The Conquest Part 5

Of neighbors, I had many. There was Miss Carter from old Missouri whose claim joined mine on the west, and another Missourian to the north of her; a loud talking German north of him, and an English preacher to the east of the German. A traveling man's family lived north of me; and a big, fat, lazy barber who seemed to be taking the "rest cure," joined me on the east. His name was Starks and he had drawn number 252. He had a nice, level claim with only a few buffalo wallows to detract from its value, and he held the distinction of being the most uncompromisingly lazy man on the Little Crow. This, coupled with the unpardonable fault of complaining about everything, made him nigh unbearable and he was known as the "Beefer." He came from a small town, usually the home of his ilk, in Iowa, where he had a small shop and owned three and a half acres of garden and orchard ground on the outskirts of the town. He would take a fiendish delight in relating and re-relating how the folks in his house back in Iowa were having strawberries, new peas, green beans, spring onions, and enjoying all the fruits of a tropical climate, while he was holding down an "infernal no-account claim" on the Little Crow, and eating out of a can.

A merchant was holding down a claim south of him, and a banker lived south of the merchant. Thus it was a varied cla.s.s of homesteaders around Calias and Megory, the first summer on the Little Crow. Only about one in every eight or ten was a farmer. They were of all vocations in life and all nationalities, excepting negroes, and I controlled the colored vote.

This was one place where being a colored man was an honorary distinction. I remember how I once requested the stage driver to bring me some meat from Megory, there being no meat shop in Calias, and it was to be left at the post office. Apparently I had failed to give the stage driver my name, for when I called for it, it was handed out to me, done up in a neat package, and addressed "Colored Man, Calias." My neighbors soon learned, however, that my given name was "Oscar," but it was some time before they could all spell or p.r.o.nounce the odd surname.

During the month of June it rained twenty-three days, but I was so determined to break out one hundred and twenty acres, that after a few days of the rainy weather I went out and worked in the rain. Starks used to go up town about four o'clock for the mail, wearing a long, yellow slicker, and when he saw me going around the half-mile land he remarked to the bystanders: "Just look at that fool n.i.g.g.e.r a working in the rain."

Being the first year of settlement in a new country, there naturally was no hay to buy, so the settlers turned their stock out to graze, and many valuable horses strayed away and were lost. When it rained so much and the weather turned so warm, the mosquitoes filled the air and covered the earth and attacked everything in their path. When I turned my horses out after the day's work was done, they soon found their way to town, where they stood in the shelter of some buildings and fought mosquitoes. Their favorite place for this pastime was the post office, where Billinger had a shed awning over the board walk, the framework consisting of two-by-fours joined together and nailed lightly to the building, and on top of this he had laid a few rough boards. Under this crude shelter the homesteaders found relief from the broiling afternoon sun, and swapped news concerning the latest offer for their claims. The mosquitoes did not bother so much in even so slight an inclosure as this, so every night Jenny Mule would walk on to the board walk, p.r.i.c.k up her ears and look in at the window. About this time the big horse would come along and begin to scratch his neck on one of the two-by-fours, and suddenly down would go Billinger's portable awning with a loud crash which was augmented by Jenny Mule getting out from under the falling boards. As the sound echoed through the slumbering village the big horse would rush away to the middle of the street, with a prolonged snort, and wonder what it was all about. This was the story Billinger told when I came around the next morning to drive them home from the storekeeper's oat bin where they had indulged in a midnight lunch. The performance was repeated nightly and got brother Billinger out of bed at all hours. He swore by all the G.o.ds of Buddha and the people of South Dakota, that he would put the beasts up and charge me a dollar to get them.

Early one morning I came over and found that Billinger had remained true to his oath, and the horse and mule were tied to a wagon belonging to the storekeeper. Nearby on a pile of rock sat Billinger, nodding away, sound asleep. I quietly untied the rope from the wagon and peaceably led them home. Then Billinger was in a rage. He had a small, screechy tremulo voice and it fairly sputtered as he tiraded: "If it don't beat all; I never saw the like. I was up all last night chasing those darned horses, caught them and tied them up; and along comes Devereaux while I am asleep and takes horses, rope and all." The crowd roared and Billinger decided the joke was on him.

Miss Carter, my neighbor on the west, had her trouble too. One day she came by, distressed and almost on the verge of tears, and burst out: "Oh, Oh, Oh, I hardly know what to do."

I could never bear seeing any one in such distress and I became touched by her grief. Upon becoming more calm, she told me: "The banker says that the man who is breaking prairie on my claim is ruining the ground."

She was simply heart-broken about it, and off she went into another spasm of distress. I saw the fellow wasn't laying the sod over smoothly because he had a sixteen-inch plow, and had it set to cut only about eight inches, which caused the sod to push away and pile up on edges, instead of turning and dropping into the furrow. I went with her and explained to the fellow where the fault lay. The next day he was doing a much better job.

Those who have always lived in the older settled parts of the country sometimes have exaggerated ideas of life on the homestead, and the following incident offers a partial explanation. Megory and Calias each had a newspaper, and when they weren't roasting each other and claiming their paper to be the only live and progressive organ in the country, they were "building" railroads or printing romantic tales about the brave homesteader girls. A little red-headed girl nicknamed "Jack" owned a claim near Calias. One day it was reported that she killed a rattlesnake in her house. The report of the great encounter reached eastern dailies, and was published as a Sunday feature story in one of the leading Omaha papers. It was accompanied by gorgeous pictures of the girl in a leather skirt, riding boots, and cow-boy hat, entering a sod house, and before her, coiled and poised to strike, lay a monster rattlesnake. Turning on her heel and jerking the bridle from her horse's head, she made a terrific swing at Mr. Rattlesnake, and he, of course, "met his Waterloo." This, so the story read, was the eightieth rattlesnake she had killed. She was described as "Rattlesnake Jack" and thereafter went by that name. She was also credited with having spent the previous winter alone on her claim and rather enjoyed the wintry nights and snow blockade. Now as a matter of fact, she had spent most of the previous winter enjoying the comforts of a front room at the Hotel Calias, going to the claim occasionally on nice days. She had no horse, and as to the eighty rattlesnakes, seventy-nine were myths, existing only in the mind of a prolific feature story writer for the Sunday edition of the great dailies. In fact she had killed one small young rattler with a b.u.t.ton.

CHAPTER XIII

IMAGINATIONS RUN AMUCK

I decided to utilize some of my spare time by doing a little freighting from Oristown to Calias. Accordingly, one fair morning I started for the former town. It began raining that evening, finally turning into a fine snow, and by morning a genuine South Dakota blizzard was raging. How the wind did screech across the prairie!

I was driving the big horse and Jenny Mule to a wagon loaded with two tons of coal. They were not shod, and the hillsides had become slick and treacherous with ice. At the foot of every hill Jenny Mule would lay her ears back, draw herself up like a toad, when teased, and look up with a groan, while the big horse trotted on up the next slope, pulling her share of the load.

When the wind finally went down the mercury fell to 25 below zero and my wrists, face, feet, and ears were frost bitten when I arrived at Calias. As is always the case during such severe weather, the hotel was filled, and laughing, story telling, and good cheer prevailed. The Nicholson boys asked "how I made it" and I answered disgustedly that I'd have made it all right if that Jennie Mule hadn't got faint hearted. The remark was received as a good joke and my suffering and annoyances of the trip slipped away into the past. That remark also had the further effect of giving Jennie Mule immortality. She became the topic of conversation and jest in hotel and postoffice lobbies, and even to this day the story of the "faint hearted mule" often affords splendid entertainment at festive boards and banquet halls of the Little Crow, when told by a Nicholson.

While working in the rain, the perspiration and the rain water had caused my body to become so badly galled, that I found considerable difficulty in getting around. To add to this discomfiture Jenny Mule was affected with a touch of "Maudism" at times, especially while engaged in eating grain. One night when I had wandered thoughtlessly into the barn, she gave me such a wallop on the right shin as to impair that member until I could hardly walk without something to hold to. As it had taken a fourteen-hundred-mile walk to follow the plow in breaking the one hundred and twenty acres, I was about "all in" physically when it was done.

As a means of recuperation I took a trip to Chicago. While there, the "call of the road" affected me; I got reinstated and ran a couple of months to the coast. Four months of free life on the plains, however, had changed me. After one trip I came in and found a letter from Jessie, saying she was sick, and although she never said "come and see me" I took it as an excuse and quit that P----n Company for good--and here it pa.s.ses out of the story--went down state to M--boro, and spent the happiest week of my life.

After I had returned to Dakota, however, I contracted an imagination that worked me into a state of jealously, concerning an individual who made his home in M--boro, and with whom I suspicioned the object of my heart to be unduly friendly. I say, this is what I suspicioned. There was no particular proof, and I have been inclined to think, in after years, that it was more a case of an over-energetic imagination run amuck. I contended in my mind and in my letters to her as well, that I should not have thought anything of it, if the "man in the case" had a little more promising future, but since his proficiency only earned him the munificent sum of three dollars per week, I continued to fret and fume, until I at last resolved to suspend all communication with her.

Now what I should have done when I reached this stage of imaginary insanity, was to have sent Miss Rooks a ticket, some money, and she would have come to Dakota and married me, and together we would have "lived happy ever after." As I see it now, I was affected with an "idealism." Of course I was not aware of it at the time--no young soul is--until they have learned by bitter experience the folly of "they should not do thus and so", and, of course, there is the old excuse, "good intentions." Somewhere I read that the road to--not St. Peter--is paved with good intentions. The result of my prolific imagination was that I carried out my resolutions, quit writing, and emotionally lived rather unhappily thereafter, for some time at least.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SURVEYORS

The entire Little Crow reservation consisted of about two million acres of land, four-fifths of which was unopened and lay west of Megory County. Of the two million acres, perhaps one million, five hundred thousand ranged from fair to the richest of loam soil, underlaid with clay. The climatic condition is such that all kinds of crops grown in the central west, can be grown here. Two hundred miles north, corn will not mature; two hundred miles south, spring wheat is not grown; two hundred west, the alt.i.tude is too high to insure sufficient rainfall to produce a crop; but the reservation lands are in such a position that winter wheat, spring wheat, oats, rye, corn, flax, and barley do well.

Ever since the drouth of '94, all crops had thrived, the rainfall being abundant, and continuing so during the first year of settlement.

Oristown and other towns on the route of the railroad had waited twenty years for the extension, and now the citizens of Oristown estimated it would be at least ten years before it extended its line through the reservation; while the settlers, to the number of some eight thousand, hoped they would get the road in five years. However, no sleep was lost in antic.i.p.ation. The nearest the reservation came to getting a railroad that summer was by the way of a newspaper in Megory, whose editor spent most of his time building roads into Megory from the north, south, and the east. In reality, the C. & R.W. was the only road likely to run to the reservation, and all the towns depended on its extension to overcome the long, burdensome freighting with teams.

With all the country's local advantages, its geographical location was such as to exclude roads from all directions except the one taken by the C. & R.W. To the south lay nine million acres of worthless sand hills, through which it would require an enormous sum of money to build a road.

Even then there would be miles of track which would practically pay no interest on the investment. At that time there was no railroad extending the full length of the state from east to west, most lines stopping at or near the Missouri River. Since then two or three lines have been built into the western part of the state; but they experienced much difficulty in crossing the river, owing to the soft bottom, which in many places would not support a modern steel bridge. For from one to two months in the spring, floating ice gives a great deal of trouble and wreaks disaster to the pontoon.

A bird's eye view of the Little Crow shows it to look something like a bottle, the neck being the Missouri River, with the C. & R.W. tracks creeping along its west bank. This is the only feasible route to the Reservation and the directors of this road were fully aware of their advantageous position. The freight rates from Omaha to Oristown (a distance of two hundred and fifty miles) being as high as from Omaha to Chicago, a distance of five hundred miles.

But getting back to the settlers around and in the little towns on the Little Crow. The first thing to be considered in the extension was, that the route it took would naturally determine the future of the towns.

Hedrick, Kirk, and Megory were government townsites, strung in a northwesterly direction across the country, ranging from eight to fifteen miles apart, the last being about five miles and a half east of the west line of the county. Now the county on the west was expected to be thrown open to settlement soon, would likely be opened under the lottery system, as was Megory county. After matters had settled this began to be discussed, particularly by the citizens of Megory, five and one-half miles from the Tipp County line. This placed Megory in the same position to handle the crowds coming into the next county, as Oristown had for Megory County, excepting Megory would have an advantage, for Tipp County was twice as large as Megory. When this was all considered, the people of Megory began to boost the town on the prospects of a future boom. The only uncertain feature of the matter then to be considered was which way the road would extend. That was where the rub came in, which way would the road go? This became a source of continual worry and speculation on the part of the towns, and the men who felt inclined to put money into the towns in the way of larger, better, and more commodious buildings; but when they were encouraged to do so, there was always the bogy "if." If the railroad should miss us, well, the man owning the big buildings was "stung," that was all, while the man with the shack could load it on two or four wagons, and with a few good horses, land his building in the town the railroad struck or started.

This was, and is yet, one of the big reasons shacks are so numerous in a town in a new country, which expects a road but knows not which way it will come; and the officials of the C. & R.W. were no different from the directors of any other road. They were "mum" as dummies. They wouldn't tell whether the road would ever extend or not.

The Oristown citizens claimed it was at one time in the same uncertainty as the towns to the west, and for some fifteen or twenty years it had waited for the road. With the road stopping at Oristown, they argued, it would be fully ten years before it left, and during this time it could be seen, Oristown would grow into an important prairie city, as it should. Everything must be hauled into Oristown, as well as out. So it can be seen that Oristown would naturally boom. While nothing had been raised to the west to ship out, as yet, still there was a growing population on the reservation and thousands of carloads of freight and express were being hauled into and from Oristown monthly, for the settlers on the reservation; which filled the town with railroad men and freighters. Crops had been good, and every thing was going along smoothly for the citizens and property owners of Oristown. Not a cloud on her sky of prosperity, and as the trite saying goes: "Everything was lovely, and the goose hung high," during the first year of settlement on the Little Crow.

And now lest we forget Calias. Calias was located one and one-half miles east, and three miles south of Megory, and five miles straight west of Kirk. If the C. & R.W. extending its line west, should strike all the government townsites, as was claimed by people in these towns, who knew nothing about it, and Calias, it would have run from Kirk to Megory in a very unusual direction. Indeed, it would have been following the section lines and it is common knowledge even to the most ignorant, that railroads do not follow section lines unless the section lines are directly in its path. If the railroad struck Kirk and Megory, it was a cinch it would miss Calias. If it struck Calias, perched on the banks of the Monca Creek, the route the Nicholsons, as promoters of the town, claimed it would take; the road would miss all the towns but Calias.

This would have meant glory and a fortune for the promotors and lot holders of the town. It would also have meant that my farm, or at least a part of it, would in time be sold for town lots.

After I got so badly overreached in dealing in horses, for a time the opinion was general that the solitary negro from the plush cushions of a P----n would soon see that growing up with a new country was not to his liking, and would be glad to sell at any old figure and "beat it" back to more ease and comfort. This is largely the opinion of most of the white people, regarding the negro, and they are not entirely wrong in their opinion. I was quite well aware that such an opinion existed, but contrary to expectations, I rather appreciated it. When I broke out one hundred and twenty acres with such an outfit as I had, as against many other real farmers who had not broken over forty acres, with good horses and their knowledge of breaking prairie, acquired in states they had come from, I began to be regarded in a different light. At first I was regarded as an object of curiosity, which changed to appreciation, and later admiration. I was not called a free-go-easy c.o.o.n, but a genuine booster for Calias and the Little Crow. I never spent a lonesome day after that.

The Nicholson Brothers, however, gave the settlers no rest, and created another sensation of railroad building by their new contention that the railroad would not be extended from Oristown, but that it would be built from a place on the Monca bottom two stations below Oristown, where the track climbed a four per cent grade to Fairview, then on to Oristown.

They offered as proof of their contention that the C. & R.W. maintained considerable yardage there, and it does yet. Why it did, people did not know, and this kept everybody guessing. Some claimed it would go up the Monca Valley, as Nicholson claimed. This much can be said in favor of the Nicholsons, they were good boosters, or "big liars," as their rivals called them, and if one listened long and diligently enough they would have him imagine he could hear the exhaust of a big locomotive coming up the Monca Valley. While the people in the government townsites persisted loudly that the C. & R.W. had contracted with the government before the towns were located, to strike these three towns, and that the government had helped to locate them; that furthermore, the railroad would never have left the Monca Valley, which it followed for some twenty miles after leaving the banks of the Missouri. All of which sounded reasonable enough, but the government and the railroad had entered into no agreement whatever, and the people in the government towns knew it, and were uneasy.

I had been on my claim just about a year, when one day Rattlesnake Jack's father came from his home on the Jim River and sold me her homestead for three thousand dollars. My dreams were at last realized, and I had become the owner of three hundred and twenty acres of land; but my money was now gone, when I had paid the one thousand, five hundred dollars down on the Rattlesnake Jack place, giving her back a mortgage for the remaining one thousand, five hundred at seven per cent interest, and it was a good thing I did, too. I bought the place early in April and in June the Interior Department rejected the proof she had offered the November before, on account of lack of sufficient residence and cultivation. The proof had been accepted by the local land office, and a final receipt for the remaining installments of the purchase price, amounting to four hundred and eighty dollars, was issued. A final receipt is considered to be equivalent to a patent or deed, but when Rattlesnake Jack's proof of residence got to the General Land Office in Washington, in quest of a patent, the commissioner looked it over, figured up the time she actually put in on the place, and rejected the proof, with the statement that it only showed about six month's actual residence. At that time eight month's residence was required, with six months within which to establish residence; but no proof could be accepted until after the claimant had shown eight month's actual and continuous residence.

From the time the settlers began to commute or prove up on the Little Crow, all proofs which did not show fully eight month's residence, were rejected. This was done mostly by the Register and Receiver of the Local Land Office, and many were sent back on their claims to stay longer.

Many proofs were also taken by local U.S. Commissioners, County Judges, and Clerks of Courts, but these officers rarely rejected them, for by so doing they also rejected a four dollar and twenty-five cent fee. About one-third of the persons who offered proof at that time had them turned down at the Local Land Office. This gave the local Commissioners, County Judges, and Clerks of Courts, a chance to collect twice for the same work. It may be interesting to know that a greater percentage of proofs rejected were those offered by women. This was perhaps not due to the fact that the ladies did not stay on their claims, so much as it was conscientiousness. They could not make a forcible showing by saying that they had been there every night, like the men would claim, but would say instead that they had stayed all night with Miss So-and-So this time and with another that time, and by including a few weeks' visit at home or somewhere else, they would bungle their proofs, so they were compelled to try again.

A short time after this and evidently because so many proofs had been sent back, the Interior Department made it compulsory for the claimant to put in fourteen months' actual residence on the claim, before he could offer proof. With fourteen months, they were sure to stay a full eight months at least. This system has been very successful.

When Rattlesnake Jack was ordered back, after selling me the place, she wanted me to sign a quit claim deed to her and accept notes for the money I had paid, which might have been satisfactory had it not been that she thought I had stopped to look back and failed to see the rush of progress the Little Crow was making; that the long antic.i.p.ated news had been spread, and was now raging like a veritable prairie fire, and stirred the people of the Little Crow as much as an active stock market stirs the bulls on the stock exchange. The report spread and stirred the everyday routine of the settlers and the finality of humdrum and inactivity was abrupt. It came one day in early April. The rain had kept the farmers from the fields a week. It had been raining for nearly a month, and we only got a clear day once in a while. This day it was sloppy without, and many farmers were in from the country. We were all listening to a funny story Ernest Nicholson was telling, and "good fellows" were listening attentively. Dr. Salter, a physician, had just been laid on a couch in the back room of the saloon, "soused to the gills," when in the door John M. Keely, a sort of ne'er do well popular drummer, whose proof had been rejected some time before, and who had come back to stay "a while longer", stumbled into the door of the local groggery. He was greeted with sallies and calls of welcome, and like many of the others, he was "feeling good." He sort of leaned over, and hiccoughing during the intervals, started "I've," the words were spoken chokingly, "got news for you." He had by now got inside and was hanging and swinging at the same time, to the bar. Then before finishing what he started, called "Tom," to the bar tender, "give me a whiskey before I", and here he leaned over and sang the words "tell the boys the news."

"For the love of Jesus Keel" exclaimed the crowd in chorus "tell us what you know." He drained the gla.s.s at a gulp and finally spit it out. "The surveyors are in Oristown."

CHAPTER XV

"WHICH TOWN WILL THE R.R. STRIKE?"

The drummer's information soon received corroboration from other sources, and although it seemed almost unbelievable, it was discussed incessantly and excitement ran high. These pioneers, who had braved the hardships of homestead life had felt that without the railroad they were indeed cut off from civilization. To them the advent of the surveyors in Oristown could mean only one thing--that their dreams of enjoying the many advantages of the railroad train, would soon materialize.

They fell to enumerating these advantages--the mail daily, instead of only once or twice a week; the ease with which they could make necessary trips to the neighboring towns; and most of all--the increase in the value of the land. With this last subject they became so wrought up with excitement and anxiety as to the truth of the report, that they could stay away from the scene of action no longer. Accordingly, buggies and vehicles of all descriptions began coming into Oristown from all directions. I hitched Doc and my new horse, Boliver, for which I had paid one hundred and forty dollars, to an old ramshackle buggy I had bought for ten dollars, and joined the procession.

Three miles west of Oristown we came upon a crowd of circus-day proportion, and in their midst were the surveyors.

In their lead rode the chief engineer--a slender, wiry man with a black mustache and piercing eyes, that seemed to observe every feature of surrounding prairie. Behind came a wagon loaded with stakes, accompanied by several men, the leader of whom was setting these stakes according to the signal of the engineer from behind the transit. Others, on either side, were also driving stakes. They were not only running a straight survey, but were cross-sectioning as they went.