Centennial (138 page)

“Emperor IX is the top Hereford in history,” Charlotte snapped.

“Emperor IX is a runt. The day will come when scrupulous cattlemen will breed out of their herds every strain of that bull.”

“What nonsense are you talking?” Charlotte demanded. Turning to her breeders, she sought their support.

“The general judgment is that Emperor’s saving the breed ... bringing it into conformity to modern necessities.”

Jim took a deep breath, not because he felt any need for courage but because he felt a sudden lack of air. “I despise watching nature altered to suit a passing fad. I don’t like seeing a breed I’ve loved ...” He felt that
loved
might sound ridiculous in such context, but upon reflection, judged it to be the word he wanted. “I can’t stand by and watch a breed I’ve loved messed up. I think we should leave animals alone ... and the land too ...”

He paused to take another deep breath, for he was losing his temper. “I do feel most deeply, my dear Charlotte, that for this ranch, to send forth a generation of dwarfs ...” He grabbed at the corral gate, failed to reach it and crumpled in a heap. From the earth he tried one last time to protest, but words did not come, and before they could carry him back to the castle, he was dead.

After the funeral, Emperor IX won blue ribbons at Denver, Kansas City and Houston, confirming his domination of the field. He came to represent the sleek conformation the judges had decided to sponsor, the compact look that new-type ranchers wanted for their herds. It was acknowledged that he was the bull of the future.

It seemed that with the death of Jim Lloyd, who had protected the land, luck left the region. The previous year, 1923, had been a disaster for dry-land farmers, for only six inches of rain had fallen, which meant that even the best fields produced only about two bushels of wheat an acre, not enough to pay for the plowing, and land-poor men like Earl Grebe now found they had barely enough money to pay their store bills.

In 1924 things were no better, for even though nine inches of rain did fall, the drought of the preceding year showed its effects, and the good fields produced slightly under four bushels an acre.

A sense of defeat spread through the area, for if such conditions continued, many farmers would be driven out of business. They would not produce enough to make interest payments on their mortgages, and banks would foreclose. For the lack of a few dollars of ready cash, a man stood to lose a farm worth many thousands. It was a crazy system, one devised by idiots and administered by bankers, but it was the way America was run, and the individual farmer could do nothing about it.

Now the dreadful word
mortgage
struck at the heart of the Grebe family. In the good years, when money was plentiful, they had bought a half-section from Mervin Wendell and had considered themselves clever in talking him into accepting a thousand-dollar mortgage at five percent per annum.

“It’s like finding money,” Earl had explained enthusiastically. With four hundred acres planted to wheat which sold at two dollars a bushel, the Grebes had a gold mine, and when the cash came in they had built what the brochure called “their mansion.” They had also paid off their mortgage, but as soon as this was done Mervin Wendell came by with the good news that he could sell them an adjoining 320 acres. He also extended them the courtesy of another thousand-dollar mortgage, but when the papers were drawn he did not restrict it to the land he had just sold; he applied the mortgage to the entire farm.

Now, in the bad years, they owed Mervin Wendell’s son Philip one thousand dollars at a time when there were simply no dollars in circulation, and certainly none coming their way. The interest was only fifty dollars a year; if they continued to pay that, nothing bad could happen to them; they did not have to reduce the principal. But pay the interest they must, even though the debt had been contracted when dollars were plentiful and was coming due when they were rare.

“It’s so unfair,” Alice Grebe told her family as they gathered to discuss the threat which hung over their home. “He switched the mortgage from the land, which we could give back if we had to, onto the house, which is our very life blood. Earl, you must do something about this.”

He visited Philip Wendell in his offices near the railroad station and explained the error. “Your father must have meant to put the mortgage on the land,” he said, but the new head of Wendell Ranches and Estates proved adamant, polite but adamant.

“I’m quite sure, Mr. Grebe, that my father never made such a careless mistake. Times being unfavorable, you look back upon the event in a way which best supports your interests. I’m sure rain is coming back to these parts, and all you have to do is pay off the mortgage, and this unpleasantness will be forgotten.”

That night Earl Grebe assembled his family and spoke to them in harsh, grave words. His wife Alice was thirty-five years old that autumn and seemed prepared for whatever trials might lie ahead. She was still a tense woman and her energy had not flagged. Their son Ethan, an intelligent boy who duplicated many of the virtues of Mrs. Wharton’s hero, was twelve years old and eager to work. Their daughter Victoria was a tall, quiet girl like her mother, but their son Tim, two years old, was a boisterous little fellow. He sat on his mother’s lap as the discussion began.

“He means to take this farm from us,” Grebe said. “I could see it in his eye. In everything he did.”

“Was he so harsh?” Alice asked.

“He’s already foreclosed on three farms, Alice, and he intends making us the fourth.”

“He wouldn’t transfer the mortgage to the land?”

“He looked me in the eye, never blinking, and said he was sure his father never made such a mistake.”

“We should have had a lawyer,” Alice said, biting her lip to keep from whimpering.

“I did not think you required a lawyer when dealing with an honest man.” He was sweating, and Alice said, “Victoria, make us some lemonade.”

“Sit still! There will be no more lemonade. This family is going to eat grass if necessary, but we’re going to accumulate that thousand dollars and pay him off. Our life depends on it. Alice, you start. Tell us right now how you can save money.”

“Oh, dear!” she said falteringly. For some time now she had been conducting her home as frugally as possible. She was about to say that no further savings could be effected, but then she saw her husband’s stern visage, the goodness of his character shining through, and she knew that she must do even more.

So she began to enumerate the little things that could be done: “We’ll buy no clothes for anyone. No toys for Christmas. No candy. We’ll eat a lot of mush, the way we did in the soddy. And we don’t need curtains or brooms or anything like that. I’d feel happier, Earl, if you gave me no money at all, because I do grow careless. You buy the things and handle the accounts.”

Each of the two older children stated what he or she would surrender, and when Earl’s turn came he said harshly, “I’ll sell the two bay horses ...”

“Oh, no!” his wife protested “They’re the heart of the farm.”

“I must sell them,” he said

The prospect of Earl’s selling the two bays was more than Alice could face, and she broke into tears, dropping her head onto the table and shuddering as she had done years ago. Her shoulders contracted for some moments, and Earl said to Victoria, “Comfort her,” and he continued with his account of what expenditures he would eliminate. When he finished, his wife said weakly, “Earl, for God’s sake, don’t sell the horses. We don’t have to give at church. Victoria can ...”

“We will all bear down, Alice. We will pay back this unjust debt. The fault is mine, but we must all share it.”

So the Grebes went onto a regimen so spartan that only their neighbors who were in similar straits could comprehend. They were encouraged by two unexpected events. Vesta and Magnes Volkema, who had never allowed a mortgage on anything they owned, came voluntarily, and Vesta said, “We have some savings. If that miserable bastard tries to sheriff you out for the mortgage money, we’ll pay your interest.”

“I’m glad to see you’re cutting back expenses, Earl,” Magnes said. “If we get any rain at all, you’ll get out from under.”

The other appreciated visitor was Dr. Thomas Dole Creevey. At his own expense he was visiting the dry-land acres hit hardest by the two-year drought, and he was not even close to surrender. At the school auditorium he said in his low, powerful voice, “Don’t lose heart! Don’t listen to the ranchers when they gloat ‘We told you so.’ Never in the history of this state have we had three bad years in a row. Men! Look at the statistics! In region after region across this nation two bad years have always been followed by five good ones. Look at the facts!”

He became his old evangelical self as he scribbled the reassuring figures on a board. Montana, two bad years followed by six good ones. North Dakota, two very bad years followed by five excellent ones. Utah, where they kept careful records, the same. “Five years from now,” he promised them, “I’ll be lecturing somewhere in Kansas, and I’ll write on the blackboard, ‘Colorado, two bad years in 1923-24, followed by five excellent ones.’ It’s the law of nature.”

He visited Earl Grebe’s farm, making numerous borings with the earth auger, and he proved that down deep a residue of moisture existed. “This soil is ready for snow, Earl. You have your surface well prepared to accept it. For God’s sake, when it comes, disk it at once and trap the moisture in here. You’ve a great farm, Earl, and you’ll see thirty-bushel wheat again. On that I give you my solemn promise.”

And two days after he left, snow came, and then more snow, and then more, until it was clear that the drought had ended. Vesta Volkema, who was becoming quite rowdy as she grew older, told the Grebes during a family dinner, “Our little bastard Creevey warned God to get off his ass and get some snow moving,” but before the two families started to eat, Alice Grebe asked if she might open the meal with grace, and the other five bowed their heads as she began, “Dear Lord, from the depths of our hearts we thank ...” She could go no further, for she fell into a fit of weeping and Vesta had to take her from the room for a while.

The moisture came and the crops were saved, but in the late spring of 1925 something happened which went unnoticed by everyone in town except Walter Bellamy, who was now the town postmaster, the land commissioner’s office having had to close down. It was in May, on a cold, blustery day such as spring often brought to Colorado, and he was looking toward the mountains when he noticed an unusually heavy gust of wind sweep eastward across the prairie. It came from such a direction that its path lay along furrowed fields, with never a windbreak or a strip of unplowed land to temper its force, and as it moved, it began to catch up from the earth small grains of soil and collections of tumbleweeds and shreds of Russian thistle which had come in with the Turkey Red, and as it whipped through Line Camp, Bellamy thought that if such winds became frequent, especially during years with little snow, they might do real damage.

Increasingly apprehensive, Bellamy convened a meeting of the district farmers and invited an expert from the Agricultural College in Fort Collins to explain how they might protect their fields from either wind or rushing summer rains by plowing a different pattern, but fifteen inches of rain had already fallen this year, with more expected, so no one paid much attention to what the professor said. Bellamy did insist, however, that the new tenant who was farming the land he had acquired east of Line Camp start to plow in the new way, and although they grumbled at “fancy-pants ideas of men who never farmed,” they did agree to plow along the contours, but since there was neither wind nor flood, they accomplished nothing, and in the fall of 1925 Bellamy saw to his disgust that they had reverted to long, straight furrows, uphill and down. Any force left in his argument vanished that October when his tenant won the plowing contest with a set of the straightest, evenest furrows a judge ever saw.

On December 31 Earl Grebe had the satisfaction of carrying seven hundred dollars in cash into the office of Philip Wendell. “That leaves only three hundred dollars on the mortgage,” he said with a certain grimness.

“I told you last year we’d get rain,” Wendell said evenly. “Next year looks just as good.”

“If it is, we’ll burn the mortgage.”

“I’m sure you will,” Philip said. “My father had great respect for you and Alice.”

Why the Grebes and families like them now fought to stay on the land was a mystery. They could see that Line Camp had reached its peak and was beginning to die. In 1924 the local newspaper had folded, and even in the good year of 1925 two major businesses closed down. The tall white grain elevator stood half empty and the railroad which was supposed to have reached the town went into bankruptcy without laying a yard of track.

Alice Grebe, who had done so much to make the town habitable, was among the first to realize it was doomed, and twice she begged her husband to pull up stakes now, sell out and move to California. But men like Grebe could not bring themselves to admit defeat. “Look, Alice!” he pleaded. “I own more than a thousand acres. We have this good house. When things turn around ...”

Alice suspected they might never turn around. For reasons she could not have explained she saw that prairie towns such as Line Camp must become vacated ghosts populated only by gusts of wind, yet she was powerless to act. “We’ll make the best of it,” she said with little hope, for she saw that the Grebes and the Volkemas had, through vanity and hope, locked themselves onto a land that was dying and to a town that was vanishing. At the end of 1925 two more stores shut down, and the population fell below one hundred.