Bursting with enthusiasm, he jumped around before the blackboard, jabbing his right forefinger into the faces of men in the front row as he laid forth the ten principles which would revolutionize the west.
“One, the whole secret is to catch, store and protect from evaporation whatever rain falls on your land.
“Two, you can never catch and store enough in one year to grow a good crop. Therefore, you must allow about sixty percent of your land to lie fallow. If you’ve been farming eighty acres in Iowa, plan to farm at least three hundred and twenty out here. And allow most of it to rest and accumulate water.
“Three, you must know your soil. Don’t move a foot west of Iowa without an earth auger. It looks like this and enables you to bore beneath the surface and see what’s going on. How deep the topsoil is, how wet.
“Four, keep a mulch of some kind on your fields throughout the year, for this will prevent what moisture you do get from evaporating. You must never allow even one drop of rain to escape.
“Five, whenever it rains you must do two things. Fall on your knees and thank God. Then jump up, harness your horses to the disk and turn the field over while the last drops are falling. This will throw a mulch that traps the water. If you wait till tomorrow before you disk, half the water will evaporate.
“Six, plow in the fall. If you keep a small family garden, you will naturally want to plow that in the spring, but plow your big fields in October and November.
“Seven, plow at least ten inches deep. Then disk. Then harrow.
“Eight, plant your wheat only in the fall. Plant only Turkey Red.
“Nine, after a field has lain fallow for a year, it’s a fine idea to raise a crop of lucerne or milo and plow it under. This roughage aerates the soil, adds nitrates and enriches.
“Ten, farm every day of your life as if next year would see the drought.”
As he finished his decalogue he clasped his hands in front of his round belly and bowed his head. He knew that he was asking inexperienced men to engage in a dangerous gamble, and some would be so faltering in courage that they would fail; for them he felt deep sadness. But he also knew that some of his listeners were men of determination like the pioneers who had settled this land originally; for them he felt an abounding joy. They were about to enlist in a great adventure, and he knew they could succeed.
In the quiet barn he delivered his challenge: “I do not offer you men an easy life. I offer you riches if you will work. I do not promise your wives a life of ease. I do promise them partnership in the last great challenge of this land. And to husband and wife I offer that divine promise so beautifully expressed in Isaiah 35:
The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing ... Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees ... for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water ...
In the next three days Dr. Creevey demonstrated each of his principles, showing how to use the earth auger and the mulch and the system of summer tillage. Since it did not rain during their visit, one morning he said, “We shall make believe that rain falls at ten o’clock, because you must fix in your minds what to do when it does.”
So at ten a small sprinkler was hauled onto one of the fallow fields, and four horses dragged it back and forth for an hour to show how far the water would penetrate. As soon as they left, Dr. Creevey shouted, “Rain’s over!” and he hitched four other horses to his disk and proceeded to turn over barely four inches of the moistened soil, throwing it to the bottom of the furrows where its water content would be protected from evaporation. He then unhitched his team, fastening them to a harrow, with which he smoothed the roughened field. In this way the rainfall was conserved.
“When I plow this field in October,” he told the men confidently, “and plant it with Turkey Red, I am assured a crop, even if no moisture falls during the winter, for I have trapped the moisture down there and it lies waiting. The only thing that can injure me is a sudden hailstorm.”
At the end of his exposition he placed before his visitors his farm accounts for the past five years, and they could see for themselves what he had accomplished on this Kansas farm, on the one near Denver, Colorado, and on the one in California. There were the rainfall records; there were the crops harvested; there were the funds deposited in the bank. One hundred and thirty-one farmers were satisfied that it could be done, and more than ninety were prepared to follow in his footsteps. Their plows would tear apart the sleeping west. Of the ten principles Creevey had expounded, nine would have permanent applicability; only one was defective, and this only because he had failed to take into consideration the interaction between it and a natural phenomenon which swept the plains at rare intervals.
During the first twenty years of his experiments, the nature of this fatal deficiency would not become apparent, but when it did. it would come close to destroying a major portion of the nation.
On the train back to Ottumwa, Earl Grebe was preoccupied with the task of convincing himself that he ought to leave his farm in Iowa and take the risk of dry-land farming farther west. He was a cautious man, and the idea of leaving the fields on which he had been raised was distressing, but since he had worked them for some years without moving any closer to ownership, he was receptive to any solution which promised improvement. Magnes Volkema was certain that Colorado was the answer.
“Look at the pictures,” he told Grebe. “Same kind of land, same kind of results.”
They studied the sixteen-page pamphlet which Creevey had distributed as they boarded the train. It detailed the rich future that awaited any man who bought a dry-land farm in the vicinity of Centennial, Colorado. The wheat was tall. The furrows were straight. The pages were filled with photographs of expensive homes that had been built by enterprising men and women who had moved west. Pages of statistics showed what the rainfall was and how long the growing season, but the persuasive portion of the brochure came in the words of the man who had compiled it. The photograph showed a frank, sincere businessman in a dark suit, sitting at his desk beneath a shiny new sign which said:
Slap Your Brand on a Hunk of Land
MERVIN WENDELL
RANCHES AND ESTATES
Wend Your Way to Wendell
Below the reassuring portrait were the words: “In 1889 I arrived in Centennial penniless, but through the prudent purchase of irrigated farmland, I now own the palatial residence portrayed on the opposite page. You can do the same with your dry-land farm.” The photograph showed a fine new mansion at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Ninth Street, with Mervin Wendell standing on the lower step and looking up fondly at his handsome wife on the porch. It exuded success and stamped Real Estate Agent Wendell as a man to be both trusted and emulated.
Grebe and Volkema were particularly interested in the map of the region open to the lucky families who moved west, for it showed where the proposed new town would be located. “Line Camp,” the brochure said, ‘soon to be the Athens of the west. The school will be housed in this fine building, facing this edifice in which the civil officials will maintain their headquarters.” The photograph showed the two stone buildings built there by Jim Lloyd back in 1869. They were sturdy and clean and the years had not marked them. They sat solidly upon the plains, lending an impression of permanence and promise.
“The land office will be housed here,” the brochure promised, “and all you have to do is go onto the prairie, locate the 320 acres you prefer, and claim it for your own. Three years to a day from the moment you step foot on your chosen land, it’s yours, and you’ll have a paper signed by the President of the United States to prove it.”
“Can you imagine owning 320 acres like the ones Dr. Creevey had?” Volkema asked. “A man could make his fortune on that.”
Grebe was looking at the photograph of
a dry-land farm operated by a man named John Stephenson, who, the caption maintained, had come to Centennial penniless in 1908, had purchased some land from Mervin Wendell and now lived in a palatial home. The land looked good and the wheat was tall.
“He wouldn’t dare lie about this, would he?” Grebe asked suspiciously.
“No! When we get to Centennial and ask, ‘Where is Stephenson’s farm?’ Mr. Wendell’d be in real trouble if there wasn’t any such farm. This is real, Earl. People are making their fortune out there, and you and I ought to be part of it.,
So the two men studied the seductive publication, and the more they saw, the more convinced they became, so that by the time their train reached Ottumwa they were not reporters, they were missionaries, and each man went home to talk to his wife and neighbors.
Alice Grebe was a tall, thin young woman of twenty-two. She had been reared on a farm east of Ottumwa, one of seven children of deeply religious parents, and Earl had met her at church. He had courted her over a period of three years, and when he formally proposed, at first her parents seemed reluctant to let her go, even though their home was crowded. But her father and older brother launched an inspection of Earl’s life and came away satisfied that he was worthy to join their God-fearing family.
The wedding had taken place only the year before, with three members of Earl’s family in attendance and nineteen of Alice’s. As she stood before the minister she looked more dedicated than radiant, for she was not a beautiful girl. Her quality lay in her capacity for work and her desire to found a Christian home. The women of Ottumwa who watched as she pledged her vows concluded that here was a girl who would give her husband little trouble and much support. She was, indeed, an ideal wife for a young farmer, and the fact that she preferred rural life enhanced this promise.
This first year of marriage had been close to perfect, because each honestly sought to be a good partner; their only disappointment stemmed from Earl’s inability to acquire a farm of his own. Iowa prices were simply too high, and the young couple had to content themselves with leasing a farm owned by a banker in town. They inspected several farms up for sale but could not meet the required down payments and had resigned themselves to working for others when Dr. Thomas Dole Creevey arrived in town.
Alice Grebe had been the first to see the announcement and it had been she who had encouraged her husband and Magnes Volkema to attend the first night’s lecture. On the second night, when Dr. Creevey promised to get down to specifics, she and Vesta Volkema had sat near the front, and it was partly because of their visible enthusiasm that the audience had nominated their husbands to take the trip west to investigate Creevey’s experimental farm.
“It’s all he promised,” Earl reported as they sat together after supper. “Look at these photographs of the land we get free in Colorado.” When she saw the alluring pamphlet, and the friendly countenance of the real estate man who was volunteering to help them acquire land around the new town he was planning, she experienced the same excitement that had gripped her husband when he had first seen the publication.
“It looks just fine,” she said, turning the pages.
You wouldn’t believe what Dr. Creevey accomplishes on land just like this,” Earl said, and he went on to explain Turkey Red, that fine winter wheat imported from Russia, and the clever new ways of trapping moisture.
She was not listening. Her eye had fallen upon the one photograph Mervin Wendell had fought against including in his pamphlet. “You’ve got to show them what the land looks like.” the railroad agent had insisted. “I don’t want women looking at those bleak empty spaces.” Wendell had said with the prescience that marked his dealings. “You show a bunch of Iowa women those prairies, and they’ll panic.” Against his better judgment the dry-land photograph had been included, and now as Alice Grebe looked at it, she had a premonition of the loneliness she could expect and the dread silence at night with no human being within earshot, and she was no longer sure they should embark on this adventure.
“Are you all right?” Earl asked, seeing her grow pale.
“Of course,” she said weakly. “It looks to be wonderful land.”
“I want to move west,” he said. “I want to work where I can own my own place.”
It was the timeless cry of the man who dreamed of moving on, of leaving old patterns which circumscribed less venturesome men. It had been voiced at every stage of American development and had motivated the most diverse types of men: the renegade trapper, the devoted Mormon, the feckless son, the daring entrepreneur, the young woman without a man or a prospect of one, the housewife who wanted better things for her husband. It was the authentic vision of the pioneer American, the dream of freedom and more spacious horizons.
In the early years of the twentieth century this eagerness to move westward reached its height. New immigrants from Europe who did not wish to be trapped in city slums caught the train to Chicago and from there to the wheat-fields of Dakota and Minnesota. Old residents of the Atlantic seaboard who sensed that this might be the last chance for a man to live more freely heard of unclaimed lands in Colorado and Montana and made the break. Young ministers, middle-aged hardware merchants and old roustabouts joined the movement, while a score of different railroads sent persuasive men into all towns preaching the doctrine of free land in the west. It was a conscious movement and the people who participated were among the finest and strongest citizens America had yet produced.
Alice Grebe stifled her fears. If her husband longed to hazard new fortunes, like the hero of a book she had just finished, she must encourage him. And in the last days of summer, 1911, two families from Ottumwa reported to the station for the journey west: Earl and Alice Grebe and a crafty older pair already familiar with emigration, Magnes and Vesta Volkema, accompanied by their two teen-age children. A few men in the crowd that bade them farewell said, “I wisht I was younger so’s I could go along,” and Vesta Volkema told some of them, “You’re younger right now than I am.”
They went to Omaha, and caught the train there which would take them to Centennial, where Mervin Wendell would be waiting. And as they sat in the coach through the long night while the train crept westward through Nebraska and across the border into Colorado, they talked of their bright future.
“It’s a new start,” Alice Grebe said with an animation she did not wholly feel. “Like the ox-cart women of a hundred years ago. It’s really quite thrilling.”
“It’s a chance to pick up a few easy dollars,” Vesta Volkema said. “I want to get hold of as much land as possible as quick as possible. Sell at a profit. Then on to California.”
“I see it as an opportunity to establish a home,” Alice Grebe said. “Our own town ... maybe watch one of our sons become mayor.” She leaned forward as she spoke, as if eager to begin this new contest with the land, and once she reached out to touch her husband’s hand, reassuring him that she was ready for whatever the new challenge presented. “I can hardly wait to see our new home,” she said.
“Our families will build the church,” Alice said prophetically. “And we’ll put our books together to build a library.”
“You’re looking too far ahead,” Vesta teased. “What I’d like to see is a good grocery store.”
“We’ll get one,” Alice said. She had been valedictorian of her class in Ottumwa, a very bright girl who should have gone on to college, her teachers said. She read books by Upton Sinclair and visualized an always-better society. In her graduation address she had declaimed: “We are the builders of tomorrow. We are the new pioneers.” At the time she drafted those words she had been only vaguely aware of their import, but now as the train rattled toward Denver and the great mountains she felt as if she were the very spirit of a pioneer movement, and she reveled in the excitement of what lay ahead.
“It’s so thrilling!” she whispered to Vesta. “There can’t be another pair on this train as fortunate as we.”
But when dawn broke and she saw those interminate pla
ins west of Julesburg, those prodigious reaches of loneliness, gray-brown to the horizon without tree or shadow, the enormousness of their adventure overcame her, and she fell into such a trembling that Vesta had to grasp her hands and quieten her.
“Earl! Come here!” Vesta called, and when Grebe sat with his wife he said, “She’s only nervous,” but Vesta sized the situation up more accurately. “She’s pregnant,” she said matter-of-factly, and when she confronted Alice, the girl confessed that she had known for several weeks but had told no one lest the trip west be canceled.
“It’s an omen,” Earl told the group. “Just like the Bible says: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.’ Those are the first words God ever spoke to man.” He sat with Alice’s hand in his and looked out at the lonely land. “We shall multiply,” he said, “and we shall subdue.”
Mervin Wendell rose early that morning. In the years when he sold irrigated farmland, he had learned to be at the station whenever settlers arrived, for he had found that in their first hours in Centennial they were likely to require his reassurance in a variety of ways, and if he signed them up early, they stayed signed. Now that he was trying to peddle drylands, it was even more important. He therefore shaved by the new electric light which graced his mansion, then doused himself with real French eau de cologne shipped in from Boston. He trimmed the hair about his ears, using his wife’s scissors, and slipped into his western outfit: whipcord trousers, Texas boots adorned with silver, pale-blue shirt with string tie, a wide-brimmed hat. Reviewing himself in the mirror, he felt satisfied that his figure was as good as ever and his jaw line still firm and in its way commanding.
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