Pa said to him, “So this is your first trip west,” and Uncle Tom answered quietly, “Oh, no. I was with the first white men that ever laid eyes on the Black Hills.”
Pa and Ma were struck dumb for a moment. Then Ma asked. “Whatever were you doing there, Tom?”
“Looking for gold,” said Uncle Tom.
“Too bad you didn’t find a few gold mines,” Pa joked.
“Oh, we did,” Uncle Tom said. “Only it didn’t do us any good.”
“Mercy on us!” Ma softly exclaimed. “Do tell us all about it.”
“Well, let’s see. We started out from Sioux City, eight years ago,” Uncle Tom began. “In October of ’74. Twenty-six of us men, and one man brought along his wife and their nine-year-old boy.”
They traveled in covered wagons, with ox teams, and some saddle horses. Each man had a Winchester and small arms, and ammunition enough to last for eight months. They loaded supplies of flour, bacon, beans, and coffee into the wagons, and depended on hunting for most of their meat. Hunting was good; they got plenty of elk, antelope, and deer. The greatest trouble was lack of water on the open prairie. Luckily it was in early winter; there was plenty of snow, and they melted it at night to fill the water barrels.
The storms halted them some; during the blizzards they stayed in camp. Between storms the snow made hard going, and to lighten the loads they walked; even the woman walked a great part of the way. A good day’s journey was fifteen miles.
So they pushed on into the unknown country, seeing nothing but the frozen prairie and the storms, and now and then a few Indians at a distance, till they came to a strange depression in the land. It barred their way, and stretched as far as they could see ahead and on both sides. It looked like an impossibility to get the wagons down into it, but there was nothing to do but cross it, so with considerable trouble they got the wagons down onto this sunken plain.
From the floor of it, strange formations of bare earth towered up all around them, hundreds of feet high. Their sides were steep, sometimes overhanging, cut and whittled by the winds that blew forever. No vegetation grew on them, not a tree nor a bush nor a blade of grass. Their surface looked like dry caked mud, except in places where it was stained with different and brilliant colors. The floor of this sunken land was scattered thick with petrified shells and skulls and bones.
It was a heathenish place to be in, Uncle Torn said. The wagon wheels crunched over the bones, and those tall things seemed to turn as you went by, and some of them looked like faces, and outlandish idols. The wagons had to go between them, following the gulches or valleys. Winding around among those queer things, they got lost. It was three days before they could find their way out of that place, and it took a day’s hard work to get the wagons up on its rim.
Looking back over it, an old prospector told Uncle Tom that it must be the Bad Lands of which he had heard tales from the Indians. And he added, “I think that when God made the world He threw all the leftover waste into that hole.”
After that, they went on across the prairie until they came to the Black Hills. There they found shelter from the fierce prairie winds, but the going was hard because the valleys were full of snow and the hills were steep.
They had been traveling seventy-eight days when they made their last camp on French Creek. Here they cut pine logs from the hills, and built a stockade eighty feet square. They chopped the logs thirteen feet long, and set them upright, tightly together, sinking the bottom ends three feet into the ground. It was hard digging, the ground being frozen. On the inside of this wall, they battened it with smaller logs, pegged over every crack between the larger logs, with heavy wooden pegs. At each corner of the square stockade they made stout log bastions, standing out, to give them a crossfire along the outside of the walls. In these bastions, and also along the walls, they cut portholes. The only entrance to this blockade was a double gate, twelve feet wide, made of large logs solidly pegged together with wooden pins. It was a good stockade, when they got it finished.
Inside they built seven little log cabins, and there they lived through the winter. They hunted for their meat, and trapped for furs. The winter was bitter cold, but they pulled through, and toward spring they found gold, nuggets of it, and rich gold dust in the frozen gravel and under the ice in the creek beds. About the same time, the Indians attacked them. They could hold off the Indians all right, in that stockade. The trouble was that they would starve to death in it, if they could not get out of it to hunt. The Indians hung around, not fighting much but driving back any party that started out, and waiting for them to starve. So they cut down rations and tightened their belts, to hang on as long as they could before they had to kill their ox teams.
Then one morning they heard, far off, a bugle!
When Uncle Tom said that, Laura remembered the sound, long ago, echoing back from the Big Woods when Uncle George blew his army bugle. She cried out, “Soldiers?”
“Yes,” Uncle Tom said. They knew they were all right now; the soldiers were coming. The lookouts yelled, and everybody crowded up into the bastions to watch. They heard the bugle again. Soon they heard the fife and drum, and then they saw the flag flying, and the troops coming behind it.
They threw open the gate and rushed out, all of them, fast as they could to meet the soldiers. The soldiers took them all prisoner, there where they were, and kept them there, while some of the troops went on and burned the stockade, with everything in it. They burned the cabins and the wagons, and the furs, and killed the oxen.
“Oh, Tom!” Ma said as if she could not bear it.
“It was Indian country,” Uncle Tom said mildly. “Strictly speaking, we had no right there.”
“Had you nothing at all to show for all that work and danger?” Ma mourned.
“Lost everything I started out with, but my rifle,” said Uncle Tom. “The soldiers let us keep our guns. They marched us out on foot, prisoners.”
Pa was walking back and forth across the room. “I’ll be durned if I could have taken it!” he exclaimed. “Not without some kind of scrap.”
“We couldn’t fight the whole United States Army,” Uncle Tom said sensibly. “But I did hate to see that stockade go up in smoke.”
“I know,” Ma said. “To this day I think of the house we had to leave in Indian Territory. Just when Charles had got glass windows into it.”
Laura thought: “All this happened to Uncle Tom while we were living on Plum Creek.” For some time no one spoke, then the old clock gave its warning wheeze and slowly and solemnly it struck, only once.
“My goodness! look at the time!” Ma exclaimed. “I declare, Tom, you’ve held us spellbound. No wonder Grace is asleep. You girls hurry up to bed and take her with you, and Laura, you throw down the featherbed from my bed, and quilts, and I’ll make a bed down here for Tom.”
“Don’t rob your bed, Caroline,” Uncle Tom protested. “I can sleep on the floor with a blanket, I’ve done so, often enough.”
“I guess Charles and I can sleep on a straw-tick for once,” said Ma. “When I think how you slept cold and uncomfortable, so many nights on that trip.”
The cold winter of Uncle Tom’s story was still in Laura’s mind, so strongly that next morning it was strange to hear the Chinook softly blowing and the eaves dripping, and know that it was springtime and she was in the pleasant town. All day while she was sewing with Mrs. McKee, Pa and Ma were visiting with Uncle Tom, and next day only Laura and Carrie and Grace went to Sunday School and church. Pa and Ma stayed at home in order not to waste a moment of Uncle Tom’s short visit. He was leaving early Monday morning for his home in Wisconsin.
Only scattered patches of snow were left on the muddy ground. There would be no more sleighing parties, Laura knew, and she was sorry.
Pa and Ma and Uncle Tom were talking of people she did not know, while they all sat around the table after a late Sunday dinner, when a shadow passed the window. Laura knew the knock at the door, and she hastened to open it, wondering
why Almanzo had come.
“Would you like to go for the first buggy ride of spring?” he asked. “With Cap and Mary Power and me?”
“Oh, yes!” she answered. “Won’t you come in, while I put on my hat and coat?”
“No, thank you,” he said, “I’ll wait outside.”
When she went out she saw that Mary and Cap were sitting in the back seat of Cap’s two-seated buggy. Almanzo helped her up to the front seat and took the reins from Cap as he sat down beside her. Then Prince and Lady trotted away up the street and out on the prairie road toward the east.
No one else was out driving, so this was not a party, but Laura and Mary and Cap were laughing and merry. The road was slushy. Water and bits of snow spattered the horses and buggy and the linen lap robes across their knees. But the spring wind was soft on their faces and the sun was warmly shining.
Almanzo did not join in the merry talk. He drove steadily, without a smile or a word, until Laura asked him what was the matter.
“Nothing,” he said, then he asked quickly, “Who is that young man?”
No one was in sight anywhere. Laura exclaimed, “What young man?”
“That you were talking with, when I came,” he said.
Laura was astonished. Mary burst out laughing. “Now don’t be jealous of Laura’s uncle!” she said.
“Oh, did you mean him? That was Uncle Tom, Ma’s brother,” Laura explained. Mary Power was still laughing so hard that Laura turned, just in time to see Cap snatch a hairpin from Mary’s knot of hair.
“Suppose you pay some attention to me,” Cap said to Mary.
“Oh, stop it, Cap! Let me have it,” Mary cried, trying to seize the hairpin that Cap held out of her reach, while he snatched another one.
“Don’t, Cap! Don’t!” Mary begged, putting both hands over the knot of hair at the back of her neck. “Laura, help me!”
Laura saw how desperate the situation was, for she alone knew that Mary wore a switch. Cap must be stopped, for if Mary lost any more hairpins, her beautiful large knot of hair would come off.
Just at that instant, a bit of snow flung from Prince’s foot fell into Laura’s lap. Cap’s shoulder was turned to her as he struggled with Mary. Laura nipped up the bit of snow and neatly dropped it inside his collar at the back of his neck.
“Ow!” he yelled. “Looks like you’d help a fellow, Wilder. Two girls against me is too many.”
“I’m busy driving,” Almanzo answered, and they all shouted with laughter. It was so easy to laugh in the springtime.
Chapter 14
Holding Down a Claim
Uncle Tom went east on the train next morning. When Laura came home from school at noon, he was gone.
“No sooner had he gone,” said Ma, “than Mrs. McKee came. She is in distress, Laura, and asked me if you would help her out.”
“Why, of course I will, if I can,” Laura said. “What is it?”
Ma said that, hard as Mrs. McKee had worked at dressmaking all that winter, the McKees could not afford to move to their claim yet. Mr. McKee must keep his job at the lumberyard until they saved money enough to buy tools and seed and stock. He wanted Mrs. McKee to take their little girl, Mattie, and live on the claim that summer, to hold it. Mrs. McKee said she would not live out there on the prairie, all alone, with no one but Mattie; she said they could lose the claim, first.
“I don’t know why she is so nervous about it,” said Ma. “But it seems she is. It seems that being all alone, miles from anybody, scares her. So, as she told me, Mr. McKee said he would let the claim go. After he went to work, she was thinking it over, and she came to tell me that if you would go with her, she would go hold down the claim. She said she would give you a dollar a week, just to stay with her as one of the family.”
“Where is the claim?” Pa inquired.
“It is some little distance north of Manchester,” said Ma. Manchester was a new little town, west of De Smet. “Well, do you want to go, Laura?” Pa asked her.
“I guess so,” Laura said. “I’ll have to miss the rest of school, but I can make that up, and I’d like to go on earning something.”
“The McKees are nice folks, and it would be a real accommodation to them, so you may go if you want to,” Pa decided.
“It would be a pity, though, for you to miss Mary’s visit home,” Ma worried.
“Maybe if I just get Mrs. McKee settled on the claim and used to it, I could come home long enough to see Mary,” Laura pondered.
“Well, if you want to go, best go,” Ma said. “We needn’t cross a bridge till we come to it. Likely it will work out all right, somehow.”
So the next morning Laura rode with Mrs. McKee and Mattie on the train to Manchester. She had been on the cars once before, when she came west from Plum Creek, so she felt like a seasoned traveler as she followed the brakeman with her satchel, down the aisle to a seat. It was not as though she knew nothing about trains.
It was a seven mile journey to Manchester. There the trainmen unloaded Mrs. McKee’s furniture from the boxcar in front of the passenger coach, and a teamster loaded it onto his wagon. Before he had finished, the hotelkeeper was banging his iron triangle with a spike, to call any strangers to dinner. So Mrs. McKee and Laura and Mattie ate dinner in the hotel.
Soon afterward the teamster drove the loaded wagon to the door, and helped them climb up to sit on the top of the load, among the rolls of bedding, the kitchen stove, the table and chairs and trunk and boxes of provisions. Mrs. McKee rode in the seat with the teamster.
Sitting with their feet hanging down at the side of the wagon, Laura and Mattie clung to each other and to the ropes that bound the load to the wagon, as the team drew it bumping over the prairie. There was no road. The wagon wheels sank into the sod in places where it was soft from the melting snow, and the wagon and its load lurched from side to side. But it went very well until they came to a slough. Here where the ground was lower, water stood in pools among the coarse slough grass.
“I don’t know about this,” the teamster said, looking ahead. “It looks pretty bad. But there’s no way around; we’ll just have to try it. Maybe we can go across so quick the wagon won’t have time to sink down.”
As they came nearer to the slough, he said, “Hang on, everybody!”
He picked up his whip and shouted to the horses. They went fast, and faster, till urged on by his shouts and the whip they broke into a run. Water rose up like wings from the jouncing wagon wheels, while Laura hung on to the ropes and to Mattie with all her might.
Then all was quiet. Safe on the other side of the slough, the teamster stopped the horses to rest.
“Well, we made it!” he said. “The wheels just didn’t stay in one place long enough to settle through the sod. If a fellow got stuck in there, he’d be stuck for keeps.”
It was no wonder that he seemed relieved, for as Laura looked back across the slough she could see no wagon tracks. They were covered with water.
Driving on across the prairie, they came finally to a little new claim shanty, standing alone. About a mile away to the west was another, and far away to the east they could barely see a third.
“This is the place, ma’am,” the teamster said. “I’ll unload and then haul you a jag of hay to burn, from that place a mile west. Fellow that had it last summer, quit and went back east, but I see he left some haystacks there.”
He unloaded the wagon into the shanty, and set up the cook-stove. Then he drove away to get the hay.
A partition cut the shanty into two tiny rooms. Mrs. McKee and Laura set up a bedstead in the room with the cook-stove, and another in the other room. With the table, four small wooden chairs, and the trunk, they filled the little house.
“I’m glad I didn’t bring anything more,” said Mrs. McKee.
“Yes, as Ma would say, enough is as good as a feast,” Laura agreed.
The teamster came with a load of hay, then drove away toward Manchester. Now there were the two straw-ticks to fill with
hay, the beds to make, and dishes to be unpacked. Then Laura twisted hay into sticks, from the little stack behind the shanty, and Mattie carried it in to keep the fire going while Mrs. McKee cooked supper. Mrs. McKee did not know how to twist hay, but Laura had learned during the Hard Winter.
As twilight came over the prairie, coyotes began to howl and Mrs. McKee locked the door and saw that the windows were fastened.
“I don’t know why the law makes us do this,” she said. “What earthly good it does, to make a woman stay on a claim all summer.”
“It’s a bet, Pa says,” Laura answered. “The government bets a man a quarter-section of land, that he can’t stay on it five years without starving to death.”
“Nobody could,” said Mrs. McKee. “Whoever makes these laws ought to know that a man that’s got enough money to farm, has got enough to buy a farm. If he hasn’t got money, he’s got to earn it, so why do they make a law that he’s got to stay on a claim, when he can’t? All it means is, his wife and family have got to sit idle on it, seven months of the year. I could be earning something, dressmaking, to help buy tools and seeds, if somebody didn’t have to sit on this claim. I declare to goodness, I don’t know but sometimes I believe in woman’s rights. If women were voting and making laws, I believe they’d have better sense. Is that wolves?”
“No,” Laura said. “It’s only coyotes, they won’t hurt anybody.”
They were all so tired that they did not light the lamp, but went to bed, Laura and Mattie in the kitchen and Mrs. McKee in the front room. When everyone was quiet, the loneliness seemed to come into the shanty. Laura was not afraid, but never before had she been in such a lonely place without Pa and Ma and her sisters. The coyotes were far away, and farther. Then they were gone. The slough was so far away that the frogs could not be heard. There was no sound but the whispering of the prairie wind to break the silence.
The sun shining in Laura’s face woke her to an empty day. The little work was soon done. There was nothing more to do, no books to study, no one to see. It was pleasant for a while. All that week Laura and Mrs. McKee and Mattie did nothing but eat and sleep, and sit and talk or be silent. The sun rose and sank and the wind blew, and the prairie was empty of all but birds and cloud shadows.