“If you have any more trouble let me know.”
* * * *
The wagon bumped along over the trail which ran like a parting between two hairy stretches of buffalo grass. Wild roses made a mat of color along the roadway; not a faint pink, like Platteville roses, but a vivid rose-color that was almost red. Here and there a slope of snow-on-the-mountain made white waves in the sea of green, and meadow phlox were blots of violet ink in the grass. Now and then they drove by homely little houses of sod or unpainted boards, bare and lonesome looking, with nothing to shade them or soften their rude outlines. Most of them had a door and a window; some of them had pumps; each one had a section of rusty stovepipe sticking out of the roof. Wherever there were children a flock of sunburned boys and girls, with bare brown legs and faded hair, ran out to see the Linvilles pass.
One boy had a dead snake, with dust-colored checks on its back, tied to a pole. The snake looked like a huge whip-lash, as he threw it after the wagon. Near one shack was chained a coyote, with a snarling mouth and shifting eyes, and the children had to hold Bronx to keep him from leaping out for a visit. Around each small shack there was a clearing, and in each one of these fields that looked like black patches on the green, a homesteader was plowing or planting. If his ground ran up hill, his black figure looked like a shadow picture against the blue sky.
Joan regretted the stretches of breaking. They were like torn patches on skin, she said, and she was sure the prairie didn’t like being cut up, that way. “It proba’ly hates people coming out here to stick shovels into it,” she remarked, jolting about in the wagon.
“I guess it’d rather have shovels stuck into it than tomahawks,” argued Phil.
“About the same thing,” retorted his sister. “That’s what plowing is—scalping the prairie.”
Phil took a virtuous turn: “It proba’ly prefers being useful and raising corn to running wild with roses.”
“Yes, it does! Raising corn is like going to school; raising wild roses is playing Saturdays. Don’t tell me which one it perfers!”
“Quit your arguing,” said Dick from the front seat. “Don’t you kids ever get tired of scrapping?”
Phil knew the perfect retaliation. “Bronx is going to be mine,” he said, pulling the dog on to his lap.
“He’s all of ours,” retorted Joan. “Mr. Cleaver said so.” She turned the glass globe lovingly in her hands, making the snowflakes fly. “He’s not like the paper weight, which belongs just to me.”
It was long past noon when the wagon drove up in front of the house. Becky went in to get lunch while Dick unharnessed the team. She heard him call from the barn and hurried out to hear.
“Red Haw has got away,” he said. Red Haw was the cow that the children had christened the first day on the claim.
“Where did you leave her?”
“Staked out back of the barn.”
“Could she have pulled away? That stake was a long one.”
“I don’t see how; I drove it way into the ground. But stake and all are gone. Do you suppose she’s gone back home?”
“Goodness, I hope not,” said Becky, looking worried. “Maybe she followed down the creek looking for better grass. We’ll go out hunting after lunch.”
“Perhaps I ought to start now.”
But Becky insisted that they eat first. No telling how long they might have to hunt after the lost cow. After lunch Dick put a saddle on the horse and followed the course of the creek westward. Becky took the two children and climbed the hill back of the house. From there she could see for miles across the green grass. No cow was in sight. She had half suspected their troublesome neighbors, but she could see every inch of the Welp barnyard, and no animal was there.
Dick returned in an hour without the cow. No one that he had questioned had seen her.
“Did you go up by the Welps?” asked Becky.
“No, but I was telling Mr. Trainer about Red Haw’s being missing when the Welp boy rode past his gateway. Trainer called to him to know if he’d seen anything of a red cow. The Welp boy pointed at me. ‘His cow?’ he said. Trainer said ‘yes.’ ‘The cow knows enough not to stay on a claim that doesn’t belong to her,’ he said, and rode away, laughing. Guess I’d better try the east hills,” and he started in the other direction with a sinking heart. Without the cow the food question became a serious one.
Meanwhile Becky and the two children scoured the claim. Becky felt sure that they would find her in the deep slough grass that lay along the creek, but no Red Haw was there, though they followed the banks for a couple of miles.
“I’ll bet the Welps have her,” said Phil. Becky echoed the thought, but she didn’t dare admit it, even to herself.
“Perhaps she wandered back to her old home.”
“But the people who sold her said that she always came in to be milked.”
Becky did not answer. She tried to think of what hopeful things Uncle Jim would have said, but her heart felt like a weight in her chest. How would they ever get through the year without milk? And they could not afford to buy another Red Haw.
The shadows had begun to lengthen when Dick returned. He came back empty-handed and discouraged. He had ridden miles along the creek-bed, hunting and inquiring, without a crumb of comfort.
“I’m going to turn in early,” he said, as he washed his dusty face and hands before his supper was eaten. “I s’pose I’ve got to ride into Dallas tomorrow and see if that fool cow has wandered back home. That’ll be another day wasted.”
“We’ll work while you’re gone,” comforted Becky. “The children and I can finish the potatoes.”
Dick laid an old piece of sacking in the box that the children had hunted out for a home for Bronx, and called the dog.
“Oh, can’t he stay in the house,” begged Phil. “I’m afraid he’ll run off, too.”
“If he runs off he’ll have to run. I don’t expect to spend my life teaching animals where their own fireside is,” said Dick gruffly. “Besides, I want him out-of-doors to greet any sneak thieves that happen by.”
Sometime in the night Becky was awakened by a bark, followed by the sound of heavy feet swishing through the grass. She got out of bed and went to the window. A cover of blue-black sky, alight with stars, cupped the earth. The wind had gone down and the prairie was so still that she could almost hear the silence. The last quarter of a moon shone full on the slope above her, and down the white trail trotted two figures. Red Haw was ahead, and at her heels, dusty and dew-drenched, with drooping tail, came Bronx.
The girl roused Dick, who put on enough clothes to go out and receive the lost member of the family. Becky slipped on shoes and shawl, and followed him out to the barn. Red Haw was already crouched on the straw, evidently weary from her trip.
“No wandering off about that,” said Dick indignantly. “She’s been milked, and the stake and rope are gone. And it was our brand new rope. Somebody’s had a hand in that.”
“Never mind the rope as long as the cow is back. Where do you suppose they hid her?”
“Bronx knows. Probably somewhere in the deep grass, for they’re both drenched with dew.”
“But how did he find her? He never knew there was a cow here.”
“Ask me something easier. Maybe he smelled her about the place and knew she wasn’t in the barn where cows belong. Maybe he just stumbled upon her by accident. Anyway, she’s here.”
“I’m going to feel a lot safer with him around.”
“So am I.” Dick stooped down and patted the dog. Then he locked the barn door, and the three walked back to the house together. Bronx crept in on the sacking and turned himself around twice before he settled down for the night.
Becky patted his wet fur. “It isn’t going to be so easy to steal cows after this,” she said.
The frogs were still croaking when she dropped back to sleep.
CHAPTER V
MAKING A HOME
At the close of almost every page in Uncle Jim’s book he
had added the words: Stop work just before you get tired. Becky’s eyes never failed to soften when she read them, but she sometimes smiled too. For it couldn’t be done. How could one apportion work that came crowding in so fast that you had no time to plan? The tasks marched in a long, unending procession, so many and so heavy that the housework slipped into second place, and often had to be left to the younger children. Becky and Dick were up almost as early as the sun. They dug and hoed and planted. They put in potatoes and melons; they planted a little alfalfa; on the overturned sod they dropped their field corn. They did it with the confidence born of youth; if they had been a few years older they would have been more timorous and less hopeful. They built a chicken house, and a shelter for the dog. They set out currant bushes, and raspberries and rhubarb; they laid boards from their packing boxes for a rude sidewalk in the back door yard. And whenever there was a momentary lull in the outside work there was always bread to be mixed, beans to be baked, or clothes to be washed.
The out-of-door living and the hard physical work gave them appetites that could hardly be satisfied, and it seemed to Becky that she never got her family quite filled up. Once a week Dick went to town for supplies, which seemed enormous but which she could scarcely stretch to last the seven days. Careful as she tried to be, the money seemed to flow away, and the two older children could hardly wait for the garden to relieve their purse. But there was no time for worry, even; during the day there was too much work, and when night came they fell asleep the moment they touched their pillows.
There were no more meetings with the Welp family. After Red Haw’s return they saw no more of outlawry. The children had been warned to keep away from the troublesome neighbors and to avoid the spring, and the presence of the dog made Becky feel that their own home was guarded. Bronx was a fine policeman. At the slightest word of affection from his own family he would quiver all over with delight; his tail would wag nervously as he awaited their praise or blame, and his liquid eyes would seek theirs, pathetically eager for an invitation. But at the approach of a stranger his hair would stiffen along his back, and a growl would start that seemed to come from the very depth of his stomach. His bark heralded the coming of a visitor long before the family could either hear or see the arrival, and with him on the front doorstep Becky felt relieved and safe.
The dewiness and freshness of spring time had turned into flaming summer, and the sun baked in at the kitchen window as Becky mixed her breakfast pancakes. She called to her brother as she stirred the batter:
“You’ll have to get some more flour today, Dick. I’ll have to scrape the bottom of the can to set sponge tonight.”
Dick was bringing in the big bucket of warm milk which did so much to supply their table. “Flour? I thought we started with two hundred and fifty pounds.”
“We did. But one sack is gone, and the field mice got into the others.”
Dick sighed. “It’s the unexpected things like mice and hail and measles that cost. But of course we’ve got to have flour; I’ll go into town this morning.”
There was an excited duet from Joan and Phil, “Oh, may we go too?”
“I guess so. You’ve been pretty fair kids about sticking to the garden, and you’ve earned a day off. But I won’t have any fighting.”
“Then you’d better leave Joan home,” suggested Phil.
“Or take out Phil’s bronnical tubes,” retorted Joan.
“What for, I’d like to know?”
“So he couldn’t talk; bronnical tubes are what you speak through.”
“Hoh, hoh!” jeered Phil. “Speaking through bronnical tubes! Those tubes are what you get sore throat in. I just knew how it would be if you were let to go; we’d be sure to have a quarrel.”
Becky called the children into separate rooms to be cleaned, while she helped with their clothes and put up their lunch. “Seems nice to see you in something besides overalls,” she said, as she helped Phil into a clean blouse. “Dick, you’ll have to get this boy a new pair of shoes today. His toes are out.”
“What do you do, eat your shoes?” demanded Dick. “I never saw anyone go through cowhide the way you and Joan do. You’ll have to go barefoot the rest of the summer.”
“Suits me all right.”
“It doesn’t suit me,” said Becky. “If you don’t wear shoes you’ll look just like every other squatter’s child.”
“Why not look that way? That’s what I am.”
Well, why not, Becky wondered. It would save the expense of shoes. They were claim-dwellers now; they must live like squatters. You could not carry the standards of Platteville on to the prairies. The bare feet were a symbol; they seemed like a letting down, a sag in living. And yet it was the practical, the best thing to do. “Guess you’re right, Dick,” she said. “I wouldn’t get the shoes.”
As soon as the family departed Becky hurried through her housework. She had a plan for that day. No dinner to get; no gardening; no building; at least six hours without interruption, and she knew what she wanted to do with that time. She called Bronx, took a wooden box with a rope tied to it, and went up the stony hill behind the house.
It was a bleak, bare hillside where nothing grew but the mulleins and the buffalo grass that poked coarse tufts up between the flat rocks that covered the sides. At the summit it was almost all stone. The wind up there was so strong that it blew Becky’s skirts straight out behind her, and when she called to Bronx she could not hear her own voice. She stopped a moment to look across the prairie, which seemed each day to hold a new appeal. The deep grass below her had russet spots on it, now and then, a soft, reddish glow, like the bloom of a peach. The rim of the sky cut down over the earth like a cookie cutter. “Boom, boom,” called a prairie cock from the deep grass, and a hawk swept lazily through the blueness above her. She looked at the billowing miles below her with a softened expression on her face before she turned to work among the rocks at her feet.
From the stones she selected large, flat shapes until she filled her box. She drew them down hill, steadying the box with her hand, and dumped them in a pile at the front door. Three times she returned for more. Then from the door to the edge of the natural terrace on which the house stood, she strung a taut line, and followed it with a spade, leaving behind her an irregular row of shallow holes into which she laid the flat rocks. These made stepping stones to the trail, and to the spot where they would some day have a fence, and perhaps even a gate.
Along the stepping stones, at either side, she dug long, narrow beds for flowers, ending at Castor and Pollux. It was the hardest work Becky had ever undertaken, for it was in virgin soil, untouched by plow or harrow. It meant digging through the tough prairie sod, through the network of roots that lay below, till the black loam was exposed. Each clump of root had to be lifted and shaken to remove the earth that clung to it, then thrown down to the creek bed below. Some day those clods would help to build a dam. The prairie sun baked down fiercely; when she looked up from the ground its white light was almost blinding. Perspiration streamed down her face, her hands were stiffened by soil and roughened by rocks, but she stuck stoutly to the task which was to accomplish so much in home-making.
At noon when she stopped for lunch she was so hot that the thought of food was not tempting. The inevitable fried bacon, potatoes, and canned vegetables offered little inducement to eat. She longed for a melon, or oranges, or a salad that should be crisp and cool. “How I used to hate the sound of those ice wagons rumbling by in Platteville,” she said to herself, “and how far I’d run to hear one now!” She got butter from the well, spread several slices of thin bread, and opened a can of tomatoes. That was the best Tripp County could offer in coolness and freshness.
Down the long beds she went with her seeds in the early afternoon. She hoed and raked the ground until it fell apart into fine grains of loam; then she threw the seed broadcast—coreopsis and cornflowers and cosmos and poppies. At the end of the walk she planted a row of sunflowers at right angles to her garden
. They might cast a little shade in the hot days that were to come, and their seeds would save chicken feed.
On the side of the house that faced the creek she dug two deep holes. It took her nearly an hour to get through the grass, the tough soil, and the roots below. Then she walked a half mile to one of the tiny thickets that bordered the creek. It was no grove—just a handful of small dwarf ashes, box elders, and cottonwoods that had sprung up on its banks. “At home they’d call these ‘brush,’ and thin them all out,” thought Becky, sitting down for a moment to rest luxuriously in real shade. “But how wonderful they are here! And where did the seed that started them come from? We’re miles from a tree of any size.”
She longed to transplant one of the taller ones, but common sense told her that she would be more successful with a sapling. So she picked out a tiny aspen and a baby ash, carried water from the creek to pour about their roots, and dug deep around them. She took them up with a large clump of earth at each base, wrapped the roots in old sacking, and carried them one at a time, to her wheelbarrow. And then hot, tired, but triumphant, she wheeled her prizes through the burning sun to their new home. So large was the mass of soil that clung to them that she was able to get them into the ground without disturbing their roots. The leaves had not withered, the tiny branches stuck out boldly, and when the last spadeful of earth went in around them they seemed to have grown in their new surroundings. The aspen leaves quivered in the wind, and there on the prairie was a real spot of shade. Becky laid an earth-stained hand on the trunk. “Grow fast,” she said.
It was hot in the house too, but the relief from the sun was a comfort. Becky pulled out the smoothest of the packing boxes into which Uncle Jim had put shelves and rubbed in the green stain that was left from the floor borders. The shelves in the room and the two wicker chairs got a coat of the same color. The white curtains which she had never had time to hang were brought out and strung on wires above the windows. She covered the living-room cot with the green cretonne, flowered in orange and blue, that she had bought in Dallas; slipped the pillow into an orange casing, and added another pillow covered with dull blue. She unpacked the books and stood them in the stained packing case, rejoicing over them as old friends. She took the victrola out of its straw packings and moved it into the living-room, putting Dick’s ukulele on the table shelf below. Over the kitchen table oilcloth she laid a square of spotless linen. “More to wash, but I’m not going to have us living like heathen,” she said to herself, almost fiercely. She brought a jar of wild sunflowers for the table and another for the bookcase. Then she stood off and surveyed the result of her work. “Perhaps Uncle Jim wouldn’t like the couch coverings,” she said. “He might call them ‘gim-cracks.’ But bare boards have to be dolled up some way. Anyway, it looks cosy.”
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 65