Christine seemed as stolid as the oxen, her face as patiently expressionless. One could not have told whether she was old or young. Her colorless hair was braided in small braids and wound flat from ear to ear, looking like a small oval-shaped rug pinned on the back of her head.
This was the third family, then, to be going up into the same section with the Deals. And together, after a lunch, the wagons journeyed on to the west. In a long, straggling line they journeyed stolidly and silently toward the sun. Of them all, only Sarah Lutz sometimes called out a cheery comment. Abbie lay on the wagon bottom, so ill with nausea and heat, that it seemed she could never again take any interest in life.
Toward evening another long fringe of trees penciled itself against the dipping sun.
“Stove Creek,” Henry Lutz called back. And they knew they were at their destination.
There were old buffalo wallows along the creek banks, shallow declivities, where the huge beasts had rolled and stamped out the mud. The sight of buffalo chips, too, reminded them that the time was not long past since the shaggy fellows had ambled leisurely along the creek bed. They crossed the creek, which was little more than a ravine now, with its few inches of water. And then Henry Lutz, who was in the lead, stopped.
“Well, here we are,” he called when Will and Abbie had caught up with him. “This is yours.” He had a rude paper plan in his hand. “Mine lies over there to the west. Oscar’s is to the north of mine, and Reinmueller’s,—” Gus and Christine had come up in the ridiculous boat wagon. “Reinmueller’s is exactly south of Deal’s.”
Abbie crawled out of the wagon-box. She was stiff and ill and her head ached from the blinding sunlight. Sarah Lutz, with her round rosy cheeks and her beady black eyes, was out of her wagon, too, and over to Abbie’s.
“Well, you’re home.” She was chuckling in her merry way. “This is where you live,—and my good gracious,—you’ve got callers.” She shook hands with Abbie in mock formality. “May I come in and sit a while? Yes, thank you, I’ll take the rocking-chair, Mrs. Deal. Yes, thanks, I’ll have a cup of tea.”
It made Abbie laugh a little, too, the nonsense of it at such a time. And then, “Boo!” Abbie squealed and jumped and ran for the wagon. A little dark, lizard-shaped thing had darted close to her feet with the speed of lightning.
“They’re just swifts,” Will told her, “as harmless as mice.”
“Yes, and just as horrid,” Abbie called back.
They camped in a group for the night. It made quite a party: Will, Abbie and little Mack, the Oscar Lutzes with their three children, Henry and Sarah Lutz with Grandpa Lutz and little Dan, the orphaned nephew, Gus and Christine Reinmueller and their two babies.
The wagons formed a circle, with a single campfire in the center. The sun slipped down behind the rim of the world. One of the men found a spring in the creek bed and brought water. The others fed the horses and led them down to drink. The women folks got supper and washed the plates and cups at the side of the creek bed. The children were put to sleep in the wagons and the older people gathered around the fire. The stars came out, pale yellow flowers in the sky’s own prairie.
A coyote howled. Another answered. It made Abbie think of a night on the journey from Illinois when she was eight, and yet this was different. Then, they had been close to the woods,—the sheltering woods. They had heard all the little night creatures at work, all the tiny rustlings of the timber. But this, paradoxically, was a silent noise. There was complete silence,—save for those distant coyotes. Silence,—save for a faint sound of shivering grass. Silence, so deep, that it roared in its vast vacuum. Silence,—grass,—stars. The group around the fire seemed suddenly too small to be alone in the still vastness, too inadequate and helpless.
What if—? Even as her fear formed itself into thought, she saw through the shadows a figure—and another—and others steal with panther-like tread between the wagons and the creek bed.
CHAPTER X
Abbie could frame no words. She could only reach forth her hand and touch Will’s arm, a nightmare of fear upon her. Will and the other men of the party were also looking toward the shadowy figures in the dark.
“They’re friendly,” Will whispered, “there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Friendly? Were they friendly?
All night the Indians camped near the creek bed a little to the north. Abbie, with Mack upon her arm, did not close her eyes. Only a year and a half before, the Fort Phil Kearney massacre had occurred. Only two months before, Red Cloud had sent word that he would not sign the great Fort Laramie treaty. They were so much nearer hostile Indians here than back home. You couldn’t tell from what tribe these were. You couldn’t tell in the dark how many there were. All night Abbie lay in an agony of fear, her body tense, her little son at her breast.
In the morning, fears were dissipated. If there had been any evil from them it would have been during the night. They proved to be a small group of Pawnees, with their squaws and papooses. They had dozens of skinned chickens across their ponies, the flies thick upon them.
One of Henry Lutz’s horses was missing from the bunch which had been staked together. After a half-concealed conference among the men folks, it was deemed wiser to accept the loss and not question the matter. One of the braves evidently had ridden away on it. The Indians ate, broke camp, came over to the settlers and examined their outfits. A brave pointed to Oscar Lutz’s wife, who was not exactly dainty in size, and shrugged massive shoulders jovially, at which the other bucks showed symptoms of ingrowing mirth. They took their time to peer into all the wagons. One man picked up a little bright-colored shoulder shawl of Sarah Lutz’s and coolly transferred it to the shoulders of his squaw. The others gave a few grunts of satisfaction, fell into a long straggling line and started toward the northwest, the red and black of the appropriated shawl growing fainter in the distance.
Abbie wondered if she ever again would pass through such a fearsome night.
As Henry Lutz had said, the Reinmueller place was south of the Deal acreage and his own joined it at the west. Abbie was glad to find that Sarah Lutz was the one who was to live nearer to her. She had taken a great fancy to the bride with the round rosy face, the jet black hair and the little beady black eyes that seemed always twinkling. For Christine Reinmueller she held no great liking. Christine was uncouth, not quite clean, her little tight braids wound flat from ear to ear, greasy looking.
The wagons were now each driven onto the families’ respective holdings, forming little homes on wheels until the rude houses would be finished.
As far as eye could see, the land lay in long rolling swells, unlike the monotonous flatness which characterized part of the state farther to the west of which they had heard.
There was nothing to be seen in any direction but the prairie grass and the few native trees which traced the vagrant wanderings of Stove Creek. The undulating land covered with prairie grass, the straggling line of trees along the creek bed and the cloudless sky composed the entire picture,—these, and the Deal, Reinmueller and Lutz covered wagons,—little toys in the vastness of the lonely prairie.
Gus and Christine Reinmueller set about at once making a dug-out at the end of a ravine near the creek bed. They dug into the low hillside, set sturdy tree trunks a short way from the opening and covered the top with poles cut from the branches of trees, across which they packed a solid roofing of sod. Into this, with only the hard dirt floor, and the one opening, they moved their few possessions and their two baby boys. To Abbie it seemed that they were burrowing in like moles. But Gus was too anxious to get to work on the land to put much time on living quarters.
The Lutz family began a frame house at once, Henry and his brother both working on Henry’s, so that when it was finished, the two families could live in it while Oscar’s was being built. They took turns making the long trips to Nebraska City for material. The foundation of the house was merely rocks under the four corners, which, free for the picking up, were hauled fro
m Weeping Water. The house itself was a two-roomed affair, with rough boards nailed up and down on the studding, and battened with narrow strips, but without plastering, so that for the first winter, Henry would nail burlap sacking all over the interior.
Will started a sod house. He did not feel that he could yet build as good a frame as he wanted, and every one said soddies were warm in winter and cool in summer. He cut strips of sod three feet long and laid them up as a mason would lay so many huge bricks, leaving places for the windows which Henry Lutz agreed to haul out from Nebraska City with whatever other lumber Will needed, The inside dimensions of the house were thirty by eighteen, so that when the partition was run through, the general living-room was eighteen by twenty and the bedroom eighteen by ten.
Abbie’s physical ill-feelings and homesickness had been with her thus far through the making of the house. The sight of the prairie grass blowing and dipping in the wind under the cloudless sky still gave her a sensation of dizziness and nausea. The water from the spring at the edge of Stove Creek had a peculiar taste, so that she longed for the old well-water back home. She longed also for a sight of her mother’s placid face under its white cap, and for a talk with Belle or Mary or Janet. In her low state of mind she felt uncertainty concerning their prospects, strange forebodings for the future, a torment that she was to die at childbirth and leave Will and little Mack.
But on an afternoon when Will was putting on the sod roofing, something lifted from Abbie’s heart. Perhaps it was only because she was physically better that the deep depression seemed lightened, the intense homesickness for old scenes lessened. She put Mack to sleep in the wagon and walked farther up the long rolling land.
A sense of lightness, such as she had not known for weeks, was upon her. A revival of hope and courage possessed her. This was their own land. They, who had never owned a foot of ground, were now the sole owners of one hundred and sixty acres. Rich soil, too, Will said,—black and rich. A farm of their own upon which to make a home,—a home for Mack,—and one other! She wondered, as all mothers have wondered, which the new baby would be. And could not quite determine, as all mothers have been not quite able to determine, which she rather it would be. A boy would be the nicer for one reason,—he could be a chum for Mack. But a little girl,—down in her heart she hoped it would be a little girl. She remembered what she had said to her mother in the old cabin loft, back home. “Some day we may have a little girl. We will be rich then and she can wear the pearls.” Well, maybe the baby would be a girl,—here was the good black soil upon which to get rich,—and over in the wagon were the pearls. She and Will were young. Life was all before them. With neighbors not far away, it was not going to be so lonely. Sarah Lutz—already she loved Sarah. And Christine Reinmueller,—even though Christine was so “Dutchy,” she was kind hearted. Their own land, two babies, youth, neighbors! No, life here was not going to be so bad.
She raised her head to the cloudless September sky.
“Oh, the Lady of the Lea,
Fair and young and gay was she,”
Her voice rose clear, full-throated, mature.
“Dreamed of visions longingly,
The Lady of the Lea.”
Yes, she and Will would soon be wealthy. Will had said so. Youth, babies, friends, wealth! She put the joy of it into melody:
“When she held in bower or hall
Banquet high or festival,
On every side her glance would fall . . .”
A crow, flying above her, wheeled and dipped down toward her, “Caw! Caw!” it threw down at her saucily. Abbie broke off singing.
“Were you jeering at me?” she called after the vagrant wanderer.
“Caw! caw!” it threw back raucously.
Maybe it was a sign. Maybe it was a bad sign. Grandma Deal would have said it was. Then she threw back her head and laughed. Oh, well, she was young. Her voice wouldn’t run away and leave her. In a little while she could get to a teacher somewhere,—over the prairie to Nebraska City or back to Plattsmouth, or perhaps even up to Omaha some day.
As she started back to the prairie schooner, with the song unfinished, a long, slimy, gruesome Thing slipped, belly-flat, through the grass. Abbie shuddered and scrambled into the sheltering wagon.
The rough edges of the black sod of the house were now treated to a thick coat of mud plaster and a board floor laid. The low partition, over which she could hang clothes, and the crude board door, Abbie papered with hoop-skirted feminine paragons of style out of Godey’s Ladies’ Book, from which vantage point they looked down upon the humble interior with supercilious pride.
This, then, was the house into which Abbie moved from the prairie schooner,—Abbie, the granddaughter of Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie with her town house and her two country estates, her silk shawl, her pearls and her jeweled fan, her reddish-brown hair and her long slender fingers that tapered at the ends. But with the same pride that had rearranged the sumptuous furnishings in the ancestral home across the sea, Abbie now hung curtains at the windows, tacked burlap gunny-sacking on the floor, put down the small braided rag rugs, and made up the two clean beds. Under one of these she put the calf-skin-covered chest which held the pearls and the paints, and in the deep window-seat formed by the width of the sod strips, she set the Seth Thomas clock with the little brown church painted on the glass. There was one “boughten” cupboard for the dishes and Will made another one of store boxes to hold Abbie’s books,—the Shakespeare plays and the Bible, the McGuffy readers, and a few other textbooks.
There was a four-holed stove whose long pipe protruded through the sod roof, three chairs, and a table with a declivity in one corner of it in which Doc Matthews had always rolled pills. A couch, which might also serve as an extra bed, was made of the same type of sod strips which had been used in the house, and covered with a feather bed and “The Rose of Sharon,” one of Grandma Deal’s quilts of intricate design. The rooms were both furnished now. The little soddie was not much of a house, but it was that other thing,—that intangible thing of the spirit called home.
As soon as his work on the house was finished, Will started on a shed for the stock. And in the mild October weather before the frosts had come, he broke sod on one portion of the land, so that it would be ready for slightly easier plowing in the spring.
With November the mild weather ceased. The winds, that seemed never still, blew harder from the open country to the north and west. Dried tumbleweeds, round in shape and as large as bushel baskets, rolled over the prairie with the winds, like great platoons of charging cavalry. Abbie, standing sometimes at the little soddie window, would watch the ceaseless riding of the brown-coated swashbucklers, the unending onslaught of Nature’s artillerymen. On and on they came,—mounted rifles, dragoons, hussars,—columns, companies, regiments, brigades. They swept by, to disappear in the distance, only to be followed by reserves from farther out on the prairie.
It gave her a sense of fear,—fear that the unseen force which sent the slender-stemmed, globular-shaped weeds on their endless journey, might suddenly send her, too, on the hard ride.
When Will took the long drive to Nebraska City for supplies, her desolation seemed complete. She would catch up little Mack, who was a year and a half now and toddling everywhere, and hold him to her with a prayer for safety from all the unknown terrors,—Indians, winds, prairie fires, storms, her own hour of travail.
Will brought back corn meal and one precious sack of white flour for which he had paid ten dollars. So sparing was Abbie in its use, that it was nearly spring when the last bit was baked and the sack made into an apron for herself.
It was in the middle of the first night in March that Abbie knew her hour had come. The March winds, like so many wild March hares, were running past the little soddie. Will dressed hurriedly, replenished the fire, and with a word of encouragement, was gone into the night. Abbie, bolting the door behind him, knew the greatest fear of all for prairie women,—to be alone on the desert of grass wi
th the pangs of childbirth upon her. “Oh, God, bring Will and the doctor safe home.” The winds blew. Little Mack slept. Abbie’s body was wracked. “Oh, God, send some one.”
And then some one pounded on the door: “Ein! . . . Las mich ein . . . Christine.” Abbie opened the door, and Christine Reinmueller came in, her fat face red from the cold wind, her little tight greasy braids flattened from ear to ear. She looked beautiful to Abbie.
It was hours before Will came with the doctor from Weeping Water. And then Abbie had her little girl,—the little daughter who was to wear pearls and all the lovely things that should go with them. Will brought Mack in and showed him the new sister, and Mack promptly welcomed her by poking a fat forefinger into her eye and mouth to see if she really worked.
They named her Margaret,—for both grandmothers. “It will please them both,” Abbie fibbed politely. Almost she could hear Grandma Deal saying: “What did they do that fool thing for?”
Mackenzie Deal and Margaret Deal! A son and a daughter! Such a big family! She and Will laughed together in their relief and happiness.
And now, Abbie’s love was divided between two babies. No, that is not true. There is no division nor subtraction in the heart-arithmetic of a good mother. There are only addition and multiplication.
March was cold, windy, snow-filled,—the land a desolate waste. Grayish-white snow over the low rolling hills,—a grayish-white sky like the pale reflection of those rolling hills in an opaque glass! And into the gray vastness of the sky, three little thin lines of smoke from the stove-pipes through the roofs of a dugout, a chink-battened frame and a soddie,—incense ascending to the God of Homes!
And then, the miracle! Spring came over the prairie,—not softly, shyly, but in great magic strides. It was in the flush of green on the elders and willows by Stove Creek. It was in the wind,—in the smell of loam and grasses, in the tantalizing odor of wild plums budding and wild violets flowering. Nature, the alchemist, took them all, the faint odors of the loam and the grasses, the willow buds and the little wild flowers, and mixing them in her mortar, threw them over the prairie on the wings of the wind.
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