The little procession filed back as it had come, leaving a dark mound rising above the flat prairie. Becky, who had feared to leave the children alone on the claim for even so short a time, did not follow, but she and Dick turned their horses toward home. As they neared the prairie dog town they heard a horse coming rapidly down the trail behind them. They both turned to look. It was Ole Oleson, galloping to overtake them. They reined their horses and waited.
Ole had been so full of his errand that he had not considered his shyness, but as his horse stopped the blood rushed to his face and his tongue was tied.
“Did you want us, Ole?” asked Becky gently.
The boy ducked his head awkwardly. “Yes,” he said. “I got to tell you—I haf to say—” He could go no further; the tears filled his eyes. “I pay you back sometime,” he said. Then he wheeled his horse and galloped away.
CHAPTER IX
SCHOOL
The next few days Becky spent in reviewing compound interest, trying to persuade her conscience that she was capable of teaching a school, and dreading the approaching meeting with the School Commissioner. But the conference, when it came, was anything but fearful. Mr. Peters was a man of convex profile and easy-going manner, who was frankly relieved at the prospect of getting any teacher for the Crane Hollow school.
“There never were people who want teaching more than homesteaders,” said he, “and there’s never a place where you’ll find fewer teachers than in homesteading country. That school stayed closed all last winter because I couldn’t scare up a soul to take it.”
“You know I have no teacher’s certificate,” explained Becky. “I was just ready to enter normal school when we came out here.”
“Well, according to state law every teacher has to have a certificate. But a certificate without a teacher isn’t of as much good as a teacher without a certificate.”
“In other words,” said Becky, dimpling, “I’m better than an empty chair. But do you think I can carry a school?”
“If what your school record and Mr. Cleaver says about you is true, you can. He thinks you’re about right.”
“He knows me as a homesteader, not as a school-teacher. I suppose I may be better than no teacher at all. The course seems simple enough; the only two things that I’m really afraid of are cube root and the Welps.” She explained the feud with her neighbors.
“You won’t have to teach cube root. And if the Welp boys make trouble, sit on ’em hard. Their older brother, Chris, who was brought up by an uncle in Bonesteel, wanted the school, and they’ll probably not like your getting it. But if they start anything you fire them. I’ll stand by you.”
Becky repeated this conversation to her family. Joan, especially, seemed impressed. “That’s just what I’ve always thought,” she said. “We’ve been too hold-your-tongue-y to that family; just sat and let them run over us. If they dare to act up in school you do just as Mr. Peters says, an’ sit on ’em hard. If you don’t, I will!”
“You’d better keep out of trouble, and let Becky fight her own battles,” advised Dick.
“Fighting’s no trouble to me,” observed Joan.
“Maybe I can find a way to get on the good side of them,” said the prospective teacher.
“‘There’s no good road to a wasp’s nest,’ Uncle Jim used to say. Don’t waste time hoping for anything from the Welps but cussedness.”
“It’s the arithmetic problems that worry me more than the Welps. When I think of teaching them how to measure a cistern I shake in my boots.”
“Keep away from cubic dimensions, and stick to farm problems, where you only have length and width,” advised Dick. “Go heavy on reading, grammar, and history, and soft-pedal the rest. We’ll never give you away! And when you’re up against a problem postpone the lesson and let the whole school sing. Many a teacher has done that in my time. I’ll bet it’s the system that all normal schools teach.”
* * * *
School opened on September fifteenth. As Becky crossed the bare fields to the little schoolhouse, nestled in a hollow of the rolling prairie, she saw the homesteaders gathering the remnants of their crop and plowing under the burnt fields, with hope for a better year. Those who had been on the ground the year before worked feverishly, knowing how much must be accomplished before the cold weather set in. Winter was evidently a thing to dread on the Dakota prairies.
The school was an unpainted frame building, with a dejected-looking flight of steps to its only door. Inside was a fat soft-coal burner, some old desks, resurrected from another school, a pine table, two chairs, a blackboard, and a map of the United States. Becky had come early with a purpose in her mind, and a large market basket on her arm. Out of the basket came new sash-curtains to cover the glaring windows, some gay pictures to be tacked on the bare walls, a pot of Wandering Jew for the wide window sill, an American flag to be hung above the blackboard, and a handful of books. Becky and Dick had spent a day cleaning the room the week before, but these little touches made it a cheerful as well as a shining place. The earliest arrivals found a pleasant school and a smiling teacher. Becky was quaking inside, and her dimples had disappeared, but she was trying to remember Uncle Jim. “Hurricanes always whistle before they strike,” she could almost hear him say.
One by one they filed in, with books and lunch-boxes—the three little Wubbers; Phil and Joan (Dick had ridden horseback to Winner to enter high school that morning); Marietta, with her shining eyes; the two Courtland boys; four of the Welp children, Pete, Bill, and two freckled-faced girls; the Trainer twins; Johnny Lambert and his sister Shirley; and, towering over the heads of all, Ole Oleson, with his great hands dangling below his coat-sleeves. They were all in the lower grades except the two Lambert children and Marietta, and Becky began to recover confidence as she saw how elementary most of the lessons would be. The two little Welp girls seemed inoffensive children, and the boys, while evidently on the defensive, showed no open rebellion. Becky spent the morning in grading the pupils, there was an hour’s recess at noon, and at four o’clock lessons had been assigned and recited, and school was out for the day.
It seemed to Becky that she had never worked so hard as during those golden days of September. She was up at half-past five in the morning to get lunches packed, breakfast ready, and housework done, before she left for school. When she came home there was a hot dinner to cook, lessons for the next day to prepare, and the ironing and mending to do. On Saturdays she washed and helped Dick with the farm work. The children themselves cut the sad-looking corn, and tied it into stacks for fodder. They picked the few pumpkins and the cabbage, dug their scanty hills of late potatoes and the rutabagas, and carried them to the cellar. There were a few parsnips too, and some withered turnips. “All the kinds of vegetables you don’t like,” was Joan’s comment on their winter’s supply. But Becky gave thanks for the tiny stock that had been saved from destruction. It would help so much to relieve the monotony of canned food.
“Wish we had anything to show in the way of flowers,” she said sadly, looking out at the sickly line of poppies and cornflowers, with a shabby Castor and Pollux mounting guard at the head. “No chance of taking a picture of the vines that were torn down, and the plants that burnt up. It wouldn’t prove anything to the Land Office except desolation.”
“We’ll take a kodak of the house, anyway,” said Dick. “General Land Office would know we were establishing ‘permanent residence’ if he saw our awning and our curtains and the little trees. And some day I’m going to get a snapshot f the Welp establishment as I drive by. The two pictures will be Exhibit One and Exhibit Two when the contest comes on.”
“That ole contest!” exclaimed Phil gloomily. “I wouldn’t mind living without things if I only knew the land was going to be ours. But if I’m going without ice cream sodas and cherries and circuses just to make a farm for Pete Welp I’ll be sore that I wasted my life out here.”
“I can’t think that they’ll ever win the contest,” said Becky ho
pefully. “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 5 1/2 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 the other children.
Pete did not wait for Ol
e’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.
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