His aunt pushed back the chair from the doorway. “Well, I see there’s no advising you children. I try to do my best for you because I can’t forget that your mother was Sam’s own sister, but you’re set in your own way, just as she and Jim always were. You’ll have to try out the Dakota idea for yourself. Only don’t come crying back to me when your money’s all gone, and you want a home.”
Dick rolled the linoleum over so fiercely that he almost caught her feet in it. “We won’t! we won’t!” he exclaimed. “We’d hate living with you just as much as you’d hate having us.”
“You needn’t snap at me that way,” said Aunt Jule. “ Even your Uncle Jim wouldn’t approve of your being so sassy. I guess I’ll be getting along before you roll my shoes in with your oilcloth.” She raised herself stiffly from her seat. “I s’pose you’re not thinking of taking that big red chair with you, are you? That would be hard to pack. I’ll be glad to keep it for you if you want to store it; it’s the most comfortable chair you have.”
“We’re going to crate it and send it out to Dakota.”
“Well, it’s yours; take it if you want. When are you going?”
“Next Saturday. We’ve got to be out of the house by that time, for the Glovers want to move in Monday. There isn’t so much left for us to do; we were almost packed when Uncle Jim was taken sick. I suppose our goods are already in Dakota.”
“Piling up freight charges,” commented Aunt Jule cheerily. “Well, I think I’ll be going on; my advice doesn’t seem to be worth anything to either of you. School’s about out, anyway, and I don’t suppose one summer of homesteading is going to hurt you. Only when you come back in the fall with everything spent, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She pulled her black cape around her shoulders, and stepped over the roll of linoleum.
“We won’t,” promised Dick.
The kitchen door closed behind Aunt Jule. Then it opened again, wide enough to admit her face. “Have you thought of rattlesnakes?” she asked. Then she shut the door and walked briskly down the gravel walk.
Brother and sister faced each other in the kitchen. “Can you beat that?” demanded Dick. “Our most comfortable chair; therefore leave it with her.”
“I don’t mind the chair,” said Becky. “But I can’t stand it when she begins on Uncle Jim — darling Uncle Jim, who never had a word of hate for anyone in the world, even his crank of a sister-in-law.”
“Well, there’s one good thing about Aunt Jule: she makes you so mad at her that you forget everything else — even his dying. And I’m glad not to think about that, even for a minute.”
Becky was laying newspaper and burlap down on the floor. “We might as well finish this up tonight,” she said. “That will leave the last crating for tomorrow. Thursday we’ll pack the trunks; Friday we’ll store the beds and sleep at the Dennisons’ and Saturday —” She did not finish the sentence.
THEIR first real knowing of Uncle Jim had come eight years before. Dick’s earliest memory of him had been of a pair of arms, with a blue anchor tattooed on one of the wrists, holding him up to kiss his father’s dead face. And Becky, who had been nine, remembered the stream of tears that had flowed down her mother’s face as Uncle Jim had said: “You’re all going back with me. Now I can have what I’ve always wanted — a home.” He had sold their little house in Trenton, packed their household goods, and brought the whole family, carrying the two babies himself, back to the old home in Platteville. “I’m tired of the sea,” he said. “I’ll be glad to settle down.” It was years before Becky stopped believing that, and realized that making the home was not wholly a favor to Uncle Jim. For the first four years he had been father to the little family; after that his duties were doubled, for he had to be mother as well. Becky was thirteen when Mrs. Linville died, and she could still remember her uncle’s: “It’s up to you and me now, Becky. If you’ll do the home-making I’ll do the cooking and the spanking.” No one but Uncle Jim could have made her smile, then.
And so the Linville home went on. Aunt Jule shook her head over the way “Mary’s children were being raised,” and said it was the craziest house she had ever seen. Uncle Jim’s housekeeping was done by a process of elimination. His sailor’s training had given him a hatred for uncleanliness or disorder, but it had also taught him what was necessary and what unnecessary for living. Of books, fresh air, games, music, light, and food the house was full; of ornaments and draperies, and what Uncle Jim called “gimcracks” there were none. Before and after his business hours Becky and he had fought out the cooking together; he had given the two older children their first lessons in darning. He had enforced a system of co-operation, of order, and of waiting upon themselves. He had let them fill the house with playfellows and gayety and noise, but he had no patience with laziness or selfishness or fine airs. As a house Uncle Jim’s establishment may not have been a perfect success; as a home it was a triumph.
Two years before, when the Rosebud Indian Reservation was thrown open for settlement, Uncle Jim had gone out to file on the land. He had not been one of the fortunates who drew claims, but he came back in love with the country and enthusiastic about its future. “I don’t believe I’d ever be lonely for salt water, out there,” he confided to Becky. “Those prairies are seas made out of grass.”
In the fall following, when all of the land not already filed upon was thrown open to squatters, he went out again. He found a quarter-section which had been left tenantless because of a stony hill that was included within its limits. True, the hill occupied ten acres of the three hundred and sixty, but the soil was a rich, sandy loam, all of the land except that hill was fit for cultivation, and a little creek, winding its way through the level meadow, would be a fine thing for stock. He filed on the claim, “established residence” by putting up a good-sized barn and a smaller shack, and after a month of work had come home to the children full of enthusiasm. All winter they had planned and purchased and packed, intending to start for the new home in the early spring. And then, the week before they were ready to leave, with almost all their household goods sent on before them, a clot of blood in Uncle Jim’s brain had halted everything. Gradually movement and speech came back to the stricken man, but strength had evidently gone to stay. All his thought during those last weeks of his life had been of the children and their new home. His love and his will dominated the nerveless hands and the feeble brain. He compelled himself to live long enough to plan their fourteen months of homesteading for them. Then he died.
Becky’s thoughts went back over that last year as she rolled the papers about the linoleum. The homesteading had seemed a lark and an adventure with Uncle Jim there to direct, to decide, and to superintend. But now it was a leap into the dark, a trip on an uncharted sea without a pilot. Could she hold the crew together, and steer the boat? Dared she start out on that unknown sea, with no compass but Uncle Jim’s notebook, no rudder but the memory of his words? She dared not try it. And yet she must go.
“Dick,” she said softly. She hesitated, and tucked in the ends of the newspapers as she felt for the right words.
“Speak up,” encouraged Dick. “What’s eating you?”
Becky dropped back upon her knees. “I’m scared to death to start off.”
“Aunt Jule’s done that to you — the old crape-hanger.”
“No, it isn’t Aunt Jule; it’s I. I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to put it across. I’m not afraid of snakes or blizzards or hard work, but I’m panicky about myself. Maybe I’m not going to be big enough to do it if I don’t have Uncle Jim.”
“You’ll not be doing it alone; you’ll have us.”
“The kids will help, of course, but they aren’t old enough to take any responsibility. It’s the responsibility I dread.”
“You won’t have to take all of it, Dumb-bell. I’m going to hold up my end, ain’t I?”
“I know you will, Dick; I’m sure of that. But it isn’t just the work and the planning! it’s the keeping together. I don’
t know if we can do that. We’ve got to stand against everybody else, just as Uncle Jim said. Oh, Dick, we mustn’t fight!” She laid a dusty hand on his grimy overalls.
“Well, I won’t fight if you treat me right,” said her brother gruffly. He was boy enough to wriggle away from her caress, but man enough to understand what that caress meant. “Uncle Jim told me what he wanted me to do, and I’m going to do it,” he said, in a brusque voice. “We’ll work it out, some way, Beck. Hold those papers down, and let me do the rolling.”
A small, white-robed figure stood in the doorway, a sharp-chinned little girl, with a freckled nose, and gray-green eyes. “Aunt Jule gone?” she asked.
“Look in the most comfortable seat; if she’s not there she isn’t here,” said Dick.
“Did you tell her that she could have the red chair?”
“Neither the red chair, nor you and Phil. I think with a little urging she would have kept all three of you,” teased her brother.
“She wouldn’t keep me,” said Joan. “I never would stay in her horrible house.” And she shivered.
“You’d better run back to bed,” said Becky. “Don’t you dare take cold before Saturday.”
“I can’t sleep. I just get about there, and then I think of him again.”
Becky smiled at her through tears. “Remember what he told you, Joan.”
“I do,” said the little girl, “But sometimes I can’t.”
“Come on up,” said Becky. “I’ll tuck you in.” She squeezed the thin little hand as the two went back upstairs together.
Dick wrapped burlap over the long roll of linoleum, and tied each end with rope. A new, queer sensation seemed to hang about a spot somewhere between his heart and his throat— a feeling that he would fasten up the old part of his life when he turned the key in the door. School days, track team, baseball nine, the skating rink, old friends, would be left behind when he went. Would there be something to take their place in that new country that Uncle Jim loved so well? He stood a moment, looking around the dismantled room — at the bright spot on the wall that the kitchen clock had covered, the pencil lines on the doorway, where Uncle Jim had measured heights on each birthday, the empty table drawer with a single knife left in it, the mark that Uncle Jim’s rubber heel had made when the pantry floor was newly varnished.
Then he got out pen and ink and wrote a tag, which he fastened with wire to the roll of linoleum. It was addressed to
Richard Linville
Dallas
Tripp CountySouth Dakota
CHAPTER II
THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE
GOOD-BY, Mary, you blessed old thing!” “Good-by, Becky dear. Good luck. Come back soon.”
It seemed as though everybody in Platteville were at the Northwestern Station on Saturday afternoon. Old, young, and middle-aged stood on the platform, while parcels and boxes were passed through the window with the affectionate good-bys. The farewell was too much for Becky, and as the train pulled away from the mass of waving handkerchiefs, she sank back into the seat with tears in her eyes. “The dear, dear people!” she said.
“They gave us a fine send-off,” said Dick, speaking gruffly to hide a shake in his voice.
Becky shaded her eyes to look back at the little town set in its nest of green. As the train crossed the Rountree Branch on the trestle she looked up the valley to the graveyard where they had left Uncle Jim. Between her heart and her throat was a leaden weight that both pressed and choked. It seemed as though she must stop that train, clamber down the steps and run up the hillside to tell Uncle Jim that she couldn’t go.
“When do we eat?” inquired Phil.
Joan said nothing. She settled herself back into the red plush with delight written all over her expressive little face. Her last trip on the railroad had been made at the age of three months, and she had never dreamed of the splendors of velvet and veneer that lay behind the windows of a chair car. What joy to be going on a real trip, amid such luxury! She was oblivious to the dust on the seats, the cinders on the window-sills, the faint odor of lunch boxes that pervaded the car. She gave a bounce of ecstasy on the hard, plush seat. “Just like a throne!” she said to herself.
At Ipswich Phil made a trip to the watercooler, being parched with thirst after four miles of travel, and it was during his absence that the news agent passed by Joan. A very friendly man, with much gold in his teeth and on his cap, who called her “sister,” and laid on the seat beside her a package of gum, a fortune-telling ring, and a bottle made of parafine, with a delicious-looking red liquid inside. He passed on without waiting for her grateful “Oh, thank you!”
Joan quickly concealed both bottle and ring. No use in exhibiting her treasures all at once; it would prolong the pleasure to produce them one at a time. Moreover, they wouldn’t have to be shared so generously. But she opened the package of gum, took out a thin wedge of Yucatan for Phil and a mint stick for herself; then put the rest away. When Phil came back her jaws were busy. She produced his stick.
“Where’d you get it?”
“None of your beeswax,” answered his sister. Phil amicably accepted the dainty. “Of course you’d annex the spearmint for yourself,” he said. “Lookit, Jonie, quick. Ain’t that a swell cave up there in those rocks? If I find one like that in Dakota I’m going to fix it up and live in it. Betcha there’d be bears in a cave like that.”
“Uncle Jim said there weren’t any bears in South Dakota.”
“Well, there may be now, since all the settlers have come in. Bears always go where there’s good eating.”
Joan shivered happily. It was a terrifying thought — one that she feared, yet found delicious to harbor.
“It would be a swell place for wolves, too,” said Dick.
“They don’t have wolves; only coyotes.”
“Ain’t those wolves, I’d like to know?”
The door slammed, and the news agent came back through the car again. He guided his swinging tray of wares between the seats till he stopped in front of Joan, and gave a swift glance over her lap. “Well, sister, how were they?”
“Oh, fine!”
“Thirty-five cents,” said the news agent.
“Sir?” She must have misunderstood him.
“Thirty-five cents. Ten for the gum, ten for the cordial and fifteen for the ring.”
Joan turned very red. “I thought you gave them to me.”
The news agent showed the gold in his teeth, but his smile seemed, somehow, less pleasant. “What do you think I’m in business for?”
Joan cast a quick look across the car. Becky and Dick, with their backs turned, were looking out of the window. She produced a ten-cent piece from the little bead bag in her lap, and the ring and the bottle from her pocket. How she hated them both, now!
The agent looked at them with scorn. “I can’t sell those things after they’ve been bumping around in your pocket.”
“Do you mean you won’t take ’em back?”
“I sure won’t.”
Joan’s face was despairing. She flushed till even the freckles on her nose were invisible. “But I haven’t got any more money.”
“I can’t stand here gassing all day over thirty-five cents,” said the news agent. “Where’s yer folks?”
Phil stood up in his seat, and shook down his clothes. There was a little jingle. From his hip pocket he took out two nickels. From his blouse waist he extracted, one by one, five pennies. “Here’s a quarter,” he said to the man in uniform. You can take back the ring; she never damaged that package.”
The man looked disagreeable, but he picked up the money and the goods, and started away.
“Hey,” said Phil. “That bottle belongs to us. We paid for that.”
The news agent tossed the parafine bottle toward them, as he started away.
“You’re a good boy, Phil Linville,” said his sister gratefully. “That was the money you got for your rabbit.”
“You got to make it up to me, some way. Anyway, I
guess there are plenty of rabbits where we’re going. C’mon, Jonie, I’ll let you drink the juice, an’ I’ll chew the parafine. Don’t let Beck see you; she’ll say we’ll spoil our meal.” And thus reminding himself, he crossed the aisle and touched his elder sister’s shoulder. “Becky,” he said, “When are we going to eat?”
THEY ate their luncheon in the park in Galena, sitting under the shade of the hard maples. Then they climbed the steep hill that led to General Grant’s old home. It was after visiting hours, but the caretaker, moved by Becky’s almost reverent questions, unlocked the door and showed them through the old-fashioned rooms.
“Is she the Grants’ aunt?” whispered Joan, with her hand on Becky’s dress.
“Why?”
“’Cause she calls ’em all by their first names — Fred and Jesse and Julia.”
The caretaker heard the question, and smiled. “Don’t wonder you ask that,” she said, good-naturedly. “You know, living here in the house, and talking about them to people, the way I do, every day, you get so you feel as though they were your own folks. Nellie has great-grandchildren now, but I always think of her as a pretty little girl, looking into the mirror in that small room upstairs. And the General — why, I never go up the front steps that I don’t look for him sitting in that porch chair, with his cigar in his mouth.”
Joan was enraptured with Galena, with its steep little streets running into the rocky hills above the town, the vine-covered church that was built into the solid limestone behind it, the deserted graveyard that was now a playground. “I don’t see why General Grant ever went away from here,” she said. “He could sleigh ride down these hills so fast that he’d go up on the other side. Then all he’d have to do would be to turn his sled around. Wish we were going to live here instead of in Dakota.”
IT WAS ten o’clock at night before the Northwestern train came in, and Phil and Joan were dead with sleep when the Linvilles started on their way to Omaha. Becky, not daring the extravagance of a sleeper, made them as comfortable as she could with blankets and pillows, and the two went immediately to sleep. Dick stretched himself out on the seat with his overcoat and sweater, and soon followed suit. The train clanked its way over the prairies, with only an occasional light to show that the towns were far apart and small. Becky took out the steamer rug and curled up inside of it, but sleep would not come. All that was sure and tried lay behind, in Platteville; before her stretched the unknown. She thought of the change of cars ahead of her in Omaha, of the freight that must be identified and claimed at their journey’s end, of the stock that they must find, of the supplies that they must buy. How was she to do all these things as Uncle Jim would have them done? She felt inadequate for the task, too young and inexperienced to meet what the next day was sure to bring.
The Jumping-Off Place Page 2