crossing the desert on a camel. Pinto was too lazy to trot uphill and
too stiff to trot down, and as the country was rough and rolling, there
was not much of the trail on which we could make any time. He could have
jogged up a little, but he was too stubborn. He had lived with the
Indians too long.
That old pony had a sly, artful eye and a way of shaking his head that
was tricky--and try to catch him loose on the prairie with a bucket of
oats as a coaxer! There were times on the trail when one could not see
him moving except at close range. When he took such a spell, one of us
drove while the other walked alongside, "persuading" him to keep ahead
of the buggy. As there wasn't a tree or shrub in that part of the
country, we were reduced to waving a hat in front of him like a cowboy
taunting a bucking horse in the ring, or waving a dry cornstalk at
him--but all with the same effect.
A little brown-and-white spotted animal with long brown mane and tail,
he was the most noticeable as well as notorious piece of horseflesh in
that region, and according to a few who "knew him when--," he had a
past; a reputation as an outlaw and a dislike for the white man as a
result of his part in an Indian skirmish against a band of white
settlers. Now, like the Indian, he had become subdued with age and
conquest; but like the Indian, too, stubborn and resentful. From him we
learned much about how to deal with the Indian.
One evening when I had stopped at the school for Ida Mary we saw a
snowstorm coming like a white smoke. We were only half a mile from home,
but in blizzards, we had been warned, one can easily become lost within
a few feet of his own door. Many plainsmen have walked all night in a
circle trying to find a familiar shack or barn and perished within a few
yards of shelter. Even in daytime one did not dare, in some of those
blinding furies, to go from house to barn without holding on to a rope
or clothesline kept stretched from one building to the other for that
purpose.
We could not take a chance on Pinto's slow pace, so we got out of the
buggy and ran as fast as we could, leaving him to follow. We were barely
inside when the storm broke over the shack. As the snow came in blinding
sheets we became anxious about the pony, but there was nothing we could
do that night. We opened the door a crack and looked out. We could not
see our hands before us, and the howling of the wind and beating of snow
against the shack made it impossible to hear any other sound.
Cowering in that tiny shack, where thin building-paper took the place of
plaster, the wind screaming across the plains, hurling the snow against
that frail protection, defenseless against the elemental fury of the
storm, was like drifting in a small boat at sea, tossed and buffeted by
waves, each one threatening to engulf you.
Next day the blizzard broke and we found Pinto standing in the hayshed,
still hitched to the buggy, quietly munching hay.
When the landseekers had left and the plains had seemed emptier and more
silent than before, it had seemed to Ida Mary and me, let down from our
high-pitched excitement, that there was not much incentive in doing
anything. But, after all, there was no time to be bored that winter. The
grim struggle to hang on demanded all our energy.
When I had first visited the McClure _Press_, I had looked distastefully
at Myrtle's ink-stained hands and face, and at the black apron stiff
with ink which she wore at her work. Now there were nights when, after
turning the press or addressing papers still wet with ink until
midnight, I fell upon the cot and slept without washing or undressing.
At such times Myrtle, with her cheerful unconcern, became an exalted
creature.
The next morning I would make a stab at cleaning myself up, eat
breakfast on the small inking table drawn close to the fire, with a
clean paper over the black surface for a tablecloth, and go to work
again.
When blizzards raged they drove the snow through the shack like needles
of steel. There was not a spot where I could put that cot to keep dry,
so I covered my face with the blankets, which in the morning were
drifted over with snow. Where did the lumber industry get hold of all
the knotholes it sold the poor homesteader?
For a girl who had come to the prairie for her health, I was getting
heroic treatment, wrestling all day with the heavy, old-fashioned,
outworn printing press, heavy manual labor for long hours, sleeping with
the snow drifting over me at night.
It was during one of these great storms that I rode in one of the last
covered wagons, one of the few tangible links between the pioneers of
the past and the pioneers of the present--and a poignant, graphic
reminder that men and women had endured storm and discomfort and
disaster for decades as we were enduring them now, and as people would
continue to endure them as long as the land remained to be conquered.
One morning after the hardest snowstorm I had seen, I awoke in the print
shop to find myself corralled by snowdrifts which the wind had driven up
over the windows and four or five feet high in front of the door. I
could barely see over the top of the upper panes.
That was Friday. Until Sunday I waited, cut off from the
world--wondering about Ida Mary! If she were alone in that tar-paper
shack, what chance would she have? Was she cold and frightened? With the
snow piled in mountainous drifts she would be as inexorably cut off from
help as though she were alone on the plains. The things that happen to
the people one loves are so much worse than the ones that happen to
ourselves--but the things that may happen are a nightmare. As the hours
dragged on I paced up and down the print shop, partly because being
hemmed in made me restless, partly to keep warm, wondering whether the
neighbors would remember that Ida Mary was alone--fearing that they
might think she was in McClure with me.
On Sunday, a passage was dug from the print shop so that I could get
out--not a path so much as a canyon between the walls of snow, and a
neighbor with a covered wagon offered to take me home--or to try to.
He drove a big, heavy draft team. The horses floundered and stuck and
fell; plunged out of one drift into another. Galen got out and shoveled
ahead while I drove, resting the horses after each plunge. The ravines
we skirted and finally got up onto the ridge.
It was mid-afternoon when we arrived, and already the skies were closing
in, gray upon the white plains. The grayish-white canvas of the wagon,
and the team almost the same color blended into the drab picture, darker
shadows against the gray curtain of earth and sky, until we came to the
shack.
The Dunns had remembered, as they so often did, that Ida Mary was alone,
and they had shoveled a path to the door for her. And she was safe,
waiting tranquilly until it would be possible to return to the school
again. In such weather the school remained closed, as there was no way
for the children to reach it, through the deep drifts, without the risk
of freezing to death.
With Ida Mary safe in the covered wagon, we started back at once to
McClure. Having broken the drifts on the first trip, it was not hard
going, but it was midnight when we reached the print shop.
On cold, bad days the Dunns, getting their own children home from
school, would see to it that Ida Mary got back safely, and Mrs. Dunn
would insist that she stay with them on such nights. "Now you go, Huey,
and bring Teacher back. Tell her the trapdoor is down so the attic will
be warm for her and the children to sleep." And when she came, Mrs. Dunn
would say, with that clear, jolly laugh of hers, "Now, if you're
expecting Imbert Miller, he can come right on over," which he did.
Imbert Miller was a young native westerner whose family had been
ranchers out there for a good many years. He was a well-built, clean-cut
young man who had been attracted to Ida Mary from the beginning, and
whatever her own feelings for him, she liked claim life a lot better
after she met him. All during that bitter winter Imbert came over every
Sunday, dressed in neat blue serge and white collar. Some of the
settlers said that was how they could tell when Sunday came, seeing
Imbert ride by dressed up like that. He dropped in, sometimes, through
the week in clean blue shirt and corduroys for an evening of cards or
reading or talking.
In fact, the evenings were no longer lonely as they had been at first,
nor were we always exhausted. We were young and demanded some fun, and
feminine enough to find life more interesting when the young men who
were homesteading began to gather at the shack in little groups. In
spite of the difficulties of getting any place in the winter, and the
distances which had to be traveled, the young people began to see a lot
of each other; the romances which naturally developed made the winter
less desolate.
Sometimes we would gather at Wilomene's for supper--honey served with
flaky hot biscuits baked in one of the very few real cookstoves to be
found on a homestead. Wilomene had a big shack, with blue paper on the
wall and a real range instead of a monkey stove with a drum set up in
the stovepipe for an oven--not many settlers could boast even a drum.
And always the supper was seasoned with Wilomene's laughter.
In fair weather I printed both back and front pages of the paper, and in
storms, when ink and machinery froze up--another complication in dealing
with the press--I printed the front page only, with headlines that
rivaled the big dailies. There was no news to warrant them, but they
were space-fillers. A dance at McClure would do for a scarehead. I put
in the legal notices, whatever news items I had handy or had time to set
up, and stuck in boilerplate as a filler. I could not count the times I
used the same plate over--but the settlers didn't mind reading it again;
they had little else to do in midwinter.
One day there came an indistinct message over the telephone line, which
consisted mainly of barb-wire fences, saying that the railroads were
blocked by storm and the stages were delayed. I threw down my mallet and
went home. There would be nothing on which to print the paper.
On the first stage to get through, four or five days later, there was a
note from the proof king: "Do not fail to publish last week's paper,
properly dated, along with the current issue." As long as there was one
proof notice running, the newspaper could not skip a single week.
When the two editions were printed I went home very ill. During the
course of a busy and eventful life I have managed--perhaps I should say
happened--to be a trail-breaker many times. And always I have had a
frail body which seemed bent on collapsing at the wrong time. Robust
health I have always coveted, but I have come to the conclusion that it
is not an essential in getting things done, and I have learned to ignore
as far as possible my lack of physical endurance.
The Widow Fergus came over and waited on me all night, using her simple
home remedies. It cost at least $25 to get a doctor out there, and many
times the emergency was over one way or the other before he arrived.
Homesteaders could not afford to call a doctor except in critical cases,
and they relied for the most part upon the amateur knowledge and help of
their neighbors.
From the beginning cooperation had been one of the strongest elements in
western life. When no foundation for a civilized life has been laid,
when every man must start at the beginning in providing himself with
such basic necessities as food and shelter, when water holes are few and
far between and water to sustain life must be carried many miles, men
have to depend on each other. Only together could the western settlers
have stood at all; alone they would have perished. In times of sickness
and individual disaster, it was the community that came to the rescue.
If only for self-preservation, it had to.
The next time the prints were held up by a storm I bought a roll of
wrapping paper at Randall's store, cut it into strips, and got the paper
out.
When I took the papers into the post office to mail, Mrs. Randall
laughed out loud, but Mr. Randall said reassuringly: "That's right, Miss
Ammons; learning to meet emergencies in this country is a valuable
thing."
The proof-sheet king wrote: "It is regrettable that a paper like that
should go into the government Land Offices--such an outlaw printer--"
I replied cheerfully, "Oh, I sent the land officials a good one. They
can read every number."
And printers were not to be found on every quarter-section.
Meantime, while I was hammering the paper into shape, Ida Mary had
settled the doubts of the homesteaders who feared that a slight young
city girl could not handle a frontier school. She was a good teacher.
She had a way of discipline with the half-grown plains boys who were
larger and stronger than she, and who, but for her serene firmness,
would have refused to accept her authority. Instead, they arrived early
to build the fire for her in the mornings, carried the heavy pails of
drinking water, and responded eagerly to her teaching. By means of the
school, she began to create a new community interest.
Another and perhaps the biggest factor in the community life of that
section was the Randall settlement at McClure. The Randalls threw up a
crude shell of a building for a community hall and now and then gave a
party or a dance for the homesteaders. Typical of the complete democracy
of the plains, everyone was invited, and everyone, young and old, came.
The parents put their children to bed in the lodge quarters of the
Halfway House while they joined in the festivity. The older ones
square-danced in the middle of the hall and we younger ones waltzed and
polkaed in a long line down the outside ring.
It was not always easy to get music for both round and square dances at
the same time, but Old Joe, a fiddler ever since the--Custer's battle,
was it?--would strike one bar in waltz time and the next in rhythm to
the "allemande left" of the square dances, and we got along beautifully.
Some of the homesteaders helped out with guitars; a few cowboys, riding
in from remote ranches, played accompaniments on jew's-harps; other cow
punchers contributed to the music as they danced with clicking of spurs
and clatter of high-heeled boots. And always the Randalls had a big
kettle of coffee to serve with the box lunches the guests provided for
themselves.
At Christmas Ida Mary and I were invited by the Millers for a house
party. It was the first well-established home we had seen since we
reached South Dakota. A small farm house, plainly furnished, but it had
been a home for a long time.
The Millers were counted a little above the average westerner in their
method of living. Stockmen on a small scale, they ran several hundred
head of cattle. Mrs. Miller was a dignified, reserved woman who
maintained shiny order in her house. "She even scalds her dishes," folks
said, which by the water-hauling populace was considered unpardonable
aristocracy. Imbert was the pride and mainstay of his parents. There
were warm fires, clean soft beds, and a real Christmas dinner. There was
corn-popping, and bob-sledding with jingling bells behind a prancing
team, with Imbert and Ida Mary sitting together as Imbert drove.
Imbert's devotion to Ida was casually accepted by the prairie folk. They
all knew him--a likable, steady young fellow, who seemed to have a way
with the girls. Homestead girls came and went, and flirtations to break
the monotony while they stayed were nothing unusual.
But when Imbert paid $10 for the teacher's box at a box-social held at
the schoolhouse one night, the old-timers gaped. It looked, they said,
as if that little tenderfoot teacher had Imbert Miller lariated. It beat
thunder how the western fellows did fall for eastern schoolmarms. Ten
dollars for a shoe box, without knowing what there was in it! Most of
the bachelor homesteaders bought boxes with a view to what they would
get to eat--potato salad and homemade cake.
Because we were no longer oppressed by a sense of loneliness, Ida and I
came to love best of all the evenings at home in the tiny shack with
its gay cushions and bright curtains; we enjoyed the good hot supper of
spuds and bacon, or rabbit which some neighbor had brought; hot
biscuits, chokecherry jelly and coffee simmering gently on the back of
the stove. Such a feast, however, was only on rare occasions. After
supper, with the world shut out, we read the mail from home. "You've
done so well, girls, I'm proud of you," our father wrote. "I'll be
looking to see you home next spring."
I believe Ida Mary was happier that winter than she had ever been, and
her work was easier for her than mine for me, with fewer hardships,
thanks to the Dunns and to Imbert who did much to make it easier for
her.
During that whole winter the Randalls were the mainstay of the
community. They were one of those families who are the backbone of the
old West, always ready to serve their neighbors. They were like old
trees standing alone on the prairie, that have weathered the storms and
grown strong, with their sheltering branches outspread.
When there were signs of a blizzard in the air, it was the Randalls who
sent out their sleighs to round up the women who lived alone and bring
them in to shelter. When a doctor was needed, the Randalls got one.
Young Mrs. Layton was having her first baby sooner than she expected. It
was a black night, twenty below zero. The makeshift telephone line was
out of order, as it usually was when it was needed.
Mr. Randall called his sons. "You'll have to go for Doc Newman.... Yes,
I know it's a bad trip. But you boys know how to take care of
yourselves. Make it--if you can." And they rode hell-for-leather.
It seemed to me there never was a time when at least one of the Randalls
wasn't riding horseback over the prairie with an urgent message or
errand for the homesteaders. Pay? Hell, no! Weren't these newcomers
funny!
I remember one evening in January with a storm raging. I had run to the
Randalls' house from the print shop. They sent the sleigh to pick up Ida
Mary and Wilomene. By dark half a dozen men were marooned at the Halfway
House, three of them strangers passing through, three of them plainsmen
unable to get home. A little later two homestead women, who had come in
from Pierre on the stage and could not go on, joined us.
Somehow there was room for all of them in the big, bare-floored living
room. Chairs with an odd assortment of calico-covered cushions were
scattered over the room. Crude, old-fashioned tables were set here and
there, each with a coal-oil lamp. By the light from the brightly
polished chimneys some read newspapers more than a week old, others
looked hungrily through the mail-order catalogs which always piled up in
country post offices. And Wilomene White, telling some of her homestead
anecdotes, filled the room with laughter. Her most harassing experiences
seemed funny to Wilomene.
In the middle of the room the big heating stove, stoked with coal, grew
red hot as the wind howled and whistled down the chimney and the snow
lashed against the windows of the old log house.
Opening off one end of the long room were the small cubicles that served
as bedrooms where the women guests would sleep, crowded together, two or
three in a bed. Cots would be put up in the living room for the Randall
young ones. But the strangers? Leave that to the Randalls--always room
for a few more.
"Do you know," said Mr. Randall, "I am never happier than on a night
like this, sitting around the fire, knowing my family are all here and
safe; and that strangers from out of the storm have found shelter under
my roof."
When the weather grew milder and I could ride back and forth again
almost daily, it was Mr. Randall who had one of the boys on the ranch
wrangle me a range pony which, he said, was "broke" to ride. He _was_
broke to ride. The only difficulty was to mount him. It was all right
once one got on his back, but only an expert bronco buster could do it.
Every time I set foot in the stirrup he went up in the air, pitched, and
bucked and sun-fished.
I couldn't draw $10 a week as a printer and waste my time on an outlaw
bronc. So I solved it by tying him short with a heavy lariat to the
corner post of the hay barn so that he could not get his head up or
down, nor his heels up very far. Then I gave one leap into the saddle,
Ida cut the rope close to his neck, and away we went to the print shop,
where I wrestled with the old, worn-out press. Fortunately, there was no
trick to dismounting, although I always expected the worst.
* * * * *
One day I broke loose. I had worked all morning and used up half a can
of grease on the press, and still it stuck. I picked up a hammer and
tried to break it to pieces. I threw one piece of battered equipment
after another across the prairie. ("Don't go near the print shop," a
little Randall boy warned all comers; "the printer's a-actin'.")
I scrubbed the ink from my hands and face and boarded the stage. I was
off to Presho to meet the proof-sheet king.
E. L. Senn was a magnate in the frontier newspaper field. His career is
particularly interesting because it is, in more ways than one, typical
of the qualities which made many western men successful. Basically, he
was a reformer, a public-spirited man who backed, with every means at
his command, and great personal courage, the issues he believed for the
good of the country, and fought with equal intensity those which were
harmful.
In the early nineties he had moved out to a homestead and started a
small cattle ranch. In itself that was a daring gesture, as outlaw
gangs--cattle rustlers and horse thieves--infested the region and had
become so bold and influential that it was difficult to get any settlers
to take up land in it. He started his first newspaper on his homestead,
miles from a post office, for the purpose of carrying on his fight with
the cattle thieves. In retaliation the outlaws burned him out.
E. L. Senn promptly moved his paper to the nearest post office at a
small crossroads station to continue the fight. He incorporated in this
paper final proof notices for the settlers. When the fight with the
rustlers had been waged to a successful close, he expanded his
final-proof business; now he owned the greatest proof-sheet monopoly
that ever operated in the West, with a chain of thirty-five papers
strung over that part of South Dakota.
As civilization pushed into a new district the king picked up another
printing outfit and made entry to the Post Office Department at
Washington of another newspaper. Sometimes he moved his own outfits from
one region to another, but often he merely shut the door on an old plant
not worth moving and let it return to scrap-iron while the print shop
tumbled down with it.
It cost a lot of money, he used to complain, with investments
depreciating like that and the proof business so short-lived, when the
settlers filled a section and all proved up at once. And he had to run a
paper a year before it became a legal publication.
But the proof sheets soon became gold mines, the plants costing but a
few hundred dollars and the expenses of operating only ten to fifteen
dollars a week--a cheap printer, the prints, the ink. Established at
inland post offices they became the nuclei for crossroad trading points.
At this time he had embarked on another cause, prohibition, which was
causing great excitement in South Dakota. A few years later, with his
proof sheets extending through the Black Hills, he bought a newspaper in
Deadwood, the notorious old mining town which is usually associated in
people's minds with the more lurid aspects of the Wild West. He found
conditions all that they had been painted, dominated by underworld vice
rings, with twenty-four saloons for its population of 3000, and gambling
halls, operated as openly as grocery stores, running twenty-four hours a
day. Even the two dance halls exceeded all that has been written about
similar places.
With his newspaper as his only weapon E. L. Senn set out to clean up
Deadwood. In the fight he sunk his own profits until he had to sell most
of his newspapers, emerging from it almost penniless.