over the prairie. When he entered the hotel in Presho where I was
awaiting him my courage almost failed me. He was wise enough not to ask
me what was wrong. He must have been secretly amused by the very small,
frightened girl with the determined expression in her direct blue eyes.
To my surprise, he asked no questions. Instead he took me to supper and
then to a moving picture, the first I had seen in the West. His kindness
so melted my exasperation with the press that I was at a loss to know
how to begin the fighting talk I had come to make. But the film ended
with a woman driving sheepmen off her claim, and with that example to
fortify my ebbing courage, I asked for a new printing press. And I got
it!
The "new" press was a second-hand one, but in comparison to the Noah's
Ark model it was a mechanical wonder. I did not know that the proof king
was facing a financial crisis at that time. But I've always thought the
blow of having to buy a press was not half so bad as the shock of having
a printer who would ask for one.
While I was enjoying the new press one day the Reeds came by McClure.
"Well, good-by, folks."
"Oh, are you going?"
"Yes, proved up. Going back to God's country."
God's country to the Reeds was Missouri; to others it was Illinois, or
Iowa or Ohio. Day after day homesteaders left with their final receipt
as title to their land, pending issuance of a government patent.
Throwing back the type of the "dead" notices, I could almost tell who
would be pulling out of the country.
"Going back in time to get in the spring crop," farmers would say.
Land grabbers they were called. Taking 160 acres of land with them, and
leaving nothing. Most of them never came back.
And while this exodus was taking place, here and there a settler was
drifting onto the Lower Brulé, a "lucky number" who had come ahead of
time--there was so much to do getting settled. And by these restless
signs of change over the plains, we knew that it was spring.
And one week I set up for the paper, "Notice is hereby given that Ida
Mary Ammons has filed her intention to make proof ..."
[Illustration]
VI
"UTOPIA"
With the first tang of spring in the air we cleaned the shack, put up
fresh curtains and did a little baking. Then we grew reckless and went
into an orgy of extravagance--we took a bath in the washtub. Wash basins
were more commensurate with the water supply. Then we scrubbed the floor
with the bath water. In one way and another, the settlers managed to
develop a million square miles of frontier dirt without a bathtub on it.
For the first time we stopped to take stock, to look ahead. For months
there had been time and energy for nothing but getting through the
winter. We had been too busy to discuss any plans beyond the proving
up.
"What are we going to do after we prove up?" I asked, and Ida Mary shook
her head. "I don't know," she admitted.
In some ways it was a relief to have the end in sight. I hated the
minute routine of putting a paper together, with one letter of type at a
time. I hated the hard mechanical work. Most of our neighbors were
proving up, going back. But we realized, with a little shock of
surprise, that we did not want to go back. Imperceptibly we had come to
identify ourselves with the West; we were a part of its life, it was a
part of us. Its hardships were more than compensated for by its
unshackled freedom. To go back now would be to make a painful
readjustment to city life; it would mean hunting jobs, being tied to the
weariness of office routine. The opportunities for a full and active
life were infinitely greater here on the prairie. There was a pleasant
glow of possession in knowing that the land beneath our feet was ours.
For a little while we faced uncertainly the problem that other
homesteaders were facing--that of going back, of trying to fit ourselves
in again to city ways. But the eagerness to return to city life had
gone. Then, too, there was something in the invigorating winter air and
bright sunshine which had given me new resistance. There had been a
continuous round of going down, and coming back with a second wind; but
I had gained a little each time and was stronger now than before.
In the mid-afternoon, after our orgy of spring house-cleaning, with
everything fresh and clean, Ida Mary said, "Someone is coming--straight
across our land."
"Who is it?" I asked. We had learned to recognize every horse in that
part of the country a mile away. But this was not a plainsman.
We rushed into the shack and made a mad scramble through the trunk, but
before we could get dressed there came a knock at the door. "Will you
wait a moment, please?" I called. It was the custom of the plains for a
man to wait outside while his hostess dressed or put her house in order,
there being no corner where he could stay during the process. If the
weather prohibited outdoor waiting, he could retire to the hayshed.
A pleasant voice said, "I'll be glad to wait." But as I whispered,
"Throw me those slippers," and Ida Mary said _sotto voce_, "What dress
shall I wear?" we heard a muffled chuckle through the thin walls.
When we threw open the door to a slightly built man with brown hair and
a polished air about him, I knew it was the cartoonist from Milwaukee.
Only a city man and an artist could look like that.
"How do you do, Mr. Van Leshout."
"How did you know?" he said, as he came in.
"So you were a Lucky Number, after all," seemed a more appropriate
response than telling him that it was spring and something had been
bound to happen, something like the arrival of a cartoonist from
Milwaukee.
"Are you going to be a settler?" Ida Mary asked doubtfully.
He laughed. Yes, he had taken a homestead close to the Sioux settlement
so that he could paint some Indian pictures.
Odd how we kept forgetting the Indians, but up to now we hadn't even
seen one, nor were we likely to, we thought, barricaded as they were in
their own settlement. "But they are wonderful," he assured us
enthusiastically; "magnificent people to paint; old, seamed faces and
some really beautiful young ones. Character, too, and glamor!"
We invited him to tea, but he explained that he must get back to his
claim before dark. It was already too late, Imbert told him; he would
have to wait for the moon to rise. Imbert had dropped in, as he had a
habit of doing, and seeing him through the eyes of an easterner we
realized what fascination the lives of these plainsmen had for city men.
In honor of the occasion we got out the china cups, a wanton luxury on
the plains, and tea and cake. As they rode off, Van Leshout called to
us: "Come over to the shack. I built it myself. You'll know it by the
crepe on the door."
As the two men melted into the darkness we closed the door reluctantly
against the soft spring air. Strange that we had found prairie life
dull!
One morning soon after the unexpected appearance of the Milwaukee
cartoonist I awoke to find the prairie in blossom. Only in the spring is
there color over that great expanse; but for a few weeks the grass is
green and the wild flowers bloom in delicate beauty--anemones, tiny
white and yellow and pink blossoms wherever the eye rests. I galloped to
the print shop with the wind blowing through my hair, rejoicing in the
sudden beauty, and found myself too much in holiday mood to get to work.
Suddenly I looked up from the type case to find an arresting figure in
the doorway, a middle-aged man with an air of power and authority about
him.
"I'm waiting for the stage," he said. "May I come in?"
I offered him the only chair there was--an upturned nail keg--and he sat
down.
"Where do you come from?" he asked abruptly.
"St. Louis," I said.
"But why come out here to run a newspaper?"
"I didn't. I came to homestead with my sister, but the job was here."
Because he was amused at the idea, because the function of these
frontier papers seemed unimportant to him, I began to argue the point,
and finally, thoroughly aroused, described the possibilities which grew
in my own mind as I discussed them. There was a tremendous job for the
frontier newspaper to do, I pointed out. Did he know the extent of this
great homestead movement and the future it promised? True, the frontier
papers were small in size, but they could become a power in the
development of this raw country.
"How?" he demanded.
I think I fully realized it for the first time myself then. "As a medium
of cooperation," I told him.
He got up and walked to the window, hands in pockets, and looked out
over the prairie. Then he turned around. "But the development of this
country is a gigantic enterprise," he protested. "It would require the
backing of corporations and millions of dollars. In fact, it's too big
for any organization but the government to tackle. It's no job for a
woman." His eyes twinkled as he contrasted my diminutive size with the
great expanse of undeveloped plains. "What could you do?"
"Of course it's big," I admitted, "and the settlers do need lots of
money. But they need cooperation, too. Their own strength, acting
together, counts more than you know. And a newspaper could be made a
voice for these people."
"Utopian," he decided.
Bill appeared at the door to tell him that "The stage has been a-waitin'
ten minutes, now."
He handed me his card, shook hands and rushed out. I looked at the card:
"Halbert Donovan and Company, Brokers, Investment Bankers, New York
City." The fact that such men were coming into the country, looking it
over, presaged development. Not only the eyes of the landseekers but
those of industry and finance were turning west.
I stared after the stagecoach until it was swallowed up in distance. My
own phrases kept coming back to me. There was a job to be done, a job
for a frontier newspaper, and soon the McClure _Press_ would be a thing
of the past--as soon as the homesteaders had made proof. Slowly an idea
was taking shape.
I slammed the print-shop door shut, mounted Pinto and loped home. I
turned the horse loose to graze and walked into the shack. With my back
against the door in a defensive attitude I said abruptly, "I'm going to
start a newspaper on the reservation."
Ida Mary slowly put down the bread knife. "But where are you going to
get the money?" she asked practically.
"I don't know, yet. I have to plan what to do first, don't I, and then
look around for a way to do it." That was the formula followed day after
day by the settlers.
"It's too bad you didn't register for a claim in the Drawing," she said
thoughtfully. "After all, there is no reason why you shouldn't have a
claim too."
"I could still get a homestead on the Brulé," I declared, "and I can run
the newspaper on the homestead."
The more we discussed the plan the more Ida Mary liked the idea of
moving to the Strip where so many new people would be coming. We would
work together, we planned, and the influence of the newspaper would
radiate all over the reservation. But, it occurred to us, coming
abruptly down to earth, with no roads or telephones or mail service, how
were the settlers to receive the radiation?
This was a stickler, but having gone so far with our plans we were
reluctant to abandon them. Where there was a newspaper there should be a
post office. Then we would start a post office! Through it the land
notices would be received and the newspaper mailed to the subscribers.
The settlers could get the paper and their mail at the same place. We
decided that Ida Mary would run it. Somehow it did not occur to us that
the government has something to say about post offices and who shall run
them. Or that the government might not want to put a post office on my
homestead just to be obliging.
But once a person has learned to master difficulties as they come up, he
begins to feel he can handle anything; so Ida took her final proof
receipt to a loan office in Presho.
"How much can I borrow on this?" she asked, handing it to the agent.
"Oh, about eight hundred dollars."
"That isn't enough. Most homesteaders are getting a thousand-dollar loan
when they prove up."
"Yes, but your land's a mile long and only a quarter wide--"
Ida Mary was not easily bluffed. She reached for the receipt. "I'll try
Sedgwick at the bank."
"We'll make it nine hundred," the agent said, "but not a cent more. I
know that quarter section; it's pretty rough."
Homesteading was no longer a precarious venture. A homesteader could
borrow $1000 on almost any quarter-section in the West--more on good
land, well located. It was a criminal offense to sell or mortgage
government land, but who could wait six months or a year for the
government to issue a patent (deed) to the land? Many of the settlers
must borrow money to make proof. So the homestead loan business became a
sleight-of-hand performance.
The homesteader could not get this receipt of title until he paid the
Land Office for the land, and he could not pay for the land until he had
the receipt to turn over to the loan agent. So it was all done
simultaneously--money, mortgages, final-proof receipts; like juggling
half a dozen balls in the air at once. It was one of the most ingenious
methods of finance in operation. Banks and loan companies went into
operation to handle homestead loans, and eastern capital began flowing
in for the purpose.
Being familiar with Land Office procedure from my work on the McClure
_Press_, I knew that not every winner of a claim on the Lower Brulé
reservation would come to prove it up. A few of them would relinquish
their rights. The buying and selling of relinquishments, in fact,
became a big business for the land agents. There was a mad rush for
relinquishments on the Strip, where landseekers were paying as high as
$1000 to $1200 for the right to file on a claim.
I wanted a relinquishment on the reservation, in the very center of it,
and I found one for $400.
Then I made a deal with a printing equipment firm for a small plant--a
new one! And, although there were only a dozen settlers or so on the
land, I pledged 400 proof notices as collateral.
These proofs at $5 apiece were as sure as government bonds; that is, if
the settlers on the Brulé stayed long enough to prove up, if the
newspaper lived, and if no one else started a paper in competition. But
on that score the printers' supply company was satisfied. Its officers
thought there was no danger of anyone else trailing an outfit into that
region.
We arranged for straight credit on lumber for a print shop, there being
nothing left to mortgage. From now on we were dealing in futures. In
just two short weeks I had become a reckless plunger, aided and abetted
by Ida Mary. The whole West was gambling on the homesteaders' making
good.
Long we hesitated over the letter home, telling of our new plans. Under
the new laws, one must stay on a claim fourteen months, instead of the
eight months required when Ida Mary had filed. At last we wrote to
explain that we were not coming home this spring. We were going on to a
new frontier.
Earnestly as we believed in the plans we had made, it was hard to make
that letter carry our convictions, difficult to explain the logic of our
moving to an Indian reservation so that Ida Mary could run a
non-existent post office in order to mail copies of a non-existent
newspaper to non-existent settlers. Looking at it like that, we were
acting in blind faith.
* * * * *
And one day a funny little caravan made its way across the prairie,
breaking a new trail as it went. A shack with a team hitched to it, a
wagon loaded with immigrant goods; and a printing press; ahead, leading
the way, a girl on horseback.
Again it was Huey Dunn who jacked up our old shack that morning when the
term of school was over and put it on wheels for the trip to the
reservation--twelve miles around by McClure, a few miles closer by a
short-cut across the plains. Huey decided on the latter way, and I rode
on ahead to see that the load of printing equipment should be put on the
right quarter-section, while Ida Mary came in the shack. She sat in the
rocking chair, gazing placidly out of the window as it made its way
slowly across the plains.
We had hired two homesteaders to haul out lumber and put up a small
building for the newspaper and post office, although we had not yet got
the necessary petition signed for a post office. We could not do that
before the settlers arrived. A small shed room was built a few feet from
the business structure as a lean-to for our migratory shack.
When I arrived at the claim the men who had hauled out the load of
equipment were gone. Suddenly there came on one of those torrential
downpours that often deluge the dry plains in spring. It was pitch black
as night came on, and no sight of Huey and Ida Mary. The rain stopped at
length. Throwing on a sweater, I paced back and forth through the
dripping grass listening for the sound of the horses. At last I went
back and crouched over the fire in the little lean-to, waiting. There
was nothing else I could do.
At midnight Huey arrived with the shack. He and Ida Mary were cold and
wet and hungry. They had not had a bite to eat since early morning. Just
as they had reached Cedar Creek, usually a little dry furrow in the
earth, a flood of water came rushing in a torrent, making a mad, swollen
stream that spread rapidly, and they were caught in it. When they got in
the middle of the stream the shack began to fill with water. Huey
grabbed Ida Mary and got her on one horse while he mounted the other,
and the horses swam to land.
The next morning the sun came out, flooding the new-washed plains. It
was a different world from the harsh, drab prairie to which we had come
eight months ago. Here the earth was a soft green carpet, heavily
sprinkled with spring flowers, white and lavender hyacinths, bluebells,
blossoms flaming red, yellow and blue, and snow-white, waxen flowers
that wither at the touch and yet bloom on the hard desert.
Huey Dunn squared the migratory shack and rolled the wheels from under.
And there in the Land of the Burnt Thigh, the Indians' name for the
Brulé, I filed my claim and started a newspaper. The only woman, so it
was recorded, ever to establish a newspaper on an Indian reservation.
And if one were to pick up the first issues of that newspaper he would
see under the publisher's name, "Published on Section 31, Township 108
North, Range 77W, of the 5th Principal Meridian," the only way of
describing its location.
Ida's claim had seemed to us at first sight to be in the midst of
nowhere. Compared to this, it had been in a flourishing neighborhood.
For here there was nothing but the land--waiting. No sign of habitation,
no living thing--yes, an antelope standing rigid against the horizon.
For a terrified moment it seemed that there could be no future
here--only time. And Ida Mary and I shrank from two very confident young
women to two very young and frightened girls.
But there was work to be done. Our tar-covered cabin sat parallel to and
perhaps ten feet from the drop-siding print shop--a crude store building
12 × 24 feet, which we called the Brulé business block. We had a side
door put on near the back end of each building so that we could slip
easily from house to shop. We did a little remodeling of our old shack.
Befitting our new position as business leaders, we built a 6 × 8
shed-roof kitchen onto the back of the shack and a clothes closet in one
end of it; we even bought a little cookstove with an oven in it.
One morning we saw a team and wagon angling across the Strip toward our
place. Upon the top of the wagon there perched a high rectangular
object, a funny-looking thing, bobbing up and down as the wagon jolted
over the rough ground. It was Harvey with the outhouse. There was
nothing left now on Ida Mary's claim but the mortgage.
Confronted suddenly by so many problems of getting started, I stood
"just plumb flabbergasted," as Coyote Cal, a cowpuncher, always remarked
when unexpectedly confronted by a group of women.
And yet I knew what I wanted to do. I had known since the day I heard
myself telling the New York broker. An obscure little newspaper in a
desolate homestead country: but, given courage enough, that little
printing outfit would be a tool, a voice for the people's needs. It was
a gigantic task, this taming of the frontier.
And meantime, getting down to reality, I had a newspaper without a
country, without a living thing but prairie dogs and rattlesnakes to
read it. And around us a hundred thousand acres on which no furrow had
ever been turned.
We did not know where to begin. There wasn't a piece of kindling wood on
the whole reservation. We had brought what food and water we could with
us. Food, fuel, water. Those were basic problems that had to be met.
And then, within a week, almost imperceptibly, a change began to come
over the reservation. The Lucky Numbers were coming onto the land. On
the claim to the west a house went up and wagons of immigrant goods were
unloaded. Ida Mary rode over one evening and found that our new neighbor
was a farmer, Christopher Christopherson, from Minnesota. He had brought
plows and work horses and was ready to break sod, another example of the
farmers who were leaving the settled states for cheap land farther
west.
Mrs. Christopherson was a thrifty Swedish farm woman who would manage
well. There was a big family of children, and each child old enough to
work was given work to do.
Around us new settlers were arriving daily and we felt that the time had
come to start out among them with our post-office petition. With Pinto
as our only means of transportation it proved to be a slow job.
One day, dropping suddenly down off the tableland into a draw, I came
squarely upon a shack. I rode up, and an old white-whiskered man invited
me in. His wife, a gray-haired, sharp-featured woman, appeared to me
much younger than he. I explained my errand.
"For mercy sake," the woman said, "here you are starting a post office
and I thought you was one of them high-falutin' city homesteaders a
rec-connoiterin' around. Listen to that, Pa, a post office in four miles
of us."
The woman put out a clean cup and plate. "Set up," she said. "We ain't
signing any petition till you've had your dinner. There's plenty of
biscuit. I stirred up an extry cup of flour and I said to Pa, 'They'll
be et!'"
I ate salt pork, biscuit and sorghum while she talked.
"So you're going to handle newspapers too. Oh, print one!" She sighed.
"Seems to me that would be a pestiferous job. We're going to have a
newspaper out here, Pa, did you ever--?" Pa never did.
Where had I seen these two old people before, and heard this woman talk?
"Where you from?" she asked, but before I could answer, she went on,
"We're from Blue Springs."
Pa wrote "David H. Wagor" on the petition.
One morning Imbert Miller came with his team and buggy to take us out
into a more remote district to get signers. We found two or three
farmers, a couple of business men with their families, and several young
bachelors, each building the regular rough-lumber shack. They were
surprised and elated over the prospect of a post office.
After wandering over a long vacant stretch, Imbert began to look for a
place where he could feed the horses and get us some food. At last we
saw bright new lumber glistening in the sun. As we drove up to the
crudely built cabin we saw an emblem painted on the front--a big black
circle with the letter V in it, and underneath, the word "Rancho."
Standing before the open doorway was an easel with a half-finished
Indian head on it.
"Van Leshout's!" Ida Mary exclaimed.
He came out, unshaven, and sweeping an old paint-daubed hat from his
head with a low bow. "It's been years since I saw a human being," he
exclaimed. "You'll want grub."
Building a cabin, learning to prepare his own meals, getting accustomed
to solitude were new experiences for the cartoonist from Milwaukee.
"Not many courses," he said, as he dragged the spuds out from under the
bunk; "just two--b'iled potatoes, first course; flapjacks and 'lasses,
second course; and coffee."
"You've discovered the Indians," we said, pointing to the canvas.
The Indians, yes, but they hadn't been much of a cure for loneliness.
What were we doing on the reservation?
We brought out the post-office petition and told him about the
newspaper. I explained that I had filed on a claim on the reservation.
"I looked for the crepe on the door as we drove up," I told him.
"You have a claim on the reservation? To hell with the crepe!" he said
in high spirits.
On the road home, seeing Imbert's elation, it occurred to me that I had
never taken into consideration the fact that Imbert Miller lived near
the borders of the reservation and that the "fence" would not separate
him from Ida Mary now. How deeply she had weighed the question I did not
know.