The First Four Years Read online

  The wall was shelved the whole length. The top shelf was only a short space from the ceiling, and from it down, spaces between the shelves were wider until there was room for tall pitchers and other dishes to stand on the lower shelf. Beneath the lowest shelf was a row of drawers as well made and fitted as boughten furniture. There was a large wide drawer to hold a baking of bread. There was one drawer that already held a whole sack of white flour, a smaller one with graham flour, another with corn meal, a large shallow one for packages, and two others: one already filled with white sugar and the other one with brown. And one for Manly’s wedding present of silver knives and forks and spoons. Laura was so proud of them. Underneath the drawers was an open space to the floor and here stood the stone cookie-jar, the doughnut jar, and the jar of lard. Here also stood the tall stone churn and the dasher. The churn looked rather large when the only cow giving milk was the small fawn-colored heifer Pa had given them for a wedding present, but there would be more cream later when Manly’s cow should be fresh.

  In the center of the pantry floor, a trap door opened into the cellar.

  The door into the bedroom was just across the corner from the front door. On the wall at the foot of the bed was a high shelf for hats. A curtain hung from the edge of the shelf to the floor, and on the wall behind it were hooks for hanging clothes. And there was a carpet on the floor!

  The pine floors of the front room and pantry were painted a bright clean yellow. The walls of all the house were white plaster, and the pine woodwork was satin-smooth and oiled and varnished in its natural color. It was a bright and shining little house and it was really all theirs, Laura thought. It belonged to just Manly and her.

  The house had been built on the tree claim, looking forward to the time when the small switches of trees should be grown. Already Manly and Laura seemed to see it sitting in a beautiful grove of cottonwoods and elms and maples which were already planted along beside the road. The hopeful little trees stood in the half circle of the drive before the house. They were hovering close on each side and at the back. Oh, surely, if they were tended well, it would not be long before they sheltered and protected the little house from the summer’s heat and the winter’s cold and the winds that were always blowing! But Laura could not stand idly in the pantry dreaming and watching the cottonwood leaves blowing. There was work to be done. She cleared the breakfast table quickly. It was only a step from it to the pantry where everything was arranged on the shelves as it belonged; the dirty dishes she piled in the dishpan on the work shelf before the window. The tea kettle of hot water on the stove was handy too, and soon everything was clean and the door closed upon a pantry in perfect order.

  Next Laura polished the stove with a flannel cloth, swept the floor, dropped the table leaf, and spread a clean, bright red tablecloth over it. The cloth had a beautiful border and made the table an ornament fit for anyone’s front room. In the corner between the window to the east and the window to the south was a small standtable with an easy armchair at one side and a small rocker at the other. Above it suspended from the ceiling was a glass lamp with glittering pendants. That was the parlor part of the room, and when the copies of Scott’s and Tennyson’s poems were on the stand it would be complete. She would have some geraniums growing in cans on the windows soon and then it would be simply beautiful.

  But the windows must be washed. They were spattered with plaster and paint from the housebuilding. And how Laura did hate to wash windows!

  Just then there was a rap at the screen door, and Hattie, the hired girl from the farm adjoining, was there. Manly had stopped as he drove to the threshing and asked that she come and wash the windows when she could be spared!

  So Hattie washed the windows while Laura tidied the little bedroom and unpacked her trunk. Her hat was already on the shelf and the wedding dress hanging on its hook behind the curtain. There were only a few dresses to hang up, the fawn-colored silk with the black stripes, and the brown poplin she had made. They had been worn many times but were still nice. There was the pink lawn with the blue flowers. It would not be warm enough to wear that more than once or twice again this summer. Then there was the gray calico work dress to change with the blue she was wearing.

  And her last-winter’s coat looked very good hanging on the hook beside Manly’s overcoat. It would do for the winter that was coming. She didn’t want to be an expense to Manly right at the beginning. She wanted to help him prove that farming was as good as any other business. This was such a lovely little home, so much better than living on a town street.

  Oh, she did hope Manly was right, and she smiled as she repeated to herself, “Everything is evened up in this world.”

  Manly was late home, for threshers worked as long as there was daylight to see by. Supper was on the table when he came in from doing the chores, and as they ate, he told Laura the threshers would come the next day, would be there at noon for dinner.

  It would be the first dinner in the new home and she must cook it for the threshers! To encourage her, Manly said, “You’ll get along all right. And you can never learn younger.” Now Laura had always been a pioneer girl rather than a farmer’s daughter, always moving on to new places before the fields grew large, so a gang of men as large as a threshing crew to feed by herself was rather dismaying. But if she was going to be a farmer’s wife that was all in the day’s work.

  So early next morning she began to plan and prepare the dinner. She had brought a baking of bread from homeland with some hot corn bread there would be plenty. Pork and potatoes were on hand and she had put some navy beans to soak the night before. There was a pieplant in the garden; she must make a couple of pies. The morning flew too quickly, but when the men came in at noon from the thresher, dinner was on the table.

  The table was in the center of the room with both leaves raised to make room, but even then some of the men must wait for the second table. They were all very hungry but there was plenty of food, though something seemed to be wrong with the beans. Lacking her Ma’s watchful eye, Laura had not cooked them enough and they were hard. And when it came to the pie - Mr. Perry, a neighbor of Laura’s parents, tasted his first. Then he lifted the top crust, and reaching for the sugar bowl, spread sugar thickly over his piece of pie.

  “That is the way I like it,” he said. “If there is no sugar in the pie, then every fellow can sweeten his own as much as he likes without hurting the cook’s feelings.”

  Mr. Perry had made the meal a jolly one. He told tales of when he was a boy in Pennsylvania. His mother, he said, used to take five beans and a kettle of water to make bean soup. The kettle was so large that after they had eaten all the bean broth and bread they could, they had to take off their coats and dive for a bean if they wanted one.

  Everyone laughed and talked and was very friendly, but Laura felt mortified about her beans and her pie without any sugar. She had been so hurried when she made the pies; but how could she have been so careless? Pieplant was so sour, that first taste must have been simply terrible. The wheat had turned out only ten bushels to the acre, and wheat was selling at fifty cents a bushel. Not much of a crop. It had been too dry and the price was low. But the field of oats had yielded enough to furnish grain for the horses with some to spare. There was hay in great stacks, plenty for the horses and cows and some to sell.

  Manly was very cheerful and already planning for next year. He was in a great hurry to begin the fall plowing and the breaking of new sod land, for he was determined to double his acreage next year—or more, if possible. The wheat for seeds was stored in the claim shanty on the homestead, for there was no grainery on the tree claim. The rest of the wheat was sold.

  Now was a busy, happy time. Manly was early in the field, plowing, and Laura was busy all day with cooking, baking, churning, sweeping, washing, ironing, and mending. The washing and ironing were hard for her to do. She was small and slender but her little hands and wrists were strong and she got it done. Afternoons, she always put on a clean dress and sa
t in the parlor corner of the front room sewing, or knitting on Manly’s socks.

  Sundays they always went for a buggy ride and as the horses trotted along the prairie roads Laura and Manly would sing the old singing-school songs. Their favorite was “Don’t Leave the Farm, Boys.”

  “You talk of the mines of Australia,

  They’ve wealth in red gold, without doubt;

  But, ah! there is gold on the farm, boys—:

  If only you’ll shovel it out.

  (Chorus:)

  “Don’t be in a hurry to go!

  Don’t be in a hurry to go!

  Better risk the old farm awhile longer,

  Don’t be in a hurry to go!”

  And Laura thought of the golden wheat stored in the homestead claim shanty and she was glad.

  The drives were short these days for the plowing was hard work for pretty, quick-stepping Skip and Barnum, the driving team.

  Manly said they were not large enough to do all the breaking of the new sod land. One day he came home from town leading two large horses hitched behind the wagon, and they were drawing a new sulky breaking plow. Now Manly said he could hitch all four horses to the big plow. Then there would be no trouble in getting the land broke for his crops next year. The horses had been a bargain because their owner was in a hurry to sell and get away. He had sold the relinquishment of his homestead to a man from the east and was going farther west and take up another claim where government land could still be found.

  The sulky plow had cost fifty-five dollars, but Manly had only paid half down and given a note for the rest to be paid next year. The plow turned a furrow sixteen inches wide in the tough grass sod and would pay for itself in the extra acres Manly could get ready for crops since he could ride instead of walking and holding a narrow walking plow.

  After that Laura would go out in the morning and help hitch the four horses to the plow. She learned to drive them and handle the plow too and sometimes would plow several times around the field. She thought it great fun. Shortly after this Manly came from town again and behind the wagon was a small iron-gray pony. “Here,” he said to Laura, “is something for you to play with. And don’t let me hear any more about your father not letting you learn to ride his horses. This one is gentle and won’t hurt you.”

  Laura looked at the pony and loved it. “I’ll call her Trixy,” she said. The pony’s feet were small and, her legs fine and flat. Her head was small with a fine mealy nose and ears pointed and alert. Her eyes were large and quick and gentle, and her mane and tail were long and thick. That night after supper, Laura chose her saddle from the descriptions and pictures in Montgomery Ward’s catalogue and made the order for it ready to mail the first trip to town. She could hardly wait for the saddle to come but she shortened the two weeks’ time by making friends with Trixy. It was a beautiful all-leather saddle, tan-colored and fancy-stitched with nickel trimmings.

  “And now,” said Manly, “I’ll put the saddle on Trixy and you and she can learn together. I’m sure she’ll be gentle even if she never has been ridden, but better head her onto the plowed ground. It will be harder going for her—so she won’t be so frisky—and a soft place for you to light if you fall off.” So when Laura was safely in the saddle, her left foot in the leather slipper stirrup, her right knee over the saddle horn with the leaf-horn fitting snuggly about it, Manly let go the bridle and Laura and Trixy went out on the plowed ground. Trixy was good and did her best to please even though she was afraid of Laura’s skirt blowing in the wind. Laura didn’t fall off, and day after day they learned horseback riding together.

  It was growing late in the fall. The nights were frosty and soon the ground would freeze. The breaking of the new fifty-acre field was nearly finished. There were no Sunday afternoon drives now. Skip and Barnum were working too hard at the plowing to be driven. They must have their day of rest. Instead, there were long horseback rides, for Manly had a saddle pony of his own, and Fly and Trixy, having nothing else to do, were always ready to go. Laura and Trixy had learned to foxtrot and to lope together. The little short lope would land them from the side of the road across the wheel track onto the grass-covered middle. Another jump would cross the other wheel track. Trixy would light so springingly on her dainty feet that there was never a jar.

  One day as they were loping down a road, Manly said, “Oh, yes! Trixy can jump short and quick, but Fly can run away from her”—and Fly started. Laura bent low over Trixy’s neck, touched her with her whip, and imitated, as near as she could manage, a cowboy yell. Trixy shot ahead like a streak, leaving Fly behind. Laura stopped her and sat a little breathless until Manly came up. But when Manly protested at the sudden start she said airily, “Oh, Trixy told me she was going in plenty of time.”

  After that it was proven many times that Trixy was faster—often on a twenty-mile ride over the open prairie before breakfast.

  It was a carefree, happy time, for two people thoroughly in sympathy can do pretty much as they like.

  To be sure, now and then Laura thought about the short crop and wondered. Once she even saved the cream carefully and sent a jar of fresh butter to town for sale, thinking it would help pay for the groceries Manly was getting. With the butter, she sent five dozen eggs, for the little flock of hens, picking their living around the barn and the straw stacks and in the fields, were laying wonderfully well. But Manly brought the butter back. Not a store in town wanted it at any price and he had been able to get only five cents a dozen for the eggs. Laura couldn’t help any in that way. But why worry? Manly didn’t.

  When the breaking was finished, the hay barn back of the house was made more snug for winter. It was a warm place for the stock, with hay stacked tightly on each side against the skeleton frame. Hay was stacked even over the roof, about four feet thick at the eaves and a little thicker at the peak of the roof to give plenty of slant to shed water.

  With a long hay knife, Manly had cut two holes through the haystack on the south side of the barn. Then he had put windows over the holes inside the barn for, he said, the stock must have light even with the door shut.

  When the barn was made snug, it was butchering time. But Ole Larsen, the neighbor across the road, butchered first. Mr. Larsen was always borrowing. It was the cause of disagreement between Manly and Laura, for Laura objected to tools and machinery being used and broken and not returned. When she saw Manly going afoot to the back end of Ole Larsen’s field to get some machine that should have been at his own barn, she was angry, but Manly said one must be neighborly.

  So when Mr. Larsen came over to borrow the large barrel in which to scald his hog in the butchering, she told him to take it. Manly was in town but she knew he would lend it. In a few minutes Mr. Larsen came back to borrow her wash boiler to heat water to scald the hog. Soon he was back again to borrow her butcher knives for the work, and again a little later to get her knife whetstone to sharpen the knives. Grimly Laura said to herself if he came next to borrow their fat hog to kill she would let him have it. But he had a hog of his own.

  And after all that, he did not bring over a bit of the fresh meat as good neighbors always did. A few days later Manly butchered his fat hog and Laura had her first experience making sausage, head cheese, and lard all by herself. Hams and shoulders and spareribs were frozen in the storm shed and fat meat was salted down in a small barrel.

  Laura found doing work alone very different from helping Ma. But it was part of her job and she must do it, though she did hate the smell of hot lard, and the sight of so much fresh meat ruined her appetite for any of it.

  It was at this time that the directors of the school were able to pay Laura the salary for the last month she had taught. The money made Laura feel quite rich and she began planning how she should spend it. Manly told her if she bought a colt with it she could double the money in a short time by selling it when it was grown. So that was what they decided to do, and Manly bought a bay two-year-old that promised to grow out well.

  Laura
didn’t bother to name the colt. It was just to be sold again, so what was the use? But the animal was fed well, brushed, and cared for, to make it grow well.

  One blustery day Manly started early for town, leaving Laura very much alone. She was used to being the only person on the place and thought nothing of it, but the wind was so cold and raw that she had not opened the front door. It was still locked from the night. In the middle of the morning, busy with her work, Laura looked out the front window and saw a little bunch of horsemen coming across the prairie from the southeast. She wondered why they were not traveling on the road. As they came nearer she saw there were five of them, and they were Indians.

  Laura had seen Indians often, without fear, but she felt a quick jump of her heart as they came up to the house and without knocking tried to open the front door. She was glad the door was locked, and she slipped quickly into the back room and locked the outside door there.

  The Indians came around the house to the back door and tried to open that. Then seeing Laura through the window they made signs for her to open the door, indicating that they would not hurt her. But Laura shook her head and told them to go away. Likely they only wanted something to eat, but still one never could tell. It was only three years ago that the Indians nearly went on the warpath a little way west, and even now they often threatened the railroad camps.

  She wouldn’t open the door but watched them as they jabbered together. She couldn’t catch a word that she could understand, and she was afraid. They weren’t acting right. Why didn’t they go away!

  Instead they were going to the barn—and her new saddle was hanging in the barn and Trixy was there… Trixy! Her pet and comrade!