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CHAPTER I - My Early Life

     I pray you don’t judge me. I wanted to be good. 

     But, oh, I had difficulties in my youth! I had a strict childhood and, though my parents were good, we were poor and began to have troubles with forces against us.  The reason for these troubles spawned from the fact that I grew up in a faithful family of polygamous Mormons!      Polygamy is how I was raised and polygamy is the ship onto which I was but a passenger, sailing into rough seas. This led me to a life of sorrows that no one could predict, based on how it started.

     I, Sarah Birt, was born at home in Fredonia, Arizona in February of 1871. They have told me stories about this winter over and over again. They said it was very cold that month. 

     I was born during a blizzard and a famine. Father’s farm had fallen on hard times and we had gone without flour for nearly a month. Mother had been making hoe cakes, which is a bread made mostly of just corn and water, along with beans for most meals. She even said that I also struggled to nurse at first. 

     But life got better with that first spring. It finally began to rain a little for the first time in months, and with that, we were finally able to get wheat again that year. Heavenly Father would start to bless us and our family would begin to blossom and grow! 

     For a very long time, I was alone with Mother as the only girl. You would think I would like this, however, it was nothing but pain. I waited on my little brothers night and day. They had grown in number to be nine before I had another sister born. I had no sisters to help me for a very long time. 

     So, the work was left up to me and this made life unbearably hard. When my sisters were finally born in my teenage years, I felt trapped in a male-dominated world, with my mothers as my only solace. 

     I felt so totally alone some days, that I would retreat into my bedroom, and keep a secret diary. There I would write about the day when I would leave, and get married to the man I love. 

     I would imagine him as he walked in and swept me away. I would imagine the horse we rode away on, or the carriage we took, or the places we went. 

      Sometimes, even, I would imagine leaving alone, and finding him in a field, sometimes on a river boat. Or in a faraway land, just like a real princess. 

      Once, I even imagined finding him in my backyard and him forcefully taking me away from my family. But that time, I came back. I couldn’t leave them. 

      As boys were treated so differently than girls, many times, I was left in another room with Mother while discussions were held with the menfolk in the front-room. Meanwhile, occasionally Mother and I with other ladies who would visit from our ward, would work in the kitchen or craft in the dining area. The men, though, would sit and laugh, telling exploits of their hunting days or farming expertise. It would lend to my loneliness and isolation. 

     I also felt as if my parents just didn’t understand me! I was looking to break free from this and start my own family! I wanted one where I could be more of a leader, and hunt if needed, or take more leadership with my boys. 

     I felt that they might need their mother more often. I saw wildness in my brothers that I felt needed taming! If Mother didn’t do it, I felt, it would never be done and their wives would be the offended.

     When the time came to be married, I had decided, I was going to experience my life with a man and leave this place where I had been a servant to all of these boys. 

     I wanted to be with a real man. 

     I wanted to know what marriage was all about. 

     No one understood that in my family. 

     At night, I would lay awake and think about the man I wanted to marry, Beckam Snow. He was an angel, I thought, sent from above, to whisk me away from the place I was in! I will now explain how it all started…   

CHAPTER IV - The Rendezvous

     I had never been in a bed with hardly anyone before, much less a man, and all I could do was stare at Beckam. I could not see him really well, as the only light I had was what little the moon was giving off, coming through the window to my right. 

     However, Beckam had sat to my left so that I could see him really well. I had asked him to remove his boots and we had thrown them outside, in the hopes that I didn’t get much mud in the room. Also, I took a big chance and asked him to remove his trousers before he got into bed. I knew they had mud on them. 

     I was dressed in my nightgown and undergarments. They were snow white and I did not want mud on them either, though I didn’t want to say anything about that at this point. 

     So now I had a full-grown man in my bed in only his shirt and undergarments. He said we were really taking chances with this, but I told him that if my mother found mud in the bed, she would have known that someone was there. 

     For a while, we just sat quietly, and stared into each other’s eyes. His eyes shown enough in the moonlight that they appeared to glow. I could also see the shadow of that hard chin line against his neck as I followed it down to his shirt. I wondered what it looked like underneath. 

     My eyes continued to wander down his shirt and then I got to the undergarments. I could barely make out the trousers in the moonlight. It was then my eyes caught the excess protrusion in his trousers. I didn’t know what to do or say about it. Beckam saw me looking at it.

     “Please don’t look at me!” he begged outright, breaking our silence. He attempted to cover himself there.

     “I am sorry,” I replied. “I have really never had a man in here before. My father doesn’t even come in here much. No one has ever been in this bed but me!”

     A wolf howled in the distance again. The wind whispered against the windows. A blackbush scratched its salty branches against one of the back walls.

     “Well I wanted to talk to you about marriage and I am desperate!” Beckam spoke defiantly. “I don’t want to marry Sally. I want to marry you. My parents are pushing me very hard. 

     “You have a radiance about you, Sarah! You have beautiful blue eyes, the color of the warm summer sky as it brightens my day. And your hair is the color of the golden leaves of fall, as they adorn the trees with beauty, in the hope that they may stave off the feared cold of winter! 

     “You are small, and I know that you have said that some look down on you for that. But to me, there is perfection in this, for I am able to gaze perfectly upon you, from above, and see the sweetness and allure that God Himself has bestowed upon you, with your lovely, slender, but sturdy, shoulders and arms, and your small hands, large enough to hold our babies, should we be blessed with them. 

     “I long to kiss and nurture your fragile neck and make it mine. I am in awe of your delicate waistline, and still, you have been bequeathed an ample bosom that makes me yearn so much for your loveliness. 

     “The angelic curve of your hips at just the right point makes your entire look complete and I can reflect down upon you, from a height, that God arranged. Yes, I do feel, that God wants us to be together. 

     “Do you understand how I feel? If not, I should tell you. I feel as if I…I deeply love you.” 

     With these words, he began to lean back in the bed, and I followed suit. I put my hand on his chest and I could tell he really enjoyed it. I could feel his heart pounding in his chest. 

     He leaned forward toward me and I brought my head to him. His lips met mine and I began to feel his warm breath against my face. 

     I began to feel an urge, a sense that I should do something with him. My entire being overwhelmed me, but I still felt somewhere in the back of my mind, a nagging sense that I shouldn’t be doing this.