The Jumping-Off Place

by Marian Hurd McNeely

  THE FOUR YOUNG HOMESTEADERS LOOK AT THEIR LAND

  “Why, Joan, he had no fishing tackle.”

  “He didn’t need any; he caught ’em in his fingers. Just put his hands down in the water at the deepest hole, and held ’em terrible still. Then when they swam by he caught ’em, just like lightning. He took ’em home for dinner; said he s’posed maybe his mother would cook ’em, if she didn’t have one of her laying streaks.”

  “Laying streaks? What did he mean?”

  “I asked him, and he said she laid around, some days. He says she ain’t one for work.”

  “Hope you kids don’t feel that way,” said Dick. “We’ve got to start the garden, today.”

  Phil sighed. “I’ll betcha the prairie is better to play on than to work on,” he predicted.

  Becky hurried through the breakfast dishes while Dick sought Uncle Jim’s green book. He was silent so long that Becky called to him. “Does it tell us how to start?”

  “I should say it does. Look, Beck, he’s drawn the whole plan of the garden. Even marked the vegetables down, in rows for us, and has the plot measured. No way of making a botch if we follow his directions. Gee, doesn’t this sound like him:

  When you work in the garden start early and quit from noon till two o’clock. If you get a sunstroke you won’t need vegetables.

  String beans are pretty safe things to pin your faith to. Only one planting to a summer.

  You’re hungrier for potatoes when you’re eating them than when you’re planting them.

  The earlier you get Becky’s pieplant started the earlier she’ll have rhubarb pie for you.”

  Becky pulled out her handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Then she turned back to her dishes. “I’ll be out to help in a minute,” she said. “You start along, Dick.”

  THE sod had been turned up the fall before. It had been plowed and harrowed and disked in the plot Uncle Jim had set apart for the garden. Even with all that work it didn’t look like Wisconsin soil; it was tough of fibre, and the roots of wild roses that ran through it were like wires. It didn’t seem possible to the children, remembering the powdery loam of the Platteville garden, that seeds would grow in it, but Uncle Jim must have known. They took the book out into the field, and held the corners of the leaves down with clods of earth while they planted. Turnips and carrots, tomatoes, onions, melons, and cucumbers all dropped, seed by seed, along their rows of string. Becky planned quickly prepared meals, and the children worked with unusual steadfastness and energy.

  The man from Dallas drove out with new panes of glass, and not alone repaired the pump and the windows, but presented Becky with two castor bean plants which had already put out their first four leaves. “The elm trees of Dakota,” he told her. They were a gift from Mr. Cleaver, he said, who had sent word that he wanted the family to have some shade to sit under. Becky planted one on either side of the door, carried a bucket full of water from the creek to water them, and sent back her grateful thanks to their new friend. “Tell him I’m going to call them Castor and Pollux” she said.

  “Never heard ’em called Ann Pollacks before,” said the Dallas man. “Castor beans is the Dakota name for ’em.”

  It was a long day, and a hot one, and when the sun went down in a burst of flaming cloud the children were tired. Becky suggested that the two small ones leave the kitchen stoop where they were helping Dick cut the seed potatoes, and go to the spring for fresh water. “The man said this morning that the well water would taste queer for a while after the pump was fixed.” The children set off eagerly, and Becky took their place, cutting the eyes out of the potatoes they had brought from Wisconsin. The hard work of the past two days had taken their toll of enthusiasm, and the brother and sister talked soberly, like man and woman, as they worked.

  “Pretty tired?” asked Becky.

  Dick straightened up from the bushel basket. “Dead,” he confessed. “I’ve got an ache instead of a back, tonight. I’m going to bed the moment these are done.”

  “I’ll finish them.”

  “You will not; you haven’t been exactly frittering away the day, yourself.”

  Becky was touched. Chivalry was a new trait in Dick, and one that she rejoiced to see. Homesteading wasn’t going to be so bad if she was going to share it with someone else; it wasn’t the being a martyr, but the feeling yourself one, that made hardship. Evidently Dick had started out with the idea he was to take his share of whatever came.

  “Do you think we’re going to swing it, Dick?” she asked.

  Dick looked sober. “It’s bigger than I thought it was going to be. Plenty of work in front of us. But some things about the place are great; guess it’ll be worth while in the end. Anyway, I’m not planning to go back to Aunt Jule.”

  The fairy castles of golden cloud turned into masses of violet. The hush of evening began to close them in.

  “It’s wonderful country,” said Becky, still cutting potatoes as she looked across at the blue buttes that were melting into sky. “I can hardly believe yet, that it is ours.”

  “In fourteen months more,” exulted Dick.

  A sound of hurrying feet in the grass; hurrying feet and panting breath. The children came tearing across the creek, breathless with excitement, with their pail still empty.

  “Those boys — at the spring — said it was theirs — we shouldn’t — set the dog on us,” they cried, interrupting each other with broken snatches of sentences.

  “Hey, calm down. One at a time,” ordered Dick. “You tell, Phil; Joan has no breath left.”

  “We were up at the spring filling our pail, and two kids came along with a dog. They told us to get out of there or they’d bust our faces in. We told ’em we was only getting water, and they said it was their water, and we sure had our nerve to come and help ourselves. They were a lot biggern us and they had the dog too, so we didn’t dare sass ’em back. We thought we’d fill the pail and come away, but as fast as we had it full they’d empty it. They told us we had no business up there at all; that it was their claim, and they’d been living on it for months. Finely they set the dog on us and we had to run off. They’ve got a shack just over the hill from the spring; we saw the roof.”

  “They told us to keep away from the water if we knew what was good for us,” added Joan.

  Dick raised his bent shoulders from the potato cutting. “Do you mean the shack is on this claim?”

  “Yes,” said the children together.

  “Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “Mr. Cleaver showed us where our stake is set; their shack is way this side.”

  Dick stuck his knife into a potato and stood up. “I’m going up to see about that.”

  “Oh, Dick, you’re so tired. And the kids are probably mistaken about the shack. The boys were just teasing them.”

  “I’ll feel better if I go up.”

  “Then I’m going with you. There are two of those boys, and I’m afraid you’ll have trouble with them.”

  “You’re going to do no such thing. It’s no place for you.”

  “I’m afraid to have you go up there alone. There might be trouble.”

  “I don’t expect any trouble, but I’ve got to see that shack.”

  “Then let me go, too.”

  Dick said no, with decision and emphasis, and Becky unwillingly had to agree. That new chivalry was a comfort and a joy, but it had its price. If Becky was to be given protection she must be willing to take it; she must not spoil this new feeling of responsibility by being too independent. “All right,” she said meekly.

  Dick’s tall figure lumbered away through the twilight. Becky noticed, as she watched him go, that he had seemed to broaden out in the last few weeks. He was almost a man in size, and she was glad of it. He would need strength if at fifteen the protection of the family fell upon him.

  The boy went through the tangled slough grass, crossed the creek, and climbed the hill to the spring. No one was in sight as he stooped to drink. The scolding water
and a complaining wood dove made the only sounds he heard. Then over the hill a dog barked, and another dog answered. He climbed higher, following the sound, till he saw a light in a window. It came from a small shack standing on the hillside. It was a box of a house with one window and a stovepipe sticking through the roof; it was built of boards and covered with building paper that the wind had torn loose. The children were right. The shack certainly stood within the Linville boundary line.

  As Dick approached two dogs began to strain at their leashes and bark madly. “Hello,” he called, over the uproar.

  The door opened, and a man and two halfgrown boys appeared in the oblong of light.

  “What you want?” demanded the man.

  Dick ignored the surly tone. “I’m Linville,” he said. “We’re your new neighbors; just came yesterday. We found our pump out of order when we came, and we’ve been using the spring. When the children came up for water tonight they said some boys sent them off. I thought I’d come up and ask you if there was any reason why that spring shouldn’t be used.”

  The boys snickered in a silly, awkward way. The father shook the ashes out of his pipe. “You’re right there’s a reason! I ain’t furnishing water to trespassers.”

  “But I understood that the spring was on our land.”

  “Well, change your understanding, sonny; it ’taint. It’s on mine.”

  “What section do you call yours?”

  “Don’t know any reason why you should be pinning me down to st’istics. But I’d as lieve tell you that this is Section twenty-three.”

  “But that’s our claim.”

  The dogs moved up around his ankles. The man swore. “It is, is it? Well, I’ll have you know, you young snapping turtle, that it’s mine.”

  “But my uncle filed on twenty-three last fall, the night the land was thrown open.”

  “He’s pretty late in getting his residence started. Why wasn’t he around the first of March? That’s when residence began.”

  “Because he was dying.”

  “He should ’a’ come out here to die if he wanted the claim. He’s lost it now; funerals don’t cut no odds with the guv-ment. I been here since the first day of March, I got my crops in and witnesses to prove it, and plenty of neighbors to swear that there wasn’t a rag of you folks around here on March first. Everybody thought you’d given up. I come in and plant my corn and make my improvements, and then you show your sassy face and claim the land’s yours. You got a swell chance of proving it! My advice to you is to tell your folks to pull up stakes and git back where they come from. If they stay around here they’re likely to git something more than a contest filed agin ’em.”

  The lighted doorway was full of heads. Back of the man a woman’s voice spoke a few words in a low tone.

  “You shut yer click,” said her husband. “Keep out o’ what don’t concern you.” He turned to Dick. “And as fer you, young feller, you get out o’ here, quick. Keep away from that spring o’ mine, and get off my land if you want to keep out of trouble. I give you three days to pack up; if you and your stealing family ain’t out of this section by that time there’s going to be something doing around these parts!”

  CHAPTER IV

  TROUBLES

  BECKY scarcely slept that night. The next morning, early, she and Dick were on their way to the Wubber claim, which lay to the north of what they had just begun to call home. The Wubbers’ barn was built of sod, from which an occasional tuft of dried grass still waved in the breeze. The shack was of plank with a roof of corrugated iron which made a loud banging noise when the wind cut under its edges. There was a well and a chicken house and a “cave” in which the family kept their milk and butter, when Mrs. Wubber felt disposed to churn.

  She was sitting in the open doorway in the only rocker — a large-framed woman, shaped very like her own churn. Gum in her mouth, an enormous man-sized pair of sandals on her stockingless feet, she was rocking and rocking and rocking. Her placidity and satisfaction with life was, somehow, an aggravation to the worried guests.

  She did not rise from her chair to greet them, but her manner was cordial. “Come in, you-alls. You must be our new neighbors. Crystal, you and Autie bring two chairs. Set down and make yourselves easy-boned. Was you needin’ your east cake?”

  Dick told his errand, while Mrs. Wubber rocked and listened. The tow-headed children stood in groups around the three chairs. “Run and tell your paw who’s here,” she admonished them. “You got to take me just as I am,” she told Becky, “I ain’t got started at my work, yet.” She caught Autumn around the neck, and gave him an indulgent spat. “Dirty boy, ain’t had his face washed yet,” she apologized fondly.

  Mr. Wubber came in from the barn with a pail of milk in either hand. He set them in the corner, to the loud accompaniment of buzzing flies. Then he pulled up a soap box and sat down to listen to the story of the night before.

  “That’s Welp, all right,” he said. “He’s a mean cuss.”

  “Did you know he was living on our claim when you drove our goods out, yesterday?”

  “Oh, yaas,” said Mr. Wubber easily.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I hated to start you in with bad news. I ain’t never seen his place, but I’ve seen him, and if he’s as mean as he looks he’s a terror. Trainer, his neighbor on the section south, has had a lot of trouble with him — lost chickens and tools and that kind of business.”

  “Has Welp been here long?”

  “Well, he come out some time during the fall, I don’t know just when. He put up such a poor kind of shack that nobody thought he was going to stick it out. When spring first came he brought his family up here from Gregory County, and did his planting, they tell me. Maybe now he intends to stay.”

  “Did he file at the land office?”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I heerd someone say, in the early winter, that he was going to contest your claim.”

  “Do you suppose he would have a chance of winning?”

  “I don’t know but he would, and I don’t know as he would,” said Mr. Wubber cheerily. “You never can tell what a president’s going to decide. What are you — Republicans or Democrats?”

  “Republicans.”

  “That's in your favor.”

  “I’d druther see you get it,” remarked Mrs. Wubber. “Anyone can see that you-all have some refinement and been nice-raised. And that’s the kind of neighbors I want for my childern — folks like ourselves.”

  “It’s a good piece of land,” said her husband. “It’s worth fighting for. If I was you I’d scrap it out. Of course you wasn’t on the land when you should ’a’ been, this spring, but that wasn’t your fault, and you probably got the death stifficate to prove it. Those Welps can make things pretty lively for you — they’ve got two cussed mean boys — but I’d stick it out if I was you.”

  “I wonder what the law would say about it.”

  “Dunno,” said Mr. Wubber, “I ain’t no lawyer; there ain’t a law book in the house. Why don’t you go to see someone that has one?”

  “We haven’t any money to spend on legal advice.

  “Why don’t you ask Cleaver about it? He’s in the land business, as well as lumber, and has had a chance to hear of all kinds of contests. He’s a white man, too; he’ll advise you right.”

  Becky and Dick looked at each other. “We really haven’t any time to spend on it,” said the girl, more to her brother than to Mr. Wubber. “We ought to get in those potatoes, today. But we’re so worried that we won’t sleep till we know if our planting is all going to be wasted. I hate to lose two days, but I do think we’d better drive in to Dallas and see him, Dick.”

  “You won’t have to go to Dallas if you go today,” advised their neighbor.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he always spends this part of the week at Winner, ten miles north of here. He has his land office there.”

  “Let’s go,” said Dick.

 
Mrs. Wubber rocked comfortably back and forth, keeping time to the rocker with her gum. “Always best to start right at a job if it does put you out a bit,” she approved.

  “We’ll have to go back and get the children,” said Becky. “I’m afraid to leave them on the claim alone.”

  “Good luck to you,” called Mr. Wubber, as they started back across the prairie. “If you get into a contest I’ll be willing to testify that I seen your uncle pass my place the night he squatted.”

  THE Linville children found Mr. Cleaver in his office in the little flat town of Winner — a town set down like a toy village on the prairie. It was comforting to have an adult to consult, even though he gave them no definite encouragement.

  “Too bad you’re in for a contest,” he said, when he heard their story. “I know this man Welp — he’s a worthless sort of a villain — but I didn’t know he’d squatted on your claim. If I had I’d have written your uncle advising you not to come out. You kids are too young to have a fight on your hands.”

  Becky looked worried, but Dick grinned. “We’ve had a lot of experience with scraps. There are four of us, you know.”

  “Not just this kind of scrap. Welp is a mean man to deal with.”

  “How much chance has he of winning?”

  “That’s hard to say. It’s the Department of the Interior that will decide the case on its merits. Your uncle squatted in September, didn’t he?”

  “The last night of August.”

  “And he filed right away?”

  “Yes, he crossed the line at midnight, drove his stakes, and set up his two-by-fours. Then he rode horseback to Gregory and filed his application at the land office.”

  “When did Welp come on the land?”

  “We don’t know. I can’t believe he was here when Uncle Jim came back to build; he would certainly have seen him.”

  “How much improvement has he made?”

  “Nothing built but a miserable little shack, and a rickety sort of a barn. But he has quite a lot of ground broken.”