The Blue Bucket Treasure

By Doreen Milstead

Synopsis: The Blue Bucket Treasure - A young onion farmer travels west on a journey towards a new life. He hears about a legend and after some of his dreams come true, his journey takes on a twist that he might never have imagined. And, it does not involve onions, which he actually hates.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Hart
• Release date: Feb 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463273050

Book preview

The Blue Bucket Treasure

by

Doreen Milstead

Copyright 2020 Susan Hart

The Blue Bucket Treasure

Synopsis: The Blue Bucket Treasure - Lee sighed and wiped his forehead with a bandanna. After three months on the Oregon Trail, he still couldn’t get used to the sun beating down or the hard board seat of the worn wagon. When was the last time I slept in a real bed, he asked himself. Seems like forever.

Forever was how long it seemed to be taking to get to the Oregon Territory. For almost two years, ever since Uncle Joseph headed out to Oregon, all Pa had talked about was selling the small farm in eastern Iowa, buying a prairie schooner and heading for Oregon. It didn’t help that Ma’s brother, Uncle Joe, had spurned the largely dug out goldfields of California and had headed straight to the Willamette Valley. From there he had sent word back asking them to come out to Oregon and join him. It seemed that farming there was particularly easy, now that the settlers were establishing farms along Lake Labish and planting onions.Onions! Who, Jeb wondered, wanted to grow onions? He didn’t even like them, and had hated peeling and chopping them –- tears running down his face -- on the rare occasions when his mother could corral him into helping with dinner.

For as far back in his 20 years as he could remember, his life had been focused on tending the farm that his father had started along the Wapsipinicon River. Pa – or Thomas, to give him his proper name -- had come from Kentucky as a young man, eager to own his own land. Iowa had seemed like it had everything he wanted –- free, fertile land to farm, newly united in marriage with Mary, his childhood sweetheart. Thomas had loved to hear his father’s stories of taming the land and riding circuit, bringing the Gospel to the tiny, scattered cabins in the Kentucky woods and fields. His father’s love of learning had been handed down to Thomas, and thence to his children.

Traveling to Iowa had worked out fine at first for Thomas and Mary Lee. A year after they arrived on the banks of the Wapsi River, as the locals called it, Jeb had been born. He was followed two years later by his sister, Louisa, and then four years later by little Joe. Hattie and Clarinda, the twins, had followed, then little Thomas Junior. The farm had flourished, and Pa had continued his father’s Sunday evening ritual of reading the Gospel together.

Jeb had attended a little school run by their nearest neighbors, Leroy and Teresa McCausland. He hadn’t liked it much at the time, Jeb thought, recalling more than a few raps on the palm of his hand by his teacher for inattentiveness. In spite of that, somehow, the schooling had stuck with him,