The
Jumping-Off Place
AT THE END OF THE BARN A DOOR HAD BEEN CUT
The
Jumping-Off Place
Marian Hurd McNeely
Illustrated by
William Siegel
Dover Publications, Inc.
Mineola, New York
Bibliographical Note
This Dover edition, first published in 2017, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Longmans, Green and Co., New York, in 1929.
International Standard Book Number
ISBN-13: 978-0-486-81568-8
ISBN-10: 0-486-81568-4
Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications
81568401 2017
www.doverpublications.com
TO THE TWO
WHO WERE THERE WITH ME
CONTENTS
I. WHERE THE WEST BEGINS?
II. THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE
III. NEIGHBORS
IV. TROUBLES
V. MAKING A HOME
VI. THE ENEMY ATTACKS
VII. A MESSAGE FROM UNCLE JIM
VIII. PRAIRIE BONDS
IX. SCHOOL
X. SNOW BOUND
XI. THE CALL OF THE PRAIRIE
ILLUSTRATIONS
At the End of the Barn a Door Had Been Cut
The Four Young Homesteaders Look at Their Land
Spent with Heat and Pain and Thirst and Loneliness
Becky Laid a Clean White Cloth over the Pillows
They Moved Slowly along in the Biting Sweep of the Storm
CHAPTER I
WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
DOWN on their knees, a boy and girl were taking up the kitchen linoleum. It was a queer time to be at that work — half-past eight in the evening — and there was an air of strangeness about the house; an unusual silence, a hollowness and a fragrance of crushed flowers in the air. The lighted candle, which had been set on the floor to piece out the electric light, shone on the towsled, red head of the boy and on the firm lips of his sister, who was working on the opposite side of the room.
The Linville kitchen was usually the noisiest room in the house, but tonight it was so still that the “plack” of the tacks, and an occasional grunt over a stubborn fastening, were the only sounds. It was not often that fifteen and seventeen worked together so silently or so soberly. As they approached each other along the sides of the room there was a cough and a step on the back porch, and someone tried the door. Both young people sat up, looking as though caught in the act.
“Aunt Jule!” whispered Becky.
“You bet it’s Aunt Jule,” said Dick. “Come back to see if we’ve read the will.”
“I know she expected to be asked to stay to supper this afternoon,” commented his sister. “But I did hope we’d be alone tonight. I suppose we’ve got to let her in.”
“You haven’t told her we were going?”
There was an insistent knock on the door.
Becky shook her head. “No, I knew she’d make a fuss about it and I didn’t want Uncle Jim bothered when he was so sick. But she might as well know now. Unlock the door, Dick.”
“I’d rather let in measles,” growled the boy.
The visitor stepped over the threshold with a word of commendation, which was an unusual entrance for her. “You children are wise to keep the door locked,” she said. “You can’t be too careful, now that you’re all alone. I never pick up a paper that I don’t read of a house being robbed somewhere.”
Aunt Jule was fifty-nine and unyielding. The stiff clothes of 1910 were made for her type. Her black hair was drawn tightly over a stiff pompadour roll; her shirt waist was starchy; and in temperament she was like both hair and waist.
“This is a fine to-do,” she said, from the doorway. “I come up here to talk over the services and cheer you up and I find you tearing the house down, in those filthy overalls. What if company drops in? What you doing in those clothes the day of a funeral, anyway? I don’t think you’re paying much respect to your dead uncle.”
“Oh, yes, we are,” answered Dick. “He told us to get the linoleum up as soon as he was gone. ‘That’s one job I’ll skip,’ he said. ‘I always despised taking out tacks.’” He smiled at the speech that brought Uncle Jim so near, but his eyes were ready to overflow. “We can’t pull tacks in Sunday clothes.”
“Better not let anyone else see you grinning that way,” advised his aunt, taking a chair. “Of course Jim would make jokes on his death bed, but the day of a funeral is no time to repeat them. Why on earth are you children upsetting the house, this way?”
“We’re turning the linoleum,” said Dick, sourly.
Becky gave her brother a reproving look. “We’re getting ready to pack, Aunt Julia.”
“To pack?” exclaimed Aunt Jule. “For what?”
“For Dakota.”
“Dakota! You aren’t planning to go out to the Jumping-off Place to visit that homestead?”
“No,” said Dick. “Not to visit it, but to live on it.”
Aunt Jule gasped. “I thought that idea died when your Uncle Jim did. Or rather, when he was first taken sick. He must have known, after the first week of his stroke, that he never could farm again.”
Becky’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes, he knew it. He told us so just after his speech came back to him.”
“Well,” said Aunt Jule, triumphantly, “That put an end to it.”
“It put an end to it for him, but not for us. He wanted us to go on without him.” Becky’s lips trembled, but her voice was resolute.
“He must have been delirious.”
“Oh, no, he wasn’t. He called Dick and me into his room as soon as he could speak, and talked it over with us. He told us he knew that he was never going to be well again and that it was up to us to ‘run the engine alone.’ He asked us if we thought that we could hold down the claim for fourteen months for the sake of a good farm, some day. And we told him we could. Even Phil and Joan promised him that they’d help.”
“The man was certainly out of his head.”
Becky’s eyes flashed. “He never was saner in his life, Aunt Jule. He told us all about his plans, just what we’d have to pay for the land now, and what he thought it would be worth in ten years. He told us that if we were willing to put in fourteen months of hard work the claim would give each one of us a good schooling. He planned the whole trip for us. He had me bring him pencil and a note-book, and he kept them by the side of his bed all the time he was sick. And as he thought of things he’d either write them himself, or else have me jot them down: just how we were to go, what we would need to take, how we were to get started, how much land we were to have broken, what we were to plant, what clothes we would want — there wasn’t a thing that he didn’t plan for.”
“And his idea was for you children to go out alone, and live alone until you proved up?”
“Yes, it was.” Becky went resolutely back to her linoleum.
“I can’t believe he was himself. People often get those queer notions when they’re sick.”
“Well, I can prove to you that he was himself,” said Dick hotly. “After he had most everything planned he said to us: ‘There’s only one thing that worries me. I’m not afraid that you can’t settle the land — you kids; but who’s going to settle your fights?’ Now, does that sound as if Uncle Jim were sane or not?”
Tears sprang to Becky’s eyes at the dear, familiar phrasing. Aunt Jule nodded grimly. “Well, I admit it does,” she said, “But I can’t see what he was thinking about. You children, being orphans, have picked up some things about helping yourselves, but you’ve never tried running a house alone in your lives, even in a civilized commun
ity where there are churches and grocery stores. And to go out in that God-forsaken place, among dirty Indians and coyotes, with nothing growing but sage brush, would be new business for you. Jim himself told me that the nearest neighbor lived a quarter of a mile away. What would you do if you were sick? There’s always chills and fever in new country.”
“Take quinine,” suggested Dick. “That’s all we could do if our neighbors lived next door.”
“Why, there’s no house out there,” said Aunt Jule. “I’d like to know where you’re going to live. I s’pose you’ll argue that you don’t need a house. Or are Dick and Phil intending to put up a bungalow for you?”
Dick bristled, but Becky pretended not to notice the sarcasm. Phil, at ten, could not be of much assistance at bungalow building.
“Uncle Jim said that we could live in the new barn. That’s a good-sized building, and it’s partitioned off into three rooms. At first he only intended to have us live there while the house was being built, but after he was sick he said we’d better not plan for the house at all. There wouldn’t be enough left to build it, after we paid the bills for his sickness, and besides, we might not want to stay out there after our homesteading was over. He said the best Child in the world started out in a barn and it wouldn’t hurt us to live there fourteen months.”
“And where will you keep the stock if you use their stalls for your parlor?” asked her aunt disagreeably.
“We’re only going to have a cow and two horses. Uncle Jim had already bought the team or we wouldn’t need two. We may sell one when we get through hauling. He said that we could keep them in the shack that he had intended for a tool shed.”
“I suppose you’re going to farm, too?”
“Now, Aunt Jule, you know we can’t farm; Uncle Jim didn’t have any idea of our doing it after — after he was sick,” said Dick, his face red with the combined effort of tack-pulling and temper-holding. “He said that we were to have only ten acres broken and planted to corn for the stock. We’re going to put in a garden, ourselves, so that with our vegetables and our milk and our eggs we can get along. We can plant a garden and take care of the chickens and the animals. But we’re no farmers.”
“You’re right about that,” said Aunt Jule, in a tone that was as aggravating as it was intended to be. “No farmers, and not much gardeners, either, unless the Dakota air gives you new energy. Becky’s a pretty fair hand for work, but it’ll be a new thing for you, young man. Hoeing potatoes ain’t as entertaining as track-teaming, you’ll find. And how are you going to pay for all the things you’ll need, out there? You’ll find you’re not millionaires, when the will’s read.”
Becky tried, for Uncle Jim’s sake, to keep resentment out of her voice. “We shan’t have tq wait for a will to learn that. He always told us about his affairs, and we know exactly what we’ll have to live on. You see, Aunt Jule, he had everything — almost everything — bought and paid for last winter, for we expected to be out there early this spring. We’ll start out with enough to carry us until our first crop is due.”
“Easy come; easy go. You’ve never had any experience at handling money. What you going to count on for income if your crop fails?”
“We’ll have the rent from this house.”
“I s’pose you think twenty-five dollars a month would keep you.”
“It may have to.”
“Well, it’s a fool idea, all the way round. Of course I haven’t anything to say about it unless I’m appointed guardian, and I don’t suppose Jim ever looked ahead far enough to plan for that. I never was one to put my oar in, anyway. You children would be far better off if you stayed right here in Platteville. Becky’s all ready for normal school, and in three years she’d have her certificate and be ready to teach. Then she could support the rest of the family while Dick is preparing. Your uncle didn’t have any too much to leave you, anyway. You’d better not spend the last cent of it on a wild-goose chase like this.”
“But where could we live?” said Becky. “This house is rented to the Glovers. We’d have to find a home, and we haven’t enough money to live and go to school and to pay rent, too. And we’d have to give up that land. Uncle Jim had already filed on it, he’d built the barn and the shack, and he paid for the stock this spring. A lot of our goods are already out there. No, we’ve gone too far to back out now. Uncle Jim thought it was best to go ahead. And besides, Aunt Jule, now that he’s — gone, I just feel as though I can’t stay on without him.” She pulled at a bent and rusty tack with unseeing eyes.
“Nonsense,” said Aunt Jule. “You can’t give up to any such feeling as that. Death comes to everybody in this world, sooner or later. I was prostrated when I lost Sam, but where would I be if I had given in to my grief? And he was a husband, not an uncle. You’ve all got to brace up, just as I did.”
Dick rubbed his coat sleeve across his eyes. “We are bracing up,” he said fiercely.
Aunt Jule settled back in her rocker. “Well, I s’pose there’s no use trying to tell you anything if your uncle’s got your affairs all settled. You won’t starve during the summer — you’ll probably have enough money to carry you for awhile. But you’ll be back as soon as cold weather starts, and I’ll be expected to take the four of you in.”
Becky shook her head.
“You needn’t worry; we’d never come to you,” exclaimed Dick.
“You may be glad to come, yet. I’ve heard those Dakota stories before. No homesteader is ever able to keep the land he settles; it always goes back to the bank that has loaned him money. And four children! How are you going to run a farm? Why, you’re not even old enough yet to keep from fighting among yourselves!”
It was impossible to deny this, much as they longed to do it. Neither meekness nor tolerance were characteristics of the Linvilles. Becky ignored the accusation, but she answered with spirit: “We don’t intend to ‘run a farm.’ Uncle Jim had no idea of our doing that. What we expected to do was to hold down that claim for fourteen months till we got the title to the land. And we’re going to do it.”
“Fourteen months is fourteen months,” remarked Aunt Jule, impersonally. “There’ll be no grocery store to run to for canned peas, and wood and water won’t carry themselves.”
Over her candlestick Becky gave Dick a wink. It was a wink of large proportions, signifying caution, self-restraint, and a third element which Dick well understood. Being interpreted it meant “The less you say the less chance she gets.” And knowing the truth of that hint, the boy held his tongue as well as his temper. It was Becky who said slowly:
“We know that it’s going to be hard living, Aunt Jule; Uncle Jim told us the bad things as well as the good. But he had everything planned for us, and we’re going to do the best we can. If it were twice as hard living as he told us we’d still go, because he wanted it. I can go to normal school after we prove up, but it’s the proving up we’re going to do first.”
Aunt Julia’s sharp little eyes swept over the room, taking note of all the gaps. “So that’s why you’ve been moving out things, right along. I believe you gave me to understand that you were house-cleaning.”
“That was I; not Beck,” said her nephew, without a show of repentance. “I didn’t tell you a lie, either. You asked me if we were housecleaning, and I told you that it was house-cleaning time. It is, isn’t it?”
Aunt Julia ignored him. “You going to take all the furniture, Becky?”
“Part of it. Uncle Jim had everything that we would want listed, and most of it has already gone out. We’re going to pack the few last things we’ll need. The rest we’ll store or sell.”
Aunt Jule made a noise with her tongue that sounded like “tchick, tchick.” “Well, it’s a pretty poor notion, to my way of thinking. However, I wasn’t asked for my opinion, and I don’t intend to give it. You going to have enough money to carry you?”
“We’re going to have enough to make our first payment on the land, to pay for our breaking, and what supplies we’ll need
this summer. Uncle Jim had canned goods and claim clothes bought for a year, and he said we wouldn’t need much else. The horses and wagon and the cow are paid for. Even the chickens are ordered. He thought of everything. But of course we’ve got to help ourselves.”
“I’m surprised that your uncle was that practical. It’s the wild life out there that took his fancy — not the farming. He was always crazy about out-of-door things. I think that’s what gave him his stroke — the continual tramping around with you kids. He never had any sense about taking care of himself.”
“He never thought about himself; always about us,” said Becky. She faced the wall to hide the tears that would rise.
“He sure was dippy about wild things,” agreed Dick. “He said when he got to Dakota he was going to breathe for the first time since he left the sea. It took a hundred and sixty acres of open land, he said, to give a man a real breath of air.” The boy pulled out a tack with a strong dig of his screw-driver. “There, that’s the last. We’re clear around, Beck.”
His aunt rose from her chair. “I s’pose I might as well move into the sitting-room if you’re going to roll that linoleum. I can talk just as well through the door.”
Even through her tears Becky smiled at Dick’s glance. Aunt Jule never had any difficulty in making speech, anywhere.
Their aunt settled herself in the doorway. “I was surprised, this afternoon, when I didn’t see you in the black veil I sent over to you. He was only your uncle, but he’s been a real father to you, and that blue hat of yours was too gay for a funeral.”
“It was what he wanted, Aunt Julia. He said he hoped to goodness we wouldn’t see black every time we thought of him.”
Dick broke the bonds of hospitality, at last. “Uncle Jim hated mourning clothes. He used to say it was easier to put on black after folks were gone than to treat them white while they were here. He told Beck to shy if you tried to put a mourning net on her, Aunt Jule.”
The Jumping-Off Place Page 1