MAKING A HOME
AT THE close of almost every page in Uncle Jim’s book he had added the words: Stop work just before you get tired. Becky’s eyes never failed to soften when she read them, but she sometimes smiled too. For it couldn’t be done. How could one apportion work that came crowding in so fast that you had no time to plan? The tasks marched in a long, unending procession, so many and so heavy that the housework slipped into second place, and often had to be left to the younger children. Becky and Dick were up almost as early as the sun. They dug and hoed and planted. They put in potatoes and melons; they planted a little alfalfa; on the overturned sod they dropped their field corn. They did it with the confidence born of youth; if they had been a few years older they would have been more timorous and less hopeful. They built a chicken house, and a shelter for the dog. They set out currant bushes, and raspberries and rhubarb; they laid boards from their packing boxes for a rude sidewalk in the back door yard. And whenever there was a momentary lull in the outside work there was always bread to be mixed, beans to be baked, or clothes to be washed.
The out-of-door living and the hard physical work gave them appetites that could hardly be satisfied, and it seemed to Becky that she never got her family quite filled up. Once a week Dick went to town for supplies, which seemed enormous but which she could scarcely stretch to last the seven days. Careful as she tried to be, the money seemed to flow away, and the two older children could hardly wait for the garden to relieve their purse. But there was no time for worry, even; during the day there was too much work, and when night came they fell asleep the moment they touched their pillows.
There were no more meetings with the Welp family. After Red Haw’s return they saw no more of outlawry. The children had been warned to keep away from the troublesome neighbors and to avoid the spring, and the presence of the dog made Becky feel that their own home was guarded. Bronx was a fine policeman. At the slightest word of affection from his own family he would quiver all over with delight; his tail would wag nervously as he awaited their praise or blame, and his liquid eyes would seek theirs, pathetically eager for an invitation. But at the approach of a stranger his hair would stiffen along his back, and a growl would start that seemed to come from the very depth of his stomach. His bark heralded the coming of a visitor long before the family could either hear or see the arrival, and with him on the front doorstep Becky felt relieved and safe.
The dewiness and freshness of spring time had turned into flaming summer, and the sun baked in at the kitchen window as Becky mixed her breakfast pancakes. She called to her brother as she stirred the batter:
“You’ll have to get some more flour today, Dick. I’ll have to scrape the bottom of the can to set sponge tonight.”
Dick was bringing in the big bucket of warm milk which did so much to supply their table. “Flour? I thought we started with two hundred and fifty pounds.”
“We did. But one sack is gone, and the field mice got into the others.”
Dick sighed. “It’s the unexpected things like mice and hail and measles that cost. But of course we’ve got to have flour; I’ll go into town this morning.”
There was an excited duet from Joan and Phil, “Oh, may we go too?”
“I guess so. You’ve been pretty fair kids about sticking to the garden, and you’ve earned a day off. But I won’t have any fighting.”
“Then you’d better leave Joan home,” suggested Phil.
“Or take out Phil’s bronnical tubes,” retorted Joan.
“What for, I’d like to know?”
“So he couldn’t talk; bronnical tubes are what you speak through.”
“Hoh, hoh!” jeered Phil. “Speaking through bronnical tubes! Those tubes are what you get sore throat in. I just knew how it would be if you were let to go; we’d be sure to have a quarrel.”
Becky called the children into separate rooms to be cleaned, while she helped with their clothes and put up their lunch. “Seems nice to see you in something besides overalls,” she said, as she helped Phil into a clean blouse. “Dick, you’ll have to get this boy a new pair of shoes today. His toes are out.”
“What do you do, eat your shoes?” demanded Dick. “I never saw anyone go through cowhide the way you and Joan do. You’ll have to go barefoot the rest of the summer.”
“Suits me all right.”
“It doesn’t suit me,” said Becky. “If you don’t wear shoes you’ll look just like every other squatter’s child.”
“Why not look that way? That’s what I am.”
Well, why not, Becky wondered. It would save the expense of shoes. They were claim-dwellers now; they must live like squatters. You could not carry the standards of Platteville on to the prairies. The bare feet were a symbol; they seemed like a letting down, a sag in living. And yet it was the practical, the best thing to do. “Guess you’re right, Dick,” she said. “I wouldn’t get the shoes.”
As soon as the family departed Becky hurried through her housework. She had a plan for that day. No dinner to get; no gardening; no building; at least six hours without interruption, and she knew what she wanted to do with that time. She called Bronx, took a wooden box with a rope tied to it, and went up the stony hill behind the house.
It was a bleak, bare hillside where nothing grew but the mulleins and the buffalo grass that poked coarse tufts up between the flat rocks that covered the sides. At the summit it was almost all stone. The wind up there was so strong that it blew Becky’s skirts straight out behind her, and when she called to Bronx she could not hear her own voice. She stopped a moment to look across the prairie, which seemed each day to hold a new appeal. The deep grass below her had russet spots on it, now and then, a soft, reddish glow, like the bloom of a peach. The rim of the sky cut down over the earth like a cookie cutter. “Boom, boom,” called a prairie cock from the deep grass, and a hawk swept lazily through the blueness above her. She looked at the billowing miles below her with a softened expression on her face before she turned to work among the rocks at her feet.
From the stones she selected large, flat shapes until she filled her box. She drew them down hill, steadying the box with her hand, and dumped them in a pile at the front door. Three times she returned for more. Then from the door to the edge of the natural terrace on which the house stood, she strung a taut line, and followed it with a spade, leaving behind her an irregular row of shallow holes into which she laid the flat rocks. These made stepping stones to the trail, and to the spot where they would some day have a fence, and perhaps even a gate.
Along the stepping stones, at either side, she dug long, narrow beds for flowers, ending at Castor and Pollux. It was the hardest work Becky had ever undertaken, for it was in virgin soil, untouched by plow or harrow. It meant digging through the tough prairie sod, through the net-work of roots that lay below, till the black loam was exposed. Each clump of root had to be lifted and shaken to remove the earth that clung to it, then thrown down to the creek bed below. Some day those clods would help to build a dam. The prairie sun baked down fiercely; when she looked up from the ground its white light was almost blinding. Perspiration streamed down her face, her hands were stiffened by soil and roughened by rocks, but she stuck stoutly to the task which was to accomplish so much in home-making.
At noon when she stopped for lunch she was so hot that the thought of food was not tempting. The inevitable fried bacon, potatoes, and canned vegetables offered little inducement to eat. She longed for a melon, or oranges, or a salad that should be crisp and cool. “How I used to hate the sound of those ice wagons rumbling by in Platteville,” she said to herself, “and how far I’d run to hear one now!” She got butter from the well, spread several slices of thin bread, and opened a can of tomatoes. That was the best Tripp County could offer in coolness and freshness.
Down the long beds she went with her seeds in the early afternoon. She hoed and raked the ground until it fell apart into fine grains of loam; then she threw the seed broadcast — coreopsis and cornf
lowers and cosmos and poppies. At the end of the walk she planted a row of sunflowers at right angles to her garden. They might cast a little shade in the hot days that were to come, and their seeds would save chicken feed.
On the side of the house that faced the creek she dug two deep holes. It took her nearly an hour to get through the grass, the tough soil, and the roots below. Then she walked a half mile to one of the tiny thickets that bordered the creek. It was no grove — just a handful of small dwarf ashes, box elders, and cottonwoods that had sprung up on its banks. “At home they’d call these ‘brush,’ and thin them all out,” thought Becky, sitting down for a moment to rest luxuriously in real shade. “But how wonderful they are here! And where did the seed that started them come from? We’re miles from a tree of any size.”
She longed to transplant one of the taller ones, but common sense told her that she would be more successful with a sapling. So she picked out a tiny aspen and a baby ash, carried water from the creek to pour about their roots, and dug deep around them. She took them up with a large clump of earth at each base, wrapped the roots in old sacking, and carried them one at a time, to her wheelbarrow. And then hot, tired, but triumphant, she wheeled her prizes through the burning sun to their new home. So large was the mass of soil that clung to them that she was able to get them into the ground without disturbing their roots. The leaves had not withered, the tiny branches stuck out boldly, and when the last spadeful of earth went in around them they seemed to have grown in their new surroundings. The aspen leaves quivered in the wind, and there on the prairie was a real spot of shade. Becky laid an earth-stained hand on the trunk. “Grow fast,” she said.
It was hot in the house too, but the relief from the sun was a comfort. Becky pulled out the smoothest of the packing boxes into which Uncle Jim had put shelves and rubbed in the green stain that was left from the floor borders. The shelves in the room and the two wicker chairs got a coat of the same color. The white curtains which she had never had time to hang were brought out and strung on wires above the windows. She covered the living-room cot with the green cretonne, flowered in orange and blue, that she had bought in Dallas; slipped the pillow into an orange casing, and added another pillow covered with dull blue. She unpacked the books and stood them in the stained packing case, rejoicing over them as old friends. She took the victrola out of its straw packings and moved it into the living-room, putting Dick’s ukulele on the table shelf below. Over the kitchen table oilcloth she laid a square of spotless linen. “More to wash, but I’m not going to have us living like heathen,” she said to herself, almost fiercely. She brought a jar of wild sunflowers for the table and another for the bookcase. Then she stood off and surveyed the result of her work. “Perhaps Uncle Jim wouldn’t like the couch coverings,” she said. “He might call them ‘gim-cracks.’ But bare boards have to be dolled up some way. Anyway, it looks cosy.”
She gave herself the luxury of a leisurely bath, soaking her abused hands in hot water till they were almost smooth. Then she exchanged one of the dark blue calicoes that she had worn ever since she had reached the claim, for a clean green-and-white gingham. And then, oh joy, she sat down in the deep red chair that had come by freight a few days before, and took out the first book she had touched since she had stepped into Tripp County. At least an hour to read and rest and invite one’s soul, with nothing driving her, indoors or out. She opened her “Oxford Book of Verse” with delight as well as hunger. How she would read!
Her lame shoulders settled back into the comfortable depths of the chair. The flies droned outside the screen door. The wind blew through the rooms — a wind that stirred, but did not cool, the air … The book closed in her hands; her head drooped. She was back in Platteville with Aunt Jule telling her that she was too big a girl to walk on stilts …
Bronx gave a warning bark and started up the trail, woofing loudly as he went. Becky started, and picked up the book which had fallen to the floor. It was prairie again, not Platteville. She ran to the door, half expecting to see a Welp come down the road.
A lean, sorrel horse ambled over the hill with two people on his back. He came down the Linville trail, and his driver reined him in at the side of the house. She was a gaunt, weatherbeaten woman with thin wisps of faded hair flying about her face. Her shoulder blades thrust out the back of her dress; great cords stuck out when she moved her neck. A little girl sat in front of her. “You seen anything of a white horse?” called the woman.
Becky hurried out to the trail. It seemed good to have a visitor, even one who came hunting a horse.
“He’s been missing since yestiddy noon,” said the woman. “Last time we seen him he was out eatin’, and when we looked again he was gone. We started out after him early this morning, but we ain’t seen hide er hair of him.”
“We lost our cow the same way a few weeks ago,” said Becky.
“Where’d you find her?”
Becky explained the cow’s mysterious return.
“Was she an all-red cow with a white nose?”
“Yes.” Becky described Red Haw and her rope.
“I bet I seen that cow. The Welp boy was milkin’ her along the creek-bed one afternoon. I don’t hold no truck with those Welpses so I didn’t speak to him, but I know right well they ain’t got no cow now.”
“Why didn’t they keep her after they got hold of her?”
“Oh, they wouldn’t dast do that. Folks has been lynched for less’n stealing a cow. They probably pulled up her stake so’s to make trouble for you an’ then stole your rope. They’re a thieving, low-down set, those Welpses. I never seen a meaner boy than that Pete.”
“Do you suppose they have your horse?”
“No, I went along that way to look, first thing. No horse there, and no place to hide one, less’n they put him behind their tin can pile. That’s most big enough to shelter an animal. No, they’re mean enough to steal anything, but I reckon they didn’t do it, this time.”
“Won’t you come in and rest a few minutes?”
The woman hesitated. “Oh, do. Let’s, ma,” begged the little girl.
“I don’t know but we might as well. There ain’t much of any place left to hunt; I been all around the creek. I guess the Mister’ll have to start out tomorrow when he gets back from town.” She got out of the man’s saddle, and lifted the little girl down. “She’s plum tuckered out, riding in this hot sun.”
The child raised a pair of violet eyes, fringed by dark lashes, to Becky’s face. They were her one beauty; her pinched little face was the face of a cripple, and her back bent in an unmistakable spinal curvature.
Rejoicing in her day of work, Becky led the way into the house. The woman gave a sweeping glance of appraisal about the room; the little girl showed open delight in her surroundings. “You sure got it nice here,” she said.
“My name is Rebecca Linville. What’s yours?” asked the hostess.
“Marietta Kenniker.”
“We’re new homesteaders, so we don’t know the neighborhood yet. Do you live near us?”
”We live in the sod house two miles up the creek, past the Welpses. We seen your things when you drove past our place. You had bed springs.”
“Marietta never seen bed springs before except when she was to the hospital,” explained her mother.
“Do you like homesteading?”
Marietta shook her head. “It’s too lonesome.”
“Haven’t you any brothers or sisters to play with?”
“Marietta’s all,” said the woman. “I had nine, but she’s the only one left. And she the way she is!”
A slow flush crept over the little girl’s face. Becky melted with pity. She brought out bread and strawberry jam, made from the Platteville garden. She gave the child Joan’s doll to hold. “This belongs to my little sister,” she said. “She’s about as old as you.”
“How old is she?”
“Eight.”
“I’m twelve. I’ve stopped playing with dolls. But I look l
ike eight.”
“She wasn’t born that way,” explained Mrs. Kenniker. “She had a fall when she was a baby. She’s always been pindly. But I don’t know but it’s a good thing; if she’d been well she’d be worked to death. That’s what always happens to women folks on the prairies.”
“Have you lived here long?”
“I’ve lived in Dakoty fifteen years. Come here when I was first married, from Kansas. I was sixteen then. I’ve homesteaded twict — once before, in Gregory County.”
“Why did you leave your claim there to come to new land?”
“Oh, it wasn’t ours. We proved up on it, but we couldn’t pay for it; the bank got it.”
Becky tried not to show her astonishment. Fifteen years. That made her thirty-one years old. Could this gaunt woman, with the hollow eyes and the yellow skin drawn tightly across her cheeks, be only thirty-one? She looked sixty.
“So you thought you’d try it again.”
“The Mister did. I didn’t want to come. I’m like Marietta here; I hate the prairie.”
The little girl turned her sober eyes upon her mother. She had laid down the doll and was looking at the rows of books in the new bookcase.
“It’s beautiful country,” commented Becky.
“Oh yes, it’s likely country all right — in the springtime. But that fresh grass is just like a false face. You wait till the green goes and the blizzards come, and then see what you think about it! It’s bare everywhere, and the sky shuts you down just like a cover. There’s no gettin’ away from it. And the wind blows all the time; it nags at you till it finally gets you. I ain’t got no love for the prairies.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Oh, the Mister he’s cracked about it. The prairie seems to make him drunk, you might say. The minute he seen this land opening advertised he was crazy to come. I know just how it’s going to end: we’re going to put in five years of nigger’s work, and starvin’, and lonesomeness, and no schoolin’ for Marietta, and then the bank’ll get it all. But you can’t make him believe that. When you’ve got the prairie in your blood you can’t get it out.”
The Jumping-Off Place Page 7