The Land of Lure Part 6

As he rested and watched the shades of evening settle and creep down the distant mountain side, he took his horse's nose between his hands and, caressing it, enjoyed the warmth of the hot steaming breath. Then he cast one more glance in the direction of his home; it had faded from his view and was lost in the corresponding darkness, but in its stead a small twinkling light gleamed feebly across the snow. It was scarcely larger than the flame of one of the Christmas tree candles and was many miles away; yet it warmed his heart as no other flame could have done.

Speaking encouragingly to his horse, they resumed their toilsome journey, and never faltering or stopping, followed the guidance of the little light for another hour, and Gully staggered into his yard, his trip ended. But conditions had been reversed; the horse had led him home. Wearily he removed the pack, and placing it upon the ground near the kitchen door, was in the act of reaching for the mail to hand to his wife when his strength gave out and he collapsed. Numb with the cold, and with his trousers frozen fast to his shoes, he was helped into the house. The horse, upon gaining his freedom when his master's hand had released its hold on the rope, went to its place in the barn and munched hungrily at the hay that had been placed there to await his coming.

The warmth of the room and a cup of steaming hot coffee soon revived Gully, and after being provided with warm dry clothing he ate supper with his family and listened in a dazed manner to the reading of the news from home. But the stupor induced by the exposure and tremendous exertion finally overcome him, and he was forced to retire.

After Minnie Gully had a.s.sured herself that her husband was comfortable and sleeping soundly, she quietly slipped from the room, closing the door that led into the kitchen as she came out for fear that the chatter of the children might disturb him. Clearing away the dishes from the supper table she brought out the letters and papers that had been received that day and carefully reread every line of the letters from home. An occasional smile would brighten her countenance as she came upon some bit of homely advice or some suggestion from her dear old mother, suggestions that would have been applicable to the Minnie Gully of old, the tired, haggard daughter her mother had last seen, but to the robust, cheerful woman she had now grown to be they were amusing.

After having read the last of the letters she dropped her hands upon the table before her and sat staring at the open pages, reading between the lines. How plainly she could see the old home, the very room in which this letter was written. 'Twas evening, probably Sat.u.r.day. Yes, it was Sat.u.r.day, for there was father's Bible and scattered notes. He had been preparing his sermon for the morrow. His spectacle case was laying on the loose pages. He had got up and moved his chair to the opposite side of the table, and was seated by mother, who with toil stiffened fingers was laborously writing this letter. How plain it all was, and how her heart ached, not from homesickness nor from a desire to see and be with them, but rather to cry out to them and tell them what they had missed.

They, in their crowded communities, even in the rural districts, knew nothing of the wild delights of perfect freedom and unlimited s.p.a.ce. She had always been crowded; she knew it now. She had never known or felt until now the exhilerating thrills of doing something, doing something worth while. Fighting, yes, that was the word; fighting the elements, doing battle with unadorned nature, free from the artifices of mankind.

Oh! if she could only make them understand the inexpressable joy of conquest. The joy of breathing pure air; breathing it out in the open; air that had probably never come in contact with the nostrils of a living creature. Even though the air at times might be laden with sand that stifled and choked, it was dust that had been torn from a virgin soil, and was uncontaminated from having been trodden under foot by a hurrying mult.i.tude of human beings. And the mountains--how she loved them--she never tired of their ever changing beauty and grandeur. Still retaining the hold on the letter, Minnie Gully arose from the table, and going to the outside kitchen door, threw it open and stepped out. Not until she was met by the cold air and the blackness of the night did she realize how completely she had been lost to her surroundings.

Laughing aloud at her foolish flights of thought, she hurriedly tossed back the few strands of hair that had been displaced by the cold breeze and returned immediately into the room. She gathered up the letters and scattered papers and put them away, after which she joined in the conversation and games with the children; but the thoughts of the home folks remained with her. She wanted them to feel as she felt and to reap some of the benefits of this land of health, and be a factor in its development.

Long after she and the children had gone to bed she lay and thought of her girlhood friends, whom she knew would live their prosaic lives without ever having known the joys, miseries, delights and sorrows that enter into the daily life of a pioneer, and she wanted to help them; she went to sleep with visions of herself as a great benefactress distributing happiness to thousands of her kind.

The pa.s.sing of the blizzard marked the turning point of the winter, and the weather throughout the month of January was nice, and while the snow did not disappear, there was only an occasional flurry added nothing to the quant.i.ty on the ground. The social meetings at the school house were not resumed after the Christmas tree, owing to the extreme cold, but the neighbors visited with each other and met frequently at the store in the village. At such times when two or more were together the princ.i.p.al topic was the blizzard. Although the country was comparatively new in its settlement there was always the proverbial "oldest inhabitant" who could recall "Just such another winter," but to those who actually knew, it had been by far the worst blizzard the country had ever known since the advent of the white man.

There was a legend told by the Indians of the Northwest of the winter of the long ago when the snow was so deep in the mountains that the deer, driven from their natural haunts in the mountains, had crossed on the surface of the frozen Columbia river in search of food and died by the thousands on the plain. This, to a certain extent, was verified by the occasional finding of antlers, bleached white by years of exposure to the rays of the desert sun.

The matter of irrigation was now seldom mentioned. That the party of Government surveyors who had worked on the project the summer before had left with their equipment at the first approach of winter was known, but as to whether they were to return, or had completed their investigation, was left to conjecture.

With the arrival of February came the first real spring weather. A chinook wind came, and after blowing for two nights and a day, had melted the snow to such an extent that the only traces of it to be found was where it had drifted into an abandoned badger or coyote den and escaped the warm breath of the chinook. There being no frost in the ground the moisture created by the melting snow sank deep into the soil and was stored away for future use. The sun, as it rose higher with each lengthening day, dispensed its increasing warmth, thereby reviving the earlier varieties of plant life with startling rapidity.

Gully having cleared a number of acres of sagebrush, was anxiously awaiting seasonable weather for plowing, that he might sow his grain early and get it up and well rooted before the spring winds came, thinking that by adopting this method it would survive. There was plenty to do before the ground was in a condition for plowing. Seed grain and feed was to be hauled from the wheat growing district of the Big Bend country, and a supply of provisions procured, that a trip to the village would not be required of the team during the plowing and seeding time.

The cistern was to be filled and as much more ground made ready for the plow as was possible before the rush.

Plans for the accomplishment of all this had been carefully made by Gully and his wife, and they were eager to begin. As the roads were in excellent condition while the sand was wet and settled, Gully borrowed a team to work with his own from one of his neighbors and went for his seed grain, the trip requiring two days.

Upon his return from this trip he and his entire family drove to the village. There was no great amount of shopping to be done, as Gully's funds were about exhausted, but one of the merchants in the town had promised to supply him with provisions until the harvest season. The family was taken along that they might enjoy the outing, and as the weather was bright and there was no dust or blistering sun, the trip was often looked back to as one of the most pleasant they had ever taken.

CHAPTER XIV.

By the last of March the grain had all been sown and the first of the planting was beginning to force its tender shoots through the surface.

The sun was growing brighter with each day and everything pointed to an early spring.

Travis Gully, with his wife and children, toiled early and late, making the best of the favorable season. Grudgingly they stopped for their meals and time for their horses to feed. Night brought no diminishing of their labors; brush was piled and burned, and even trips to the well for water were made by moonlight.

It became the custom of the settler that when one of them went to town to bring out the mail for the neighbors who lived along their route home, and to call and deliver it when pa.s.sing. Almost daily mail came to the Gullys by this means, letters from people with whom they had been but slightly acquainted, asking for information in regard to the Northwest, of the chances for a man with but limited means, and the possibilities of their procuring a piece of the free land for a home.

Gully made no effort to reply to all these inquiries, nor did he feel justified in holding out alluring prospects to the writers, although he himself had absolute faith and confidence in the ultimate success of his undertaking. He was not certain as to whether all the anxious seekers for a home would be willing to endure, or could withstand, the hardships incident to the establishment of a home in the desert.

He would sit and talk the matter over with his wife during the evenings and at other spare times, and they agreed that while it would be nice to have some of their old friends as neighbors, the pleasure of their coming would be marred should conditions prove unsatisfactory upon their arrival.

They could recall a few of those among their former friends whom they felt a.s.sured would be easily convinced of the splendid future this country had, but there were others, many others, who they knew would expect to find conditions such as would guarantee immediate profitable results from their efforts. Of this latter cla.s.s they were afraid, as evidence of their kind having been there and tried, failed and gone their way, was at every hand visible, and they did not care to be held to blame for their disappointment.

So they finally decided to write a letter to the editor of their little home paper, that it might be published, a letter setting forth bare facts. Conditions as they existed, without embellishment, the good and the evil alike, and let those who might read choose for themselves.

The preparation of this letter was a source of both worry and amus.e.m.e.nt to Travis Gully and his wife, and required several nights for its completion. Worry that in their enthusiasm and optimism they might make it too favorable in its tone, that they might infuse into it too much of their individual hopes and aspirations of which they had dreamed until they had become almost a reality. And again they would burst into hearty laughter at the recounting of some of their experiences, never realizing that these little incidents must be lived through to be appreciated.

When the letter was written, and after having been read and altered and rewritten a number of times, it was finally p.r.o.nounced satisfactory and sealed, ready for mailing. Nearly a week elapsed before an opportunity to send the important packet to the post office came, and then only by the merest chance.

The news of the activities of the Government surveyors in the region the summer before had been spread broadcast throughout the East, and unscrupulous land boomers had announced that the reclamation by the Government of the vast area was an a.s.sured fact, some even going so far as to announce the exact amount of the appropriation made by Congress for this purpose and so, as a result of this, and also to the fact that the railroads had again put on a homeseekers excursion rate, the early spring brought an unusually large number of prospective settlers into the community.

They came in parties, toiling their way across the level stretch of country, now still moist from the melted snow, showed no evidence of the clouds of sand and dust that would follow after a few short weeks of sunshine. The surface of the unplowed ground was thickly carpeted with a specie of fine gra.s.s, known as sheep gra.s.s, that always came first in the spring, to be followed by the more succulent bunch gra.s.s.

Myriads of tiny plants were pushing their way through the surface and many were bursting into full blossom before they had lifted their dainty heads more than a few inches above the gra.s.s roots. Many and varied were their shapes and colors, each vieing with the other in hastening to bloom, that it might flaunt its beauty for the longest possible time before being forced to close its petals by the ever increasing heat of the sun.

To those of the tourists who came at this season of the year the prospects were most inviting. Never had they, in their homes in the East, had such a range of vision, such an unlimited expanse to sweep with their bewildered eyes, and the kaleidoscopic changes came so rapidly, as they turned to admire it.

It was like a dream. Starting with the snow capped peaks of the mountains, they could follow the scene downward past the snowline, over the barren s.p.a.ce that intervenes between it and the timber, which starts in with its varied shades of green, the peculiar, yellowish green of the tamarack, that seldom grows at an alt.i.tude of less than three thousand feet. Intermingled with this would appear the spots of dull brown, showing the clumps of sarvic berries and choke cherries, the favorite haunts of the bear and deer. Towering above these thickets the slender white trunks and branches of the quaking asp could be plainly seen.

Farther down the shades of green become darker as the forests of fir, pine and cedar come within the range of vision. Flaming patches of sumach adorn the edges of the rocky spots that occasionally occurred in the picture. On downward the dull gray of the sagebrush marks the upper rim of the breaks of the Columbia river, then a blank of smooth rock wall that drops for hundreds of feet to the water's edge. The river itself is hidden from view by the undulating hills that lay immediately adjacent to the plains. Here the scene changes from its wild rugged beauty to one indicating the presence of mankind. The vast expanse of sagebrush is dotted here and there with square patches of a new and different shade of green, the green of the freshly growing grain, each of these being marked by the presence of a newly constructed home. The green of the grain fields and the bare, unpainted walls of the homes refuse to harmonize with the color scheme of the desert and are easily distinguished as not being a part thereof, and do not figure in the picture. Pa.s.sing them by with a hasty glance, barely sufficient to note their remoteness, one from the other, the beholder allows his gaze to gradually take notice of objects nearer at hand, and finally to lower his eyes, with a sigh of satisfaction, and looks with wonder into the faces of the little desert flowers blooming happily at his very feet, and asks himself what connection there is between these two, the glacial peaks and the tiny desert flower, so different in every way, and yet both so necessary for the completion of the picture.

Travis Gully and his wife anxiously awaited the arrival of the copy of the paper in which their letter was to be published and given to the world, and when it came they reread every word, and felt rea.s.sured that it contained no misleading statements, no invitation to others to come unprepared to take up the hardships of the life of a homesteader, but the entire article teemed with the elements of hope and optimism that showed their faith in a successful end.

During April and May the influx of homeseekers was at its height, and almost daily parties of prospective settlers stopped at the Gully home for information as to directions and locations of pieces of land they wished to secure. Gully's first year's experience had given him knowledge of conditions that had enabled him to overcome to a certain degree some of the difficulties with which he had to contend. During his enforced idleness of the winter just pa.s.sed he had planned the course he proposed to pursue during the ensuing year. He had decided to introduce some of the dry land farming methods that had been successfully tried out in other sections of the Northwest, an idea of which he had gleaned from some Government Bulletins that had been given him by the postmaster of the village.

As a result of his experiments along these lines, and due to a most favorable season in the way of absence of hard winds and seasonable showers, Gully's homestead presented a most creditable appearance. His field of wheat was by far the best in the neighborhood, and as he had planted nothing but the most hardy varieties of corn and vegetables his garden promised to be a success, and as a result of the showing he was making, his place became one of the points of interest to which most of the visitors were directed by the people of the village, or to which the real estate agents always brought their clients, and would exclaim: "What this man has done in this country others can do."

Spurred on by his success and the ever increasing feeling of independence, Travis Gully toiled on thruout the spring. The constant recurrence of visitors to view their home was a source of diversion to the Gullys, and a means whereby many dollars came into their possession.

They made no charge for the hospitality extended to the strangers who came their way, but the offering of a gla.s.s of water or, as was often the case, a lunch and an hour's rest to the tired, dusty travelers who could not but see and appreciate their condition, was always rewarded by liberal offerings of change, made in most instances to the children.

Thus the immediate requirements of the family were met and a small amount saved.

As the summer approached and the unusual showers became less frequent, the fitful gusts of wind started the restless sand, but too late to harm the grain that was now beginning to a.s.sume the golden tint that foretold an early harvest. The garden was beginning to wilt beneath the hot sunrays, but the ingenuity of Gully saved it. At the root of the melon vines and other plants empty cans were imbedded into which the waste water was poured and allowed to filter slow through, and by this method sufficient moisture was given the plants to mature them, and the yield was abundant.

The favorable season in the desert region had renewed the hopes of those who had chosen to make it their home, and scenes of unusual activity were apparent at every hand. New tracts of land were being cleared and plowed, and new buildings sprang up overnight; their glistening bare walls could be seen in many directions.

The services of a Miss Anderson as teacher for the little school had been secured, and though the season was late for starting, it was opened, and each school morning, early, the Gully children went joyfully across the sagebrush plain to the little school building, where they were joined by some half dozen other children who came from as many different directions.

The glint of the sunrays on their brightly shining dinner pails flashed heliographic warning of their approach long before the small pupils could be seen. The Sunday School was reorganized and the meetings of the literary society resumed. The hardships of the past winter were almost forgotten and were seldom referred to.

The middle of the month of June brought the harvest season. The grain in the desert maturing and ripening several weeks in advance of that in the grain belt to the north, thus affording the homesteader an opportunity to harvest their grain at home before leaving for the grain fields for their regular season's run.

Gully, whose harvest at home had yielded exceptional returns for which he found a ready market among his neighbors, was undecided as to whether to make another trip into the Big Bend country or remain at home and improve his place. But the desire to have a well, with abundance of water, which would give him an opportunity to irrigate and develop his home, soon caused him to decide to go. He had not forgotten his experience of the fall before, and his firm resolve never to leave his family alone in the desert again, but conditions had changed since them.

They were better provided for, and there were neighbors, many of whom would have to leave for the winter, but still there were among them many who would leave their families behind. Besides he had bought another team and what they could earn, together with his earnings, would enable him to secure the coveted well, and he would not have to leave again.

As for the work, he was better equipped now and would know what to expect and consequently make the best of it. Thus he reasoned, and after fully determining to go, he wrote to the grower for whom he had worked the previous fall and arranged for work during the coming season.

The summer now being on, the heat of the sun was terrific, and no effort was made to accomplish anything during the day. When trips to the village became necessary the start was made early, and the home coming frequently postponed until after sundown, to avoid as much as possible the midday drive over the hot dusty roads. Rains were a thing of the past now, and the desert began to a.s.sume its accustomed dry, parched appearance. Many of the newcomers who had moved in during the early spring, when conditions were most favorable, were now becoming alarmed, and questioned the wisdom of their choice, and had it not been for the positive evidence of the possibilities of the district as seen at the Gully place, many of them would have become discouraged and given up in despair.

To many of these unfortunates the village was the only source of comfort. They would congregate there during the day and discuss the various subjects pertaining to home building in the wilderness. Many of them had had no experience at farming even under the most favorable conditions, and these presented a most pitiful appearance and woebegone manner. Fresh from within the confines of shop or office and launched upon a life of hardships and exposure, upon a sea of blistering sands, sizzling sagebrush and bunch gra.s.s, it was no wonder they blistered, peeled, freckled and tanned and seemed to shrivel and slouch when they had lain aside their neat fitting business suit and donned their overalls. It was a cruel test of stamina and manhood, and a surprising few that withstood it.

Many of the earlier settlers adhered to the belief that help would come to them through irrigation, and the fact of the surveyors having been in the field the summer before was related to the new settlers with convincing arguments that it had to come. Still no one had ever heard the slightest intimation of what the surveyors had accomplished in the way of favorable results or the nature of their official report.