plain until far into the night, a great deal of traveling was done at
night. It was easier for man and horse. On moonlight nights that white
light shining through the thin atmosphere made the prairie as light as
day, but ghostly; moonlight softened the contours of the plains and
robbed them of their color; sounds traveled great distances, seeming to
come from space; the howling of coyotes down the draw, the shrill, busy
sound of insects in the long grass, the stamping of the horses in the
barn, accentuated the stillness; they did not break it. Even the
prairie wind came softly, sweet with the scent of hay, not lifting its
voice on those hushed nights.
With the stillness invading one's flesh and bones, and the prairie,
washed by moonlight, stretching out beyond one's imagination, I wondered
that I had ever feared space and quiet.
But out of the silence would come the rhythmic thud of a horse's feet
and a loud hail. The Ammons settlement was a day-and-night institution.
With a loud knock on the door would come the identification, "It's
Alberts!" Or Kimball, or Pinchot--real estate agents. "I've got a man
here who wants to pay a deposit on N.W. quarter of section 18. We're on
our way to the Land Office. Want to be there when it opens."
One of us would light the print-shop lamp, make out the papers, take the
money, and stumble back to bed. A sign, "CLOSED," or "NEVER CLOSED," would
have been equally ineffective in stopping the night movement on the Strip.
Homesteaders living miles away came after the long day's work to put in
their proving-up notices. They must be in the paper the following day to
go through the five weeks' publication before the date set at the Land
Office. During those scorching weeks their days were taken up by hauling
water and caring for things at home.
With those urgent night calls we did not stick a gun out as had the
Presho banker. We were not greatly perturbed about the possibility of
anyone robbing us. A burglar who could find the money would accomplish
more than we could do half the time, so outlandish had the hiding places
become. Imbert insisted that we keep a loaded gun or two on the place,
but we knew nothing about handling guns and were more afraid of them
than of being molested.
Ada put up her folding cot at night in the lean-to kitchen, and one day
she brought a rawhide whip from home and laid it on the 2 × 4 scantling
that girded the walls--"the two-be-four" she called it. "You don't need
a gun," she said in her slow, calm voice. "Just give me a rawhide." With
that sure strong arm of hers and the keen whip, one would never enter
without shooting first.
There were a few nights when we woke to find Ada standing still as a
statue in her long white cotton nightgown, straw-colored braids hanging
down her back, rawhide in her right hand, only to find whoever had
prowled around had driven on, or that it was Tim Carter, the lawyer,
coming home from town intoxicated, talking and singing at the top of his
voice.
During that clock-round period the days were usually quiet and we worked
in shifts as much as our many duties permitted. "Come on, girls," Ma
would call, "this ice tea is goin' to be hot if you don't come and drink
it. Now this isn't made from dam water. Fred hauled it over from the
crick. (Fred Farraday did things like that without mentioning them.)
It's set in the cave all day. Now the Ladies' Aid back in Blue Springs
sticks a piece of lemon on the glass to squeeze in--just to get your
fingers all stuck up with. I never was one for mixing drinks."
Ma poured an extra glass for Van Leshout, who had just come in with
letters to mail. "Tomorrow we'll have the lemonade separate. Come on,
Heine, don't you want a glass of tea?"
"Naw." Offering Heine tea was the one thing that shook his calmness.
"You don't expect he-men like Heine to drink tea," protested Van
Leshout. A sly grin on Heine's face which the artist quickly caught on
paper.
"Pa drinks it," from Ma, with that snapping of the jaw which in Ma
expressed emphasis. Poor old Pa was the shining example of masculinity
in her eyes.
Like a sudden breath the hot winds came. The dams were getting
dangerously low. The water was dirty and green-scummed and thick. And
Ada's folks lost a horse and a cow--alkalied.
The drier it became the whiter the ground on the alkali spots. We had no
alkali on the great, grassy Brulé, but there were strips outside the
reservation thick with it, and the water in those sections contained
enough of it to turn one's stomach into stone.
Carrying the mail from the stage, I saw along the trail horses and
cattle leaning against the fences, or lying down, fairly eaten up with
it, mere skin and bones; mane and tail all fallen out, hoofs dropped
off.
A number of settlers had not a horse left that could put his foot to the
ground to travel. Every day there were a few more horses and cows lying
dead over the pastures. Gradually, however, most of the afflicted stock
picked up, got new hoofs, new manes and tails.
The livestock, even the dogs and the wild animals on the plains, drank
from little holes of reservoirs at the foot of the slopes until the
water became so hot and ill-smelling that they turned away from it.
But the settlers skimmed back the thick green scum, dipped up the water,
let it settle, and used it. The dam water must be boiled, we warned each
other, yet we did not always wait for a drink of water until it had been
boiled and cooled. Late that summer, when the drying winds parched the
country, the dams became the only green spots left on the yellow plains.
But the cry for rain was no longer for the fields, it was for the people
themselves.
A few narrow, crooked creeks cut their way through the great tableland
of prairie. But they were as problematic as the Arkansas Traveler's roof
in that they overflowed in the rainy season when we did not need water,
and were dry as a bone when we did need it. The creeks were dry
now--except the water holes in the creek beds and a few seep wells which
homesteaders living near the creeks had dug and into which water from
the creeks had seeped.
Proving-up time came for a few, and the ones who had not come to farm
left as soon as they proved up--at least until the following year. And
the situation was so serious we were glad to have them go--the fewer
there were of us the less water we would need.
To add to the troubles of the homesteaders, there were increased
activities by claim jumpers. Almost equal to the old cattle-rustling
gangs were the land rustlers who "covered up" land as the cattle thieves
did brands, making mavericks out of branded stock. Technicalities, false
filings, or open crookedness were used to hold rich valleys and creeks
and water holes open--or to block the settler's proof title.
Because the problem was a federal one, the courts and men like Judge
Bartine were powerless to act in the matter. The West needed fearless
representation in Washington. If John Bartine were elected, westerners
said, he would fight the land graft. "But there must be a strong
campaign against it on the ground," he emphasized. "The frontier
newspapers can become the most powerful agency in abolishing this evil."
"Could _The Wand_ help?" I asked.
"Its influence not only would be effective," he assured me, "but it
would set a precedent and give courage to other little proof sheets."
So _The Wand_ took up the issue, using what influence it had to bring a
halt to the activities of the claim jumpers. And the homesteaders
continued their battle for the thirsty land. Whisky barrels and milk
cans were the artillery most essential to keep this valiant army from
going down in defeat. They were as scarce as hen's teeth and soared sky
high in price, so great was the demand on the frontier. Barrel and can
manufacturers must have made fortunes during the years of water-hauling
in the homestead country.
The size of a man's herd, and thus his rank as a farmer, was judged by
the number of barrels and cans surrounding his shack or barn.
Ida Mary bought a barrel and several new milk cans. "You cannot use the
barrel for water," Joe Two-Hawk said. "It is yet wet with fire-water."
He drained a pint or more of whisky from it. It would have to be burned
out. No one wanted fire-water these days.
Across the hot stretches, from every direction, there moved processions
of livestock being driven to water; stone-boats (boards nailed across
two runners), with barrels bobbing up and down on them, buggies, wagons,
all loaded with cans and barrels.
Ida Mary and I led our livestock to a water hole three miles away,
filling water cans for ourselves. The Ammons caravan moving across the
hot, dry plain was a sorry spectacle, with Ida in the vanguard astride
old Pinto, her hair twisted up under a big straw hat. Lakota insisted
upon jumping the creek bed, and we were not trained to riding to hounds.
In the flank, the brown team and Lakota, the menagerie following behind.
Coming up from the rear, I sat in the One-Hoss Shay behind Crazy Weed,
the blind and locoed mare, with the water cans rattling in the back end
of the buggy. I too wore an old straw hat, big as a ten-gallon sombrero,
pushed back on my head to protect my sunburnt neck, and an old rag of a
dress hanging loose on my small body, which was becoming thinner.
The sun blazed down on the shadeless prairie, and the very air smelled
of heat. The grain was shriveled and burnt. And for shelter from that
vast furnace, a tar-paper shack with a low roof.
As we reached the creek, Crazy Weed, smelling water, leaped to the creek
bed, breaking the tugs as she went, leaving the horseless buggy, the
empty cans and me high and dry on the bank.
We patched up the tugs, fastened them to the singletree with hairpins,
hitched up Pinto, drove down to the water hole and filled our cans.
When we got back to the settlement we saw Lone Star on Black Indian,
waiting for us. He dismounted, threw the reins to the ground and carried
the water cans into the cool cave.
"Don't know what we're goin' to do with the range stock," he said
anxiously, "with the grass dried up and the creeks and water holes on
the range goin' dry."
"Lone Star," I said, "don't you think it's going to rain soon?"
Yesterday I had asked Porcupine Bear, and he had shaken his head and
held up one finger after another, counting off the moons before rain
would come.
"What will become of the settlers?" asked Ida Mary.
"The quicker these homesteadin' herds vacate," Lone Star answered in
that slow drawl of his, "the better for everybody. The hot winds have
come too early. Goin' to burn the pastures, looks like; hard to find
water now for the cattle."
He handed us two flasks of cold water. "Brought 'em from the river;
filled 'em while the water was cold early this morning."
Cold, clear water! We drank great long draughts of it, washed ourselves
clean and fresh in a basin half-full of water.
One day Tim Carter came by sober. "The damn homestead is too dry for a
man to drink water, say nothing of whisky," he stormed. "I'm going to
have water if it takes my last dollar."
He brought in a drill. For several days neighbors helped with the
drilling; others flocked around with strained anxiety, waiting, waiting
for that drill to strike water.
Then one scorching afternoon the drillers gave a whoop as they brought
up the drill. "Oil! Oil! There's oil on this drill. Damned if we ain't
struck oil!"
Tim Carter's straight, portly figure drooped. He put his hands in his
pockets, staring aghast at the evidence before him. "Oil!" he shouted.
"Who in hell wants oil? Nobody but Rockefeller. It's water we want!"
"Pack up your rig, boys," he said in a tone of defeat, as though he'd
made a final plea in court and lost the case. A discouraged,
disheartened group, they turned away.
Thirst became an obsession with us all, men and animals alike. Cattle,
breaking out of pastures, went bawling over the plains; horses went
running wildly in search of water. People were famished for a cold
drink.
"I don't believe we ought to drink that water," I heard Ida Mary tell Ma
Wagor, as she stood, dipper in hand, looking dubiously into the bucket.
"Oh, never mind about the germs," Ma said. "Just pick out them you see
and them you can't see oughtn't hurt anybody. You can't be persnickety
these days." With all that we could see in the water, it did seem as
though the invisible ones couldn't do much harm.
With the perverseness of nature, the less water one has the thirstier
one becomes. When it is on tap one doesn't think of it. But down to the
last half-gallon, our thirst was unquenchable.
The store's supply of salmon and dried beef went begging, while it kept
a team busy hauling canned tomatoes, sauerkraut, vinegar. People could
not afford lemons, so vinegar and soda were used to make a refreshing,
thirst-quenching drink.
Homesteaders reached the point where the whole family washed in the same
quart of water. A little more soap and elbow grease, the women said, was
the secret. Most of the water used for household purposes did double or
triple duty. The water drained from potatoes was next used to wash one's
face or hands or dishes; then it went into the scrub bucket. Potato
water kept one's hands and face soft, we boasted; it was as effective as
face cream.
But I was not a tea-cup saver by nature. Could the time and scheming of
those pioneer women to save water have been utilized in some water
project, it would have watered the whole frontier. But gradually we were
becoming listless, shiftless. We were in a stage of endurance in which
there was no point in forging ahead. We merely sat and waited--for rain
or wells or whatever might come.
And always when we were down to the last drop, someone would bring us
water. I never knew it to fail. One such time we looked up to see Huey
Dunn coming. He had made the long trip just to bring us water--two whole
barrels of it, although we had not seen him since he moved us to the
reservation.
It was so hot he waited until evening to go back. He was in no hurry to
return: it was too hot to work. But when had Huey ever been in a hurry?
We sat in the shade of the shack, talking. He had dug a well, and his
method of fall plowing--fallowing he called it--had proved successful.
Starting home toward evening, he called back, "If you girls take a
notion to leave, you needn't send for me to move you--not until you get
your deed, anyhow." I only saw him once after that--Ida Mary never
again.
Ida Mary was seeing a lot of a young easterner that summer, an
attractive, cultured boy who had taken a claim because he had won it in
a lottery and it was an adventure. Imbert Miller had gone into the land
business. He was well fitted for the work, with his honest, open manner,
which inspired confidence in landseekers, and his deep-rooted knowledge
of the West.
One day I looked up from my work with a belated thought.
"Imbert hasn't been here for some time. What's the matter?"
"He is to stay away until I send him word. I've got to be sure."
When there was any time for day-dreaming those days I conjured up
pictures of snow banks and fountains and blessed, cooling rain, and
long, icy drinks of water. The water had alkali in it and tasted soapy
in cooking. But it was water. And we drank it gratefully.
The old man from the Oklahoma Run came over. Stooped and stiff, he
leaned on his cane in the midst of a group of settlers who had met to
discuss the drought and the water problem.
"Now, down in Oklahomy," he began, "it was hotter than brimstone and the
Sooners didn't draw ice water from faucets when they settled there."
Sooners, we took it, were those who got on the land sooner than the
others. "Water was imported in barrels. Buying water was like buying
champagne and worse to drink than cawn liquor."
"What did they do?"
"Well, suh," he went on, the long mustache twitching, "one of the
fellahs down there was a water witch. He pointed out where the water
could be got. Divining rods. That's the solution for the Strip."
But finding expert water witches was almost as difficult as finding
water. They had to be imported from some remote section of the West. The
witches, as we called them, went over various parts of the reservation,
probing, poking, with their forked sticks.
The divining rod was a simple means of locating water, and it had been
in common use through the ages, especially in arid regions. It was used
in some instances to locate other underground deposits. These rods were
pronged branches, sometimes of willow, but preferably of witch-hazel or
wild cherry.
If there were water close to the surface, the divining rod would bend
and turn with such force that it was hard to keep the prongs in hand. It
was said to work by a process of natural attraction, and was formerly
regarded as witchcraft or black magic.
Our divining rods refused to twist or bend. If there were water on the
Strip, the witches missed it; either that, or it was too deep for the
rods to detect. One of the experts said there was indication of some
kind of liquid deposit far underground.
The settlers shook their heads and said there must be something wrong
with the witches or the divining rod, and Ma Wagor declared, "I never
did have any faith in them little sticks."
* * * * *
The hot winds swept the plains like blasts from a furnace. There was not
a shelter as far as the eye could see except those little hot-boxes in
which we lived. As the sun, like a great ball of fire, lowered to the
horizon, a caravan topped the ridge from the north and moved slowly
south across the strip. A wagon and a wobble-wheeled buggy, its dry
spokes rattling like castanets, went by. Following behind were the few
head of stock--horses whinnying, cows bawling, for water. A panting dog,
tongue hanging out, trotted beside the wagon. They were shipping out.
The railroads were taking emigrants back to the state line free.
Leaving a land of plenty--plenty of everything but water.
A number of homesteaders who had come to stay were getting out. Settlers
were proving up as fast as they could. They wanted to prove up while
they could get loans on the land. Loan agencies that had vied with one
another for the business were closing down on some areas. Despite the
water famine, the Brulé had built such prestige, had made such a record
of progress, that it was still holding the business. Western bankers
kept their faith in it, but the lids of the eastern money-pots, which
were the source of borrowing power, might be clamped down any day.
The railroads were taking people back to the state line free, if they
wished to go. It seemed to me, exhausted as I was, that I could not go
on under these conditions, that the settlers themselves could not go on
without some respite.
I walked into the Land Office at Pierre and threw a sheaf of proof
notices on the Register's desk. He looked at them with practiced eyes.
"These haven't been published yet," he said.
"I don't want them. I'm leaving the country. I came to get nine months'
leave of absence for myself and all those whose time is not up. That
would give us until next spring to come back and get our deeds."
He leaned over his desk. "Don't pull up and leave at this critical time,
Edith," he said earnestly. "There are the legal notices, the loans, the
post office--we have depended on you so much, it would be putting a
wrench in the machinery out there."
He looked at me for a moment. "Don't start an emigration movement like
that," he warned me.
I was dumfounded at his solemnity, at the responsibility he was putting
upon me. It was my first realization of the fact that _The Wand_ had
indeed become the voice of the Brulé; that where it led, people would
follow. If my going would start a general exodus, I had to stay.
I walked wearily out of the Land Office, leaving the proofs on his desk.
It seemed to me that I had endured all I could, and here was this new
sense of community responsibility weighing on me!
A young settler drove me home, and I sat bleakly beside him. It was late
when we got near my claim, and the settlement looked dark and deserted.
Suddenly I screamed, startling the horses, and leaped from the wagon as
there was a loud crash. The heavy timbers of the cave back of the store
had fallen in.
I shouted for Ida Mary, and there was no answer from the shack or the
store. If she were under that wreckage.... Frantically we clawed at the
timbers, clearing a space, looking for a slip of a girl with long auburn
braids of hair. It was too dark to see clearly, and in my terror I was
ripping the boards in any fashion while Jack strove to quiet me.
"What's the matter?" said a drowsy voice from the door of the shack. It
was Ida Mary, who had slept so heavily she had not heard our arrival or
our shouts or the crash of the cave-in.
I ran to her, sobbing with relief. "The cave's fallen in. I thought
maybe you were in it."
She blinked sleepily and tried to comfort me. "I'm all right, sis," she
said reassuringly. "It must have gone down after I went to bed. Too much
sod piled on top, I guess. Now we'll have to have that fixed."
As I lay in bed, shaking with fatigue and nerve tension, Ida mumbled
drowsily, "Oh, the fresh butter Ma brought me is down in that cave." And
she fell asleep. A few moments later I too was sleeping quietly.
The nights were the life-savers. The evening, in which the air cooled
first in the draws, then lifted softly to the tableland, cooling the
body, quenching the thirst as one breathed it deeply. The fresh peaceful
night. The early dawn which like a rejuvenating tonic gave one new hope.
Thus we got our second wind for each day's bout.
The next day the proof notices I had turned in to the Land Office came
back to me without comment. I explained to Ida Mary what I had done. "I
told him we were going back, and he said I must not start an emigration
movement. I applied for leaves of absence while the railroads are taking
people to the state line free."
"And what," inquired Ida Mary dryly, "will they do at the state line? Go
back to the wife's kinfolk, I suppose."
She was right, of course. I began to see what this trek back en masse
would mean. What if the land horde went marching back? Tens of thousands
of them milling about, homeless, penniless, jobless. Many of them had
been in that position when they had stampeded the frontier, looking to
the land for security. With these broad areas deserted, what would
become of the trade and business; of the new railroads and other
developments just beginning their expansion?
We were harder hit than most districts by the lack of water, but if that
obstacle could be solved the Brulé had other things in its favor. The
words of the Register came back to me: "Don't start an emigration
movement."
_The Wand_ came out with an editorial called, "Beyond the State Line,
What?" It was based on Ida Mary's terse comment, "Back to the wife's
kinfolk," and concluded with my own views of the economic disaster which
such a general exodus would cause.
It took hold. Settlers who were ready to close their shacks behind them
paused to look ahead--beyond the state line. And they discovered that
their best chance was to fight it out where they were--if only they
could be shown how to get water.
No trees. No shade. Hot winds sweeping as though from a furnace. And
what water one had so hot and stale that it could not quench thirst.
We could ask our neighbors to share their last loaf of bread, but it was
a bold, selfish act to ask for water. I have seen a gallon bucket of
drinking water going down; have seen it get to the last pint; have held
the hot liquid in my mouth as long as possible before swallowing it.
The distances to water were so long that many times we found it
impossible, with all the work we had on hand, to make the trip; so we
would save every drop we could, not daring to cook anything which
required water.
One of the girl homesteaders came over with an incredible tale to tell.
She had visited one of the settlers outside the reservation gate who had
a real well. And his wife had rinsed the dishes when she washed them.
Ma prophesied that she would suffer for that.
Heine said one day, "My Pa don't wanta leave. We ain't got no moneys to
take us, Pa says."
There were many families in the same position. Get out? Where? How?
One day when Chris Christopherson came in I asked him why he thought the
water supply would be better in a year or so.
"We can dig better dams. If they bane twice so big this year, they be
full now from the snows and rains. We would yet have water plenty."
"We could dig cisterns, couldn't we?"
"Cost money, but not so much like deep wells. Trouble bane we not have
money yet nor time to make ready so many t'ings."
"Some of the farmers say," I told him, "that when we cultivate large
areas, loosening the soil for moisture absorption, they will be able to
get surface wells, especially in the draws. They say the tall, heavy
grass absorbs the surface and underground water."