Centennial

by James A. Michener

  The Negro cook waited with Mervin’s regular breakfast: sourdough pancakes, two eggs, three strips of bacon and a pot of hot coffee without cream or sugar. He liked the batter for his cakes to be kept watery, so that the resulting cakes were thin and very brown on each side. “Thick pancakes that taste like a blotting-paper sandwich are not my style,” he explained, and this morning they were done his way.

  When he had eaten, he went upstairs to kiss his wife goodbye, advising her, “I’m hauling our first load of homesteaders out to Line Camp, and I won’t be back till late. Each man will want to tramp over his land, and I’ll be busy.”

  He went downstairs and climbed into his new six-seater Buick, which he idled for some minutes before venturing out onto Eighth Avenue. The quiet purr of the motor pleased him, and slowly he engaged the clutch, releasing it with skill so that the gears meshed properly. With a restrained touch on the horn, he announced without ostentation that Centennial’s leading citizen was about to move down the street.

  On this morning he was to experience a nasty shock, for when he reached the station he found Jim Lloyd and Old Man Brumbaugh already there, and he discovered that they proposed addressing the new settlers as they left the train.

  “What about?” he asked with visible dismay.

  “About land,” Brumbaugh said shortly.

  “What about it? They homestead legally. I sell them additional land, which I own. What’s wrong about that?”

  “The use of the land.” Brumbaugh said with impatience. “Have you no conscience?”

  “It’s good land for wheat,” Wendell said pugnaciously, glaring at Brumbaugh. “It’s been proved you can grow wheat out there.”

  “The sod crop,” Brumbaugh said contemptuously. “Any soil in the world will produce a crop first year the sod’s broken. You know that.”

  “It’s the years that follow the sod crop that will break these people’s hearts,” Jim Lloyd broke in. “What are they going to do, Wendell, when those roaring winds blow out of the Rockies? You’ve seen what they can do to irrigated farms. What in hell would they do to dry-land crops?”

  Wendell licked his lips and asked placatingly, “What kind of speech will you make to our visitors?” He did not try to override his two antagonists; from past experience he had learned that where land was involved, these men could be difficult. However, he did keep stored in the back of his mind a strong telling point against them, and if they tried to make real trouble for him, he intended using it.

  “We’re going to warn the newcomers to go back home,” Brumbaugh growled. “We don’t want them to commit suicide on this barren land.”

  “You’ve done pretty well on “this barren land.’” He mimicked Brumbaugh’s pronunciation, and the old Russian grew angry.

  “I had water,” he said, turning away from Wendell and leading Jim Lloyd to a different part of the station platform.

  They were talking together when the train pulled in, and they watched as this batch of families that Wendell had assembled from all parts of the nation came hesitantly down the steps. They were a handsome lot, men and women in their late twenties and thirties mostly, skilled farmers ready for the new challenge. Potato Brumbaugh felt his heart warming to these adventurous people, especially the women, on whom the terrors of the new life would fall so heavily. “Tears come in my eyes when I see them,” be told Lloyd. “The government should prevent this.”

  One of the couples overheard this remark, and the woman shivered at the words and drew her husband closer to her.

  “You settling here?” Brumbaugh asked them.

  “Yes,” the husband said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Grebe. Earl Grebe.”

  “Listen to an old man, Earl ...” Before he could issue his warning Mervin Wendell’s clear, reassuring voice sounded through the morning air.

  “Over this way, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Mervin Wendell, the man who’s been writing to you, and I’ve rented these automobiles to carry you to your new homes.”

  He moved in deftly, a figure of distinction and reassurance, saying precisely those things which the new families wanted to hear: “The land commissioner is in his office at Line Camp. He has plats of the new town we are going to build. More important, he has the surveyors’ maps showing the townships and the sections from which you can choose free land.” As he reminded them of the opportunity they faced, his voice assumed a kind of grandeur, and he held out his hands like an Old Testament figure leading his people toward a promised land.

  The effect was somewhat destroyed, however, by Potato Brumbaugh, who muscled his way to the head of the crowd, seeking to warn them against the mistake they were making: “Good farmers, listen to me. You cannot make a living on the drylands. Men tried in the eighties.”

  “They did not try Dr. Creevey’s new method,” Wendell said coldly.

  “You’ll get good crops the first year, and you women will think you’ve found a paradise.”

  “They have,” Wendell broke in.

  “But that’s just the sod crop, and you know it. Think ahead to the dry years.”

  “If we plant the way Dr. Creevey told us,” an Indiana farmer said, “there won’t be no dry years.”

  “Some will be terribly dry,” Jim said. “And you’ve never seen the like of our Colorado windstorms.”

  Mervin Wendell saw that Brumbaugh and Lloyd were beginning to have an effect on the newcomers, so he decided that the time was proper for him to counter their arguments. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said quietly, “these good men have every reason in the world to discourage you from claiming land that is rightfully yours. Mr. Brumbaugh came to Centennial years ago without a penny. He took up his free land to grow sugar beets, and now he’s a millionaire. Jim Lloyd, that cowboy over there, also arrived without a cent. He took up grazing land for his cattle, and now he’s a millionaire too.” Wendell dropped his voice and added slyly, “Of course, he married the boss’s daughter, and that never hurts.” He watched with aloof amusement as the two men squirmed.

  “The situation is obvious, isn’t it?” he asked with scorn. “These men have all the land they need and now they wish to keep you from getting yours. Every word they utter is self-serving, because they want to keep everything for themselves.”

  The charge was devastating, and Brumbaugh realized that anything further he might say would have no effect. He walked away from the young farmers and would have left the station except that a tall young woman ran to him, touching his hand. “Are you convinced we’re wrong?” she asked earnestly.

  “You’re dead wrong,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re destroying the grass. You’re tearing up the sod. It’s impossible to farm the land you’ll be choosing.”

  “Dr. Creevey does.”

  “He spends his whole life on the project. He has every kind of support from the railroad. But when the bad years come, even he will be wiped out.”

  “You’re sure the bad years will come?” the young woman asked.

  Brumbaugh looked at her, and she appeared to be the type of woman he had known decades ago on the Volga, hard-working, dedicated, whose soul would be shattered by the experiences that lay ahead. “Are you pregnant?” he asked bluntly. When she nodded in shy embarrassment. he said quietly, “May God have mercy on you, because the land won’t.”

  “You’ve prospered, they say.”

  “My farm was near water. Yours won’t be.”

  Mervin Wendell called for the women to follow him, and the Grebes started to move away, but Brumbaugh caught Alice by the hand. “Go back home,” he warned her. “The land out there ... it’s fine for dogs and men. It’s hell on horses and women.”

  “Over here!” Wendell called. “You, young lady. In this car.”

  And it was from the rear seat of a fancy Buick that Alice Grebe first approached her new home. Mr. Wendell, at the wheel of his own car, drove east on Prairie, then north past Little Mexico, wh
ere adobe hovels astonished the newcomers, and then northeast toward the proposed village of Line Camp. When the caravan crossed Mud Creek and entered the great plains, several women gasped at the total emptiness, for not one living thing could be seen except grass, not one sign of human occupancy except the winding road.

  “My God, this is desolate!” Vesta Volkema cried.

  “Not when it has barns and windmills and lovely homes dotted across the horizon,” Wendell said brightly. And now it became clear why he had crowded all the wives into separate automobiles; he did not want their disappointment to contaminate their husbands. The men would be looking at the soil, trying to estimate its worth, and if left alone, would reach favorable conclusions ... or at least not negative ones. And later they would persuade their womenfolk to accept the decision.

  “Wait till you see Line Camp!” he said enthusiastically.

  “What’s it like?” Vesta asked.

  “A paradise!” he assured her.

  He had purchased a section of land—640 acres—from the Venneford people for the establishment of a new town centered upon old Line Camp Three, long abandoned. With the land, he acquired the stone barn and the low-built one-story stone house which had been used by generations of cowboys when they worked the Venneford cattle. The buildings were the best part of the purchase, and with them as a focus, the surveyors had platted a western town, centered upon the intersection of State 8 and Weld 33.

  A newcomer to Line Camp had three choices. He could buy land and live in town, or close to it. He could homestead for three years and get a half-section, 320 acres, free. Or he could start to homestead and after fourteen months buy the land from the government for $1.25 an acre.

  Mervin Wendell encouraged as many people as possible to do the last, for as soon as they got legal title to the land, they were free to sell it, and he was prepared to buy as much as possible from them at $1.75 an acre, intending to sell it to later arrivals at $7.00 or $8.00. It was to his interest that as many as possible of the newcomers occupy their land for fourteen months and then quit, for in their failure lay his success.

  With this first drylands group he was doubly sure that many would lose heart. The tall girl who had been talking with Brumbaugh—she wouldn’t stay long. Nor the minister’s wife, nor the young woman with two children. He had often bought homesteads from such defeated people for 25¢ an acre, and he would do so again.

  So his tactic would be to encourage the families as fulsomely as possible while they were signing up for their free land, then to commiserate with them when they wanted to flee the area. He would work principally on the women, reassuring them at first, sympathizing with them when the bad years struck. And in this manner he would acquire huge holdings in the area, hovering always like a jackal about the edges of a camp, picking up the strays.

  With horns blowing, the rented automobiles drove into the space between the two stone buildings, and Mervin Wendell climbed atop a wooden box to explain procedures: “This will be your new town. That stone barn is being converted into a first-class general store, where you will be able to purchase almost anything you could in Chicago. That round thing over there will climb ninety feet into the air and serve as the elevator where you will store your vast crops of wheat. Down there is where the railroad station will be. And this low building houses the land commissioner, who is going to give you all the acres you require. The free land extends in every direction, but I’ll tell you frankly, if I was choosing, I’d take one of those half-sections in the northeast sector, up beyond Rattlesnake Buttes.” Here he broke into an easy laugh, explaining to the women. “When Indians lived here, the Buttes had rattlers. Today no Indians, no rattlers. Today mostly Baptists, and they’re trouble enough.” At this joke the wives laughed nervously.

  “The automobiles will sally forth in various directions, and you are free to inspect the land for as long as you like. When you’ve made your choice, you come back here and speak to my good friend Walter Bellamy.” From the interior of the building. he summoned the land commissioner, and a curious young man appeared, thin as a reed, red-haired, awkward and with a green shade protecting his pale-blue eyes from the incessant sun. He was twenty-four years old, a college graduate from Grinnell in Iowa. He was shy and deprecatory of his ability; he had come west to find escape from family pressures, and he loved the quiet job he had stumbled into as land commissioner. To watch people day after day, choosing and settling upon new land would be exciting.

  “Show them the maps,” Wendell said unctuously, and the surveys were unrolled: Township 10 North, Range 60 West, with the town of Line Camp occupying Section 22, and with Sections 16 and 36 reserved for the school district. (See Map 13 – Line Camp 1911-1939)

  The farmers could see that most of the half-sections in this township were spoken for; what they could not detect was that most of them belonged to Mervin Wendell, who was ready to sell them at a profit. The free land lay farther out, and for some reason he could not have explained, Earl Grebe focused on land which lay to the northwest, and when he discussed this with the group, he found that another family, the Larsens, had done the same, so they procured one of the cars and drove along country trails to that section of the free land, but when Earl bored in with his earth auger, he brought up a very dry sample that showed a tillable depth of less than six inches.

  “This isn’t for me,” he announced, and he went off on his own, and at the northeast corner, of the township he found a half-section that had everything he required: rolling land for good drainage when the rains did come, a topsoil fourteen inches deep, fairly good moisture already in the soil and a view of the two red buttes to the south, with absolutely nothing but low hills visible in any other direction. He saw this as a majestic land, worthy of a man’s best efforts.

  “Alice!” he shouted to his wife. “Look at this!” And he showed her the dimensions of the land the government would be giving them. It seemed a vast holding, 320 acres, with enough to leave a large part fallow year after year, and a protected hillside behind which a house could be sheltered.

  Alice stood by her husband, staring at the huge land they were about to occupy. and whether it was a chill or her pregnancy or a foreboding of what the years might contain, she began shivering, for this seemed to her the bleakest land that God had ever given His children to plow. Earl, sensing her fright, placed his arm about her and promised, “It’s our task to subdue this land and make it ours.”

  He handed her his notebook and asked her to jot down the designation of their new home: “Township 10 North, Range 60 West, Section 11, the south 320.” When the figures were written, Alice found in them a sense of reality, and her apprehension abated somewhat. Bending down, for she was slightly taller than her husband, she kissed him on the cheek and said, “I’m all right. The place is so empty, it seems filled with ghosts.” To Earl such a statement was incomprehensible, and he made no reply.

  The Larsens found a good piece of land in Township 11, a little farther north, but the Volkemas located a fine half-section to the southeast and staked out two additional half-sections to which they were not entitled. When the group reassembled outside the land commissioner’s office, Alice asked, “What are you going to do with the extra sections?” and Vesta said, “Don’t worry about that, I have the chalk.” This reply made no sense at all, so Alice turned and asked Mrs. Larsen, “What does she mean?” and Mrs. Larsen said, “She looks as if she knows what she’s doing.”

  With the others watching, Mrs. Volkema directed her son, aged seventeen, and her daughter, eighteen, to take off their shoes. With her chalk she wrote on the inner sole of each shoe: “Age 21.” Then the two children put their shoes back on and accompanied Vesta into the land office, where Commissioner Bellamy waited with his maps.

  “Have you located the land you prefer?” he asked formally.

  “We have,” Earl Grebe replied, and he proceeded to designate what he and Alice had chosen. Papers were signed, and Bellamy said, “You have staked your c
laim as of this date. Within six months you must give me proof that you have taken up actual residence on your land. If you fail to do so, you forfeit your claim. On the other hand, if you pitch a tent today and take up residence, three years from this date the land is yours, fee simple. Are these terms understood?”

  “How do we inform you that we’ve taken residence?” Grebe asked.

  “You come in here and tell me so. You put your hand on that Bible and swear to your occupancy, and that’s good enough for the government, because we know you’re all Christian persons.” And in this simple manner Earl and Alice filed their intention of homesteading.