After noon that day the DeVoes came by. Cora stopped to spend some time while her husband Walter went on to town. The DeVoes were about the same age as Laura and Manly and had been married about as long. Laura and Cora were very good friends and it was a pleasant afternoon except for being rather uncomfortable from the heat.
As the afternoon passed it grew hotter and there was no wind, which was unusual. It left one gasping for breath and feeling smothered. About three o’clock Manly came in from the barn and said it was going to rain for sure. He was glad he had not been cutting the wheat to have it lie in a rainstorm before he could get it shocked. The sunshine darkened, and the wind sighed and then fell again as it grew darker yet. Then the wind rose a little, and it grew lighter, but the light was a greenish color. Then the storm came. It rained only a little; then hailstones began to fall, at first scattering slowly, then falling thicker and faster while the stones were larger, some of them as large as hens’ eggs.
Manly and Cora watched from the windows. They could not see far into the rain and hail, but they saw Ole Larsen, across the road, come to his door and step out. Then they saw him fall, and someone reached out the door, took hold of his feet and dragged him in. Then the door shut.
“The fool,” Manly said, “he got a hailstone on the head.”
In just twenty minutes the storm was over, and when they could see as far as the field, the binder was still there but the wheat was lying flat. “It’s got the wheat, I guess,” Manly said. But Laura could not speak.
Then Manly went across the road to find out what had happened to Mr. Larsen. When he came back, in a few minutes, he said that Mr. Larsen had stepped out to pick up a hailstone so large that he wished to measure it. Just as he stooped to pick it up, another one hit him on the head. He was unconscious for several minutes after he was dragged in by the heels, but was all right now except for a sore head.
“And now let’s make some ice cream,” Manly said. “You stir it up, Laura, and I’ll gather up the hailstones to freeze it.”
Laura turned to Cora where she stood speechless, looking out of the window. “Do you feel like celebrating, Cora?” she asked. And Cora answered, “No! I want to get home and see what has happened there. Ice cream would choke me!”
The storm had lasted only twenty minutes but it left a desolate, rain-drenched and hail-battered world. Unscreened windows were broken. Where there were screens they were broken and bent. The ground was covered with hailstones so thickly, it looked covered with a sheet of ice, and they even lay in drifts here and there. Leaves and branches were stripped off the young trees and the sun shone with a feeble, watery light over the wreck. The wreck, thought Laura, of a year’s work, of hopes and plans of ease and pleasure. Well, there would be no threshers to cook for. Laura had dreaded the threshing. As Ma used to say, “There is no great loss without some small gain.” That she should think of so small a gain bothered Laura.
She and Cora sat white and silent until Walter drove up to the door, helped Cora into the wagon, and drove away almost forgetting to say good-by in their anxiety to get home and learn how bad the storm had been there.
Manly went out to look at the wheat field and came in sober enough. “There is no wheat to cut,” he said. “It is all threshed and pounded into the ground. Three thousand dollars’ worth of wheat planted, and it’s the wrong time of the year.”
Laura was muttering to herself, “The poor man gets his—”
“What’s that?” Manly asked.
“I was only saying,” Laura answered, “that the poor man got his ice in the summer this time.”
At two o’clock the next day hailstones were still lying in drifts in low places. Though plans are wrecked, the pieces must be gathered up and put together again in some shape. Winter was coming. Coal must be bought to last through. That would cost between sixty and one hundred dollars. Seed grain would have to be bought for next spring’s sowing. There were notes on the machinery coming due. There was the binder that had been used to cut only fifty acres of oats; there was the sulky plow and the mower and rake, the seeder that had sown the grain in the spring, and the new wagon. There was too the five hundred dollars still due on the building of the house. “Five hundred dollars’ debt on the house!” Laura exclaimed. “Oh, I didn’t know that!”
“No,” Manly said. “I didn’t think there was any need to bother you about that.” But something must be done about all this, and he would go to town tomorrow and see what could be done. Perhaps he could raise money with a mortgage on the homestead. That was proved up on, thank goodness. He couldn’t give a mortgage on the tree claim. That belonged to Uncle Sam until Manly had raised those trees. And Laura thought she could hear her father singing, “Our Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm!” Sometimes Laura was afraid her head was a little flighty, but that extra five hundred dollars’ debt had been something of a shock. Five hundred and two hundred was seven hundred, and the wagon and the mower… She must stop counting it or she would have her head queer.
Manly found he could renew all his machinery notes for a year by paying the interest. He could even make the first payment on the binder after the next harvest, postponing the second payment to the year after. He could sell all the wild hay he had for four dollars a ton delivered at the railroad in town. Buyers wanted it to ship to Chicago.
But he could not raise money with a mortgage on the homestead unless they were living on it. He must have money to pay the interest due, for living expenses, and for seed. There was no way to get the money except by moving to the homestead. If they were living on the homestead he could mortgage it for eight hundred dollars. A newcomer would buy Kate and Bill for more than Manly had paid for them. Manly would not need them, for he had found a renter for the tree claim on shares; Manly would furnish the seed.
Skip and Barnum, with Trixy and Fly to do the driving, could do the work on the one place. If someone else worked the tree claim, Manly could raise more crops on the homestead and have more profit from the farms than if he tried to work both claims all by himself. An addition would have to be built on the homestead claim shanty before they moved but they could do with one new room and a cellar underneath through using the original shanty for a storeroom.
So it was decided. Manly hurried to stack the oats, which the hail had threshed to the ground, but the oat straw made good animal feed to take the place of hay and that would leave more hay to sell.
When the oats were hauled to the homestead and stacked, Manly dug the hole in the ground for the cellar, and over it built the one-room addition to the claim shanty. Then he built the frame of a barn, cut slough hay, and when it was dry stacked it around the frame to make a hay barn.
Everything was ready now for the moving. Manly and Laura moved to the homestead the next day after the barn was finished. It was the twenty-fifth of August. And the winter and summer were the first year.
The Second Year
It was a beautiful day, the twenty-fifth of August, 1886, when Manly and Laura moved to the homestead.
“A fine day, as fine as our wedding day just a year ago, and it’s a new start just as that was. And a new home, if it is some smaller.
“We’ll be all right now. You’ll see! ‘Everything evens up in the end. The rich man—’”
His voice trailed silent but Laura couldn’t help finishing the Irishman’s saying to herself: “The rich man has his ice in the summer and the poor man gets his in the winter.” Well, they had got theirs in that hailstorm and in the summer too. But she mustn’t think about that now. The thing to do was to get things arranged in the new home and make it cheerful for Manly. Poor Manly, he was having a hard time and doing his very best. The house wasn’t so bad. The one new room was narrow (twelve feet by sixteen) and not very long, facing the south with a door and a window on a narrow porch, closed at the west end by the old claim shanty.
There was a window in the east end of the room. The looking glass was hung beside it in the south corner and th
e parlor table stood under it. The head of the bed came close to the window on the other side and extended along the north wall.
The kitchen stove was in the northwest corner of the room and a kitchen cupboard stood beside it. The kitchen-dining table stood against the west wall close to the south end.
The carpet from the old bedroom was across the east end of the room, and the armchair and Laura’s little rocking chair stood on it, close to each other between the windows. The sun came in through the east window in the mornings and shone across the room. It was all very snug and pleasant.
The room that had been the claim shanty was convenient as a storage room, and the stock were comfortable in their new barn. Sheltered from the north and west by the low hill and facing south, it would be warm in winter.
The whole place was new and fresh. The wind waved the tall grass in the slough that stretched from the foot of the hill by the barn to the south and to the east line of the farm. The house was at the top of the low hill and there would always be grassland in front of it. The plowland lay to the north of the hill out of sight from the house. Laura was glad of that. She loved the sweep of unbroken prairie with the wild grasses waving in the winds. To be sure the whole place was grass land now, except for a small field. Ten acres of cultivated land were required by law before proving up on a homestead. But the grass to the north of the house was upland, blue stem, and not the tall slough grass that grew so rankly in low places. It was haying time, and every day counted in the amount of hay that could be put up before winter. Because of the hailstorm, hay would be the only crop this year. So as soon as breakfast was over on the day after the moving, Manly hitched Skip and Barnum to the mowing machine and began cutting hay. Laura left her morning’s work undone and went with him to see the work started, and then because the air was so fresh and the new-cut hay so clean and sweet, she wandered over the field, picking the wild sunflowers and Indian paintbrush. Presently she went slowly back to the house and her unfinished tasks.
She didn’t want to stay in the house. There would be so much of that after the baby came. And she felt much better out in the fresh air. So after that she did as little as possible in the house, and instead stayed out in the hayfield with Manly. When he loaded the hay in the big hayrack to haul to the barn, Laura, already in the wagon, stepped up on each forkful as it was pitched in and so gradually rose with the load until she was on the top, ready to ride to the barn. At the barn she slid down the hay into Manly’s arms and was safely on the ground.
Manly made the stacks in the field with a bull rake. The bull rake was a long wide plank with long wooden teeth set in it at intervals for the whole length. A horse was hitched at each end, and, walking one on each side of a long windrow of hay, they pulled the plank sideways. The long teeth slipped under the hay and it piled up in front of the plank and was pushed along the ground.
When there was enough of a load and it was where the stack was to be, Manly tipped the plank. It went over the top of the hay which was left in a pile. Several of these piles started the stack. Then as the horses came to it, one went on each side of the stack, the rake went on up, Manly followed it and spilled the hay on top of the stack and then went down the other end after another load.
Barnum was good and always walked along with his end of the plank on his side of the stack. But Skip stopped when he had no driver, so Laura drove Skip the length of the stack and then sat against the sweet hay on the sunny side while Manly would bring up another load with the rake. When the stack was high enough, Manly raked down the sides with his pitchfork and gathered up all the scattered hay around and against it, making it all neat and even. Then he topped the stack with a load of hay from the wagon. So the nice fall weather passed. Nights grew cooler, frost came. The haying was finished. Manly had mortgaged the homestead for eight hundred dollars, so now he could buy the coal for winter, and it was stored in the storeroom. The taxes of sixty dollars (there were no taxes on the tree claim because they had no title yet) were paid. Interest, on the notes given for machinery, was paid. There was money for seed in the spring and to live on, they hoped, until next harvest.
The hay had helped. Manly had sold thirty tons at four dollars a ton, and the $120 was a year’s income from crops.
Wild geese were late coming from the north, and when they did, seemed in no hurry to go on south. Instead they fed in the sloughs and flew from one lake to the other, where the water was nearly covered with them as they swam about. The sky was filled with their V-shaped flocks and the air rang to their calls. Manly hurried into the house for his gun one day.
“A flock of geese is coming over so low, I believe I can get one,” he told Laura. Quickly he went out the door, and forgetting that the old gun kicked, he held it up before his face, sighted, and pulled the trigger. Laura followed him just in time to see him whirl around with his hand to his face.
“Oh, did you hit a goose?” she asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t quite kill it,” he answered, as he wiped the blood from his nose. The flock of geese went on unharmed to join their kindred at the lake.
It was going to be an open winter; the geese knew there was no hurry to go south. The small field was soon plowed and the hurry of work was over.
In November, the snow came and covered the ground, making good sleighing. Manly and Laura, well bundled up and covered with robes, went often for sleigh rides on sunny afternoons. Because Laura felt so much better outdoors, Manly made a handsled and a breast-collar-harness for Old Shep. On pleasant days Laura hitched Shep to the handsled and let him pull her on it down the hill to the road. Then together they would climb the hill, Shep pulling the sled and Laura walking beside him to take another ride down until she was tired from the walking and the fun. Shep never got tired of it, and at times when the sled tipped against a drift and Laura rolled into the snow he seemed actually to laugh.
And so November passed and December came.
The sun was shining on the morning of the fifth of December, but it looked stormy in the north.
“Better play outdoors all you can today, for it may be too stormy tomorrow,” Manly said. So, soon after breakfast Laura hitched Shep to the sled and took the day’s first ride down the hill. But she stayed out only a little while.
“I don’t feel like playing,” she told Manly when he came up from the barn. “I would rather curl up by the stove.” And again after the dinner work was done she sat idly by the stove in her little rocking chair, which worried Manly. Along in the afternoon Manly went to the barn and came back with the horses hitched to the sleigh.
“I’m going for your Ma,” he said. “Keep as quiet as you can until we come.” It was snowing hard now as from the window Laura watched him drive down the road with the team trotting their best. She thought that the pace would have won them the prize at the Fourth of July races. Then she walked the floor or sat by the stove until Manly came back with her Ma.
“My goodness,” Ma exclaimed, as she warmed herself by the fire. “You should not be up. I’ll get you to bed right away.” And Laura answered, “I’ll have a long time to stay in bed. I am going to stay up now as long as I can.”
But soon she made no objections and only vaguely knew when Manly drove away again to fetch a friend of her Ma’s from town. Mrs. Power was a friendly, jolly Irish woman. The first Laura knew of her being there was hearing her say, “Sure she’ll be all right, for it’s young she is. Nineteen you say; the very age of my Mary. But we’d better have the doctor out now, I’m thinking.” When Laura could again see and know what went on around her, Ma and Mrs. Power were standing one on each side of her bed. And was that Manly at the foot? No! Manly had gone for the doctor. Then were there two Mas and two Mrs. Powers? They seemed to be all around her.
What was that old hymn Pa used to sing?
…angel bank
Come and around me stand,
Oh, bear me away on your snowy wings to—
She was being borne away on a wave of pain. A gust of cold,
fresh air brought her back and she saw a tall man drop his snowy overcoat by the door and come toward her in the lamplight. She vaguely felt a cloth touch her face and smelled a keen odor. Then she drifted away into a blessed darkness where there was no pain. When Laura opened her eyes, the lamp was still shining brightly over the room, and Ma was bending over her with the doctor standing beside her. And in the bed by her side was a little warm bundle.
“See your little daughter, Laura! A beautiful baby, and she weighs just eight pounds,” Ma said.
“It’s a fine girl you are yourself,” Mrs. Power said from where she was sitting by the fire. “A fine, brave girl, and baby’ll be good because of it. You’ll be all right now.”
So Manly took the doctor and Mrs. Power home, but Ma stayed, and Laura went to sleep at once with her hand resting gently on little Rose. Rose was such a good baby, so strong and healthy that Ma stayed only a few days. Then Hattie Johnson came. “To wash baby this time, instead of windows,” she said. But soon Hattie went and the three, Manly, Laura, and Rose, were left by themselves in the little house atop the low hill with the sweep of the empty prairie all around it.
There was not a house near enough for neighbors, but a mile away across the slough a few buildings on the edge of town were in sight. A hundred precious dollars had gone for doctor bills and medicine and help through the summer and winter so far; but after all, a Rose in December was much rarer than a rose in June, and must be paid for accordingly.
Christmas was at hand and Rose was a grand present. Then the day before Christmas Manly hauled a load of hay to town and brought back the most beautiful clock. It stood nearly two feet high from its solid walnut base to the carved leaf at its very top. The glass door that covered the face was wreathed with a gilt vine on which four gilt birds fluttered, and the pendulum that swung to and fro behind them was the color of gold too. The clock had such a pleasant, cheerful voice as it said tick, tock, and when it struck the hours its tone was clear and sweet. Laura loved it at once.
The First Four Years Page 4