Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart (best english novels to read txt) 📖

crossed the creek, and we were resting in the shade of a quaking-asp grove, high up on the sides of the Bad Land hills. For miles far below lay the valley through which we had come.

Farther on, the mountains with their dense forests were all wrapped in the blue haze of the melancholy days. Soon we quitted our enchanted grove whose quivering, golden leaves kept whispering secrets to us.

About three o'clock we came down out of the hills on to the bench on which the Louderer ranch is situated. Perhaps I should explain that this country is a series of huge terraces, each terrace called a bench. I had just turned into the lane that leads to the house when a horseman came cantering toward me. "Hello!" he saluted, as he drew up beside the wagon. "Goin' up to the house? Better not. Mrs. Louderer is not at home, and there's no one there but Greasy Pete. He's on a tear; been drunk two days, I'm tellin' you. He's full of mischief. 'T ain't safe around old Greasy. I advise you to go some'eres else." "Well," I asked, "where can I go?" "Danged if I know," he replied, "'lessen it 's to Kate Higbee's. She lives about six or seven miles west. She ain't been here long, but I guess you can't miss her place. Just jog along due west till you get to Red Gulch ravine, then turn north for a couple of miles. You'll see her cabin up against a cedar ridge. Well, so 'long!" He dug his spurs into his cayuse's side and rode on.

Tears of vexation so blinded me that I could scarcely see to turn the team, but ominous sounds and wild yells kept coming from the house, so I made what haste I could to get away from such an unpleasant neighborhood. Soon my spirits began to rise. Kate Higbee, I reflected, was likely to prove to be an interesting person. All Westerners are likable, with the possible exception of Greasy Pete. I rather looked forward to my visit. But my guide had failed to mention the buttes; so, although I jogged as west as I knew how, I found I had to wind around a butte about ever so often. I crossed a ravine with equal frequency, and all looked alike. It is not surprising that soon I could not guess where I was. We could turn back and retrace our tracks, but actual danger lay there; so it seemed wiser to push on, as there was, perhaps, no greater danger than discomfort ahead. The sun hung like a big red ball ready to drop into the hazy distance when we came clear of the buttes and down on to a broad plateau, on which grass grew plentifully. That encouraged me because the horses need not suffer, and if I could make the scanty remnant of our lunch do for the children's supper and breakfast, we could camp in comfort, for we had blankets. But we must find water. I stood up in the wagon and, shading my eyes against the sun's level light, was looking out in the most promising directions when I noticed that the plateau's farther side was bounded by a cedar ridge, and, better yet, a smoke was slowly rising, column-like, against the dun prospect. That, I reasoned, must be my destination. Even the horses livened their paces, and in a little while we were there.

But no house greeted our eyes,—just a big camp-fire. A lean old man sat on a log-end and surveyed us indifferently. On the ground lay a large canvas-covered pack, apparently unopened. An old saddle lay up against a cedar-trunk. Two old horses grazed near. I was powerfully disappointed. You know misery loves company; so I ventured to say, "Good-evening." He didn't stir, but he grunted, "Hello." I knew then that he was not a fossil, and hope began to stir in my heart. Soon he asked, "Are you goin' somewheres or jist travelin'?" I told him I had started somewhere, but reckoned I must be traveling, as I had not gotten there. Then he said, "My name is Hiram K. Hull. Whose woman are you?" I confessed to belonging to the house of Stewart. "Which Stewart?" he persisted,—"C.R., S.W., or H.C.?" Again I owned up truthfully. "Well," he continued, "what does he mean by letting you gad about in such onconsequential style?"

Sometimes a woman gets too angry to talk. Don't you believe that? No? Well, they do, I assure you, for I was then. He seemed grown to the log. As he had made no move to help me, without answering him I clambered out of the wagon and began to take the horses loose. "Ho!" he said; "are you goin' to camp here?" "Yes, I am," I snapped. "Have you any objections?" "Oh, no, none that won't keep," he assured me. It has always been a theory of mine that when we become sorry for ourselves we make our misfortunes harder to bear, because we lose courage and can't think without bias; so I cast about me for something to be glad about, and the comfort that at least we were safer with a simpleton than near a drunken Mexican came to me; so I began to view the situation with a little more tolerance.

After attending to the horses I began to make the children comfortable. My unwilling host sat silently on his log, drawing long and hard at his stubby old pipe. How very little there was left of our lunch! Just for meanness I asked him to share with us, and, if you'll believe me, he did. He gravely ate bread-rims and scraps of meat until there was not one bit left for even the baby's breakfast. Then he drew the back of his hand across his mouth and remarked, "I should think when you go off on a ja'nt like this you'd have a well-filled mess-box." Again speech failed me.

Among some dwarf willows not far away a spring bubbled. I took the kiddies there to prepare them for rest. When I returned to the fire, what a transformation! The pack was unrolled and blankets were spread, the fire had been drawn aside, disclosing a bean-hole, out of which Hiram K. was lifting an oven. He took off the lid. Two of the plumpest, brownest ducks that ever tempted any one were fairly swimming in gravy. Two loaves of what he called punk, with a box of crackers, lay on a newspaper. He mimicked me exactly when he asked me to take supper with him, and I tried hard to imitate him in promptitude when I accepted. The babies had some of the crackers wet with hot water and a little of the gravy. We soon had the rest looking scarce. The big white stars were beginning to twinkle before we were through, but the camp-fire was bright, and we all felt better-natured. Men are not alone in having a way to their heart through their stomach.

I made our bed beneath the wagon, and Hiram K. fixed his canvas around, so we should be sheltered. I felt so much better and thought so much better of him that I could laugh and chat gayly. "Now, tell me," he asked, as he fastened the canvas to a wheel, "didn't you think I was an old devil at first?" "Yes, I did," I answered. "Well," he said, "I am; so you guessed right." After I put the children to bed, we sat by the fire and talked awhile. I told him how I happened to be gadding about in "such onconsequential" style, and he told me stories of when the country was new and fit to live in. "Why," he said, in a burst of enthusiasm, "time was once when you went to bed you were not sure whether you'd get up alive and with your scalp on or not, the Injins were that thick. And then there was white men a durned sight worse; they were likely to plug you full of lead just to see you kick. But now," he continued mournfully, "a bear or an antelope, maybe an elk, is about all the excitement we can expect. Them good old days are gone." I am mighty glad of it; a drunken Pete is bad enough for me.

I was tired, so soon I went to bed. I could hear him as he cut cedar boughs for his own fireside bed, and as he rattled around among his pots and pans. Did you ever eat pork and beans heated in a frying-pan on a camp-fire for breakfast? Then if you have not, there is one delight left you. But you must be away out in Wyoming, with the morning sun just gilding the distant peaks, and your pork and beans must be out of a can, heated in a disreputable old frying-pan, served with coffee boiled in a battered old pail and drunk from a tomato-can. You'll never want iced melons, powdered sugar, and fruit, or sixty-nine varieties of breakfast food, if once you sit Trilby-wise on Wyoming sand and eat the kind of breakfast we had that day.

After breakfast Hiram K. Hull hitched our horses to the wagon, got his own horses ready, and then said, "'T ain't more 'n half a mile straight out between them two hills to the stage-road, but I guess I had better go and show you exactly, or you will be millin' around here all day, tryin' to find it." In a very few minutes we were on the road, and our odd host turned to go. "S'long!" he called. "Tell Stewart you seen old Hikum. Him and me's shared tarps many's the nights. We used to be punchers together,—old Clyde and me. Tell him old Hikum ain't forgot him." So saying, he rode away into the golden morning, and we drove onward, too.

We stopped for lunch only a few minutes that day, and we reached the Bridger community about two that afternoon. The much sought Aurelia had accepted the position of lifetime housekeeper for a sheep-herder who had no house to keep, so I had to cast about for whatever comfort I could. The roadhouse is presided over by a very able body of the clan of Ferguson. I had never met her, but formalities count for very little in the West. She was in her kitchen, having more trouble, she said, than a hen whose ducklings were in swimming. I asked her if she could accommodate the children and myself. "Yes," she said, "I can give you a bed and grub, but I ain't got no time to ask you nothing. I ain't got no time to inquire who you are nor where you come from. There's one room left. You can have that, but you'll have to look out for yourself and young 'uns." I felt equal to that; so I went out to have the horses cared for and to unload the kiddies.

Leaning against the wagon was a man who made annual rounds of all the homes in our community each summer; his sole object was to see what kind of flowers we succeeded with. Every woman in our neighborhood knows Bishey Bennet, but I don't think many would have recognized him that afternoon. I had never seen him dressed in anything but blue denim overalls and overshirt to match, but to-day he proudly displayed what he said was his dove-colored suit. The style must have been one of years ago, for I cannot remember seeing trousers quite so skimpy. He wore top-boots, but as a concession to fashion he wore the boot-tops under the trouser-legs, and as the trousers were about as narrow as a sheath skirt, they kept slipping up and gave the appearance of being at least six inches too short. Although Bishey is tall and thin,