The Boy Settlers Part 8

"It is a pity there is no timber anywhere," said Howell, discontentedly.

"We shall have to go several miles for timber enough to build our cabins. We don't want to cut down right away what little there is along the creek."

"Timber?" said Younkins, reflectively. "Timber? Well, if one of you would put up with a quarter-section of farming land, then the other can enter some of the timber land up on the North Branch."

Now, the North Branch was two miles and a half from the cabin in which the Dixon party were camped; and that cabin was two miles from the beautiful slopes on which the intending settlers were now looking for an opportunity to lay out their two claims. The two men looked at each other. Could they divide and settle this far apart for the sake of getting a timber lot?

It was Sandy who solved the problem. "I'll tell you what to do, father!" he cried, eagerly: "you take up the timber claim on the North Branch, and we boys can live there; then you and Uncle Charlie can keep one of the claims here. We can build two cabins, and you old folks can live in one, and we in another."

The fathers exchanged glances, and Mr. Howell said, "I don't see how I could live without Sandy and Charlie."

[Ill.u.s.tration: YOUNKINS ARGUED THAT SETTLERS WERE ENt.i.tLED TO ALL THEY COULD GET AND HOLD.]

Younkins brightened up at Sandy's suggestion; and he added that the two men might take up two farming claims, side by side, and let the boys try and hold the timber claim on the North Branch. Thus far, there was no rush of emigration to the south side of the Republican Fork. Most of the settlers went further to the south; or they halted further east, and fixed their stakes along the line of the Big Blue and other more accessible regions.

"We'll chance it, won't we, Aleck?" said Mr. Bryant.

Mr. Howell looked vaguely off over the rolling slope on which they were standing, and said: "We will chance it with the boys on the timber land, but I am not in favor of taking up two claims here. Let the timber claim be in my name or yours, and the boys can live on it.

But we can't take up two claims here and the timber besides--three in all--with only two full-grown men among the whole of us. That stands to reason."

Younkins was a little puzzled by the strictness with which the two newcomers were disposed to regard their rights and duties as actual settlers. He argued that settlers were ent.i.tled to all they could get and hold; and he was in favor of the party's trying to hold three claims of one hundred and sixty acres each, even if there were only two men legally ent.i.tled to enter homesteads. Wouldn't Charlie be of age before the time came to take out a patent for the land?

"But he is not of age to enter upon and hold the land now," said his father, stiffly.

So it was settled that the two men should enter upon the quarter-section of farming land, and build a cabin as soon as convenient, and that the claim on the North Fork, which had a fine grove of timber on it, should be set apart for the boys, and a cabin built there, too. The cabin in the timber need not be built until late in the autumn; that claim could be taken up by Mr. Howell, or by Mr. Bryant; by and by they would draw lots to decide which. Before sundown that night, they had staked out the corners of the one hundred and sixty acre lot of farming land, on which the party had arrived in the morning.

It was dark before they returned from looking over the timber land in the bend of the North Fork of the Republican.

CHAPTER X.

DRAWING THE FIRST FURROW.

The good-natured Younkins was on hand bright and early the next morning, to show the new settlers where to cut the first furrow on the land which they had determined to plough. Having decided to take the northwest corner of the quarter-section selected, it was easy to find the stake set at the corner. Then, having drawn an imaginary line from the stake to that which was set in the southwest corner, the tall Charlie standing where he could he used as a sign for said landmark, his father and his uncle, a.s.sisted by Younkins, and followed by the two other boys, set the big breaking-plough as near that line as possible. The four yoke of oxen stood obediently in line. Mr. Howell firmly held the plough-handles; Younkins drove the two forward yoke of cattle, and Mr. Bryant the second two; and the two younger boys stood ready to hurrah as soon as the word was given to start. It was an impressive moment to the youngsters.

"Gee up!" shouted Younkins, as mildly as if the oxen were petted children. The long train moved; the sharp nose of the plough cut into the virgin turf, turning over a broad sod, about five inches thick; and then the plough swept onward toward the point where Charlie stood waving his red handkerchief in the air. Sandy seized a huge piece of the freshly-turned sod, and swinging it over his head with his strong young arms, he cried, "Three cheers for the first sod of Bleeding Kansas! 'Rah! 'Rah! 'Rah!" The farming of the boy settlers had begun.

Charlie, at his distant post on the other side of the creek, saw the beginning of things, and sent back an answering cheer to the two boys who were dancing around the ma.s.sive and slow-moving team of cattle. The men smiled at the enthusiasm of the youngsters, but in their hearts the two new settlers felt that this was, after all, an event of much significance. The green turf now being turned over was disturbed by ploughshare for the first time since the creation of the world. Scarcely ever had this soil felt the pressure of the foot of a white man. For ages unnumbered it had been the feeding-ground of the buffalo and the deer. The American savage had chased his game over it, and possibly the sod had been wet with the blood of contending tribes. Now all was to be changed. As the black, loamy soil was turned for the first time to the light of day, so for the first time the long-neglected plain was being made useful for the support of civilized man.

No wonder the boys cheered and cheered again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SANDY SEIZED A HUGE PIECE OF THE FRESHLY-TURNED SOD, AND WAVING IT OVER HIS HEAD CRIED, "THREE CHEERS FOR THE FIRST SOD OF BLEEDING KANSAS!"]

"We go to plant her common schools, On distant prairie swells, And give the Sabbaths of the wild The music of her bells."

This is what was in Mr. Charles Bryant's mind as he wielded the ox-goad over the backs of the animals that drew the great plough along the first furrow cut on the farm of the emigrants. The day was bright and fair; the sun shone down on the flower-gemmed sod; no sound broke on the still air but the slow treading of the oxen, the chirrup of the drivers, the ripping of the sod as it was turned in the furrow, and the gay shouts of the light-hearted boys.

In a line of marvellous straightness, Younkins guided the leading yoke of cattle directly toward the creek on the other side of which Charlie yet stood, a tall, but animated landmark. When, after descending the gradual slope on which the land lay, the trees that bordered the stream hid the lad from view, it was decided that the furrow was long enough to mark the westerly boundary line of the forty acres which it was intended to break up for the first corn-field on the farm. Then the oxen were turned, with some difficulty, at right angles with the line just drawn, and were driven easterly until the southern boundary of the patch was marked out. Turning, now, at right angles, and tracing another line at the north, then again to the west to the point of original departure, they had accurately defined the outer boundaries of the field on which so much in the future depended; for here was to be planted the first crop of the newcomers.

Younkins, having started the settlers in their first farming, returned across the river to his own plough, first having sat down with the Dixon party to a substantial dinner. For the boys, after the first few furrows were satisfactorily turned, had gone back to the cabin and made ready the noon meal. The ploughmen, when they came to the cabin in answer to Sandy's whoop from the roof, had made a considerable beginning in the field. They had gone around within the outer edge of the plantation that was to be, leaving with each circuit a broader band of black and shining loam over which a flock of birds hopped and swept with eager movements, snapping up the insects and worms which, astonished at the great upheaval, wriggled in the overturned turf.

"Looks sorter homelike here," said Younkins, with a pleased smile, as he drew his bench to the well-spread board and glanced around at the walls of the cabin, where the boys had already hung their fishing-tackle, guns, Oscar's violin, and a few odds and ends that gave a picturesque look to the long-deserted cabin.

"Yes," said Mr. Bryant, as he filled Younkins's tin cup with hot coffee, "our boys have all got the knack of making themselves at home,--runs in the blood, I guess,--and if you come over here again in a day or two, you will probably find us with rugs on the floor and pictures on the walls. Sandy is a master-hand at hunting; and he intends to get a dozen buffalo-skins out of hand, so to speak, right away." And he looked fondly at his freckled nephew as he spoke.

"A dibble and a corn-dropper will be more in his way than the rifle, for some weeks to come," said Mr. Howell.

"What's a dibble?" asked both of the youngsters at once.

The elder man smiled and looked at Younkins as he said, "A dibble, my lambs, is an instrument for the planting of corn. With it in one hand you punch a hole in the sod that has been turned over, and then, with the other hand, you drop in three or four grains of corn from the corn-dropper, cover it with your heel, and there you are,--planted."

"Why, I supposed we were going to plant corn with a hoe; and we've got the hoes, too!" cried Oscar.

"No, my son," said his father; "if we were to plant corn with a hoe, we shouldn't get through planting before next fall, I am afraid. After dinner, we will make some dibbles for you boys, for you must begin to drop corn to-morrow. What ploughing we have done to-day, you can easily catch up with when you begin. And the three of you can all be on the furrow at once, if that seems worth while."

The boys very soon understood fully what a dibble was, and what a corn-dropper was, strange though those implements were to them at first. Before the end of planting-time, they fervently wished they had never seen either of these instruments of the corn-planter.

With the aid of a few rude tools, there was fashioned a staff from the tough hickory that grew near at hand, the lower part of the stick being thick and pointed at the end. The staff was about as high as would come up to a boy's shoulder, so that as he grasped it near the upper end, his arm being bent, the lower end was on the ground.

The upper end was whittled so as to make a convenient handle for the user. The lower end was shaped carefully into something like the convex sides of two spoons put together by their bowls, and the lower edge of this part was shaved down to a sharpness that was increased by slightly hardening it in the fire. Just above the thickest part of the dibble, a hole was bored at right angles through the wood, and into this a peg was driven so that several inches stuck out on both sides of the instrument. This completed the dibble.

"So that is a dibble, is it?" said Oscar, when the first one was shown him. "A dibble. Now let's see how you use it."

Thereupon his Uncle Aleck stood up, grasped the staff by the upper end, pressed his foot on the peg at the lower end of the tool, and so forced the sharp point of the dibble downward into the earth. Then, drawing it out, a convex slit was shown in the elastic turf. Shaking an imaginary grain of corn into the hole, he closed it with a stamp of his heel, stepped on and repeated the motion a few times, and then said, "That's how they plant corn on the sod in Kansas."

"Uncle Aleck, what a lot you know!" said Oscar, with undisguised admiration.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bryant, taking a pair of old boots, cut off the legs just above the ankles, and, fastening in the lower end of each a round bit of wood, by means of small nails, quickly made a pair of corn-droppers. Sandy's belt, being pa.s.sed through the loop-strap of one of these, was fastened around his waist. The dropper was to be filled with corn, and, thus accoutred, he was ready for doing duty in the newly ploughed field. When the lad expressed his impatience for another day to come so that he could begin corn-planting, the two elders of the family laughed outright.

"Sandy, boy, you will be glad when to-morrow night comes, so that you can rest from your labors. You remember what I tell you!" said his father.

Nevertheless, when the two boys stepped bravely out, next morning, in the wake of the breaking-team, they were not in the least dismayed by the prospect of working all day in the heavy furrows of the plough.

Bryant drove the leading yoke of oxen, Charlie tried his 'prentice hand with the second yoke, and Howell held the plough.

"'He that by the plough would thrive, Must either hold the plough or drive,'"

commented Oscar, filling his corn-dropper and eyeing his father's rather awkward handling of the ox-goad. Uncle Aleck had usually driven the cattle, but his hand was now required in the more difficult business of holding the plough.

"'Plough deep while sluggards sleep,'" replied his father; "and if you don't manage better with dropping corn than I do with driving these oxen, we shall have a short crop."

"How many grains of corn to a hole, Uncle Aleck? and how many bushels to the acre?" asked Oscar.

"Not more than five grains nor less than three is the rule, my boy.

Now then, step out lively."

And the big team swept down the slope, leaving a broad and shining furrow behind it. The two boys followed, one about twenty feet behind the other, and when the hindermost had come up to the work of him who was ahead, he skipped the planted part and went on ahead of his comrade twenty feet, thus alternating each with the other. They were cheerily at work when, apparently from under the feet of the forward yoke of oxen, a bird somewhat bigger than a robin flew up with shrieks of alarm and went fluttering off along the ground, tumbling in the gra.s.s as if desperately wounded and unable to fly. Sandy made a rush for the bird, which barely eluded his clutches once or twice, and drew him on and on in a fruitless chase; for the timid creature soon recovered the use of its wings, and soaring aloft, disappeared in the depths of the sky.