“I can’t think that they’ll ever win the contest,” said Becky hopefully. “Anyway, there’s nothing for us to do except stick it out. And that isn’t going to be so hard now. We’ll have my salary, if we haven’t any crops.”
“Good thing we have,” said Dick, an old look coming over his merry face. “The fall breaking, the coal for the winter, and the fodder we’ll have to buy will take every cent we have. Your salary will have to carry us through the winter, and buy seed for next spring.”
“You’re not counting the rent.”
“Nothing to count on. We didn’t have any check at all in August, and none so far this month. I hate to admit it, but for once in her life Aunt Jule was right about those Glovers.”
“Well, we can live off the school if we have to,” said Becky cheerfully. “And buy seed for next spring, too. Forty-five dollars a month goes a long way.”
“If we have the claim by that time,” remarked Phil.
Dick and Becky made no reply, but each echoed his words in their thoughts.
“I think we ought to start in on the winter’s work,” went on Becky.
“Plenty of time yet. Summer’s hardly over.”
“Uncle Jim said that we must start before the cold weather did. Don’t you remember how he urged us not to delay?”
“But this is only September.”
“Let’s get the book and see.” She took down the worn, green book, and turned to
SEPTEMBER
Cut corn, dig potatoes, take in vegetables.
Get fall breaking done. Have the first breaking re-plowed so snows will sink into ground during winter, and have ten new acres to the west plowed and disked.
Don't wait until shivering time to get in your coal. Buy it from Cleaver, and have it in the cellar by October 1st. You will need 5½ tons, which you can haul in two loads.
Bank the house to cover entire cellar. On north side pile it up to the window. Bank stable and chicken house, and cover tree roots.
As soon as you see the first tumble weed get your hay and straw stacked near the barn, with weights to keep the wind from carrying them away. See that your wood is within easy carrying distance for a ten-below-zero day.
Wish I could be around to help you set up stoves, and then “set around” them with you.
Dick’s eyes, as well as Becky’s, were full, “That means get to work a little harder,” he said, trying to steady his voice. “I’ll stop and see Wubber about the plowing today. And Saturday I’ll go in for the first load of coal.”
The children were on their way to school in early October when they saw the first tumble weed. It came bounding and rolling over the bare prairie like a great ball, until it stopped at their feet. They bent over to look at the queer, spiny leaves that made a globe of brush.
“No wonder they call it ‘Russian’ thistle,” said Joan. “It looks like that bushy Mr. Jarowski, over near the buttes.”
Bronx, who always accompanied the children part way to school before he returned to a quiet and uneventful home life, barked loudly. He had run into the deep, dry grass at the edge of the creek, and was pouncing and withdrawing, in a state of wild excitement about something in the grass. The children ran closer, armed with the long sticks they always carried on their prairie walks.
“Probably a snake,” said Becky. “Don’t go any nearer.”
It looked as though a long, dusty-brown hose were gliding through the grass. Bronx followed it at close range. “It’s a rattler,” said the girl. “Come here, Bronx.”
The snake was evidently anxious to get away, but Bronx was so filled with the lure of the chase that he lost all sense of discretion. He rounded the snake, going as near as he dared, and far nearer than was safe.
“Come back here!” commanded Phil.
But Bronx continued to bark wildly, and to follow his prey. The rattlesnake coiled its long, dusty body into a loop, and raised a wicked-looking head.
“Bronx, come back!”
Usually Bronx was an obedient and tractable dog, but he paid no attention to the orders of the children. The end of the snake’s tail lifted, and a rattle, as of dry leaves, came from the grass.
“He’ll be bitten, like the Oleson baby,” quavered Joan.
Becky made a sudden dart at the dog with her lifted stick. Again and again she struck at him savagely. It was not until she had beaten him into submission that he turned tail and left the enemy in the grass.
“You saved him that time,” said Phil, as the snake glided away toward the dry creek bed, and Bronx returned, chastened, to the fold.
“It shows how unsafe it is to go empty-handed on the prairie,” said Becky. “Uncle Jim knew what he was doing when he made these snake sticks for us last winter.”
“You can’t argue with a rattlesnake,” he had said as he sat by the open fire, stripping the bark off from these very hickory poles, and fitting a brass ferrule on the end of each. And Becky knew now how right he had been.
THERE was a second battle awaiting Becky at the schoolhouse. The trouble had begun, as the very first trouble in the world began, with an apple. Fresh fruit was next to a miracle in Tripp County, and when the Trainer twins had appeared with a single apple which they were to share at recess, they were the center of an admiring crowd. Pete Welp had seized the fruit from Essie Trainer’s hand, and refused to return it. In their struggles to regain their common property the second one of the twins had been thrown down, and her head was bleeding. Marietta, the oldest of the children in the group, had remonstrated with Pete. Becky came up just in time to hear her gentle rebuke and his reply. Holding the apple safely inside his sweater, Pete bent his back in imitation of Marietta’s pathetic curve, and called “What you got to say about it, Camel?”
He did not see Becky till she was quite upon him. “Peter, you must give back the apple,” she said when she had heard the story.
Pete’s reply was to bury his teeth in the fruit, and take a huge bite.
“You must give Essie the apple and apologize to Marietta.”
“He’d better give her back the bite,” put in Joan.
Pete took another mouthful. There was no time for Becky to consider what was the best discipline. Another bite of that size, and Essie’s apple would be beyond recovery.
She stepped to Pete’s side, and tried to take the fruit from his hand. The boy resisted. Bill, his younger brother, watched the struggle with delight.
“Don’t leave her take it, Pete!” he yelled, jumping up and down with excitement.
Becky was still armed with her snake stick, but she did not intend to use it except as a final resort. “If you don’t give up the apple you may not go in to school,” she said, trying to keep her breath and her dignity.
“I’d like to see you keep me out,” said Pete. He dodged her out-stretched hand, and took the last of the apple in one huge bite.
Becky hesitated a moment. On her next move hung the success of her winter’s school. If she used that hickory stick, that fitted so invitingly in her hand, she might add fuel to the smoldering wrath of the Welps. It might be used against her in the land contest. She thought with fear of the little boys strung up on the hillside, but with righteous indignation, too. If she let this rebellion go by the discipline of her school was lost. Pete towered above her, a broad-shouldered, muscular boy, and she knew that she would be worsted in a physical contest. But if she stopped now she could never command respect or obedience again. She raised the hickory stick.
“Look out, Pete! She’s aimin’ fer ye,” warned his brother.
But the hickory was not needed. Ole, tow-headed Ole, who had just come in to the school yard, set down his dinner pail and approached the group. He was in time to see Pete pull Becky’s straw hat off her head, and toss it toward the well.
“You leave your hands off the teacher,” warned Ole.
“What’s it to ye?” demanded Pete.
“I’ll show you what,” drawled Ole. “Git out of the way thar,” he warned th
e other children.
Pete did not wait for Ole’s attack. He struck out and caught the tall Swede on the chin with his fist. The two boys clinched. Becky stepped to one side, uncertain as to what to do. It seemed horrible to let them fight it out like two young animals. Ought she to try to stop it? Then she decided that force was the only language that Pete Welp could understand. “Don’t try to talk French to the Fijis,” Uncle Jim used to say. Ole was the only one in school who could answer Pete in his own tongue. If Ole should win, Pete would be tamed to submission in school. If Pete won—but Becky turned her thoughts away.
Ole was the taller and more wiry; Pete was broader-shouldered and more muscular. But he was helpless against Ole’s long arms. In two minutes Ole had the school bully down on the ground and was ramming his head into the prairie soil.
“Let him get up now,” said Becky.
“You tank you git enough?” queried Ole.
“Yaas,” said Pete sullenly.
Ole lifted his long legs from his enemy, and Pete rose slowly to his feet. The blood streamed from a cut on his forehead, and his sweater sleeve was torn loose. He turned on his brother fiercely. “You’re a fine guy to leave ’em beat me up!”
Ole pointed sternly to Becky’s hat. “You go pick up onct what you threw,” he ordered.
Pete brought the hat.
“Now give it to teacher.” The boy sullenly obeyed.
“Now, if she leaves you stay you kin,” said Ole. “But no more of grabbing or such.”
“Are you going to behave yourself after this?” asked Becky. “If you are, tell Marietta you are sorry. Then you may come in with the rest of us.”
And Pete, with a muttered word to Marietta, came in.
This settled school discipline, as far as the Welps were concerned. Pete was sullen and idle, and he and his brother bullied the younger school children as much as they dared, but they were, on the surface, obedient. And Becky, as she watched their deference toward Ole, was sure that order could be maintained as long as the Swede boy was her pupil. So, though she found the haystack near the barn torn to pieces, and the ax missing from her back door during the week that followed the fight, she accused no one, and did not mention either at school.
Lessons went on smoothly, and Becky began to enjoy, rather than dread, each day’s teaching. The walk to and from school over the prairie was a daily pleasure. Becky missed the changing foliage, and the brilliant coloring which made the Platteville autumns so lovely, but the prairie had a fall glory of its own. The faded grass began to show color—patches of orange, and dull red, and rusty brown; the wild ducks flew like an arrow point against the shining clouds; the quail’s call sounded through the dry stubble, and a faint haze hung over the world. The dark blue buttes made the only break in the horizon line and showed dimly against the lighter blue sky. The creek began to flow again.
Of all the children in the school Marietta made the best progress. The others welcomed it for the companionship, for the relief from home duties, for the pleasant atmosphere which Becky’s merry nature and clever fingers made. But Marietta was a real student, who loved her work as well as her teacher; who never had enough of lessons, and went forward to meet study, instead of dragging it behind her. Her eager eyes glowed over the history and the geography and English, and Becky, for the first time in her life, sensed the inspiration which comes from leading a mind that is so ready to follow. The child hungered for books, and after lending many of her own Becky had an idea that made the Crane Hollow schoolhouse famous for months to come.
“Cold weather is coming on,” she said to the school children, one day. “And we all want things to read this winter. If each one of you brought some of your own books to school we could start a little library of our own. Bring whatever you can spare, and we can exchange.”
The books came drifting in. Ole brought an old McGuffey’s reader and a Farmer’s Almanac; the Trainer twins brought “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and “Arabian Nights.” Johnny Lambert, whose father was a grocer at Winner, and the only homesteader who seemed to be making a living, donated “Robinson Crusoe,” “Hans Brinker,” a Chatterbox, “Little Men,” and “Donald and Dorothy;” the Barnes boys carried in “Dick the Match Boy,” “Omoo,” and one of the old “Zig-Zag Journeys.” Marietta brought in six books, neatly covered with paper, and with her name written in each one: “Vicar of Wakefield,” “Neighbor Jackwood,” “Tales from Shakespeare,” “Byron’s Poems,” “Life of the Wesleys,” and a tattered volume of “Ivanhoe.” The Wubber children made a large donation, consisting of “Tempest and Sunshine,” “Little Rosebud’s Lovers,” “A Cry in the Dark,” the “Mystery of the Red Stain,” and “The Science of Phrenology.” The Welp girls presented a Sears-Roe-buck catalogue, and Becky contributed “Eight Cousins,” “The Bird’s Christmas Carol,” “Greek Heroes,” “Anderson’s Fairy Tales,” the “Blue Fairy Book” and two bound volumes of St. Nicholas.
Joan looked dubious, as she saw the books taken off the Linville shelves. “That ‘Greek Heroes’ is mine,” she remarked.
“But you don’t mind my taking it to school, do you?” inquired Becky. “That’s what books are for—to be read.”
“That’s all right,” returned Joan, “But you make those Welp boys understand that they can read with their eyes, and not with their licked thumbs.”
Johnny Lambert’s father donated a packing case into which the big boys fitted shelves. Then they sandpapered it and coated it with some of the Linville left-over stain. Mr. Cleaver drove out to the schoolhouse one day with the superintendent, and the two men were so impressed by the sight of the well-worn library that Mr. Peters promised her ten dollars from the state fund for more books, and Mr. Cleaver added another five dollars to it. Becky sent for a children’s book catalogue, and spent a glorious Sunday afternoon checking off the volumes she could afford to buy. And the fathers and mothers began to read the books that the children carried home.
The weather grew colder. The children who came barefooted to school used to stop on the way, now and then, and squat down to warm their cold feet against their warm bodies. The honk of wild geese became less frequent; the creek had a thin glaze of ice over its surface each morning. The Linvilles set up their base burner, and the red fire glowed a welcome through its isin-glass doors to the children at night. Becky, realizing the discomforts of soft coal, which made a raging fire one moment, and no fire at all the next, appreciated the luxury of the steady warmth, and thanked Uncle Jim, time and again, for the purchase of that dear hard coal stove. She had to rise early to get the lunches packed before she left home, and the school fire started before the pupils arrived; the walk to the schoolhouse grew bleaker as the days went by, the Wandering Jew in the window froze, and the schoolroom was icy in the early morning. But there was fun as well as work during sessions, the days went swiftly by, and when night came there was always the warm house and the cheerful glow of the waiting fire.
The canned goods, ordered and paid for by Uncle Jim last spring, arrived, and were brought out from Dallas by Dick. Mr. Wubber finished the fall breaking, and the barn was stacked with all the fodder it could hold. The awning and the screens were taken down, and the house banked with manure and earth. The Linvilles were ready for winter by the time that snow fell. It came at first with a few light flakes that starred the frozen ground; then a less doubtful dust; then a business-like downfall that went on all night. The prairie dogs took to their holes, the rabbits disappeared from the corn stubble, and on starlit nights the coyotes howled from the hill where the water-mark stood.
Day by day the three children walked the four miles of the round trip from home to school. After snow fell Dick was warned to stay over night in Winner if there was any prospect of a storm; Becky had heard enough of Dakota blizzards to be fearful of them. But the weather was mild enough except for the biting wind. The children soon learned that frosted ears and noses came from wind, rather than cold, and protected their faces from the worst of the blasts. And
Becky rejoiced, in spite of the hardships, that the family was well, and that the Crane Hollow school was hers.
The Welp boys, though openly tractable, were capable of all the small meannesses in which they were not afraid of exposure. At the noon period the children gathered around the school stove to eat their lunches, while they warmed their hot drinks on the flat surface near the pipe. On one of the winter days, Becky, returning from the cellar, saw Pete Welp lean forward from the front of the stove, and take a sandwich off the desk that Autie Wubber had vacated for a moment. He opened the bread and quickly peppered the filling, giving a furtive glance at the two nearest boys. Then he laid it back on Autie’s desk, with an innocent expression. Becky was just about to pounce upon him when she caught Johnny Lambert’s dancing eyes over Pete’s shoulder. Johnny laid his finger on his lip, and Becky held her tongue, waiting to see what the boy would do. Johnny walked over to the wash basin which stood on a shelf behind Pete’s back, and took therefrom a cake of soap. Whistling innocently, he passed the rear of the stove where Pete’s pail of coffee was heating, and dropped his burden into it as he went by.
Presently Pete went for his coffee. “Trade you sandwiches,” said Johnny to Autie, in a low voice. Autie, flattered at being noticed by a fourteen year old, gladly passed over the thick sandwich that lay on his desk, to receive one from Johnny’s pail.
Pete watched and waited, but nothing happened. He saw Autie eat his sandwich with unusual relish. Then he lifted his pail to drink the sweetened, creamy, foamy draught that was always the favorite part of his lunch …
It was months before the school children stopped the motion of handwashing every time that Pete approached.
It took one more lesson to put the Welp boys in their proper place. And that lesson was not given by Ole or Johnny, but by one of the thin-legged, freckled-faced primary children that the Welp boys designated as “the babies.” On the hillside back of the schoolhouse the children gathered to slide during the noon recess. Little Kate Welp had pulled her shabby sled to school one day for the sake of a few rides, and her brother Bill had promptly taken it away from her.
The Jumping-Off Place Page 13