declared. "The more land plowed, the more moisture will go down in the
soil. It all the time costs more money to move and settle yet than to
stay where you are. And nobody knows what he find somewhere else again."
And we got thirstier and thirstier. "I've got to have a drink," I would
wail.
"You'll get over it," Ma would assure me.
But we did not always get over it. I remember trying to go to bed
without a drink one night and thinking I could not stand it until
morning. In the middle of the night I woke Ida Mary.
"I'm so thirsty I can't stand it any longer."
"Let's hitch up and go for some water."
So off we went in the middle of the night, driving over to McClure,
where we drank long and long at the watering troughs.
With few water holes left, some of the settlers went over the border,
hauling water from outside--from McClure, even from Presho, when they
went to town. Somehow they got enough to keep them from perishing.
Men cleaned out their dams "in case it should rain." But there was no
sign of the drought breaking. Except for the early matured crops, the
fields were burned; the later crops were dwarfed. Our spirits fell as we
looked at our big field of flax which had given such promise. Seed which
had had no rain lay in the ground unsprouted. Some of the farmers turned
their surplus stock loose to forage for themselves.
Public-spirited men like Senator Scotty Phillips and Ben Smith, a
well-to-do rancher living four miles from the settlement, dug down into
the bowels of the earth for water. Ben Smith went down 1200 feet. There
was no sign of water. Despondency gripped the people. "You can dig clear
to hell and you won't find water," one of them declared.
"All right, boys," Ben Smith told them, "dig to hell if you have to, and
don't mind the cost." Slowly the drill bored on down the dry hole. Ben
Smith's Folly, they called it.
_The Wand_ urged the people to put their resources together--water,
food, everything--so that they might keep going until water was found or
until--it rained. Today pooling is a common method of farm marketing. We
have great wheat pools, milk pools, and many others. At that time there
were cooperative pools in a few places, although I had never heard of
one, nor of a farm organization. But it was the pooling system that was
needed to carry on.
Of one thing there was no doubt. The grass on the Indian lands _was_
greener than the grass on the settlers' lands. Through their land ran
the Missouri River, and they had water to spare. While the homesteaders
were famishing and their stock dying for water, it was going to waste
in Indian territory. That area was as peaceful as though the whole
frontier were filled with clear, cool streams.
So Ida Mary and I went to the Indians for help. I presume we should have
gone to the Agency, but we had never seen the government officials in
charge, and we did know our Indians.
We rode over into the little Indian settlement. Rows of buffalo-hide and
canvas wigwams; Indians sitting around on the ground. Men whittling,
doing beadwork, or lounging at ease. Squaws sitting like mummies or
cooking over open fires for which they broke or chopped wood. Young
bucks riding about, horses grazing peacefully, mongrel dogs in
profusion. Children, dirty, unconcerned, playing in the sun. Rows of
meat, fly-covered, drying on the lines.
They were peaceful and unconcerned; the whole settlement had about it
the air of being on a holiday, the lazy aftermath of a holiday.
Remembering the hard labor, the anxiety, the effort and strain and
despair in the white settlement, there was a good deal to be said for
this life, effortless, without responsibility, sprawling in the shade
while others did the work.
It was not before these members of the tribe, however, that we presented
our request. We went before the chief and his council with form and
ceremony. The old chief, dressed in dignified splendor, sat on a stool
in front of his wigwam, a rich Navajo rug under his feet. He had been a
great leader, wise and shrewd in making negotiations for his tribe. He
looked at me and grunted.
I explained at length that I had come to him from the Brulé white men
for help. But I got no farther. He threw out his hand in a negative
gesture. The old warriors of the council were resentful, obstinate. They
muttered and shook their heads angrily. No favors to the whites who had
robbed them of their lands!
I sat down beside the chief while I talked to him, and then to other
members of the council--to Porcupine Bear, Little Thunder, Night Pipe.
The Indian demands pomp and ceremony in the transaction of affairs.
These wanted to hold a powwow. But I had no time for ceremony.
The Indians had _minne-cha-lu-za_ (swift-running water). We had none. If
some of the settlers could run stock on their hunting ground where they
could get to water, and if we could have water hauled from their lands,
we would pay.
The old chief sat as immobile and dignified as a king in court. We soon
learned that the Indian horse-and-bead traders are a different species
from the high powers of the tribe sitting in council, making treaties.
It was like appearing before a high tribunal.
"Take Indian lands. All time more," grunted one of them.
"The settlers' land is no good to the Indian," I argued; "no water, no
berries, no wood, no more value. The government is making the whites pay
money, not giving them allotments as they do the red men."
If they would not give us _minne-cha-lu-za_, I went on, we could not
print the paper any more, or keep _she-la_, or trade for posts.
They went into ceremonious council, and delivered their concession
officially by an interpreter, Little Thunder I think it was, attired in
all his regalia of headdress with eagle feathers, beaded coat, and
fringed breeches.
It appealed to their sense of power to grant the favor. At last the
whites had to come to them for help. Whether the deal was official or
unofficial, no one cared. In those crucial days Washington seemed to the
homesteaders as remote as the golden gates.
We took a short-cut back. There was not a single building anywhere in
sight, and the only moving thing was a herd of range cattle going slowly
toward water. Through the silence came a deep, moaning sound, the most
eerie, distressed sound I ever heard. I was passing an Indian cemetery,
and beside a grave stood an Indian woman--alone with her dead.
As is the Indian custom, she had come alone, walking many miles across
the plain. She would probably slash her breast or mutilate her flesh in
some other way as a sacrament to her grief. As I rode on slowly, her
wailing cry rose and fell until it grew dim in my ears, blending with
the moaning sound of the wind.
Some of the settlers turned stock over on the Indian lands after our
negotiations, and the Indians hauled loads of life-giving water to the
print shop now and then. Our collection of antique animals we turned
loose to go back and live off the Indians.
"Might be it will rain," Heine said one day. "Did you see that cloud
come by in front of the moon last night?"
But it wasn't a cloud. It was smoke.
[Illustration]
XIV
THE LAND OF THE BURNT THIGH
We were living in the Land of the Burnt Thigh, the famous hunting ground
of the Brulé Indians, whose name was derived from a great prairie fire
which had once swept the land.
The story of that great fire was told me by a famous interpreter who had
heard the tale many times from his grandfather. It was three seasons
after the big flood of 1812, he said, and the grass was high on Bad
River, bringing many buffalo down from the north. About two weeks after
the leaves turned they went to the prairie to get the winter's meat.
Being a hunting party, the women and children accompanied them. The
young boys wandered from the camps, shooting prairie dogs and small
birds. One day when a number of boys were returning to camp, a great
prairie fire swept down from the north.
The boys ran for the river, but the fire was too swift for them, and
they were overtaken. Throwing themselves on the ground, they turned
their faces from the fire and wrapped their heads and bodies in their
robes, waiting for the fire to pass. Where they lay the grass was high
and there were many small bushes; so when the fire came, the ground was
hot and they were all burned on the right thigh, though otherwise
unhurt.
The escape of the boys was considered so remarkable that the Sioux
called this tribe the "people with the burnt thigh." Apparently some
French trader rendered the name into his language, and thus we have
"Brulé" or burned.
The Land of the Burnt Thigh was famous not only for its great prairie
fire and the fact that it had been the feeding ground of the buffalo,
which had come in big herds to winter pasture; but also because it had
been a notorious rendezvous for horse thieves. In the early days lawless
gangs turned to stealing horses instead of robbing banks. A bold outfit
of horse thieves plied their trade over a vast section of the Bad River
country, of which the Brulé had been a part. Here in the tall grass they
found refuge and feed for the horses, with water in the creeks and water
holes almost the year around. In the night they would drive their loot
in, and the law was helpless in dealing with them.
Much has been said of Indians stealing the white man's horses and little
of the depredations of the whites upon the Indians. These gangs stole
constantly from the Indians, taking the best of their herds. A little
band of Indians, realizing that they must get back their horses at any
cost, tracked the thieves and here on the Burnt Thigh attacked them. But
they were driven back by the outlaws, who had their lookout, according
to the Indians, on the very site of Ammons; concealing themselves here
in the tall grass, they could see anyone approaching for miles around.
They had seen the Indians coming, just as we had seen them that first
day at the settlement. The gang opened fire, killed several of their
number, and routed the rest.
The Indians made no protest. All they knew of law was the power of the
government, a force not to be appealed to for protection, but rather one
against which the red men must struggle for their rights. They had no
recourse, therefore, against the thieves. And it was not until the
National Guard was sent to round them up that this lawless band was
tracked to its lair and captured.
On the Land of the Burnt Thigh that summer the grass was dry, and
nowhere was there water with which to fight fire. Heat waves like vapor
came up from the hard, dry earth. One could see them white-hot as they
rose from the parched ground like thin smoke. From the heat expansion
and the sudden contraction when the cool of the night came on, the earth
cracked open in great crevices like wide, thirsty mouths, into which
horses stumbled and fell beneath their riders.
A young couple went to town one day and returned that night, looking for
their home. They wandered around their claim, seeking their shack. It
lay in ashes, destroyed by a prairie fire.
Heine came wading through the hot yellow grass. "Did you carry matches
with you, Heine?"
"Nope," he answered laconically. "I don't need no matches."
"Suppose a prairie fire should come?" Everyone was supposed to carry
matches; no child was allowed to leave home without matches and
instructions to back-fire if he saw a fire coming. Heine sat down and
wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his little shirt.
"I look first behind when I start. Can't no prairie fire come till I get
here."
"But with these hot winds--"
We watched constantly for the first sign of smoke. Sacks, old heavy
comforts and pieces of carpet were kept at hand as fire extinguishers,
in case there were enough water on hand to wet them--which was seldom.
There were no more water holes, and it got dryer and hotter. Ben Smith's
men were still drilling for water. They were down 1500 feet. From the
print shop we could hear the drill grinding through hard earth.
Prairie fires began to break out all around the Strip. The homesteaders
began to be afraid to leave their shacks for fear they would find them
gone on their return. Ammunition for the fight was pitifully meager.
They fought with plows that turned firebreaks, back-fired to stop the
progress of the fire, beat it out with their wet sacks.
If fire ever got a start on the Burnt Thigh now, with its thick high
grass as dry as powder and no water, every habitation would be
completely annihilated. Protests about our lack of protection seethed
until they found expression in the newspaper. We had no equipment, no
fire fighters, no lookouts, no rangers. Surely the government owed us
some means of fighting the red devil of the plains.
One evening when the parched ground was beginning to cool we noticed a
strange yellow haze settling over the earth, felt a murky heat. The
world was on fire! Not near the settlement, miles away it must be,
probably on the Indian lands beyond the Strip.
From the heat in the air, the threatening stillness, the alertness of
the animals as they lifted their heads high in the air with nostrils
dilated, we knew it was coming toward us. The heavy reddish fog
portended a big fire, its tongue of flame lapping up everything as it
came.
Already a group of homesteaders was gathering at the print shop,
organizing systematic action; men from every section hurrying in with
little sacks and kegs of water splashing until they were half empty; a
pathetic, inadequate defense to set up against so gigantic an enemy.
Chris Christopherson rattled by with his tractor to turn broad furrows.
Dave Dykstra, who would never set the world on fire but would do a good
deal in putting it out, hastened up to help. Here they came! Men with
kegs of water, men with pieces of carpet, men with nothing but their
hands and their fear to pit against the fire.
Off to the south the sky was red now, and the smell of fire was in our
nostrils, faint but unmistakable. None of us knew how fast a big fire
could travel. The settlers still knew so pitiably little about combating
the frontier.
From the Indian settlement came Swift Running Deer on the horse which
had taken the State Fair prize last year. In Sioux (the young buck was
too excited to remember his English) he said the fire was on beyond the
Brulé somewhere. Most of the Indians had ridden off to it while he had
come to tell the whites.
"If the wind stay down, it mebbe no come, but heap big fire like that
take two day--three day--mebbe seven to die."
It was still and peaceful now, but there was little hope that two or
three days could pass without wind--and if the wind came from that
direction there was no hope for the Brulé.
Coyote Cal, who had come riding through the Strip, stopped at the print
shop. Ida Mary tried to persuade him to ride around to the homesteads
and tell the girls who lived alone that the fire was still a long way
off and that men had gone to fight it.
Coyote Cal stretched his long, angular figure to full height and stood
there hesitant. "No, miss, I'd ruther fight fire," he said at length.
"But the girls will be frantic with fear."
"Hain't no use a calf-bawlin' over a prairie fire. If it gits yuh, it
gits yuh, an' that's all there is to it."
With these consoling words he swung into the saddle and turned his
horse's head toward the fire.
Ma Wagor came outside where Ida Mary and I watched the reflection of
flame against the darkening sky. The air was still. There was no wind.
"I'm goin' home to milk the cow," Ma announced. She had paid forty
dollars for that cow, she reminded us, and she wanted every last drop of
milk out of her. Besides, she didn't believe in anybody leaving this
world hungry.
The red dusk found the plains stirring. The ominous silence was broken
by rumbling wagons hurrying with their barrels of water, tractors
chugging, turning long fresh rows of dirt as breaks, teams everywhere
plowing around shacks and corrals.
Night came on, inky black. The red light on the horizon and billowy
clouds of smoke intensified the darkness. Over the range, cattle were
bellowing in their mad fear of fire. They were coming closer to the
reservation fence, running from danger.
The hours crept past; around us on the plains the settlers had done all
they could, and they were waiting as Ida Mary and I were waiting,
watching the red glow on the sky, thinking of the men who were
desperately beating out the advancing flames, wondering if each tiny
gust foretold the coming of the wind.
Inside the shack we moved about restlessly, putting the money we had on
hand in tin cans, the legal paper in the little strong box, and burying
them in the small, shallow cave. If the fire came, we would seek refuge
there ourselves, but it wouldn't be much use. We knew that.
Out again to look at the sky, and then up and down the print shop,
restlessly up and down. Ida Mary made coffee; we had to do something,
and there was nothing for us to do but wait. Wait and listen to the
silence, and look our own fear squarely in the eyes and know it for what
it was.
"What's that?" said Ida Mary in a queer, hoarse voice. She put down her
cup and sat rigid, listening. Then she jumped to her feet, her face
white. "Edith," she cried, "it's the wind--it's the wind!"
Out of nowhere came the moaning sound of the wind, sweeping unchecked
across space, blowing from the south! While we listened with caught
breath, it seized some papers and sent them rattling across the table,
blew a lock of hair in my eyes, made the dry grass rustle so that it
sounded for one glorious moment like rain.
We ran outside and stood in the darkness, our dresses whipping around
us, looking at the sky. Here and there above the red haze we saw a
bright, jagged tongue of flame leap up, licking the black sky.
The homesteaders who had not gone to the fire found waiting alone
intolerable, and one by one they drifted in to the store, waiting taut
and silent.
At midnight we heard the staccato beats of a horse's hoofs. A messenger
was coming. Only one horse on the plains could travel like that; it was
Black Indian. And a moment later Lone Star Len flung himself from the
horse and came in.
He had been fighting flame. His face was blackened almost beyond
recognition.
"It's all right," he said at once, before we could question him. "The
fire's over on the government land. It's beyond the Strip."
His eyes and lips were swollen, face and hands blistered. "It's still
ragin'," he went on, "but there is a little creek, dry mostly, between
the fire and the Strip. It's not likely to get this far. 'Course, the
wind is bad. It's blowin' sparks across on the grass, this side of the
creek. But some of the settlers and Indians are watchin' it."
Ida Mary came in from the shack with sandwiches and black coffee and set
them before him.
"You didn't need to bother doin' that for me," he protested; "you girls
better go to bed."
"When did you have anything to eat?" Ida Mary asked, as he drank the hot
coffee and devoured the food ravenously, moving his hands as though they
hurt him unbearably.
"This mornin'. Been working with that fire since noon; I had started for
the chuck-wagon when I smelt smoke...."
"Lone Star, why did you risk your life to save a reservation full of
homesteaders?" I asked him.
He stood for a moment with a chagrined expression on his smoke-scarred
face.
"Cattle needs the grass," he replied as he stalked out and rode slowly,
wearily away into the flame-lighted night.
The fire had broken out on range and government land off toward the
White River country--to the southeast, where Lone Star rode herd. As the
country for the most part was uninhabited, the fire had swept the plains
for miles before the fighters reached it. Sparks and flames had jumped
the creek, but by now the grass was burned back far enough on both sides
so that the danger for this region was past.
The amused natives told how a man had jolted up on a stiff horse, a
painting outfit in his saddlebag, to watch the fire. "This is great,"
he exclaimed as he plied brush and color. Then, as a volley of wild
sparks shot across the narrow stream and went into flame nearby, he
threw down the brush, rushed in among the fire-fighters, worked madly
until the flames were extinguished, then went back and finished the
picture.
"Who is he?" someone in the gaping crowd asked.
"The cartoonist from Milwaukee," a Brulé settler answered.
For several days longer the fire raged, with the air smoky and a red and
black pall over the earth. Then it faded as our other terrors had faded,
and was gone.
* * * * *
Already, in the midst of fire and water famine, there stalked ghosts of
cold and hunger--the coming winter. With no money left to provide the
necessities of life, the homesteaders stared into the face of a food
famine. Most of them were now living on meager rations, counting every
penny, their crops shriveled in the fields.
Ada put her small wages into flour and coffee. And Heine remarked, "My
Ma says might be we'll starve and freeze yet. She's goin' to pray." We
watched him trudge back across the plains, a sturdy little fellow, one
suspender holding up patched overalls over a faded blue shirt, bare feet
which walked fearlessly and by some miracle escaped the constant menace
of rattlesnakes, ragged straw hat shading the serious round face. The
plains had made him old beyond his six years.
With the realization of danger which the prairie fire had brought, _The
Wand_ began to advocate government rangers and lookouts to be stationed
at strategic points. I was in the print shop writing an article on
conditions when Lone Star came in.
"I want to get my paper forwarded, Miss Printer," he stated; "I'm
leavin' the country. It's gettin' too crowded in these parts. Too
lonesome. I don't see how people can live, huddled up with somebody on
every quarter-section."
"Where are you going now?"
"Goin' to an honest-to-God range country," he said. "A short-grass
country, but rich feed. You can get away from landgrabbers there. It's
bigger'n all creation."
"Where shall I send the paper?"
"Wyoming. The Rawhide country. Just send the paper to Lost Trail. I'll
be goin' on there. I know a cattleman around Lost Trail."
Rawhide country. Lost Trail. About them was the atmosphere of far-flung
space, of solitude and peace.
"I may go there myself some day," I told him.
"If you do," he said soberly, "leave this doggone newspaper shebang
behind. It's a pest to the country. Don't clutter up any more range with
homesteadin' herds. Worse than grasshoppers; at least the grasshoppers
leave, and the homesteaders appear to be here to stay."
He rode off, a strange, solitary figure, topped the ridge and dropped
out of sight as swiftly as he had appeared that first morning, stopping
the eagle in its flight. When he had gone I turned back to my article.
In this gigantic homestead project, _The Wand_ declared, there should be
protection. We demanded of the local land offices why the Department of
the Interior did not establish Service Bureaus on government territory
to expedite development, to lessen hardship and danger. But the Land
Offices could not help us. They were only the red-tape machines of the
Public Lands Department.
The federal government was taking in revenue by the millions from the
homesteaders. Millions of acres of homestead land at from $1.25 to $6 an
acre provided a neat income for the United States Treasury. And, we
contended, the homesteaders of America should be given consideration.
There was nothing radical about these articles, but here again I became
known as "that little outlaw printer."
Had I been experienced, I might have carried this appeal to Washington
and said, "Put the revenue from these lands back into them. That is not
charity, it is development of natural resources."
Any such entreaty, coming from an upstart of a girl printer, would have
been like a lamb bleating at a blizzard. But the homesteaders might have
been organized as a unit, with official power to petition for aid. I did
not know then that I could do such things.