“I druther go out on the wagon,” said Phil.
“Nothing doing,” put in Dick, decidedly. ‘You’re going just as you’re told.”
“You’re not the boss of me.”
Becky broke in quickly. “The horses have enough load as it is, Phil. Besides, you’ll get a chance to look around at the place before Dick comes and we’ll all have to get to work. It’s a wonderful chance to drive out with Mr. Cleaver.”
Mr. Cleaver cast an amused glance at the girl. “You know how to manage ’em, don’t you? I was going out your way, anyway, Phil, and I’d like to show you the country as we go. It’ll give me company on my drive, and you a chance to look over your land. I’ve got to stop at the house a moment before I’m ready, but I shan’t keep you waiting long.”
He piled the children into his car and drove up Main Street to a gray bungalow, which had a real porch and the only awnings in town. When he came out of the house, fifteen minutes later, he carried a basket which he put between the two seats. “All set,” he said. “Let’s start.”
At the edge of the town the prairie seemed to roll in upon them. Becky looked out upon a world of vivid green and blue. A sea of grass, soft, lush, deep, rose around them, swept by waves of wind that made silver billows through the sea. Miles of this green stretched before them. It was a world of grass—no trees, no rocks, no land-marks of any kind. Only the gray trail that ran through the prairie, and now and then a tiny shack, built of boards, or a house made of sod.
Joan gazed over the miles of grass with a wistful expression on her sharp little face. “Aren’t there any things on the prairie?” she asked. “Is it all just grass?”
Mr. Cleaver laughed—a deep-sounding chuckle that seemed to come from his waist, rather than his throat. “That’s the way it seems to everyone at first. But wait awhile, and you won’t find it as bare as you think.”
“What’ll we find?”
“All the flowers that grow. Chipmunks and prairie dogs and coyotes and muskrats and beavers, and turtles almost big enough for you to ride, and now and then a wolf—”
“There, I told you!” interrupted Phil.
“And meadow-larks, and quail that go drumming about in the springtime. Wild geese and prairie chickens and big black hawks. Indian arrow-heads in the earth and Indian water-marks on the hills. Wild plum thickets and ground cherries. And the most wonderful sunsets you ever saw.”
“Gee!” said Phil. His sigh of ecstasy was for plums, not sunsets.
The car sped along the trail that looped and doubled upon itself like a ribbon. It rounded bottom-land that was almost swampy, where the grass grew long and showed its silver side when the wind blew across it. In the deep, vivid green was a riot of color—the blue of the liverwort, the yellow of swamp buttercup, and here and there a late red lily that looked like a stain of blood in the grass. Over it swung red-winged blackbirds, and from its depths meadow-larks called their six liquid notes.
Mr. Cleaver glanced down at Becky’s face. “How do you like it?”
The girl’s eyes were alight. “Oh, wonderful! If Uncle Jim could just see it!”
“You’re going to be all right if it strikes you that way, at first,” said Mr. Cleaver. “As for your uncle seeing it, he did. I drove him over this very trail, just about a year ago.”
“Didn’t he say he liked it?”
“Over and over. He was just crazy about the country; said that he didn’t know land could be so much like the sea.”
“How did you come to bring him out?”
“Well, I happened to meet him the first day he landed in Dallas. He was the kind of man that would make a dent in your memory—he was so unusual a fellow—and we took a shine to each other right away. When he failed to get any land in the drawing I was as disappointed as he was. I told him not to give up his idea of coming out here; that I’d keep my eye open for a claim before squatting time. It was I who wrote him that this land was to be thrown open, and when he came out to take a look at it I drove him over here.”
“Do you take that much trouble for all homesteaders?”
“Not by any manner of means. But your uncle was the kind of citizen we need. And if we can’t get him we’re glad to have his proxies.”
“We’re pretty poor substitutes for Uncle Jim.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Mr. Cleaver. “When I first got his letter telling me he was depending on you to do the homesteading, I wrote back discouraging the idea. I told him that I didn’t think it a practical thing for four kids to undertake claim living; you wouldn’t last out the summer. I had a letter from him four days later in the shaky handwriting that came after his illness. It was just six words long: ‘Wait till you see the kids.’ And since I have seen you and that brother of yours take hold this morning, I guess that your uncle was right.”
Becky’s eyes softened at the praise. She dared not trust her voice to reply.
“Too bad his sickness put you back so far. You’re three months later than you should be. But you’re lucky in having this a backward year; even the people who had their crops in early this spring aren’t seeing much results.”
“We’re not going to have any crops but sod corn,” said Becky. “We’re going to garden, not farm. Uncle Jim said it wasn’t too late for potatoes. And I’m bringing two big boxes of plants. I set out tomatoes and cabbage, and every other vegetable that I dared transplant, in boxes, weeks ago. Uncle Jim had the ground plowed and disked and harrowed last October. We ought to get some results.”
“Yes, he worked like a Trojan in those weeks that he was here last fall. He must have done a lot of the building himself, for the carpenter who worked for him was a poor sort of wood butcher. Your uncle came in for more lumber one day when I was rushed with work. My two helpers were gone, and I’d been filling orders, answering telephone and rustling lumber, myself. ‘How goes it?’ he asked, as I scurried around to find a man to help him fill his wagon. ‘Too much work to suit me,’ I said, ‘I’m sick and tired of keeping my nose to the grindstone.’ I remember how hot he looked, as he stopped in his loading. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t feel that way about work. If the Lord will supply the grindstone, I’ll furnish the nose.’ I never forgot that.”
Becky smiled through her tears. She could almost hear Uncle Jim saying it.
The car went over a hill, and two deep blue peaks showed, outlined against a lighter blue sky. “You’re on the home stretch now,” said Cleaver. “Those are the Dog Ear Buttes, twelve miles away from your claim. You’ll look at them every day for the next five years—or are you planning the five-year residence?”
“No, only fourteen months. Uncle Jim said we never could raise enough on the place to feed Phil five years.”
“Proving up will be over almost before you start. Here, look down through the valley; you can get a peek at your new home.”
The children “peeked.” The trail curved down a gentle incline, then around three buildings that stood outlined against the western sky. A square of gray ground about them, where the sub-soil had been thrown up and trampled down, made a patch in the green prairie grass. As they came nearer they saw a thin fringe of shrubbery that outlined, here and there, a curly little stream. The children bounced about excitedly on the back seat. “The creek! The creek!” they yelled.
“And there’s the barn,” said Becky.
“Don’t let’s call it a barn,” pleaded Joan. “It’s going to be our house. Let’s call the shack the barn.”
Mr. Cleaver drove up to the end of the barn-that-was-to-be-a-house. It was built in the shelter of a hill, so that on the north it would be cut off from the worst of the storm winds. On the south the tangled skeins of the creek emptied into a small pond. Near the back door was the well; over it a large pump.
The children jumped from the car before it had quite stopped, and ran to the end of the barn where a front door had been cut. Becky unlocked it, and they stepped inside. The building had been divided into three rooms by parti
tions that went part way to the ceiling. A window in each room let in light and air, and a back door, directly opposite the front, had a glass inset. The interior was unfinished. The beams ran to the roof tree, and the rafters stretched overhead, but the lumber had been planed, and was smooth, soft pine. Becky’s heart sank a little. In spite of all Uncle Jim had told her, she had not expected to find things so primitive, so unprotected, and so bare.
But Mr. Cleaver seemed to feel differently. “This is fine!” he said. “You kids are going to be mighty comfortable when you get settled. It’s a palace for Tripp County. Hello, what’s the matter with the window? And that one, too! Why, they’re all broken.”
Sure enough, every pane in the house was cracked, or contained fragments of glass. Broken slivers lay on the floor, and stones in the corners of the rooms explained how the damage had been done.
“The vandals!” exclaimed Mr. Cleaver. “Now who do you suppose could have done that!”
“It must have been someone who lives near-by,” said Becky, with a troubled look. “This is such an out-of-the-way place that no one would come so far off the main road just to break windows.”
“But you have no near neighbors except the Wubbers and the Courtlands. Wubber is a ne’er-do-well, but he hasn’t a mean bone in his body, and the Courtlands aren’t that kind at all. They’re good neighbors. Probably it was some villain of a boy. Wish I could get new panes out of his hide.”
“That means no windows for tonight. Lucky it isn’t stormy, and that we have some mosquito bar. I suppose Dick will have to get new glass and a man to set it tomorrow. If it should rain we’d be flooded.”
“I’ll send a man out with the glass in the morning,” offered Mr. Cleaver. “One that can set it, too. Makes me ashamed to find such miserable skunks as this in our community. We’re not all like that, Miss Becky.”
The girl gave him a grateful look. “I know that.”
The children had wandered out into the door yard and stopped to get a drink. “This pump won’t work,” said Phil.
Mr. Cleaver threw the last stone through the doorway, and went out to help him. The pump handle rose and fell without resistance. “Work! Of course it won’t work. That pump’s pulled out!” His face was wrathful. “Look at it! I believe someone has been trying to take it away, but couldn’t quite lift it out. That’s another thing that will have to be fixed, right away. You kids have got to have water.”
“Is it a very expensive job?” asked Becky anxiously.
“It won’t cost you a cent—not a red cent. I’ll have it done myself and I’ll spend the rest of my days in Dakota getting the pay from the man who did it. I’d like to have him here this minute. Fortunately, the pump isn’t broken; it’s just pulled loose.”
“Will we dare to use the creek for drinking water?”
“You can use it for the horses. You’ll have to get water at the spring, a half mile above here, for yourselves. It isn’t the water I’m worrying about; it’s the dirty trick. A fine welcome for you kids!”
“It would be a lot worse if you weren’t here,” said Becky.
“I’ll do my best to help you fix things—that’s all I can do now. I’ll send the car out with a man, early in the morning. I ought to be getting back to Dallas; s’pose you and the children drive with me up the creek, so I can show you the spring. Maybe I can borrow a bucket for you to bring back some water.”
“I think I’d better stay around here. I don’t want any more windows broken, or to be gone when Dick comes. But I’ll be glad to have Joan and Phil go if they can find their way home again.”
“Come on, kids.” He lifted them into the car. “Wish I could stick around and help you get settled.”
“Come back and see us when we are settled.”
“I will, and Mrs. Cleaver will come with me.” That seemed to remind him of something. He lifted the market basket from the car, and set it in front of Becky. “Don’t know what my wife would have said to me if I had brought this back home. She thought you might not want to stop to cook, today. Good-by, and good luck. I’ll send the kids back in a few minutes.” And away went the car and his friendly smile.
Becky opened the basket almost before they were out of sight. There was a loaf of homemade bread, some thin slices of boiled ham wrapped in waxed paper, a box of cookies, and a jar of raspberry jam. Her heart warmed to the kindliness. They were not without friends, even in a new country.
The girl pulled up an empty nail keg, and sat down in the doorway. It would be noon before Dick could get there; there was nothing to do but wait. She sat with hands in her lap, looking out at that intense blue of sky, that vivid green of earth, the shine and sparkle of that golden sunshine. Her eyes followed the prairie to the stake which Mr. Cleaver had pointed out as their section line. As far as eye could see that lush meadow land was theirs. Platteville, with Uncle Jim gone, was nothing to be lonely for. The Jumping-Off Place was home now.
CHAPTER III
NEIGHBORS
It was nearly noon when the household goods arrived. Joan and Phil had brought back a bucket of water, explored the plum thicket, and were sending up squeals of ecstasy from the creek’s edge when Mr. Wubber drove up to the door. Behind him came Dick, driving a dusty team, with a red cow switching her tail behind the loaded wagon. The two children, wild with excitement, ran to meet them.
“’Zat our cow?” said Joan, critically. “She looks as though she had adenoids.”
“All cows look that adenoidish way,” remarked Phil. “May I drive her to the barn?”
“Tired?” called Becky from the doorway.
Dick wiped his dusty face. “Not tired, but dry as a cork. Got any water?”
Becky produced the pail and her pocket cup, and the two drank thirstily before they went back to the load.
“Take down the kitchen table for me,” said Becky, “and the box of supplies. We’ll all need lunch before we set to work.”
Mr. Wubber nodded his approval. “That’s the ticket!” said he.
Becky opened the cartons of groceries that they had purchased in Dallas, and set the bare table with crackers and cheese, bread and ham, and the gift cookies. She passed oranges with a generous hand. In the months to come she often looked back with a smile at her lavishness with that rarest article of prairie diet, fresh fruit.
It was not until Dick came in to lunch that he noticed the broken windows. He looked very much disturbed. “That the kind of neighbors we have around here?” he asked Mr. Wubber.
“Only one family about here that’s likely to have had a hand in that. Except for them you’ll find pretty fair neighbors.”
“Who are they?”
“The Welps. I can’t say that they did it, but it would be like ’em. The old lady isn’t so bad, but her husband and the two boys are skunks.”
“But why would they have it in for us?”
“They got it in fer everybody.”
“Hope they’re not near neighbors. Where do they live?”
Mr. Wubber looked uneasy. “Over that way,” he said vaguely, with a bob of his head toward the south.
“I hope it wasn’t neighbors,” said Becky, with an anxious look. “I’d rather think it was the work of boys—mischief would be better than meanness.”
“Either one lets in mosquitoes,” suggested Joan.
“This is something like!” said Mr. Wubber, from his seat on a box. “Don’t often get cookies like these. And the chances are I wouldn’t have got much of anything this noon at home; the missus said this morning that she wasn’t going to bust herself getting dinner.”
Mr. Wubber was a most appreciative guest. There was nothing on the table that he didn’t try, try again. Even Dick and Phil, who had no mean capacity of their own, eyed with wonder the amount consumed by their neighbor. It was not until the last crumb had vanished that he took a final mighty drink, which exhausted the water supply, and suggested that they get to work; if things had to be done you might as well git ’em out of the w
ay.
“Better set up the oil stove first,” suggested Phil. “Eating’s the most important thing.”
“You mustn’t make an idol out of that stomach of yours, Sonny,” admonished Mr. Wubber. “We better set up the beds first, soon as we get the floor spreads down.”
All hands set to work. In what Joan called the middle “department,” they rolled a rug down on the floor, set up a double bed, and two cots for the small children. Into that room went the only bureau, (Becky looked worried when she thought of the three drawers that must hold the family wardrobe), two chairs, and all the trunks.
“What’s that corner shelf for?” asked Dick.
Becky looked at the triangular piece of painted wood that fitted into a corner of the room. Below it Uncle Jim had fastened a long rod of metal. “That’s why he told us to take the clothes hangers that I was going to leave behind. He even thought of a closet for us.”
Uncle Jim had evidently gone as far as he could to make the house ready for occupancy. He had built shelves and driven nails in the kitchen, painted borders around the bedroom and living-room floors, screwed hooks on the back of every door. Every sign of his thoughtfulness was a sword in Becky’s wound, and the hard physical work, that somehow made her grief a little less, was a god-send. At three o’clock the beds and stove were set up, the bedding unpacked, the crates opened, and Mr. Wubber had gone. At four Dick’s bed in the living-room—a bed that was to be a couch by day—was made, the mosquito netting had been tacked outside the broken windows, the oil stove had been started, and a pot of potatoes was boiling over the flame; the two rocking-chairs were in their places, and the living-room table held a reading lamp and some books. The clock and Uncle Jim’s picture stood on a shelf. It began to look like home—a rough, splintery, barn-like place, but still a home.
“Now,” said Becky, with a sigh of weariness and satisfaction, “That’s done! My hands feel like sandpaper. Let’s wash off the outer layer of dirt to limber us up a little. Then we’ll have an early supper, and then we’ll take a little trip around the place to see our preserves.”
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 62
