toward the claim. From a slope where she could not be seen she watched
the two men. The evening wore on. At eleven o'clock, secure in the
knowledge that the owner had failed to arrive, the men pitched camp.
Ida Mary rode quietly up the draw and galloped up to the cabin. "They
are sleeping on the claim," she said breathlessly. This meant that next
morning, as soon as the Land Office opened, one of them would be there
to slap a contest on the land, while the other held possession. It also
meant that when Rosie Carrigan arrived she would find her homestead
gone.
"What shall we do?" I asked anxiously.
Ida Mary considered for a moment. "One of us must be Rosie Carrigan,"
she decided. She ran out to hitch the team to the wagon while I
hurriedly dragged a few things out of the house and loaded them--things
such as an immigrant must carry with him, bedding, boxes, a traveling
bag or two. We threw them in the wagon, circled off a mile or two, and
then drove straight back onto the land. A few rods from the
claim-jumpers we drove a stake, hung a lantern on it, and began to
unhitch, shivering with excitement and apprehension.
The noise of our arrival roused the two men, who stirred, and then with
an exclamation got to their feet. We saw the flare of a match. One of
them had drawn out his watch and was looking at it. Under the
smoked-lantern light we looked at ours--it was ten minutes to twelve!
We heard them murmur to each other, but continued unhitching the horses,
dragging the hastily assembled articles out of the wagon. Then my heart
began to pound. One of the men walked over to us. He was short, burly,
heavy-jawed.
"Here, you can't stay here! Where do you think you are?" he demanded.
We made no answer, but the bed I contrived to make under his watching
eyes was a hopeless tangle.
"We're on this land ..." he blustered. He was trying to run a bluff, to
find out whether we were on the right quarter-section or whether, like
him, we were land-grabbers.
"I guess I'll have to have your identification," he said again. "What's
your name?"
"Rosie Carrigan," I answered, "from Ohio. What are you doing on my land,
anyway? You have no right here!"
He hesitated, weighing the situation and the possibilities.
"Get off!" I blazed at him.
He got. The two men rolled up their bedding and moved on, and Ida Mary
and I sat limply on the ground watching them go.
In case they should come back we decided to hold the land for the night,
gathered up the bedding, and slept in the wagon--when we slept.
At daybreak we were wakened by the rumble of a heavy-loaded wagon coming
slowly over the prairie behind a limping team. A tall, slim girl and a
slight boy sat high on the front seat. They drove up beside our wagon.
Fastened on the back of their load was a chicken coop, and as they
stopped a rooster stuck its head out and crowed.
The girl was Rosie Carrigan. The boy was her brother. And the rooster
was the first of his kind to settle on the reservation. They had been
delayed by footsore horses. But no land-grabbers, no one except
ourselves, ever knew that Rosie Carrigan did not establish residence at
ten minutes before midnight.
Not long after this, a rough-looking stranger rode up to an old man's
shack and took some papers out of his pocket. "There's some mistake
here, pardner," he said. "Looks like you're on the wrong quarter. This
is section--" he read the description, "and it happens to be mine."
"But that's the number of the claim I filed on at the Drawing," the old
man assured him.
After much arguing and bullying, with the old man contending he was
right, the stranger ordered him off the land.
"You don't pull that stuff on me, pardner; you'd better vacate."
"Now keep your shirt on, stranger," the old man said, with a twitching
of his long white mustache, inviting him in for a bite to eat while he
hunted up his land receipts.
"I'm all crippled up with the rheumatiz," he groaned as he hobbled back
into a corner of the room to get the papers. "A pore way for the
gov'ment to open up land, I says.
"Now down in the Oklahomy Run we used speed and brains to stake a claim,
beating the other fellow to it. But it was a tough bunch down there, and
sometimes, stranger, we--" he turned and pointed a gun straight at the
man seated at the table, "we used a gun."
The old man who had stood leaning on his cane at the Drawing,
complaining that neither legs nor brains counted in winning a claim,
used his ingenuity to hold one.
During those last days of settling, Ida Mary and I lived in a state of
tension and suspense. We watched our land plat and often rode out over
the prairie to watch for the arrival of settlers whose land was being
spotted. After a few of our deceptions, the claim jumpers became wary of
the newspaper and cursed "that snip of a newspaper woman." And the girl
who ran the post office was a government employee.
Here was a job for _The Wand_. In the next issue there appeared a
black-headline article. It began:
"It has been reported that owing to the swift settlement of the Brulé,
Secret Service Agents from the Federal Land Department are being sent
out to protect the settlers against claim jumpers who are said to be
nesting there. This tampering with government lands is a criminal
offense, and it is understood that legal action will be pushed against
all offenders."
One afternoon some two weeks later there walked into the print shop a
man with an official manner about him. He called for the publisher of
the paper.
"What do you know about this?" he demanded, pointing to the article.
"What authority did you have for it?"
I was speechless. He was a Federal Agent.
"Well," I said at last, defiantly, "if the government is not furnishing
agents on the land to look after these things, it should."
And it did. The agent looked into the matter, claim-jumping quieted
down, there were fewer "spotters" swarming around, and soon, when their
six months of grace had expired, the Lucky Numbers were all on the
ground.
[Illustration]
VIII
EASY AS FALLING OFF A LOG
"Any old cayuse can enter a race," Bronco Benny remarked one day. "It's
coming in under the wire that counts."
Ida Mary and I had saddled ourselves with a newspaper, a post office, a
grocery store, an Indian trading post, and all the heavy labor of
hauling, delivery of mail and odd jobs that were entailed. We were
appalled to realize the weight of the responsibility we had assumed,
with every job making steady, daily demands on us, with the Ammons
finances to be juggled and stretched to cover constant demands on them.
And there was no turning back.
The Lucky Numbers were all settled on their claims. Already trails were
broken to the print shop from every direction. There was no time to
plan, no time in which to wonder how one was to get things done. The
important thing was to keep doing them. On the whole Strip there was not
a vacant quarter-section. Already a long beaten trail led past the
print-shop door north and south from Pierre to Presho; another crossed
the reservation east and west from McClure to the Indian tepees and the
rangeland beyond. Paths led in from all parts of the Strip like spokes,
with Ammons the hub around which the wheel of the reservation's
activities revolved.
From every section of the settlement the people gravitated to my claim;
they came with their needs, with their plans, with their questions. In
the first days we heard their needs rather than filled them, and the
store and print shop became a place for the exchange of ideas and news,
so that I was able to distinguish before long between the needs of the
individual and those which were common to all, to clarify in my own mind
the problems that beset the settlers as a whole, and to learn how some
among them solved these problems.
Subscriptions for _The Wand_ came in from the outside world, from people
who had friends homesteading on the Brulé, and from people interested in
the growth of the West. We had almost a thousand subscriptions at a
dollar a year, and the money went into a team, equipment, and operation
expenses. Ma Wagor helped in the store--she liked the "confusement," she
said. She loved having people around her, and her curiosity about them
all was insatiable. Ida or I generally made the mail trip.
The heavy labor we hired done when we could, but many times we hitched
the team to the big lumber wagon and drove to Presho to bring out our
own load of goods, including barrels of coal-oil and gasoline for
automobiles, for there were quite a few cars on the reservation.
Automobiles, in fact, were the only modern convenience in the lives of
these modern pioneers who stepped from the running board straight back
into the conditions of covered-wagon days.
The needs of the people were tremendous and insistent. And the needs of
the people had to find expression in some way if they were to be met.
The print shop was ready, _The Wand_ was ready, I was ready--the only
hitch was that I couldn't operate the new press we had bought, because
we couldn't put it together. Ida Mary and I labored futilely with bolts
and screws and other iron parts for two days.
I had sat down in the doorway to rest, exhausted by my tussle with the
machinery, when I saw a man coming from the Indian settlement. He
appeared against the horizon as if he had ridden out of the ether,
riding slowly, straight as an Indian, but as he came closer I saw he was
a white man. At the door he dismounted, threw the reins on the ground,
and walked past me into the store, lifting his slouch hat as he entered.
A man rather short of stature, sturdy, with a wide-set jaw and flat
features that would have been homely had they not been so strong.
He looked with surprise through the open door of the print shop with its
stalled machinery.
"What's the trouble?" he asked.
I explained my predicament. "I can't put the thing together and I don't
know what to do about it. It would be almost impossible to get an
experienced printer out here to start it for me."
He smiled broadly, walked into the shop, and without a word fixed the
forms, adjusted the press and turned out the first issue of that
strange-fated newspaper.
He would accept no pay and no thanks. "My name is Farraday, Fred
Farraday," he said. "I'll ride over next Friday and help you get the
paper out."
With that he mounted his blue-roan pony and rode away as deliberately as
he had come. Every Friday after that he returned to help print the
paper. Naturally we were curious about the man who had solved our
desperate need for a printer in so surprising a way, but Fred was
content to come week after week and disappear again on the horizon
without any explanation as to who he was, where he came from, where he
went when he rode out of sight each Friday.
We tried him with hints, with bland suppositions, with bare-faced
questions, and could not break through his taciturnity. But even Fred
had no defense against Ma Wagor's curiosity, and little by little,
through her persistent questioning, we learned that he had a homestead
near the Agency, that he had run a newspaper in the Northwest, and that
he had been connected with the Indian Service.
The business of the newspaper increased rapidly, and advertising began
to come in from the small surrounding towns. Ma Wagor was kept busy in
the store, selling groceries to the Indians who camped around for a day
dickering, and to the white settlers who were generally in a hurry. So
little time! So much to do! Ida Mary helped me in the print shop, and
before long we found we needed an expert typesetter. And I found
one--unlikely as it may seem--on an adjoining claim. Kathryn Slattery,
tall and slim and red-haired, preferred setting type to sitting alone in
her shack, and with her striking appearance as an added attraction the
popularity of the settlement with the young men homesteaders mounted.
In this odd fashion I found on the prairie both a printer and a
typesetter, and for problems of format for _The Wand_ there was always
the cartoonist from Milwaukee. Late one afternoon I spied a strange,
moving object in the far distance, something that bobbed up and down
with the regularity of a clock pendulum. I asked Ida Mary in some
bewilderment whether she could identify it. At last we saw it was a
stiff-jointed quadruped with some sort of jumping-jack on top, bouncing
up and down at every step. As it drew closer, heading for the shop, Ida
Mary began to laugh. "It's Alexander Van Leshout," she said.
The cartoonist scrambled down from his mount and led the old,
stiff-jointed, sway-backed horse up to the door. "I would have called
sooner," he explained, sweeping off his hat in a low bow, "but I have
been breaking in my new steed. Let me introduce Hop-Along Cassidy."
It was the newspaper that had brought him, he went on to say.
"Editorially it's not so bad, but the make-up would give anyone sore
eyes." It was Van Leshout who helped with the make-up of the paper, and
he made drawings and had plates made that would do credit to any
newspaper.
He was a strange character in this setting, like an exotic plant in an
old-fashioned garden, and his eccentricities aroused considerable
amusement among the settlers, although he became in time a favorite with
them, serving as a sort of counter-irritant to the strain of pioneer
life. Men who trudged all day through the broiling sun turning furrows
in that stubborn soil were entertained by the strange antics of a man
who sat before his cabin in the shade (when there was any) painting the
Indians. It was a rare treat to hear him go on, they admitted, but he
was not to be taken seriously.
Among the subscriptions I received for _The Wand_ was one from the New
York broker, Halbert Donovan, with a letter addressed to McClure.
"Through the McClure _Press_ which I had sent me," it read, "I learned
that you are running a newspaper out on some Indian reservation. I
remember quite well the fantastic idea you had about doing things out
there with a little newspaper. But it does not seem possible you would
be so foolhardy.
"I'm afraid your aspirations are going to receive a great blow. It is a
poor place for dreams. Imagine your trying to be a voice of the
frontier, as you put it, to a bunch of homesteaders in a God-forsaken
country like that. If I can be of help to you in some way, you might let
me know. You have shown a progressive spirit. Too bad to waste it."
What I needed at the moment was to have him send me a few corporations,
but as that was unlikely, I pinned my faith in _The Wand_. It was a
seven-column, four-page paper which carried staunchly a strange load of
problems and responsibilities. In spite of the New York broker's blunt
disbelief in the possibilities of a frontier newspaper, I had become
more and more convinced during those weeks that only through some such
medium could the homesteaders express their own needs, in their own way;
have their problems discussed in terms of their own immediate situation.
We needed herd laws and a hundred other laws; we needed new land
rulings. We needed schools, bridges across draws and dry creeks. We
needed roads. In fact, there was nothing which we did not need--and most
of all we needed a sense of close-knit cooperation. Aside from these
matters of general interest, relating to their common welfare, the paper
attempted to acquaint the settlers with one another, to inform them of
the activities going on about them, to keep them advised of frontier
conditions. To assist those who knew nothing of farming conditions in
the West, and often enough those who had never farmed before, I
reprinted articles on western soil and crops, and on the conservation of
moisture.
Every week there were noticeable strides in that incredible country
toward civilization, changes and improvements. These were printed as
quickly as I learned of them, not only because of the encouragement this
record of tangible results might bring the homesteaders, but also as a
means of information for people in the East who still did not know what
we were doing and who did not see the possibilities of the land.
And already, in depicting the homestead movement, I had begun to realize
that the Lower Brulé was only a fraction of what was to come, and I
reached out in panoramic scope to other parts of the frontier.
And already, though but dimly, I had begun to see that the system of
cooperation which was being attempted--cautiously and on a small
scale--was the logical solution for the farmer's problems, not alone in
this homesteading area, not alone on the Lower Brulé; but that like a
pebble thrown into a quiet stream it must make ever-widening circles
until it encompassed the farmers throughout the West, perhaps--
Naturally public issues sprang up which neither Ida Mary nor I knew how
to handle. We knew nothing about politics, nothing at all about the
proper way to go about setting things right. But we were a jump ahead of
the Lower Brulé settlers in homesteading experience, and there were many
local issues with which to make a start.
One of the first public issues the paper took up was an attack on the
railroad company in regard to the old bridge spanning the Missouri River
at Chamberlain. "Every time a shower comes up, that bridge goes out,"
declared _The Wand_, and it wasn't much of an exaggeration. The
homesteaders were dependent on the bridge to get immigrant goods across,
and with the heavy rains that season many settlers had been delayed in
getting on their land or in getting their crops planted in time.
_The Wand_ referred to the railroad report that this was the biggest
immigration period of the state's history, with 537 carloads of
immigrant goods moved in during the first twelve days of the month. For
several years the small towns west of the Missouri had been making a
fight for a new bridge. "The Lower Brulé settlers want a new bridge," I
wrote. "And if the Milwaukee does not build one we are going to do our
shipping over the Northwestern regardless of longer hauls." I had not
talked this matter over with the settlers, but they would do it, all
right.
A flea attacking an elephant! But a flea can be annoying, and we would
keep it up. I was encouraged when civic leaders of several small towns
sent for copies of the article to use in their petitions to the company.
It was the voice of the Lower Brulé, and already the Lower Brulé bore
weight.
In practical ways the paper also tried to serve the homesteaders,
keeping them posted on other frontier regions and the methods employed
there to bring the land into production. It made a study of crops best
adapted to the frontier; it became the Strip's bureau of information and
a medium of exchange--not only of ideas but of commodities.
In new country, where money is scarce, people resort from necessity to
the primitive method of barter, exchanging food for fuel, labor for
commodities. There is a good deal to be said in its favor, and it solved
a lot of problems in those early, penniless days.
We had started the post office mainly as a means of getting the
newspaper into circulation, and it had developed into a difficult
business of its own which required more and more of Ida Mary's time.
Friday was publication day. On Thursday we printed the paper so as to
have it ready for Friday's mail, and on Thursday night the tin
reflectors of the print-shop lamps threw their lights out for miles
across the prairie far into the night, telling a lost people the day of
the week. "It's Thursday night--the night the paper goes to press," more
than one homesteader said as he saw it.
It was a long, tedious job to print so many newspapers on a hand press
one at a time, fold and address them. It took the whole Ammons force and
a few of the neighbors to get it ready for the mail, which must meet the
McClure mail stage at noon. While one of us rushed off with the mail,
others at home would address the local list of papers and put them in
the mail boxes by the time the return mail came in for distribution.
Our U. S. mail transport was our old topless One-Hoss Shay--repaired and
repainted for the purpose--with the brown team hitched to it. It was a
long, hot drive, eight miles, to meet the stage, which reached McClure
at noon, jolting along under a big cotton umbrella wired to the back of
the seat for shade. I slapped the brown team with the lines and consoled
myself that if roughing it put new life into one's body I should be good
for a hundred years.
When we were behind time and the mail was light or there was money going
out, we ran Lakota through as a pony express. Lakota was a gift from the
Indians, whose name meant "banded together as friends." One day Running
Deer had come over to Ammons, leading a little bronc. He had caught her
in a bunch of wild horses which roamed the plains, a great white
stallion at their head. "One day--two day--three day--I have made run,
so swift like eagle. Then I rope her and make broke for ride."
She was a beauty. Graceful, proud--and lawless. "Good blood, like Indian
chief," said Running Deer with pride in this gift from the Sioux. "But
white squaw--she throw um, mebbe. Rub like fawn--" and he stroked her
curved neck.
There was no "mebbe" about throw um white squaw. One had to be on the
lookout or "swift like eagle" she would jump from under one at the
slightest provocation. But we trained her to carry the mail, and though
there was no banditry in that section, we had to be on our guard with
money coming in. No man would ever grab the mail sack from Lakota's
back. That little outlaw would paw him to death.
Whether we caught the mail stage or not often depended upon the mood of
the stage driver. If he felt tired and lazy he patiently sat in front of
the Halfway House at McClure and "chawed" and spat until he saw the
Ammons mail coming over the trail. If he were out of sorts he drove on.
All we got out of the post-office job was the cancellation of stamps, as
it was a fourth-class office in which the government furnished the
stamps and we kept the money for all stamps canceled in our office. But
the settlers were too busy to write letters, so the income was small and
the incoming mail, for which we received no pay, weighed us down with
work. For months after the settlers came west they ordered many
commodities by mail, and their friends sent them everything from
postcards to homemade cookies and jelly, so as mail carriers we became
pack mules. But we went on carrying mail. It is easier to get into
things than to get out.
Much of the ordering of commodities by the settlers was done through the
huge mail-order catalogs issued by half a dozen large companies in the
East. Those mail-order catalogs were of enormous importance to the
homesteaders. For the women they had the interest of a vast department
store through which one could wander at will. In a country where
possessions were few and limited to essentials, those pages with their
intriguing cuts represented most of the highly desirable things in life.
From the mail-order catalogs they ordered their stoves, most of their
farming implements, and later, when the contrast between the alluring
advertisements and the bleak shacks grew too strong for the women to
endure, fancy lamps for the table, and inexpensive odds and ends which
began to transform those rough barren houses into livable homes.
Running a newspaper out here was, as Ma Wagor had predicted, a
"pestiferous" job. One day we hung the rubber roller out to dry and the
sun melted it flat. As a result Ada had to ride to McClure to borrow one
from _The Press_ before we could print the paper. There was no way to
get the ready-prints without making the long trip to Presho. Finally
every homesteader around Ammons who went to town stopped in at the
express office to get them for us. It was a multiplication of effort but
we generally got the prints.
But, hard as it was, the work did not tire me as much as the mere
mechanical grind of the hammer-and-tongs work on _The Press_ had done.
Each day was so filled with new problems and new interests, so crammed
with activity, that we were carried along by the exhilaration of it. One
cannot watch an empire shoot up around him like Jack's beanstalk
without feeling the compulsion to be a part of that movement, that
growth. And the worst barrier we had to face had vanished--the initial
prejudice against two young girls attempting to take an active part in
the forward movement of the community.