Land of the Burnt Thigh Part 24

I was restless during my stay in St. Louis; the city seemed to have changed--or perhaps I had changed--and I was glad to get back home. It was the first time I had called the West home.

Unbelievably unlike my first sight of the desolate region, I found it a thriving land of farms and plowed fields, of growing crops and bustling communities, whose growth had already begun to affect the East, bringing increased business and prosperity, whose rapid development and far-reaching influence people were only slowly beginning to comprehend.

All this had been achieved in less than two years, without federal aid, with little money, achieved by hard labor, cooperation, and unquenchable hope.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XIII

THE THIRSTY LAND

"You'd better do a little exhortin'," Ma told me on my return to the claim. "And if you get any collections, turn some of them in for the good of the store."

"Isn't business good?"

"Business is pouring in. It's money I'm talking about; there won't be any money until the crops are threshed--which will be about Christmas time out here. Now in Blue Springs--"

I didn't hear the rest of it. In the city I had been struck by the lavish spending of money, money which was at such a premium out here.

There was something shockingly disproportionate in the capacity to spend by city people and those on farms.

"At least, the crops look good."

"But," Ida Mary pointed out, "they need rain, and the dams are beginning to get low."

"What about the wells the settlers are digging for water supply?"

"They get nothing but dry holes," she told me. "Some of the settlers brought in well-drills, but they didn't find water. They don't know what to do."

All other issues faded into the background before the urgency of the water problem. I packed my city clothes deep down in the trunk, never to be worn again, and went to work!

A casual glance revealed no sign of the emergency we were facing. The Lower Brule was a broad expanse of green gra.s.s and grain, rippling gently in the breeze like water on a quiet sea. Sufficient moisture from the snow and early rain had been retained in the subsoil for vegetation.

But we needed water. With the hot weather the dams were going dry. There had been increased demands for water this summer, and there had not been the late torrential rains to fill the dams as there had been the year before.

"What are we going to do?" I asked the other settlers.

"Haul water until we can get wells. We'll have to dig deeper. Perhaps we have just not struck the water veins. After this we will follow the draws."

Water-hauling again! But haul it from where? There was no supply in the country sufficient for the needs of the region. Drills would cost money, and few settlers had any money left. There was no sign of rain, and an oppression weighed upon everyone as of impending evil--the fear of a water famine.

First we had come to understand the primitive worship of fire. Now we began to know that water is as vital to life as air itself. It takes experience to bring home the meaning of familiar words.

In the meantime the tall waving crops brought land agents with their buyers. At the first sign of water shortage more claims were offered for sale, and by that time there were a few deeded tracts put on the market.

Loan agents camped at the settlement, following up settlers ready to prove up. One could borrow more than a thousand dollars on a homestead now.

The money coming through our hands on relinquishments, options, government payments, etc., was mainly in bulk and growing beyond the coffee cans and old shoes where we secreted money awaiting deposit at the bank. We did need a bank on the Brule.

During the long hot summer weeks, when it did not grow dark on the open 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 s.p.a.ce; the howling of coyotes down the draw, the shrill, busy sound of insects in the long gra.s.s, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 inst.i.tution.

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 Pres...o...b..nker. 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 gla.s.s to squeeze in--just to get your fingers all stuck up with. I never was one for mixing drinks."

Ma poured an extra gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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-sc.u.mmed 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, gra.s.sy Brule, 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 sc.u.m, 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 t.i.tle.

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.