The First Four Years (2 page)

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 halfcircle 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 house
building. 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. T h e 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 yearor 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
sat 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. T h e 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 irongray
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 herso she won't be so friskyand 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. T h e nights were frosty and soon the ground would
freeze. T h e 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 grasscovered 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 fasteroften 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.