of loads. Among the Indian women were a few with primitive intelligence
and wisdom. Others were morose and taciturn.
Even during the enforced lull of the deep winter there seemed to be much
to do, and the routine duties of the post office and _The Wand_ appeared
to require most of our time. The opportunity to study, to know the
Sioux, was at hand, but we never took advantage of it; like most people,
we were too busy with the little things to see the possibilities around
us. Perhaps Alexander Van Leshout, who made a success of his Indian art,
came to know these people better than any of us. But he was an
artist--and therefore he refused to let the little things clutter up his
life and take his attention from the one thing that was important to
him--seeing clearly and honestly the world about him.
When the Indians got their government pay, they celebrated with a buying
spree. They were lavish buyers as long as they had a cent, and they
bought the goods that had the most alluring picture on can or box. Ida
Mary would hold up something of staple quality, but they would shake
their heads and turn to something gaudily wrapped.
Old Two-Hawk and a few others paid their yearly subscriptions to _The
Wand_ every time they got their government allotment. "Your subscription
is already paid," I would explain, but they would shake their heads and
mutter. This was their newspaper, too, the thing that had signs and
their own names printed on a machine. They had the right to trade
beadwork or another dollar for it any time they liked.
Our subscription list looked like a Sioux directory with such names as
Julia Lame Walking Eagle, Maggie Shoots at Head, Afraid of His Horses,
Paul Owns the Fire, and his son, Owns the Fire.
Our daily visitors were the rank and file of the tribe, although famous
old warriors and medicine men came now and then. The high rulers of the
Brulé, who were among the most reserved and intelligent of all American
Indians, did not come in this manner. But any negotiations between the
Brulé whites and the Brulé red men were made with their Chief and
Council. A few of the Indian warriors and chiefs always would hate the
whites, but the rank and file of the Brulés were enjoying the strange
new life about them. While they saw no advantage in an active life for
themselves, they found activity in others highly entertaining.
The weather with its dry cold was sometimes deceptive. For several days
we had had urgent business to attend to in Presho, but the weather
prohibited the trip. One morning we awoke to see the sun brilliant on
the snow.
A lovely day for the long trip, and we hitched the team to a light buggy
so that we might wrap up better. The farther we drove the colder we
became. There was no warmth in that dazzling sun. We huddled down as
near as possible to the hot bricks. We took turns driving, one of us
wrapped up, head and ears beneath the heavy robes.
On that whole journey we did not meet a soul. We were frozen stiff and
had to have our hands thawed out in cold water when we reached Presho.
A homesteader living ten miles out stepped into the land office while we
were there.
"Don't you girls know enough to stay at home on a day like this? I
didn't dare attempt it until I saw you go by. I said to the family,
'There go the Ammons girls,' so I hitched up and started. And here it is
28 below zero."
The land commissioner said, "Well, you can't depend on the Ammons girls
as a thermometer."
And the storms came.
[Illustration]
XI
THE BIG BLIZZARD
Several miles from Ammons a bachelor gave a venison dinner on his claim
to which a little group of us had gone. About noon it clouded up and no
barometer was needed to tell us that a big storm was on the way. As soon
as we had eaten we started home.
The sky was ominous. Antelope went fleeting by; a little herd of horses,
heads high, went snorting over the prairie. Coyotes and rabbits were
running to shelter and a drove of cattle belonging to the Phillips ranch
were on a stampede. One could hear them bawling madly.
The guests had gone to the dinner together in a big wagon and were
delivered to their respective shacks on the way back. We raced the
horses ahead of the storm for a mile or two, but it was upon us by the
time we reached Margaret Houlihan's. As we drove on up the draw to the
settlement we saw the chimney of our cabin, consisting of a joint of
stovepipe (the regulation chimney in this country) go flying across the
prairie. And there was not an extra joint of pipe on the place--probably
not one on the reservation, which meant that we would not be able to
build a fire in the house until we could go to Presho or the state
capital for a joint.
"Hey, whata you goin' to do," exclaimed the young neighbor boy who had
taken us to the dinner. "You can't live in your shack through the storm
that's comin' without a fire."
"We have a monkey-stove in the store," Ida Mary told him. He shook his
head, but before hurrying home he scooped up a few buckets of coal we
had on hand and took it into the store, and watered and fed the horses,
knowing we might not be able to reach them until the blizzard had
passed. "That all the fuel you got?" he demanded.
"A settler went to town this morning to get coal for us."
"But he can't get back until the storm is over. How you goin' to manage?
No fire in your shack? No fuel for the monkey-stove?"
"We'll be all right," we assured him. He was not convinced, but he dared
not linger. He had to get home while he could still find the way.
In thirty minutes we were completely shut in by the lashing force of
wind and snow that swept across the plains in a blinding rage. Ma Wagor
and Kathryn, our typesetter, had gone home and we were alone, Ida Mary
and I. We built up a hot fire in the monkey-stove, which sat in the
middle of the store building and was used for heating both store and
print shop. From canned goods on the shelf, baked beans and corned beef,
we prepared a sketchy supper, and ate on the counter.
Although it had been without heat only a few hours, the shack was
already like an iceberg, and we were shaking with cold by the time we
managed to drag the couch out of it, with a mighty effort, and into the
store. It was warm there, and we lay safe under warm blankets listening
tranquilly to the storm hurling its strength furiously against the frail
defense of the little store, the shriek of the wind, the beating of the
snow on the roof. It must be horrible to be out in it, we thought,
pleasantly aware of protection and warmth and safety.
Next morning there was a real old-time blizzard raging. We could barely
see the outline of the shack ten feet from the store; the rest of the
world was blotted out and the wind roared like an incoming tide as the
snow and sleet pelted like shot on the low roof. A primeval force drove
the storm before it. All over the plains people were hemmed in tar-paper
shacks, the world diminished for them to the dimensions of their
thin-walled houses, as alone as though each were the only dweller on the
prairie.
The team, Fan and Bill, and Lakota were the only horses tied up in the
hay barn. They could reach the hay and eat snow for water. There would
be plenty of snow. Our menagerie of Indian plugs, including Pinto, was
loose on the plains; but they were accustomed to battling storms in the
open and there were haystacks now to provide food and shelter.
Somewhere in the open they were standing, huddled together, facing the
onslaught of the storm.
The west end wall of the flimsy ell print shop, exposed to the full
force of the storm, was swaying in. Together we dragged forth some boxes
of canned goods, heavy cans of lard and molasses, and propped it with
their weight. We watched anxiously for a time, but the heavy boxes
seemed to provide sufficient support. There were no further signs of the
wall collapsing.
By evening the storm had gripped the plains like a demon of wrath. We
had been rather enjoying this seclusion--no Indians. And--we chuckled
like a victim of persecution whose persecutor had been overtaken--there
would be no mail carrier in the morning. No mail to be taken care of.
Exultant, we tried to figure how many days Dave would be blockaded and
we would be spared that morning penance of handing the mail sack out
from the icy shack.
On the second morning the storm was still raging, with the snow two feet
deep between the store and the barn. The west wall still held, and
between glances at it we stoked the monkey-stove. Stoked it while the
coal dwindled. When the last chunk had been swallowed up we hunted
around for something else to burn. Newspapers, cartons, wooden
boxes--everything we could find went into the voracious maw of the
stove.
We tended it as religiously as priestesses at an altar, or as primitive
men building up a fire to keep off wild animals. Only under such
conditions does one fully experience that elemental worship of fire. It
literally meant life to us.
Searching for something else we could burn, something else to keep that
flame going even a little while longer, that pleasant glow which had
come with our sense of protection gradually disappeared. The blizzard
was not merely a gigantic spectacle put on by nature for our
entertainment, it was a menace, to be kept at bay only by constant
alertness on our part.
Now there was nothing left in the store that we could burn!
"The Indians brought some fence posts," Ida Mary recalled. "They are
back of the barn where they unloaded them. We'll have to get them."
We put on our coats, pulled fur caps close down around our faces and
ears, wrapped gunny sacks around our feet and legs over high arctics to
serve as snowshoes. It took our combined strength to push the door open
against the storm. Before we could close it behind us, snow had swept
into the store and was making little mounds. Clinging to each other we
plowed our way through the loose snow to the fence posts and dragged in
a few, making two trips, breaking a trail with them as we went. The
wind-blown snow cut our faces like points of steel. Hearing the restless
whinny of the horses, we stopped to untie them. They would not go far
from shelter.
Naturally the fence posts were much too long to go into the stove, and
we had no way of chopping them up. So we lifted up a cap of the two-hole
stove and stuck one end of a post into the fire, propped the other end
up against the counter, and fed the fire by automatic control. When one
post burned down to the end, we stuck in another. It seemed to us that
they burned awfully fast, and that the store was getting colder and
colder. We put on our heavy coats for warmth and finally our overshoes.
Storm or no storm, however, _The Wand_ had to be printed. We pulled the
type-case into the store, close to the stove. In those heavy coats and
overshoes we went to work on the newspaper--and that issue was one of
the best we ever published. In those two long nights, shut off from all
the world, we talked and planned. We dared not take the risk of going to
bed. If we should sleep and let the fire go out, we were apt to freeze,
so we huddled around the stove, punching fence posts down into the fire,
watching the blaze flicker.
At least there was time to look ahead, time to think, time to weigh what
we had done and what we wanted to do. So that week _The Wand_ came out
with ideas for cooperative action that were an innovation in the
development of new lands, a banded strength for the homesteader's
protection. It seemed logical and simple and inevitable to me then--as
it does now. "Banded together as friends"--the Indian meaning of
Lakota--was the underlying theme of what I wanted to tell the
homesteaders. The strength and the potentialities of one settler counted
for little, but--banded together!
Our enthusiasm in planning and talking carried us through most of that
day. But toward evening there were more immediate problems. It began to
turn bitter cold. The very air was freezing up. It was no longer
snowing, but the wind had picked up the snow and whirled it over the
prairie into high drifts that in places covered up the barbed-wire
fences against which it piled.
And under the piling snow our fuel lay buried; a long windrow drift had
piled high between the posts and the shop. And the shop was growing
colder and colder. Even with the heavy coats and overshoes we stamped
our feet to keep out the chill and huddled over the dying fire. It would
soon be freezing cold in the store, as cold as the icy shack which we
had abandoned. No wonder people worshiped fire!
There was no sense of snug protection against the storm now. It seemed
to have invaded the store, although the west wall still held. "We'll
have to go somewhere for warmth," Ida Mary decided. Margaret's shack was
the nearest, but even so we knew the grave risk we took of perishing on
the way there. Action, however, is nearly always easier than inaction. A
time or two we stuck our heads out of the door and the cold fairly froze
our breath. Once I went outside, and when I tried to get back into the
shack the wind, sucking between the few buildings, blew me back as
though an iron hand held me.
"If we stay here," we thought, "we may be walled in by morning by the
fast-drifting snow." So we decided on Margaret's, a quarter-mile down
the draw. The chief difficulty was that the trip must be made against
the storm, and we did not know whether we could make it or not. We each
wrapped up tightly in a heavy Indian shawl, tied ourselves together with
a light blanket, picked up the scoop shovel, and started down the buried
trail.
Out through the side door and the narrow space between the buildings
which had been protected against the drifts, we made our way; then,
facing the full strength of the storm, we dug our way, shoveling as we
went, through a drift that had piled in front of the buildings, and on
through the deep level of snow.
It was getting dark now--the sudden steel-gray that envelops the plains
early on a winter night and closes in around the white stretches,
holding them in a vise. The only sign of life in the whole blanketed
world was the faint glimmer of light in Margaret's window. We knew now
how the light in the print shop must have looked many a night to
strangers lost on the prairie in a storm.
Such lightweights were we that, at every step we took, the wind blew us
back; we used all our force, pushing against that heavy wall of wind,
until we struck drifts that almost buried us. For all our clumsy tying,
the blanket held us together or we would have lost each other. We could
not speak, because if we so much as parted our lips they seemed to
freeze to our teeth, and the cold wind rasped in our throats and lungs
as though we had been running for a very long time.
Had the snow been tightly packed we could never have dug our way out of
some of the drifts. But it had been picked up and swirled around so much
by the wind that it was loose and light. It blew up off the ground,
lashed against our faces like sharp knives, and blinded us. "How
horrible," we had thought from the shelter of the store, "to be out in
the storm." But we hadn't tasted then the malignant fury of the thing,
battling with us for every step we made.
At last we turned and walked backwards, resting on the shovel handle for
fear we would fall from exhaustion. Every few steps we looked around to
see whether we were still going in a straight line toward the dim light
that shone like a frosted glimmer from the tiny shack which now looked
like a dark blur. We realized that if we were to swerve a few feet in
either direction, so that we lost sight of the lamp, we would not find
Margaret's shack that night.
It was quite dark now, and no sound on the prairie but the triumphant
howl of the wind and the dry crunch of our overshoes on the snow,
slipping, stumbling. We were pushing ourselves on, but our feet were so
numb it was almost impossible to walk. We had been doing it for hours,
it seemed; we had always been fighting our way through the deep snow.
The store we had left seemed as unreal as though we had never known its
protection.
Ida Mary, still walking backwards, stumbled and fell. She had struck
Margaret's shack. I pushed against the door, too numb to turn the knob.
The door opened and Margaret, with a cry, pulled us in. Swiftly she
unbundled us, taking care not to bring us near the fire. She took off
our gloves and overshoes, then ran to the door and scooped up a basin of
snow for our numb hands and feet, snow which felt curiously warm and
comforting. While the snow drew out the frost, she hastened about,
making strong, hot tea.
While we drank the tea and felt warmth slowly creeping over us, "Why on
earth did you attempt to come here on a night like this?" she demanded.
"You might have frozen to death."
"We were out of fuel," we told her. "We had to take the chance."
The shack was cheerful and warm. There was a hot supper and fuel enough
to last through the storm. Only a refuge for which one has fought as Ida
Mary and I fought to reach that tar-paper shack could seem as warm and
safe as Margaret's shack seemed to us that night. In a numb, delicious
lethargy we sat around the stove, too tired and contented to move.
Safe from the fury of the wind, we listened to it raging about the cabin
as though cheated of its victims. And then, toward midnight, it died
away. There was a hush as though the night were holding its breath, and
then the sky cleared, the stars came out.
The next day Margaret's brother took up a sack of coal on his bronco, so
we made our way back over the trail we had broken the night before, to
the store, and he built a fire for us. Later that same morning Chris
rode over with a sack of coal tied on behind the saddle.
"Yoost in case you should run out once," he said as he brought it in.
"My wife she bane uneasy when she see no light last night."
When we told him what had happened he shook his head in concern and went
to work. He scooped a path to the barn and attended to the horses. From
under the snow he got some fence posts which he chopped up while Charlie
excavated an opening to the front door--in case anyone should be mad
enough to try to reach the store on a day like that.
About noon a cowboy came fighting his way through the drifts in search
of lost cattle which the storm must have driven in this direction--the
only soul who dared to cross the plains that day.
It was Sourdough. I never knew his real name. I doubt if those with or
for whom he worked knew.
He stopped at the print shop to rest his horse, which was wringing wet
with sweat, though the day was piercing cold. He threw the saddle
blanket over the horse and came in.
We begged him to go and find out whether or not the Wagors were all
right. After Ida Mary and I had got straightened out, it occurred to us
that they had sent in their order for coal with ours. Like us they might
be imprisoned in their shack and low on fuel; but, unlike us, there
would be no question of their battling their way across the prairie to
shelter.
"Sufferin' sinners," grumbled Sourdough. "Think I got time to fool
around with homesteaders when a bunch of critters is maybe dead or
starvin' to death? Godamighty!"
We argued and insisted, telling him that he knew better how to break a
trail than the tenderfeet around here, that his horse was better trained
for it.
"This country warn't made for no humans--just Indians and rattlesnakes
and cowhands is all it was intended for."
I agreed with him. I was ready to agree with anything he might say if he
would only go to the Wagors' shack. At last, after we had exhausted all
the wiles and arts of persuasion at our command, Ida Mary told him that,
come to think of it, she had seen a bunch of cattle drifting in the
direction of the Wagor claim. He started out, saying he might stop in
if he happened to drift by and it "come handy."
Sourdough found the Wagors covered up in bed. They had been in bed two
days and three nights. The fuel had given out, as we had feared--cow
chips and all. They had burned hay until the drifts became so high and
the stack so deeply covered that the poor old man could no longer get to
it. The cow and the blind horse had barely enough feed left to keep
alive.
Not daring to burn the last bit of hay or newspaper--which would not
have warmed the house anyhow--the old couple had gone to bed, piling
over them everything that could conceivably shut out that penetrating
dead cold, getting up just long enough to boil coffee, fry a little
bacon and thaw out the bread. They dipped up snow at the door and melted
it for water. The bread had run out, and the last scrap of fuel. They
tore down the kitchen shelf, chopped it up, and the last piece of it had
gone for a flame to make the morning coffee. The little snugly built
shack was freezing cold. A glass jar of milk in the kitchen had frozen
so hard that it broke the jar.
When Sourdough walked in and learned the situation he bellowed,
"Sufferin' sinners!" and tore out like a mad steer. He cut into the
haystack, cut up a few posts from the corral fence and made a fire--and
when a range rider makes a fire it burns like a conflagration.
He fed the two dumb animals (meaning the cow and horse, he explained,
though they weren't half as dumb as anyone who would go homesteading)
while Ma stirred up some corn cakes and made coffee for them all. Milk
the cow? What the hell did they think he was, a calf? Sourdough, like
most cowboys, had never milked a cow. The only milk he ever used came
out of a can.
Mid-afternoon he reported. When we wondered what could be done next, he
said carelessly, "Godamighty! Let 'em stay in bed. If they freeze to
death it will serve 'em right for comin' out here."
Grumbling, ranting on, he slammed the door and strode out to the barn,
saddled Bill--the stronger horse of the brown team--and led him to the
door.
"What are you going to do?" I demanded.
"Ride this no-count plug of yourn to hunt them critters. You never saw a
bunch goin' that way," he accused Ida Mary. She smiled at the ruse she
had used to start him out.
He jumped on Bill, leading his cow pony behind--a range rider knows how
to conserve a horse's strength--and followed the trail he had broken,
straight back toward the Wagor shack. Now we knew. He was going after Ma
and Pa. They would be warm and nourished, with strength for the trip,
and good old Bill could carry them both.
A few days later when we asked Ma about the harrowing experience she
laughed and said, "Oh, it wasn't so bad. Pa and I talked over our whole
life in those three days, telling each other about our young days; Pa
telling me about some girls he used to spark that I never woulda heard
about if it hadn't been for that blizzard.... I told him about my first
husband ... he's the one who left me the ant-tic broach ... we did get
pretty cold toward the last.
"I burned up every old mail-order catalog I had saved. I always told Pa
they would come in handy.... What? Afraid we would freeze to death?
Well, we woulda gone together."
* * * * *
The blizzard was over, but the snow lay deep all over the prairie and
the great cold lasted so that few of the settlers ventured outside their
shacks. For days there was no hauling done. The trails that had been
worn since spring were buried deep and the drifts were treacherous.
There were many homesteaders over the Reservation who were running out
of fuel.
Now, if ever, was a time for cooperation, and _The Wand_ printed a list
of those who could spare fuel; they would share with those in need of
it. They brought what they could to the settlement and pooled it,
chopping up all the poles and posts they could find into stovewood, and
taking home small loads to tide them over.
With the fury of that storm, one of the hardest blizzards the frontier
had experienced, the winter spent itself. Under the soft warm breath of
a chinook the snow disappeared like magic, melting into the soil,
preparing it for the onslaught of the plow.
[Illustration]
XII
A NEW AMERICA
Ida Mary and I came through the winter stronger than we had ever been
before, but we welcomed the spring with grateful hearts. Only poets can
describe the electric, sweet quality of spring, but only the young, as
we were young that year, receive the full impact of its beauty. The
deep, cloudless blue of western skies, the vivid colors after the dead
white of winter, were fresh revelations, as though we had never known
them before.
One spring day I was making up the paper, while the Christophersons'
little tow-headed boy watched me.
"Are you going to be a printer when you grow up, Heine?"