Early in the gray and red dawn of a March morning in 1883, two wagons
moved slowly out of Boomtown, the two-year-old "giant of the plains." As
the teams drew past the last house, the strangeness of the scene
appealed irresistibly to the newly arrived immigrants. The town lay
behind them on the level, treeless plain like a handful of blocks
pitched upon a russet robe. Its houses were mainly shanties of pine,
one-story in height, while here and there actual tents gleamed in the
half-light with infinite suggestion of America's restless pioneers.
The wind blew fresh and chill from the west. The sun rose swiftly, and
the thin scarf of morning cloud melted away, leaving an illimitable
sweep of sky arching an almost equally majestic plain. There was a
poignant charm in the air--a smell of freshly uncovered sod, a width and
splendor in the view which exalted the movers beyond words.
The prairie was ridged here and there with ice, and the swales were full
of posh and water. Geese were slowly winging their way against the wind,
and ducks were sitting here and there on the ice-rimmed ponds. The sod
was burned black and bare, and so firm with frost that the wagon
chuckled noisily as it passed over it. The whistle of the driver called
afar, startling the ducks from their all-night resting-places.
One of the teams drew a load of material for a house, together with a
few household utensils. The driver, a thin-faced, blue-eyed man of
thirty, walked beside his horses. His eyes were full of wonder, but he
walked in silence.
The second wagon was piled high with boxes and barrels of groceries and
hardware, and was driven by a handsome young fellow with a large brown
mustache. His name was Bailey, and he seemed to be pointing the way for
his companion, whom he called Burke.
As the sun rose, a kind of transformation-scene took place. The whole
level land lifted at the horizon till the teams seemed crawling forever
at bottom of an enormous bowl. Mystical forms came into
view--grotesquely elongated, unrecognizable. Hills twenty, thirty miles
away rose like apparitions, astonishingly magnified. Willows became
elms, a settler's shanty rose like a shot-tower--towns hitherto unseen
swam and palpitated in the yellow flood of light like shaken banners
low-hung on unseen flagstaffs.
Burke marched with uplifted face. He was like one suddenly wakened in a
new world, where nothing was familiar. Not a tree or shrub was in sight.
Not a mark of plough or harrow--everything was wild, and to him mystical
and glorious. His eyes were like those of a man who sees a world at its
birth.
Hour after hour they moved across the swelling land. Hour after hour,
while the yellow sun rolled up the slope, putting to flight the morning
shapes on the horizon--striking the plain into level prose again, and
warming the air into genial March. Hour after hour the horses toiled on
till the last cabin fell away to the east, like a sail at sea, till the
road faded into a trail almost imperceptible on the firm sod.
* * * * *
And so at last they came to the land of "the straddle-bug"--the
squatters' watch dog--three boards nailed together (like a stack of army
muskets) to mark a claim. Burke resembled a man taking his first
sea-voyage. His eyes searched the plain restlessly, and his brain
dreamed. Bailey, an old settler--of two years' experience--whistled and
sang and shouted lustily to his tired beasts.
It drew toward noon. Bailey's clear voice shouted back, "When we reach
that swell we'll see the Western Coteaux." The Western Coteaux! To
Burke, the man from Illinois, this was like discovering a new range of
mountains.
"There they rise," Bailey called, a little later.
Burke looked away to the west. Low down on the horizon lay a long, blue
bank, hardly more substantial than a line of cloud. "How far off are
they?" he asked, in awe.
"About twenty-five miles. Our claims are just about in line with that
gap." Bailey pointed with his whip. "And about twelve miles from here.
We're on the unsurveyed land now."
Burke experienced a thrill of exultation as he looked around him. In the
distance, other carriages were crawling like beetles. A couple of
shanties, newly built on a near-by ridge, glittered like gold in the
sun, and the piles of yellow lumber and the straddle-bugs increased in
number as they left the surveyed land and emerged into the finer tract
which lay as yet unmapped. At noon they stopped and fed their animals,
eating their own food on the ground beside their wagons.
While they rested, Bailey kept his eyes on their backward trail,
watching for his partner, Rivers. "It's about time Jim showed up," he
said, once again.