“I knew you’d find me,” said Phil’s parched lips.
While the two children lay resting on the grass Dick left them and climbed to the summit of the hill to reconnoitre. There was not a sign of anyone near; not a footprint that the boy could find. But the ropes still hung from the edge of the cliff, weighted down by great stones from the water-mark. He stooped down, and pulled one of the lassoes toward him. It was made of a new piece of twisted hemp, and at the end was a halter snap.
“That,” exclaimed Dick, “is the rope that fastened Red Haw.”
The shadows had begun to lengthen when Job with his triple burden came down the trail. Autumn, who was the first to recover from his experience, was able to sit up behind Dick, but Phil still leaned limply against his brother. Becky and Joan met them a quarter mile from home. They had been hunting along the creek bed till they were discouraged and frightened. It was like heaven to see Job ambling down the dusty road, carrying the three boys. Becky only delayed them for a fragmentary story; then hurried the rescue party on to the house. The two girls followed, plowing through the prairie grass, holding hands tightly, and squeezing each other now and then in relief and joy. As they hurried through the door they caught sight of the morning glory vines which an hour before had reached their green tendrils half way up the sides of the door. Now they lay, a tangle of string and withered leaves, on the ground, their roots torn from the ground.
“The Welp boys have been here,” said Joan.
Becky’s relief at having Phil back again was swept up by a great wave of fear. There was no getting away from an enemy like that. Spite and hatred seemed to envelop them on all sides. Where would it strike next?
It was twenty minutes later that Dick lifted Autie on the horse to take him home. Becky washed and dressed his wound, and put on a clean suit of overalls that belonged to Phil. The boy seemed cheerful, and, except for his cut, not much the worse for his bad afternoon.
“I suppose your mother will be worried to death about you,” said Dick, as they loped over the prairie trail.
“Ma ain’t the worrying kind,” was the reply.
And Autie evidently knew his mother. As they drove up, at six-thirty, Mrs. Wubber sat just where she had been sitting three hours before. She was still rocking. She looked as though she had rocked since morning. Dick told the story of the outrage, starting with indignation, and ending with almost fury, but Mrs. Wubber did not seem greatly disturbed. She rocked and listened and rocked. “I always knew those Welp boys were mean cusses,” was her only comment. When Dick unfastened Autie’s bandage and exposed the jagged cut, he expected an outburst of anxiety and wrath, but nothing of the kind was forthcoming.
“All my kids is got scars now,” she remarked with what seemed like satisfaction.
“This has been a day of worry for you,” said Dick, as he mounted Job to go back home.
“That cut won’t last long on Autie,” she said. “He’s a quick healer. But Twinkle, now, she got a worse deal. I guess there’s no way but I got to wash her head tomorrow.”
CHAPTER VII
A MESSAGE FROM UNCLE JIM
The golden days of June became the molten days of July. The sky was cloudless and the sun was a blinding glare. The winds that stirred the air were hotter than the air itself and seemed to be blown across a fiery furnace. The meadow-larks were silent, and the gardens on the breaking withered.
Three weeks of the blazing sunshine. The green carpet that had unrolled before them two months ago disappeared, and a dry mat of slippery hay covered the earth. The corn was no longer shiny and green; the blades were pale yellow and crinkled with heat. Nobody said, any more, that it was good corn weather. At first they had complained that it was too dry; then they had said that they must get rain; now they had stopped talking about it. The few homesteaders that drove by on the trail were so discouraged and blue that they frequently didn’t rein up their horses at all as they passed by.
Becky and Dick made a brave fight to save the garden. They shielded the sickly plants from the sun with cloths and tin cans; they hoed the earth around and around the roots; they carried pail after pail of water to the clearing. But the tendrils of the cucumbers burned away, the melon vines were seared, and the tomatoes hung their limp heads. One by one the leaves on the two transplanted trees turned yellow, withered, blew away. Even Castor and Pollux looked ready to die, though each day Becky loosened the dirt around their roots, and each night she carried water from the creek to pour around them.
“I just can’t bear to lose them,” she said. “They’re the only green thing I can see from the window.”
“Wish we’d had a picture taken of the claim before everything dried up,” said Joan. “Our place looks almost as bad as the Welpses, now. If we had a contest there wouldn’t be anything to show for all that work we did.”
“I’d just as soon the Welps would get the land, if this is the kind of summers they have in Tripp County. I don’t think this is much of a place to live,” growled Phil.
The children no longer sought their old haunts. It was too hot to play near the little homestead; the prairie dog town blazed under the fierce sun; the creek was drying up. The last time they had played there water stood only in the deeper pools, and in one of the shallower basins Phil had counted twelve small striped snakes wriggling over one another in a vain attempt to get beneath the water. It was too hot to play; too hot to work. The children hung about in the shadow cast by the barn, listlessly trying and discarding schemes for comfort, and quarreling with each other. Becky’s nerves, already frayed by the heat, were more and more worn by the discord. The tiny kitchen was almost unbearable in the middle part of the day, and out of it came nothing that was appetizing. Bacon and ham and dried beef, canned vegetables, last year’s potatoes that were almost too limber to pare, butter that melted while it was being carried on the table, fried eggs, beans, dried fruit and milk was their fare, day after day. The children’s appetites began to wane.
There was no prospect of change in their menu. For weeks they had been living in hope of that garden, watching each green head poke its way through the earth, rejoicing in each inch of growth. “Perhaps in a week the beans will be ready; by August we may be able to dig our first early potatoes.” But there was no chance of that now; no future of fruit or vegetables to look forward to. Unless they had rain now, at once, the garden was doomed. And there was no rain in sight. There was never a cloud in the sky, the sun held its shining course day after day, and the dry wind blew and blew and blew. Becky closed her ears with her hands, sometimes, to shut out the sound.
On one of the hottest of these July days Dick was out in the garden. There was no further need of stirring the soil; what was turned up was as dry as the surface. He walked about through the yellowing rows, and with sinking heart looked at the ruin of his summer’s work. The potatoes had been the last to yield to the drought. They had flowered abundantly, and Dick and Becky had rejoiced over the prospect of a full crop. With milk and potatoes one could live, even if other things failed. Today he took the spading fork and turned up the dry earth around one of the plants. No potatoes. He dug around another: not a tuber there, either. He dug up a third and fourth. At the roots of the fifth he found one tiny potato, the size of an acorn.
Two horseback riders crossed the creek, and came picking their way along the dusty trail. As they rounded the potato patch they gave a derisive “hi there!” and Dick looked up to see the grinning faces of the two Welp boys.
“Fine potato crop you got,” remarked Pete.
Dick made no reply, but went on digging.
“Don’t worry over ’em; those are our spuds, not yours. Paw filed a contest on you yesterday.” And they rode on laughing.
The dry dust from the potato field blew into Dick’s face as he looked down the trail at their retreating backs. He hoped Becky had not heard their remark. She would have to know about the contest, of course, but this was no time to tell her—while this blight lay upon the eart
h. She had enough to worry about now.
He turned on his heel and went into the house. Becky was setting the table in the sitting-room to get away from the oven-like air of the kitchen. Her face looked worn and her eyes stare-y.
“I saw you digging the early potatoes,” she said.
Dick made no response.
“Well?” inquired Becky.
“Not a potato on them.”
“You sure?”
“Dead sure.”
Becky went on laying the knives and forks at each place. “Would a rain save anything in the garden?”
“Not unless it came tonight. The melons are burnt up, and the tomatoes almost gone. Some of them are burned off at the roots. I did hope we were going to have some potatoes, but I’m afraid they’re doomed. Rain might save the cabbage plants, and give the turnips a start, but there’s no hope of rain. Look at that sky!”
Becky did not look at the sky; she did not look at her brother. Her eyes faced despair. “What are we going to do?” she asked.
Dick did not answer. Becky went on: “Uncle Jim figured that we could get through the winter if we had fodder and potatoes. If we don’t have them how can we make it? With the Glovers behind in their rent there’ll be no money for even groceries.”
Her brother leaned his head on the beam that ran alongside the window, and looked out into the blinding sunshine. He stood still, without a reply, as Becky went back and forth from hot sitting-room to hotter kitchen.
The children came in languidly at her summons to the meal, and Becky turned out the oil stove and followed them. She had tried to vary the monotonous menu by a little baking, and with her face flushed with the heat, she set a plate of smoking cornbread on the table. Nobody touched it. Dick drank his milk, Phil indifferently accepted a hard-boiled egg, Joan took an empty plate. Becky’s face hardened as she looked round the table.
“I’d like to know what’s the use of baking myself over that stove if nobody’s going to eat!” she exclaimed angrily.
The children looked up amazed. Was this from serene Becky, this overwrought, petulant voice and angry inflection?
“You needn’t be so sore,” said Dick. “I can’t eat that cornbread without butter, and I don’t like butter when it swims in the dish.”
“Well, I didn’t melt it!” snapped Becky.
“Gee, but you’re cranky,” commented Phil. “Scolding us for not being hungry. And I don’t see as you’re taking anything, yourself.”
“Things look so awful uneatish out here,” complained Joan. “Just think what we’d be having in Platteville now—black raspberries, and big red tomatoes sliced on lettuce, and crispy little radishes—”
“And ice-cold watermelons,” put in Phil.
“And cherries and big, red plums—”
“And green apple sauce and frozen custard and new potatoes—”
“Be still!” said Dick savagely.
They finished the meal in silence. The children wiped the dishes, and Dick put a saddle on Job.
“Where you going?” asked Phil.
“Winner,” answered Dick. “I’ll be back for supper.” Becky heard him go to the pocket-book in the bureau drawer. “Do you want anything?”
“A lot of things there’s no money for.” She watched him take out one of the bills. “We can’t spare a cent of that,” she said sharply.
“Whose money is it?” inquired Dick with spirit. He went out with the money, and the screen door slammed behind him.
The grasshoppers flew up in swarms as Job trotted slowly over the trail to Winner. At the Wubber gate his driver stopped to speak to the tow-headed family that flowed over the chicken-wire gate to meet him. The Wubber cornstalks, yellow and dry, rustled in the hot wind.
“How are things?” called Dick.
Mr. Wubber shook his head. “Bad.”
“How’s your corn?”
“Dry enough to pop, if it had any ears on it. Ain’t goin’ to git a thing out of the year’s work. The Missus says she’s fed up with homesteading.”
Dick’s eyes followed the indicating thumb. There, in the open door of the hen house, sat the rocking-chair with Mrs. Wubber inside of it. Under that low-roofed shack the heat must have been terrific, but she was reading a torn paperbacked novel, and fanning herself with a newspaper as she rocked.
“Been out there most of the day,” explained Mr. Wubber. “When the wind’s from this way it rattles the corgerated iron roof on the house till it makes her crazy. She says she can’t stand the banging. That’s why she sets out there.”
“Maybe it’ll blow up a storm,” said Dick.
“No hope for that,” replied Mr. Wubber. “No weather-breeder about that breeze—it’s straight prairie wind. Myself, I don’t mind it, but it gits the women folks.”
Dick thought over the speech as he urged Job along the prairie trail. Was that what was the matter with Becky, that made her so jerky and irritable? She hadn’t looked right lately, and she jumped if anyone dropped a cup or the door banged. Did the wind “git” her, or was it the worry? Poor Beck! They were all having a hard enough time, but she was getting the toughest end of it. He wished he had not slammed the screen door. Well, he knew what he must do—
* * * *
From noon to three o’clock was the hottest part of the day. Becky ironed in the sitting-room, with her board placed between the doors to catch the breeze that stirred, but did not cool, the air. Birds sat motionless on the barbed wire fence, in the tiny shade cast by the posts, and the air seemed to dance as she looked out over the dry prairie. Perspiration drenched the blue gingham apron, and her head felt dizzy and too large for her body, but the basket of ironing was almost emptied. “No use in leaving it for another day; no hope of tomorrow’s being any cooler.” She was on Dick’s last blue shirt when the children burst in at the door, both crying.
“It’s wrecked. It’s all broken up!” Becky made out between sobs.
“What’s broken, children?”
“Oh, our homestead. Our little claim! The buildings are all smashed—”
“And the windmill—”
“It’s all torn up.”
She followed them down to the bank of the dry creek. It looked as though a tornado had struck the site of the little homestead. The farm buildings were split in pieces, the wheels were wrenched off the carts, the fragments of the windmill lay in the creek bottom. Nothing had been spared. The plaything was a wreck.
“It was those Welp boys! I know it was those Welp boys!” exclaimed Phil, his voice shrill with fury and excitement. “I saw Bill and Pete ridin’ along the creek this noon. They must have seen my little farm and smashed it while we were all in the house. Oh, Becky, my farm!”
Becky tried to comfort the little fellow. “I’ll help you build another,” she said, with her arms around him.
“I can’t build another; that was the last of the boxes.”
“I’d just like to catch those ole sneaks,” scolded Joan. “They waited around here till they knew Bronx and Dick were gone. I’d like to tie wasps’ nests to ’em.”
“Can’t we do something to them, Becky? Have them arrested or something? I’m afraid they’ll kill us if they get the chance.”
Becky laughed at the fear, but it was not a genuine laugh. The same thought had threatened her when the two little boys were found strung up on the hillside, and had never left her since. Broken windows, loosened stock, torn-up flowers and smashed toys could be endured, but would the Welp family stop at depredations? Becky hugged her little brother tightly. How long would the children be safe?
She comforted them with the promise of more box lumber and her help in building.
“Why don’t you pull two washtubs up in front of the shack and fill them with water?” she suggested. “It’ll begin to be shady there before long. Put on your worst clothes and you can have a good time splashing around. It will cool you off, anyway.”
Phil and Joan forgot their grief in their delight at the idea, as th
ey ran in for overalls and out again for tubs. Becky looked at the thermometer which hung at the door. “Hundred and three in the shade,” she said; “if there is any shade to be in.” She put away the ironing board and the smooth stack of linen, and took Uncle Jim’s old sweater from her pile of mending. “Dick will be wanting this some day,” she thought; “If it ever gets cool enough to wear a sweater!”
But she did not sew. She sat with the needle in her hand, and looked out at the dry world that lay beyond. The prairie seemed to be rolling in on them instead of away from them; it was like a threatening enemy, not a welcoming friend. Only a month ago it had invited them, holding out its green lap of plenty; now it had turned a traitorous face. They could never hope to make friends with it.
The hot wind sucked in at the south door and out at the north. It flapped the awning; it pounded the screen door. The strips of black cloth tacked on to the outside to keep away the flies snapped in the breeze till the edges were frayed. The gusts of hot air rose and fell like waves of the sea, with a noise that waxed and waned, but never stopped. Becky remembered Mrs. Kenniker on the wind: “It nags at you and nags at you and nags at you till it finally gets you.”… Was that what was the matter with her? Was it the worry over the drought and fear of the Welp family that was making her nervous, or was it the prairie wind? She had not been sleeping well since the hot weather set in, and she was not hungry either; nothing tasted good out of cans.
Perhaps what Phil had said about her at noon was true: Yes, she had been cranky lately; she could recall more than one irritable speech. But that wasn’t her fault; she was not naturally a cross person: it must be the wind; if it would only stop its eternal nagging she could stand all the rest of the discomforts… But how she hated the heat and the flies! How she despised the dirt! How she missed the sink, and dreaded the carrying and emptying water. How she rebelled at the traces of the barnyard that seemed ever-present, and how she longed for the old bathroom at home! She could get along without companionship; she could give up school; she didn’t mind the hard work or the loneliness. But it was the daintiness she missed, and it was impossible to be dainty on the Dakota prairie when it was a hundred and three by the thermometer.
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 68