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-Roebuck 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.
“You give that sled back to your little sister!” called Joan from the bottom of the slope.
>
“What you got to say about it, Skinny?”
“You give it back or you’ll find out.”
“Like to see you make me—or anyone else,” said Bill. He threw himself on the sled, lying flat on his stomach, and went down the incline, turning the sled as he went so it would run into the group of small children at the bottom of the hill. But Joan was not in the group when he arrived. She had run up behind him, and before he had had time to rise, had mounted his long frame from the rear. She sat down astride of him with no gentle motion; no ladylike grace. Once, twice, thrice, she raised herself in the air, and came down on the delicate region above the stomach with jounces that threatened to remove all the breath within him.
“That’s what you get, Bill Welp,” said his torturer. “Mr. Peters said we could come down hard on you if you acted up.”
Nothing was said about the occurrence in the schoolroom. Becky noticed that Bill had come in from his sleighing somewhat chastened in manner and green about the lips. She intercepted several baleful glances that afternoon between him and Joan, but on the theory that it was well to let sleeping dogs lie, asked no questions. Two days later in Joan’s class she assigned, as a language lesson, an essay on “A Bad Boy.” And it was from her little sister’s paper that she learned Joan’s version of the story:
THE BAD BOY
Once ther was a bad boy. They called him “bad boy,” he was the wurst boy in scool. His name was Bill. He had no freinds. Once he took his sister’s sled and she sade plece give me my sled, and he sade I’d like to see you make me.
He slode down hill on it, and ran into some grils. One of the grils ran up to him and sat on top of him. She bonced three or fore times and verry hard on his stumake. After that he was not so gay. They all sade to the litel gril good for you.
CHAPTER X
SNOW BOUND
A wind that had started at Labrador was tearing over South Dakota, howling down chimneys and sucking through cracks. And there were plenty of cracks in Tripp County. A dark sky fell like a cup over the prairies, and the coyote who lived on the water-mark hill had stopped howling, and taken himself to winter quarters.
Inside the Linville house it was snug and warm, with the base burner glowing, the student lamp shining, and the kettle near the stovepipe steaming away. The younger fry were abed, and Dick and Becky were at the table, the boy at his lessons, and the girl correcting papers. Bronx blinked contentedly behind the stove, the most luxurious dog in homesteading country. Becky looked up from her papers presently to see Dick frowning over a column of figures.
“What’s the matter? Stuck on your algebra?”
“It isn’t lessons; it’s finance. I was figuring to see if we were going to get through the winter.”
“But we had that all decided. We figured out last month that we were going to get along all right if nobody was sick. Don’t you remember we had a margin of forty dollars?”
“I know we did, but we were counting the rent in, then. And I’m afraid we’re not going to get it. They’ve just paid up for September now. At any rate, we can’t count on it regularly.”
“No, I suppose we can’t. Mr. Dennison seemed to think it was better to let them stay on, rather than try to get new tenants this winter, but I don’t know if we were wise. They may be the worthless kind who’ll never pay up. And we’ll need every cent of it when it comes time to buy seed, and make our spring payment on the land.”
Dick went on with his figuring. “The money seems to melt away. The coal cost eight dollars more than we counted on; I had to put tar paper against the house before we banked it; and we had to replace the ax. The oil can blew over, and we lost more than ten gallons. Then there were the kids’ shoes and our galoshes. If expenses go on in this way we won’t have enough left of that forty-dollar margin to cast a shadow. I don’t know what we’d do if you didn’t have the school.”
“Well, we won’t go hungry. And, thank goodness, we don’t need many clothes out here.”
“Except shoes.”
“And overalls. Phil’s like the woman Uncle Jim used to tell about, who bragged of her son’s clothes—‘Just pants and pants and pants.’”
Dick grinned at the family joke, but his face dropped back into worried lines. “Well, I know that we can’t spend a cent that we don’t have to spend.”
“Christmas is coming too,” said Becky.
“Swell chance we’ll get of a celebration. If we get a good Christmas dinner I’ll be satisfied.”
“The kids won’t. They’ve been counting on it for weeks. Look at Joan’s list. I found it in her spelling book last Monday.”
Dear Santa Close
Plece dont forget to Give Bronx a presat
What I want for Crismase:
haingkerches
doll
books
games
a pensl
candy
a dolls tronk
rist wach
past
a litel pelo for the doll
“What’s a pelo?” inquired Dick.
“Something you sleep on, of course. I can provide that, easily enough, and the ‘pensl’ and perhaps the paste, but I’m afraid she can’t count on a trunk, much less the watch.”
“They’ll have to do what I’m doing—count without getting any answer. Six months into $300 doesn’t leave much when you subtract for seed and payment on land and insurance and food.”
Becky bent her eyes on her brother as he went back to his figures. Dick had certainly changed in the last seven months. When he left Wisconsin he had been a careless, happy-go-lucky boy, whose interests were football and skating and the running high jump; who never had a cent in his pocket, nor a worry in his head. And now he was spending the evening over family accounts! He had altered physically, too. His freckles and his rebellious reddish hair were unchanged, but his shoulders had broadened, his merry brown eyes were soberer and steadier, and his mouth was resolute. Tripp County had made Dick a man.
“Well, we’re going to have a Christmas,” said the girl—“such as it is. I have two blouses for Phil, and two aprons for Joan cut out, for a start, and I’ve already sent Mary Dennison some money for a game and a book apiece. I’ll make some candy and some popcorn balls, and perhaps we can buy a few oranges. That would be a real treat for them. As for you, Dicky, you’ll have to take my blessing and a new pair of suspenders.”
“Cut out the suspenders, and apply the money on the garden seeds next spring. I planned to subscribe to a couple of magazines for you, but you won’t even get the funny page of the Omaha Bee now.”
“Funny how little you care for the unnecessaries out here. In fact, I never knew what the necessaries were until I tried homesteading.”
“Food, clothing, and shelter,” quoted Dick. “And easy on the clothing, too. All you need is enough to keep heat off in summer and cold off in winter. If I went in to town wrapped in meal-sacks I don’t think anybody would look at me twice.”
“Four dollars of this month’s salary has to go to the school children,” went on Becky. “I’ve sent for a box of crayons and some candy for each one. I’d have a tree for them if there were evergreens within reach of us. I don’t think one of them, except the Lamberts, ever had a Christmas. You ought to hear the questions they ask about it. Venus asked me yesterday if Santa Claus would come if you wrote to Sears-Roebuck about it. I don’t suppose the Wubbers ever had a Christmas gift in their lives.”
“It’ll be a new thing for Phil and Joan to come down to small pickings. Uncle Jim used to have such a whale of a Christmas for us all.”
Both children were silent. They could see Uncle Jim standing on the step-ladder, fastening the gold star on the treetop; Uncle Jim sawing away down cellar at the toy boats and doll houses he always produced at Christmas time; Uncle Jim coming in on Christmas eve, with bulging pockets, shining eyes, and flecks of snow powdering his coat… The old Christmases never could come back to Becky and Dick. They would do their best for the youn
ger children, but it was Uncle Jim that had made the holiday for them.
* * * *
The last week of school before vacation was bitterly cold, and it took real heroism to make the two daily trips. The whole prairie was changed by the snow; the black line of the creek-bed was the only landmark left. The sky seemed to drop lower over the gray waste, the cold bit into fingers, and the snow drove into cheeks like needles. The two little Welps came to school with their hands wrapped in cloth, and though Becky longed to give them mittens when she saw their poor, frost-bitten fingers, she dared not venture. She was glad, for their sakes, when the Christmas program was over, and the school dismissed for the holidays.
Three days before Christmas Becky heard a timid knock on her back door, and opened it to find Crystal Wubber, breathless, and with a big bundle in each hand. “Miss Linville, kin I leave these things at your house until Christmas?” she inquired. “I been getting some giffs fer the kids and they mistrust something’s going on. I know they’ll find ’em if I keep ’em at home.”
Her worried little face looked relieved, as Becky promised their safe-keeping. “They ain’t no spot to hide things over to our house,” she said, “Except under the bed, and that’s ma’s place. An’ Miss Linville, I want to ask you something else.” She unwrapped an unwieldy bundle, covered with newspapers. Out of it fell a giant tumble weed, its spiny leaves dried on its skeleton stalk; its bushy top mounted on a trunk made of a broomstick. “Do you think that would do fer a Christmas tree?” she asked.
Becky looked at the dry bush with softened eyes.
“I thought maybe I could use some plum brush fer a tree,” went on the child. “But I just hate the switchey look of ’em for Christmas. So when this whopper tumble weed came along last fall it stuck in our chicken wire, and I hung it up in the barn. It dried just that way, and I thought maybe the childern would like it fer a tree. The little ones never seen no pictures of one, even, and they wouldn’t know if it wasn’t just like. I got a pail of sand to stick that broomstick down in. I could hang the popcorn and the light things on the tumble weed, and put the rest around it. Do you think that would work, Miss Linville?”
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 72
