She reached out for her suit-case, which lay on the seat opposite, and took out a thin green book which lay near the top. The light which hung from the center of the car swung with the train’s motion, and cast shadows over the handwriting on the pages. It was the note-book which Uncle Jim had made for them in the last days of his illness. She turned the leaves till she came to:
OMAHA
Arrive 8:00 A.M. Illinois Central. Leave 8:45 A.M. on Northwestern.
N.W. train goes out at the same station. Eat a hot breakfast at the depot. Buy lunch for the next two meals. Don’t hurry. Y ou have plenty of time.
This is the home stretch. You’ll love the prairie.
DALLAS
Arrive 8:00 P.M., and go to hotel three blocks up Main Street. In early morning buy your last supplies. Inquire at the Star Dumber Yard for the superintendent, Mr. Cleaver. He’ll tell you where our freight is stored and will see that the team and the wagon are brought over to meet you. Depend on what he tells you; he is the cream of Tripp County.
Get a man to help load the boxes on to the wagon. Start with box number I, and don’t take more than the horses can carry. Dick will have to come back for the rest, later.
The bay horse is lazier than his partner; see that he takes his share of the pull.
19 miles straight north to the claim. Get a man to drive with you and help unload. Look for the prairie dog town as you drive past the hill with the watermark.
Play fair, everybody, and all help.
If you don’t like the prairie then I’ve counted wrong.
The dearness of Uncle Jim! Becky could almost hear his laughing voice in the words. He seemed so near, so with her as she read his instructions. The worry stopped. Things were not so scary after all. She pushed the little book up under her pillow, turned her back to the light, and went off to sleep.
AFTER they left Omaha the world began to change. It was opener country; the sky reached farther; the towns grew fewer. The men who boarded the train had wide-brimmed hats, and many of them wore red handkerchiefs about their necks. At Niobrara a party of Indians got on — the younger ones in store clothes, the father and mother in moccasins, flannel shirt and blanket shawl. At Norfolk the Linville children got off the car for a moment to stretch their tired legs, and there they met the prairie wind that Uncle Jim had described — the unceasing, never-waning breeze that tore at their clothes and zoomed in their ears; that attacked, rather than caressed. They were glad to get on the train again.
The occasional towns were only single streets of false-fronted stores with a few frame houses. The trees were rare wind-breaks. Finally both town and streets vanished in a sea of green grass that ran into the sky.
The west burned with a great fire. The sun turned into a molten ball of red gold. Phil began to rummage in the lunch box, but Joan, with her freckled face against the car window, watched the ball drop down behind the world. The skies turned from red to orange, from orange to purple, from purple to gray. The porter lit the lamp in the center of the car. Joan yielded her little frame to the swaying train. “Clink, clank” she sang to the accompaniment of the banging metal beneath her. Then she took out her block of paper, produced a much-chewed pencil and wrote:
Clink, clank, clink, clank,
The sun is setting behind the banck.
I me going out to live on a clame
Where raseing mellons is our ame.
IT WAS evening when they pulled into Dallas. And there a little, flat town lay between the prairie behind them and the prairie ahead of them, with the two shining railway tracks ending in waving grass. Aunt Jule had been right about one thing: it was the Jumping-off Place.
“We can’t bother Mr. Cleaver tonight,” decided Becky. “We’ll go to the hotel, get to bed, and make an early start in the morning.”
The children made their way up the long street — the only street of the town. When Becky found the stores open she decided that they might save time by buying their supplies at night. So while the two children sat in the hotel, looking with interest at the moccasined Indians and the occasional cowboys that passed, Dick and Becky made their list and did their shopping.
“Ye gods,” said Dick as he jingled the two solitary dimes that were left from his twenty dollar bill, “How that money hopped off!”
Becky looked worried. “It did go fast. But everything we bought was a necessity.”
“Except that cloth you ordered. No use for that on a claim.”
“I bought three yards of cretonne! And those cartridges of yours cost a dollar and a half.”
“Don’t shake your gory locks at me! Those cartridges will give you fresh game to cook.”
Becky’s eyes snapped. “To cook for whom?”
“Thought you were going to can the scrapping?”
The girl looked ashamed. “I am. We mustn’t, Dick.”
“See that you don’t, then.”
Becky changed the subject. “I’m glad that’s the last of the spending. We ought not to need anything else but oil for months.”
“Ought not! We can’t!” Dick had had his first awakening to the slippery quality of money.
THE children were awake early next morning. At the lumber yard they inquired for the superintendent, and a chubby-faced man that looked like Santa Claus came out of the office at once. He shook hands all around with a heartiness that was a real welcome. “So you’re the young Linvilles,” he said. “I’ve heard enough about you so I know you all. I was afraid you’d given up the homesteading idea until I had that letter from your uncle three weeks ago. Is he going to be able to make the trip out, later?”
“Uncle Jim died last week,” said Becky.
The man saw the quick tears that sprang to four pairs of eyes. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “He wrote me that his mortgage on life was just about due, but I hoped he was mistaken. His assets, he said, he was going to send out here. And you’re the assets, I take it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dick, not quite understanding.
“Well, I suppose we’d better start your homesteading proposition, right away,” said Mr. Cleaver, briskly. “You’re a bit late, anyway, and we can’t afford to waste any time. Wait till I get my hat, and we’ll go and see about your supplies. Lucky thing your new team happens to be in town today. I saw it here less than an hour ago.”
“We bought all our supplies,” said Becky.
“When?”
“Last night, after the train got in.”
“How did you know what to buy?”
“Uncle Jim made out the list for us. Dick and I went together.”
“Aren’t you pretty young kids to be handling your own cash?”
“I’ve done the marketing ever since I was fourteen.”
Mr. Cleaver glanced at the resolute mouth, at the steady blue eyes, at the decided young chin. “You kids have the ‘git up and git,’” he said, with admiration in his voice. “You’ll do.”
There was admiration in his face, too, as he watched the goods being loaded. With cap off, sleeves rolled up and flannel shirt open at the throat, Dick fell upon the freight. Becky and the two youngest children joined in the carrying, while Dick and a man from the lumber yard lifted the heavier boxes. Mr. Cleaver went back and forth on various errands, but returned each time to find the work going on steadily. There was no disagreement, no waste of steps, no false moves. The four children moved like clockwork, and in less than an hour the Linville wagon was loaded and ready to start.
“Why not get all your goods out at once?” suggested Mr. Cleaver. “Wubber, a homesteader who lives a mile from your place, is in Dallas, and going right past your claim. If he has room on his wagon for the rest of your things you’d save time and it wouldn’t cost you any more than to make the extra trip yourselves.”
Becky and Dick eagerly agreed to the plan. A boy was sent out for Mr. Wubber, a blond man whose face was so sunburned that he seemed to have the wrong wig on. When he learned where the new homesteaders were to settle h
e refused to accept pay for the use of his team.
“You give me my noon meal, and we’ll call it square. My wife would give me tittery eye if I took pay fer hauling from a near neighbor.”
Joan and Phil looked at each other. What was tittery eye?
“How near?” asked Dick. “I thought you lived a mile from us.”
“That’s close neighbors in Tripp County,” said Mr. Wubber.
“Now,” said Mr. Cleaver, when the last crate had been loaded on to the wagons, “you boys had better start on. It’ll take you several hours, with those loads. I’m going to take Miss Becky and the small fry out with me in my car. They’ll be ready and waiting when you come. Wubber, you’ll stay and help unload the kids, won’t you?”
“Sure. I’ll stay till they’re moved in,” replied Mr. Wubber. He winked one eye, which dropped a strangely white lid down on his sunburned face. “This is wash day at our house, and there ain’t much to come home to on wash days.”
“I druther go out on the wagon,” said Phil.
“Nothing doing,” put in Dick, decidedly. “You’re going just as you’re told.”
“You’re not the boss of me.”
Becky broke in quickly. “The horses have enough load as it is, Phil. Besides, you’ll get a chance to look around at the place before Dick comes and we’ll all have to get to work. It’s a wonderful chance to drive out with Mr. Cleaver.”
Mr. Cleaver cast an amused glance at the girl. “You know how to manage ’em, don’t you? I was going out your way, anyway, Phil, and I’d like to show you the country as we go. It’ll give me company on my drive, and you a chance to look over your land. I’ve got to stop at the house a moment before I’m ready, but I shan’t keep you waiting long.”
He piled the children into his car and drove up Main Street to a gray bungalow, which had a real porch and the only awnings in town. When he came out of the house, fifteen minutes later, he carried a basket which he put between the two seats. “All set,” he said. “Let’s start.”
At the edge of the town the prairie seemed to roll in upon them. Becky looked out upon a world of vivid green and blue. A sea of grass, soft, lush, deep, rose around them, swept by waves of wind that made silver billows through the sea. Miles of this green stretched before them. It was a world of grass — no trees, no rocks, no land-marks of any kind. Only the gray trail that ran through the prairie, and now and then a tiny shack, built of boards, or a house made of sod.
Joan gazed over the miles of grass with a wistful expression on her sharp little face. “Aren’t there any things on the prairie?” she asked. “Is it all just grass?”
Mr. Cleaver laughed — a deep-sounding chuckle that seemed to come from his waist, rather than his throat. “That’s the way it seems to everyone at first. But wait awhile, and you won’t find it as bare as you think.”
“What’ll we find?”
“All the flowers that grow. Chipmunks and prairie dogs and coyotes and muskrats and beavers, and turtles almost big enough for you to ride, and now and then a wolf ——”
“There, I told you!” interrupted Phil.
“And meadow-larks, and quail that go drumming about in the springtime. Wild geese and prairie chickens and big black hawks. Indian arrow-heads in the earth and Indian water-marks on the hills. Wild plum thickets and ground cherries. And the most wonderful sunsets you ever saw.”
“Gee!” said Phil. His sigh of ecstasy was for plums, not sunsets.
The car sped along the trail that looped and doubled upon itself like a ribbon. It rounded bottom-land that was almost swampy, where the grass grew long and showed its silver side when the wind blew across it. In the deep, vivid green was a riot of color — the blue of the liverwort, the yellow of swamp buttercup, and here and there a late red lily that looked like a stain of blood in the grass. Over it swung red-winged blackbirds, and from its depths meadow-larks called their six liquid notes.
Mr. Cleaver glanced down at Becky’s face. “How do you like it?”
The girl’s eyes were alight. “Oh, wonderful! If Uncle Jim could just see it!”
“You’re going to be all right if it strikes you that way, at first,” said Mr. Cleaver. “As for your uncle seeing it, he did. I drove him over this very trail, just about a year ago.”
“Didn’t he say he liked it?”
“Over and over. He was just crazy about the country; said that he didn’t know land could be so much like the sea.”
“How did you come to bring him out?”
“Well, I happened to meet him the first day he landed in Dallas. He was the kind of man that would make a dent in your memory — he was so unusual a fellow — and we took a shine to each other right away. When he failed to get any land in the drawing I was as disappointed as he was. I told him not to give up his idea of coming out here; that I’d keep my eye open for a claim before squatting time. It was I who wrote him that this land was to be thrown open, and when he came out to take a look at it I drove him over here.”
“Do you take that much trouble for all homesteaders?”
“Not by any manner of means. But your uncle was the kind of citizen we need. And if we can’t get him we’re glad to have his proxies.”
“We’re pretty poor substitutes for Uncle Jim.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Mr. Cleaver. “When I first got his letter telling me he was depending on you to do the homesteading, I wrote back discouraging the idea. I told him that I didn’t think it a practical thing for four kids to undertake claim living; you wouldn’t last out the summer. I had a letter from him four days later in the shaky handwriting that came after his illness. It was just six words long: ‘Wait till you see the kids.’ And since I have seen you and that brother of yours take hold this morning, I guess that your uncle was right.”
Becky’s eyes softened at the praise. She dared not trust her voice to reply.
“Too bad his sickness put you back so far. You’re three months later than you should be. But you’re lucky in having this a backward year; even the people who had their crops in early this spring aren’t seeing much results.”
“We’re not going to have any crops but sod corn,” said Becky. “We’re going to garden, not farm. Uncle Jim said it wasn’t too late for potatoes. And I’m bringing two big boxes of plants. I set out tomatoes and cabbage, and every other vegetable that I dared transplant, in boxes, weeks ago. Uncle Jim had the ground plowed and disked and harrowed last October. We ought to get some results.”
“Yes, he worked like a Trojan in those weeks that he was here last fall. He must have done a lot of the building himself, for the carpenter who worked for him was a poor sort of wood butcher. Your uncle came in for more lumber one day when I was rushed with work. My two helpers were gone, and I’d been filling orders, answering telephone and rustling lumber, myself. ‘How goes it?’ he asked, as I scurried around to find a man to help him fill his wagon. ‘Too much work to suit me,’ I said, ‘I’m sick and tired of keeping my nose to the grindstone.’ I remember how hot he looked, as he stopped in his loading. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t feel that way about work. If the Lord will supply the grindstone, I’ll furnish the nose.’ I never forgot that.”
Becky smiled through her tears. She could almost hear Uncle Jim saying it.
The car went over a hill, and two deep blue peaks showed, outlined against a lighter blue sky. “You’re on the home stretch now,” said Mr. Cleaver. “Those are the Dog Ear Buttes, twelve miles away from your claim. You’ll look at them every day for the next five years — or are you planning the five-year residence?”
“No, only fourteen months. Uncle Jim said we never could raise enough on the place to feed Phil five years.”
“Proving up will be over almost before you start. Here, look down through the valley; you can get a peek at your new home.”
The children “peeked.” The trail curved down a gentle incline, then around three buildings that stood outlined against the western sky. A squar
e of gray ground about them, where the sub-soil had been thrown up and trampled down, made a patch in the green prairie grass. As they came nearer they saw a thin fringe of shrubbery that outlined, here and there, a curly little stream. The children bounced about excitedly on the back seat. “The creek! the creek!” they yelled.
“And there’s the barn,” said Becky.
“Don’t le’s call it a barn,” pleaded Joan. “It’s going to be our house. Le’s call the shack the barn.”
Mr. Cleaver drove up to the end of the barn-that-was-to-be-a-house. It was built in the shelter of a hill, so that on the north it would be cut off from the worst of the storm winds. On the south the tangled skeins of the creek emptied into a small pond. Near the back door was the well; over it a large pump.
The children jumped from the car before it had quite stopped, and ran to the end of the barn where a front door had been cut. Becky unlocked it, and they stepped inside. The building had been divided into three rooms by partitions that went part way to the ceiling. A window in each room let in light and air, and a back door, directly opposite the front, had a glass inset. The interior was unfinished. The beams ran to the roof tree, and the rafters stretched overhead, but the lumber had been planed, and was smooth, soft pine. Becky’s heart sank a little. In spite of all Uncle Jim had told her, she had not expected to find things so primitive, so unprotected, and so bare.
The Jumping-Off Place Page 3