Chapter 6

When the weather grew milder and I could ride back and forth again almost daily, it was Mr. Randall who had one of the boys on the ranch wrangle me a range pony which, he said, was "broke" to ride. He _was_ broke to ride. The only difficulty was to mount him. It was all right once one got on his back, but only an expert bronco buster could do it. Every time I set foot in the stirrup he went up in the air, pitched, and bucked and sun-fished.

I couldn't draw $10 a week as a printer and waste my time on an outlaw bronc. So I solved it by tying him short with a heavy lariat to the corner post of the hay barn so that he could not get his head up or down, nor his heels up very far. Then I gave one leap into the saddle, Ida cut the rope close to his neck, and away we went to the print shop, where I wrestled with the old, worn-out press. Fortunately, there was no trick to dismounting, although I always expected the worst.

* * * * *

One day I broke loose. I had worked all morning and used up half a can of grease on the press, and still it stuck. I picked up a hammer and tried to break it to pieces. I threw one piece of battered equipment after another across the prairie. ("Don't go near the print shop," a little Randall boy warned all comers; "the printer's a-actin'.")

I scrubbed the ink from my hands and face and boarded the stage. I was off to Presho to meet the proof-sheet king.

E. L. Senn was a magnate in the frontier newspaper field. His career is particularly interesting because it is, in more ways than one, typical of the qualities which made many western men successful. Basically, he was a reformer, a public-spirited man who backed, with every means at his command, and great personal courage, the issues he believed for the good of the country, and fought with equal intensity those which were harmful.

In the early nineties he had moved out to a homestead and started a small cattle ranch. In itself that was a daring gesture, as outlaw gangs--cattle rustlers and horse thieves--infested the region and had become so bold and influential that it was difficult to get any settlers to take up land in it. He started his first newspaper on his homestead, miles from a post office, for the purpose of carrying on his fight with the cattle thieves. In retaliation the outlaws burned him out.

E. L. Senn promptly moved his paper to the nearest post office at a small crossroads station to continue the fight. He incorporated in this paper final proof notices for the settlers. When the fight with the rustlers had been waged to a successful close, he expanded his final-proof business; now he owned the greatest proof-sheet monopoly that ever operated in the West, with a chain of thirty-five papers strung over that part of South Dakota.

As civilization pushed into a new district the king picked up another printing outfit and made entry to the Post Office Department at Washington of another newspaper. Sometimes he moved his own outfits from one region to another, but often he merely shut the door on an old plant not worth moving and let it return to scrap-iron while the print shop tumbled down with it.

It cost a lot of money, he used to complain, with investments depreciating like that and the proof business so short-lived, when the settlers filled a section and all proved up at once. And he had to run a paper a year before it became a legal publication.

But the proof sheets soon became gold mines, the plants costing but a few hundred dollars and the expenses of operating only ten to fifteen dollars a week--a cheap printer, the prints, the ink. Established at inland post offices they became the nuclei for crossroad trading points.

At this time he had embarked on another cause, prohibition, which was causing great excitement in South Dakota. A few years later, with his proof sheets extending through the Black Hills, he bought a newspaper in Deadwood, the notorious old mining town which is usually associated in people's minds with the more lurid aspects of the Wild West. He found conditions all that they had been painted, dominated by underworld vice rings, with twenty-four saloons for its population of 3000, and gambling halls, operated as openly as grocery stores, running twenty-four hours a day. Even the two dance halls exceeded all that has been written about similar places.

With his newspaper as his only weapon E. L. Senn set out to clean up Deadwood. In the fight he sunk his own profits until he had to sell most of his newspapers, emerging from it almost penniless.

It was this doughty warrior whose printing press I had strewn widely over the prairie. When he entered the hotel in Presho where I was awaiting him my courage almost failed me. He was wise enough not to ask me what was wrong. He must have been secretly amused by the very small, frightened girl with the determined expression in her direct blue eyes.

To my surprise, he asked no questions. Instead he took me to supper and then to a moving picture, the first I had seen in the West. His kindness so melted my exasperation with the press that I was at a loss to know how to begin the fighting talk I had come to make. But the film ended with a woman driving sheepmen off her claim, and with that example to fortify my ebbing courage, I asked for a new printing press. And I got it!

The "new" press was a second-hand one, but in comparison to the Noah's Ark model it was a mechanical wonder. I did not know that the proof king was facing a financial crisis at that time. But I've always thought the blow of having to buy a press was not half so bad as the shock of having a printer who would ask for one.

While I was enjoying the new press one day the Reeds came by McClure.

"Well, good-by, folks."

"Oh, are you going?"

"Yes, proved up. Going back to God's country."

God's country to the Reeds was Missouri; to others it was Illinois, or Iowa or Ohio. Day after day homesteaders left with their final receipt as title to their land, pending issuance of a government patent. Throwing back the type of the "dead" notices, I could almost tell who would be pulling out of the country.

"Going back in time to get in the spring crop," farmers would say.

Land grabbers they were called. Taking 160 acres of land with them, and leaving nothing. Most of them never came back.

And while this exodus was taking place, here and there a settler was drifting onto the Lower Brulé, a "lucky number" who had come ahead of time--there was so much to do getting settled. And by these restless signs of change over the plains, we knew that it was spring.

And one week I set up for the paper, "Notice is hereby given that Ida Mary Ammons has filed her intention to make proof ..."

VI

"UTOPIA"

With the first tang of spring in the air we cleaned the shack, put up fresh curtains and did a little baking. Then we grew reckless and went into an orgy of extravagance--we took a bath in the washtub. Wash basins were more commensurate with the water supply. Then we scrubbed the floor with the bath water. In one way and another, the settlers managed to develop a million square miles of frontier dirt without a bathtub on it.

For the first time we stopped to take stock, to look ahead. For months there had been time and energy for nothing but getting through the winter. We had been too busy to discuss any plans beyond the proving up.

"What are we going to do after we prove up?" I asked, and Ida Mary shook her head. "I don't know," she admitted.

In some ways it was a relief to have the end in sight. I hated the minute routine of putting a paper together, with one letter of type at a time. I hated the hard mechanical work. Most of our neighbors were proving up, going back. But we realized, with a little shock of surprise, that we did not want to go back. Imperceptibly we had come to identify ourselves with the West; we were a part of its life, it was a part of us. Its hardships were more than compensated for by its unshackled freedom. To go back now would be to make a painful readjustment to city life; it would mean hunting jobs, being tied to the weariness of office routine. The opportunities for a full and active life were infinitely greater here on the prairie. There was a pleasant glow of possession in knowing that the land beneath our feet was ours.

For a little while we faced uncertainly the problem that other homesteaders were facing--that of going back, of trying to fit ourselves in again to city ways. But the eagerness to return to city life had gone. Then, too, there was something in the invigorating winter air and bright sunshine which had given me new resistance. There had been a continuous round of going down, and coming back with a second wind; but I had gained a little each time and was stronger now than before.

In the mid-afternoon, after our orgy of spring house-cleaning, with everything fresh and clean, Ida Mary said, "Someone is coming--straight across our land."

"Who is it?" I asked. We had learned to recognize every horse in that part of the country a mile away. But this was not a plainsman.

We rushed into the shack and made a mad scramble through the trunk, but before we could get dressed there came a knock at the door. "Will you wait a moment, please?" I called. It was the custom of the plains for a man to wait outside while his hostess dressed or put her house in order, there being no corner where he could stay during the process. If the weather prohibited outdoor waiting, he could retire to the hayshed.

A pleasant voice said, "I'll be glad to wait." But as I whispered, "Throw me those slippers," and Ida Mary said _sotto voce_, "What dress shall I wear?" we heard a muffled chuckle through the thin walls.

When we threw open the door to a slightly built man with brown hair and a polished air about him, I knew it was the cartoonist from Milwaukee. Only a city man and an artist could look like that.

"How do you do, Mr. Van Leshout."

"How did you know?" he said, as he came in.

"So you were a Lucky Number, after all," seemed a more appropriate response than telling him that it was spring and something had been bound to happen, something like the arrival of a cartoonist from Milwaukee.

"Are you going to be a settler?" Ida Mary asked doubtfully.

He laughed. Yes, he had taken a homestead close to the Sioux settlement so that he could paint some Indian pictures.

Odd how we kept forgetting the Indians, but up to now we hadn't even seen one, nor were we likely to, we thought, barricaded as they were in their own settlement. "But they are wonderful," he assured us enthusiastically; "magnificent people to paint; old, seamed faces and some really beautiful young ones. Character, too, and glamor!"

We invited him to tea, but he explained that he must get back to his claim before dark. It was already too late, Imbert told him; he would have to wait for the moon to rise. Imbert had dropped in, as he had a habit of doing, and seeing him through the eyes of an easterner we realized what fascination the lives of these plainsmen had for city men.

In honor of the occasion we got out the china cups, a wanton luxury on the plains, and tea and cake. As they rode off, Van Leshout called to us: "Come over to the shack. I built it myself. You'll know it by the crepe on the door."

As the two men melted into the darkness we closed the door reluctantly against the soft spring air. Strange that we had found prairie life dull!

One morning soon after the unexpected appearance of the Milwaukee cartoonist I awoke to find the prairie in blossom. Only in the spring is there color over that great expanse; but for a few weeks the grass is green and the wild flowers bloom in delicate beauty--anemones, tiny white and yellow and pink blossoms wherever the eye rests. I galloped to the print shop with the wind blowing through my hair, rejoicing in the sudden beauty, and found myself too much in holiday mood to get to work.

Suddenly I looked up from the type case to find an arresting figure in the doorway, a middle-aged man with an air of power and authority about him.

"I'm waiting for the stage," he said. "May I come in?"

I offered him the only chair there was--an upturned nail keg--and he sat down.

"Where do you come from?" he asked abruptly.

"St. Louis," I said.

"But why come out here to run a newspaper?"

"I didn't. I came to homestead with my sister, but the job was here."

Because he was amused at the idea, because the function of these frontier papers seemed unimportant to him, I began to argue the point, and finally, thoroughly aroused, described the possibilities which grew in my own mind as I discussed them. There was a tremendous job for the frontier newspaper to do, I pointed out. Did he know the extent of this great homestead movement and the future it promised? True, the frontier papers were small in size, but they could become a power in the development of this raw country.

"How?" he demanded.

I think I fully realized it for the first time myself then. "As a medium of cooperation," I told him.

He got up and walked to the window, hands in pockets, and looked out over the prairie. Then he turned around. "But the development of this country is a gigantic enterprise," he protested. "It would require the backing of corporations and millions of dollars. In fact, it's too big for any organization but the government to tackle. It's no job for a woman." His eyes twinkled as he contrasted my diminutive size with the great expanse of undeveloped plains. "What could you do?"

"Of course it's big," I admitted, "and the settlers do need lots of money. But they need cooperation, too. Their own strength, acting together, counts more than you know. And a newspaper could be made a voice for these people."

"Utopian," he decided.

Bill appeared at the door to tell him that "The stage has been a-waitin' ten minutes, now."

He handed me his card, shook hands and rushed out. I looked at the card: "Halbert Donovan and Company, Brokers, Investment Bankers, New York City." The fact that such men were coming into the country, looking it over, presaged development. Not only the eyes of the landseekers but those of industry and finance were turning west.

I stared after the stagecoach until it was swallowed up in distance. My own phrases kept coming back to me. There was a job to be done, a job for a frontier newspaper, and soon the McClure _Press_ would be a thing of the past--as soon as the homesteaders had made proof. Slowly an idea was taking shape.

I slammed the print-shop door shut, mounted Pinto and loped home. I turned the horse loose to graze and walked into the shack. With my back against the door in a defensive attitude I said abruptly, "I'm going to start a newspaper on the reservation."

Ida Mary slowly put down the bread knife. "But where are you going to get the money?" she asked practically.

"I don't know, yet. I have to plan what to do first, don't I, and then look around for a way to do it." That was the formula followed day after day by the settlers.

"It's too bad you didn't register for a claim in the Drawing," she said thoughtfully. "After all, there is no reason why you shouldn't have a claim too."

"I could still get a homestead on the Brulé," I declared, "and I can run the newspaper on the homestead."

The more we discussed the plan the more Ida Mary liked the idea of moving to the Strip where so many new people would be coming. We would work together, we planned, and the influence of the newspaper would radiate all over the reservation. But, it occurred to us, coming abruptly down to earth, with no roads or telephones or mail service, how were the settlers to receive the radiation?

This was a stickler, but having gone so far with our plans we were reluctant to abandon them. Where there was a newspaper there should be a post office. Then we would start a post office! Through it the land notices would be received and the newspaper mailed to the subscribers. The settlers could get the paper and their mail at the same place. We decided that Ida Mary would run it. Somehow it did not occur to us that the government has something to say about post offices and who shall run them. Or that the government might not want to put a post office on my homestead just to be obliging.

But once a person has learned to master difficulties as they come up, he begins to feel he can handle anything; so Ida took her final proof receipt to a loan office in Presho.

"How much can I borrow on this?" she asked, handing it to the agent.

"Oh, about eight hundred dollars."

"That isn't enough. Most homesteaders are getting a thousand-dollar loan when they prove up."

"Yes, but your land's a mile long and only a quarter wide--"

Ida Mary was not easily bluffed. She reached for the receipt. "I'll try Sedgwick at the bank."

"We'll make it nine hundred," the agent said, "but not a cent more. I know that quarter section; it's pretty rough."

Homesteading was no longer a precarious venture. A homesteader could borrow $1000 on almost any quarter-section in the West--more on good land, well located. It was a criminal offense to sell or mortgage government land, but who could wait six months or a year for the government to issue a patent (deed) to the land? Many of the settlers must borrow money to make proof. So the homestead loan business became a sleight-of-hand performance.

The homesteader could not get this receipt of title until he paid the Land Office for the land, and he could not pay for the land until he had the receipt to turn over to the loan agent. So it was all done simultaneously--money, mortgages, final-proof receipts; like juggling half a dozen balls in the air at once. It was one of the most ingenious methods of finance in operation. Banks and loan companies went into operation to handle homestead loans, and eastern capital began flowing in for the purpose.

Being familiar with Land Office procedure from my work on the McClure _Press_, I knew that not every winner of a claim on the Lower Brulé reservation would come to prove it up. A few of them would relinquish their rights. The buying and selling of relinquishments, in fact, became a big business for the land agents. There was a mad rush for relinquishments on the Strip, where landseekers were paying as high as $1000 to $1200 for the right to file on a claim.

I wanted a relinquishment on the reservation, in the very center of it, and I found one for $400.

Then I made a deal with a printing equipment firm for a small plant--a new one! And, although there were only a dozen settlers or so on the land, I pledged 400 proof notices as collateral.

These proofs at $5 apiece were as sure as government bonds; that is, if the settlers on the Brulé stayed long enough to prove up, if the newspaper lived, and if no one else started a paper in competition. But on that score the printers' supply company was satisfied. Its officers thought there was no danger of anyone else trailing an outfit into that region.

We arranged for straight credit on lumber for a print shop, there being nothing left to mortgage. From now on we were dealing in futures. In just two short weeks I had become a reckless plunger, aided and abetted by Ida Mary. The whole West was gambling on the homesteaders' making good.

Long we hesitated over the letter home, telling of our new plans. Under the new laws, one must stay on a claim fourteen months, instead of the eight months required when Ida Mary had filed. At last we wrote to explain that we were not coming home this spring. We were going on to a new frontier.

Earnestly as we believed in the plans we had made, it was hard to make that letter carry our convictions, difficult to explain the logic of our moving to an Indian reservation so that Ida Mary could run a non-existent post office in order to mail copies of a non-existent newspaper to non-existent settlers. Looking at it like that, we were acting in blind faith.

* * * * *

And one day a funny little caravan made its way across the prairie, breaking a new trail as it went. A shack with a team hitched to it, a wagon loaded with immigrant goods; and a printing press; ahead, leading the way, a girl on horseback.

Again it was Huey Dunn who jacked up our old shack that morning when the term of school was over and put it on wheels for the trip to the reservation--twelve miles around by McClure, a few miles closer by a short-cut across the plains. Huey decided on the latter way, and I rode on ahead to see that the load of printing equipment should be put on the right quarter-section, while Ida Mary came in the shack. She sat in the rocking chair, gazing placidly out of the window as it made its way slowly across the plains.

We had hired two homesteaders to haul out lumber and put up a small building for the newspaper and post office, although we had not yet got the necessary petition signed for a post office. We could not do that before the settlers arrived. A small shed room was built a few feet from the business structure as a lean-to for our migratory shack.

When I arrived at the claim the men who had hauled out the load of equipment were gone. Suddenly there came on one of those torrential downpours that often deluge the dry plains in spring. It was pitch black as night came on, and no sight of Huey and Ida Mary. The rain stopped at length. Throwing on a sweater, I paced back and forth through the dripping grass listening for the sound of the horses. At last I went back and crouched over the fire in the little lean-to, waiting. There was nothing else I could do.

At midnight Huey arrived with the shack. He and Ida Mary were cold and wet and hungry. They had not had a bite to eat since early morning. Just as they had reached Cedar Creek, usually a little dry furrow in the earth, a flood of water came rushing in a torrent, making a mad, swollen stream that spread rapidly, and they were caught in it. When they got in the middle of the stream the shack began to fill with water. Huey grabbed Ida Mary and got her on one horse while he mounted the other, and the horses swam to land.

The next morning the sun came out, flooding the new-washed plains. It was a different world from the harsh, drab prairie to which we had come eight months ago. Here the earth was a soft green carpet, heavily sprinkled with spring flowers, white and lavender hyacinths, bluebells, blossoms flaming red, yellow and blue, and snow-white, waxen flowers that wither at the touch and yet bloom on the hard desert.

Huey Dunn squared the migratory shack and rolled the wheels from under. And there in the Land of the Burnt Thigh, the Indians' name for the Brulé, I filed my claim and started a newspaper. The only woman, so it was recorded, ever to establish a newspaper on an Indian reservation. And if one were to pick up the first issues of that newspaper he would see under the publisher's name, "Published on Section 31, Township 108 North, Range 77W, of the 5th Principal Meridian," the only way of describing its location.

Ida's claim had seemed to us at first sight to be in the midst of nowhere. Compared to this, it had been in a flourishing neighborhood. For here there was nothing but the land--waiting. No sign of habitation, no living thing--yes, an antelope standing rigid against the horizon. For a terrified moment it seemed that there could be no future here--only time. And Ida Mary and I shrank from two very confident young women to two very young and frightened girls.