allison Kohn
• Release date: Aug 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310098963

Allison Kohn

Allison Kohn is a 75 year old ordained Presbyterian elder who has worked with both children (of all ages) and adults to help them with their Christian walk. She has published 11 books - five of them in the Baker family Saga. Since her example, Jesus, used stories to teach truth, she does the same. Everyone wants to be entertained and a good book teaches in an entertaining way, just as a good sermon preaches in an entertaining way. The author has a lot of experience with people and how they react to the ups and downs of life and she puts it to work in her writing.

Book preview

Angels, Eagles, and Fire

The Baker Family Saga, Book Three

Copyright 2014 by Allison Kohn

Published by Allison Kohn at Smashwords

This book is available in print at most online retailers as Day by Day

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 and second books in The Baker Family Saga – The Road West and Dianna’s Source of Strength at Smashwords and your favorite online retailer. This book is available in paperback at most online retailers.

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Baker Family Tree

Preface

Richard

Dianna

Larry

Providence

Linda’s Lesson

Family Lesson

They’re Home!

Richard’s choice

Richard’s Lesson

Theodore’s Lesson

The Lesson Well Learned

The Wagon Train

Sam and Chester

Earl and Sam

Nothing Too Shocking

A Gift for Alice’s Horse

Fire!

Linda’s Wait

Pearl is Missing

Eli Thomas

Searching

Reunion

Celebrtion

Linda’s Punishment

Dianna’s Beauty

On the Oregon Trail

Richard and Carol

Talk About Slavery and Railroads

The Train Turns Toward Oregon

Joseph’s Arrival

Angels

Anger

Vengeance is God’s

Waiting Is Hard

More Lessons For Linda

A Lesson On Anger

Chester Found; What Now?

Decisions

Richard and Carol in Ferndale

The Conclusion

About Allison Kohn

Other Books by the author

Contact me

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Dedication

With thanks to my counselor and guide, Yeshua Ha Mashiach, I dedicate this book to my little sister, Marjorie Lane for her unending confidence and words of encouragement.

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Acknowledgements

With thanks to all my readers and reviewers. With special thanks to my Lord and Savior Yeshua Ha Mashiach

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Baker Family Tree:

Jonathan and Margaret – married 1799

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 1833

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 married daryl O’Riley 1845

Daughter Rebekah born 1847

Twins Laura and Leslie born 1848

Son Andrew born 1849

Twins Rachel and Richard born 1851

Daughter 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

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Preface

The Baker family is living in the Willamette Valley – Ferndale, Oregon to be precise. Back in 1842 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

In book 2, Day by Day, Because Evelyn and Daryl’s wedding was in June, Richard and his father, Stephen, had to leave later than expected for the east so Richard could start his studies at Princeton. The town was experiencing the slump from the excitement of the wedding preparations and the celebration itself. To top that off, three of their numbers are absent, and Dianna was especially despondent about the departure of both her father and brother. She been spending a lot of time sighing and pacing the floor. But then her grandfather’s death and the arrival of a family of three men got her attention – a man and his two grown sons. Then there was Chester Thomas and his ill will. She was kidnapped and rescued and finally ended up in the arms of her true love.

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Richard

Richard Baker paced up and down in his room thinking, Grandmother married again! Impossible! How could she be married to another man? She and Grandfather always went together – they were one unit – how could I possibly ever think of her in unity with another? This home coming is going to be impossible.

You’re all packed, Richard, and the coach is ready whenever you are, said his uncle after a slight knock on his study door. Richard smiled and nodded and his uncle, seeing that he needed more time, withdrew.

Richard groaned and stomped over to the table where the he sat with the letter. He bent over and picked up the wad of crumpled letter from the floor and smoothed it out on the table top. And then, instead of reading it again, he carried it with him as he paced the floor one more time. He would soon be going home and there were a lot of things to digest before he left.

A lot had changed since his trip to the east to attend classes at Princeton. His grandfather, Jonathan Baker, died and would not be there when Richard got home. Of course he was not going to set up house- keeping or farming, he would be doing a lot of traveling, but his visit home was going to be strange with all of the changes since he left. He held this latest letter from the Willamette Valley in his hand and gazed out the window. Home seemed to be so far away, and yet it was nearer than it had been for a long time; for the college years were finally over.

He had always expected his cousin, Larry, to be in New Jersey to start his own studies before he left the east. That would have made the transition from college to home again easier – well at least different. But now the letter said that might change, and of course he wasn’t here now as planned anyway. Nothing was the way it was planned, although of course that all started when he changed his own plans about his life work.

But he counted on Larry being here to study agriculture before he left for home. However that had to all be delayed because of conditions at home. Now it was even further delayed because Larry didn’t want to go to college at all. He said he could learn more from his Uncle Adam any day than from wasted years in college. What kind of strange thinking was that? How could he learn more about agriculture by not coming east to study all the latest scientific discoveries and methods in a good college? Well Larry’ parents, Uncle Daryl and Aunt Evelyn, would be able to see the folly of that kind of thinking, and Larry had a lot of growing up to do.

Then there was Richard’s sister, Dianna. He always thought of Dianna as a child, but now she would be married to someone he had never even seen before he could get home to protest.

And of course he was changed too. He came east to school as his grandfather always planned he would, but he wasn’t leaving as his grandfather planned. He was going to be spending most of his time, not on the farm as planned, but as a circuit rider for the Cumberland Presbyterian Church both north and south of the Columbia River.

Richard put the letter away and went about picking up last things for his trip, thinking back over the years as he worked. There were a lot of things about his school years to remember. They were things that he considered contributions toward his growing up. When they happened, he thought of them as tragedies.

The girl with the gold curls and soft blue eyes – the most beautiful girl in all of New Jersey, and perhaps the whole world – was the most earth shattering one. She was the niece of one of his professors but he probably never would have met her if it hadn’t been for the cows.

He took a message from one of his professors to another one and just as he was turning to go home a small herd of cows entered the professor’s garden and began to feast on his blossoms. At the same time, Miranda, a vision of womanhood and purity – or so he thought – was strolling in the garden and was terribly frightened by the beasts that were trampling the flowers. And of course she was extremely grateful to Richard for driving them out of the garden and back to the pasture where they belonged.

As it turned out, Miranda was grateful for a lot of things. She was the most grateful girl Richard had ever met and he was soon thoroughly enamored of her fragile beauty and her clinging gratitude. Richard knew now she invented things to be grateful for since she was a past master of using gratitude to get the male heart – or maybe it was the male ego – and mold it to her pleasure.

Unfortunately her attention span was short and so no male could hold her affections for any longer than it took to tear out their hearts for her collection. So she soon left Richard a little older and wiser and he grabbed back the broken pieces of his heart and glued them together. And now was he going home whole-hearted? Well, time would tell.

He walked outside to the attractive lawn and sat on one of the benches breathing in the fresh spring air and listening to the thrill of the birds and the distant lowing of the cattle in the meadows. It’s nice to have a rest from the spiritual and mental rains of life for a while, he said to himself. He remembered the words of the Song of Songs, Winter is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land, all as a result of the rains that had come before. Yes, he knew that it was the rains of life, whether physical or spiritual, that trigger growth. So he would just look to his trails as doors to some knowledge of strengthening truth about God that would help him to take a step in his re-creation back into the image of God, in which he was created. It is all part of learning to walk by faith and not by sight, he told himself, seeing everything with spiritual eyes. At the same he hoped there were not going to be any more storms for a while.

As he left Maryland for his home in the Willamette Valley he let his thoughts turn toward home again and his little sister. To think of little Dianna getting married, it didn’t seem possible. Why, when he left for school she was only a child of twelve. Of course she would have turned thirteen pretty soon after that wouldn’t she? He couldn’t remember. Remembering dates was not one of Richard’s strong points.

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Dianna

Dianna had, in fact, turned thirteen the month before Richard left the Willamette Valley for school in the east. She was now