The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
by Oscar Micheaux · English · Gutenberg #39237 · 469,098 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Author: Oscar Micheaux
Release date: March 24, 2012 [eBook #39237]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONQUEST: THE STORY OF A NEGRO PIONEER ***
Produced by Cathy Maxam, Glen Fellows and the Online
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[Illustration]
The Conquest
_The Story of a Negro Pioneer_
BY THE PIONEER
1913
THE WOODRUFF PRESS
Lincoln, Nebr.
Entered according to the Act of Congress in the year 1913,
by the Woodruff Bank Note Co., in the office of the
Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D.C.
First Edition, May 1, 1913
_To the_
_HONORABLE BOOKER T. WASHINGTON_
_INTRODUCTORY_
_This is a true story of a negro who was discontented and the
circumstances that were the outcome of that discontent._
INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Became number one in the opening 56
Everybody for miles around had journeyed thither to
celebrate 113
Made a declaration that he would build a town 128
Although the valley could not be surpassed in the production
of grain and alfalfa, the highlands on
either side were great mountains of sand 133
On the east the murky waters of the Missouri seek
their level 140
The real farmer was fast replacing the homesteader 145
Everything grew so rank, thick and green 160
Had put 280 acres under cultivation 177
Bringing stock, household goods and plenty of money 192
Were engaged in ranching and owned great herds in
Tipp county 209
As the people were all now riding in autos 241
A beautiful townsite where trees stood 251
Ernest Nicholson takes a hand 256
The crops began to wither 289
The cold days and long nights passed slowly by, and I
cared for the stock 304
LIST OF CHAPTERS
PAGE
I Discontent--Spirit of the Pioneer 9
II Leaving Home--A Maiden 18
III Chicago, Chasing a Will-O-The-Wisp 24
IV The P----n Company 34
V "Go West Young Man" 48
VI "And Where is Oristown?" 54
VII Oristown, the "Little Crow" Reservation 61
VIII Far Down the Pacific--The Proposal 67
IX The Return--Ernest Nicholson 72
X The Oklahoma Grafter 74
XI Dealin' in Mules 79
XII The Homesteaders 86
XIII Imaginations Run Amuck 91
XIV The Surveyors 94
XV "Which Town Will the R.R. Strike?" 104
XVI Megory's Day 108
XVII Ernest Nicholson's Return 117
XVIII Comes Stanley, the Chief Engineer 123
XIX In the Valley of the Keya Paha 126
XX The Outlaw's Last Stand 132
XXI The Boom 134
XXII The President's Proclamation 140
XXIII Where the Negro Fails 142
XXIV And the Crowds Did Come--The Prairie Fire 148
XXV The Scotch Girl 153
XXVI The Battle 164
XXVII The Sacrifice--Race Loyalty 168
XXVIII The Breeds 175
XXIX In the Valley of the Dog Ear 182
XXX Ernest Nicholson Takes a Hand 186
XXXI The McCralines 193
XXXII A Long Night 201
XXXIII The Survival of the Fittest 208
XXXIV East of State Street 216
XXXV An Uncrowned King 233
XXXVI A Snake in the Grass 241
XXXVII The Progressives and the Reactionaries 251
XXXVIII Sanctimonious Hypocrisy 265
XXXIX Beginning of the End 273
XL The Mennonites 280
XLI The Drouth 284
XLII A Year of Coincidences 294
XLIII "And Satan Came Also" 297
The Conquest
CHAPTER I
DISCONTENT--SPIRIT OF THE PIONEER
Good gracious, has it been that long? It does not seem possible; but it
was this very day nine years ago when a fellow handed me this little
what-would-you-call-it, Ingalls called it "Opportunity." I've a notion
to burn it, but I won't--not this time, instead, I'll put it down here
and you may call it what you like.
Master of human destinies am I.
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait.
Cities and fields I walk. I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
Hovel, and mart, and palace--soon or late
I knock unbidden once at every gate.
If sleeping, wake--if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury, and woe
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore,
I answer not, and I return no more.
Yes, it was that little poem that led me to this land and sometimes I
wonder well, I just wonder, that's all. Again, I think it would be
somewhat different if it wasn't for the wind. It blows and blows until
it makes me feel lonesome and so far away from that little place and the
country in southern Illinois.
I was born twenty-nine years ago near the Ohio River, about forty miles
above Cairo, the fourth son and fifth child of a family of thirteen, by
the name of Devereaux--which, of course, is not my name but we will call
it that for this sketch. It is a peculiar name that ends with an "eaux,"
however, and is considered an odd name for a colored man to have, unless
he is from Louisiana where the French crossed with the Indians and
slaves, causing many Louisiana negroes to have the French names and many
speak the French language also. My father, however, came from Kentucky
and inherited the name from his father who was sold off into Texas
during the slavery period and is said to be living there today.
He was a farmer and owned eighty acres of land and was, therefore,
considered fairly "well-to-do," that is, for a colored man. The county
in which we lived bordered on the river some twenty miles, and took its
name from an old fort that used to do a little cannonading for the
Federal forces back in the Civil War.
The farming in this section was hindered by various disadvantages and at
best was slow, hard work. Along the valleys of the numerous creeks and
bayous that empty their waters into the Ohio, the soil was of a rich
alluvium, where in the early Spring the back waters from the Ohio
covered thousands of acres of farm and timber lands, and in receding
left the land plastered with a coat of river sand and clay which greatly
added to the soil's productivity. One who owned a farm on these bottoms
was considered quite fortunate. Here the corn stalks grew like saplings,
with ears dangling one and two to a stalk, and as sound and heavy as
green blocks of wood.
The heavy rains washed the loam from the hills and deposited it on these
bottoms. Years ago, when the rolling lands were cleared, and before the
excessive rainfall had washed away the loose surface, the highlands were
considered most valuable for agricultural purposes, equally as valuable
as the bottoms now are. Farther back from the river the more rolling the
land became, until some sixteen miles away it was known as the hills,
and here, long before I was born, the land had been very valuable. Large
barns and fine stately houses--now gone to wreck and deserted--stood
behind beautiful groves of chestnut, locust and stately old oaks, where
rabbits, quail and wood-peckers made their homes, and sometimes a
raccoon or opossum founded its den during the cold, bleak winter days.
The orchards, formerly the pride of their owners, now dropped their
neglected fruit which rotted and mulched with the leaves. The fields,
where formerly had grown great crops of wheat, corn, oats, timothy and
clover, were now grown over and enmeshed in a tangled mass of weeds and
dew-berry vines; while along the branches and where the old rail fences
had stood, black-berry vines had grown up, twisting their thorny stems
and forming a veritable hedge fence. These places I promised mother to
avoid as I begged her to allow me to follow the big boys and carry their
game when they went hunting.
In the neighborhood and throughout the country there had at one time
been many colored farmers, or ex-slaves, who had settled there after the
war. Many of them having built up nice homes and cleared the valley of
tough-rooted hickory, gum, pecan and water-oak trees, and the highlands
of the black, white, red or post oak, sassafras and dogwood. They later
grubbed the stumps and hauled the rocks into the roads, or dammed
treacherous little streams that were continually breaking out and
threatening the land with more ditches. But as time wore on and the
older generation died, the younger were attracted to the towns and
cities in quest of occupations that were more suitable to their
increasing desires for society and good times. Leaving the farms to care
for themselves until the inevitable German immigrant came along and
bought them up at his own price, tilled the land, improved the farm and
roads, straightened out the streams by digging canals, and grew
prosperous.
As for me, I was called the lazy member of the family; a shirker who
complained that it was too cold to work in the winter, and too warm in
the summer. About the only thing for which I was given credit was in
learning readily. I always received good grades in my studies, but was
continually criticised for talking too much and being too inquisitive.
We finally moved into the nearby town of M--pls. Not so much to get off
the farm, or to be near more colored people (as most of the younger
negro farmers did) as to give the children better educational
facilities.
The local colored school was held in an old building made of plain
boards standing straight up and down with batten on the cracks. It was
inadequate in many respects; the teachers very often inefficient, and
besides, it was far from home. After my oldest sister graduated she went
away to teach, and about the same time my oldest brother quit school and
went to a near-by town and became a table waiter, much to the
dissatisfaction of my mother, who always declared emphatically that she
wanted none of her sons to become lackeys.
When the Spanish-American War broke out the two brothers above me
enlisted with a company of other patriotic young fellows and were taken
to Springfield to go into camp. At Springfield their company was
disbanded and those of the company that wished to go on were accepted
into other companies, and those that desired to go home were permitted
to do so. The younger of the two brothers returned home by freight; the
other joined a Chicago company and was sent to Santiago and later to San
Luis DeCuba, where he died with typhoid pneumonia.
M--pls was an old town with a few factories, two flour mills, two or
three saw mills, box factories and another concern where veneering was
peeled from wood blocks softened with steam. The timber came from up the
Tennessee River, which emptied into the Ohio a few miles up the river.
There was also the market house, such as are to be seen in towns of the
Southern states--and parts of the Northern. This market house, or
place, as it is often called, was an open building, except one end
enclosed by a meat-market, and was about forty by one hundred feet with
benches on either side and one through the center for the convenience of
those who walked, carrying their produce in a home-made basket. Those in
vehicles backed to a line guarded by the city marshall, forming an
alleyway the width of the market house for perhaps half a block,
depending on how many farmers were on hand. There was always a rush to
get nearest the market house; a case of the early bird getting the worm.
The towns people who came to buy, women mostly with baskets, would file
leisurely between the rows of vehicles, hacks and spring wagons of
various descriptions, looking here and there at the vegetables
displayed.
We moved back to the country after a time where my father complained of
my poor service in the field and in disgust I was sent off to do the
marketing--which pleased me, for it was not only easy but gave me a
chance to meet and talk with many people--and I always sold the goods
and engaged more for the afternoon delivery. This was my first
experience in real business and from that time ever afterward I could
always do better business for myself than for anyone else. I was not
given much credit for my ability to sell, however, until my brother, who
complained that I was given all the easy work while he had to labor and
do all the heavier farm work, was sent to do the marketing. He was not a
salesman and lacked the aggressiveness to approach people with a basket,
and never talked much; was timid and when spoken to or approached
plainly showed it.
On the other hand, I met and became acquainted with people quite
readily. I soon noticed that many people enjoy being flattered, and how
pleased even the prosperous men's wives would seem if bowed to with a
pleasant "Good Morning, Mrs. Quante, nice morning and would you care to
look at some fresh roasting ears--ten cents a dozen; or some nice ripe
strawberries, two boxes for fifteen cents?" "Yes Maam, Thank you! and O,
Mrs. Quante, would you care for some radishes, cucumbers or lettuce for
tomorrow? I could deliver late this afternoon, you see, for maybe you
haven't the time to come to market every day." From this association I
soon learned to give to each and every prospective customer a different
greeting or suggestion, which usually brought a smile and a nod of
appreciation as well as a purchase.
Before the debts swamped my father, and while my brothers were still at
home, our truck gardening, the small herd of milkers and the chickens
paid as well as the farm itself. About this time father fell heir to a
part of the estate of a brother which came as a great relief to his ever
increasing burden of debt.
While this seeming relief to father was on I became very anxious to get
away. In fact I didn't like M--pls nor its surroundings. It was a river
town and gradually losing its usefulness by the invasion of railroads up
and down the river; besides, the colored people were in the most part
wretchedly poor, ignorant and envious. They were set in the ways of
their localisms, and it was quite useless to talk to them of anything
that would better oneself. The social life centered in the two churches
where praying, singing and shouting on Sundays, to back-biting,
stealing, fighting and getting drunk during the week was common among
the men. They remained members in good standing at the churches,
however, as long as they paid their dues, contributed to the numerous
rallies, or helped along in camp meetings and festivals. Others were
regularly turned out, mostly for not paying their dues, only to warm up
at the next revival on the mourners bench and come through converted and
be again accepted into the church and, for awhile at least, live a
near-righteous life. There were many good Christians in the church,
however, who were patient with all this conduct, while there were and
still are those who will not sanction such carrying-on by staying in a
church that permits of such shamming and hypocrisy. These latter often
left the church and were then branded either as infidels or human devils
who had forsaken the house of God and were condemned to eternal
damnation.
My mother was a shouting Methodist and many times we children would slip
quietly out of the church when she began to get happy. The old and less
religious men hauled slop to feed a few pigs, cut cord-wood at fifty
cents per cord, and did any odd jobs, or kept steady ones when such
could be found. The women took in washing, cooked for the white folks,
and fed the preachers. When we lived in the country we fed so many of
the Elders, with their long tailed coats and assuming and authoritative
airs, that I grew to almost dislike the sight of a colored man in a
Prince Albert coat and clerical vest. At sixteen I was fairly disgusted
with it all and took no pains to keep my disgust concealed.
This didn't have the effect of burdening me with many friends in M--pls
and I was regarded by many of the boys and girls, who led in the
whirlpool of the local colored society, as being of the
"too-slow-to-catch-cold" variety, and by some of the Elders as being
worldly, a free thinker, and a dangerous associate for young Christian
folks. Another thing that added to my unpopularity, perhaps, was my
persistent declarations that there were not enough competent colored
people to grasp the many opportunities that presented themselves, and
that if white people could possess such nice homes, wealth and luxuries,
so in time, could the colored people. "You're a fool", I would be told,
and then would follow a lecture describing the time-worn long and cruel
slavery, and after the emancipation, the prejudice and hatred of the
white race, whose chief object was to prevent the progress and
betterment of the negro. This excuse for the negro's lack of ambition
was constantly dinned into my ears from the Kagle corner loafer to the
minister in the pulpit, and I became so tired of it all that I declared
that if I could ever leave M--pls I would never return. More, I would
disprove such a theory and in the following chapters I hope to show that
what I believed fourteen years ago was true.
CHAPTER II
LEAVING HOME--A MAIDEN
I was seventeen when I at last left M--pls. I accepted a rough job at a
dollar and a quarter a day in a car manufacturing concern in a town of
eight thousand population, about eight hundred being colored. I was
unable to save very much, for work was dull that summer, and I was only
averaging about four days' work a week. Besides, I had an attack of
malaria at intervals for a period of two months, but by going to work at
five o'clock A.M. when I was well I could get in two extra hours, making
a dollar-fifty. The concern employed about twelve hundred men and paid
their wages every two weeks, holding back one week's pay. I came there
in June and it was some time in September that I drew my fullest pay
envelope which contained sixteen dollars and fifty cents.
About this time a "fire eating" colored evangelist, who apparently
possessed great converting powers and unusual eloquence, came to town.
These qualities, however, usually became very uninteresting toward the
end of a stay. He had been to M--pls the year before I left and at that
place his popularity greatly diminished before he left. The greater part
of the colored people in this town were of the emotional kind and to
these he was as attractive as he had been at M--pls in the beginning.
Coincident with the commencement of Rev. McIntyre's soul stirring
sermons a big revival was inaugurated, and although the little church
was filled nightly to its capacity, the aisles were kept clear in order
to give those that were "steeping in Hell's fire" (as the evangelist
characterized those who were not members of some church) an open road to
enter into the field of the righteous; also to give the mourners
sufficient room in which to exhaust their emotions when the spirit
struck them--and it is needless to say that they were used. At times
they virtually converted the entire floor into an active gymnasium,
regardless of the rights of other persons or of the chairs they
occupied. I had seen and heard people shout at long intervals in church,
but here, after a few soul stirring sermons, they began to run outside
where there was more room to give vent to the hallucination and this
wandering of the mind. It could be called nothing else, for after the
first few sermons the evangelist would hardly be started before some
mourner would begin to "come through." This revival warmed up to such
proportions that preaching and shouting began in the afternoon instead
of evening. Men working in the yards of the foundry two block away could
hear the shouting above the roaring furnaces and the deafening noise of
machinery of a great car manufacturing concern. The church stood on a
corner where two streets, or avenues, intersected and for a block in
either direction the influence of fanaticism became so intense that the
converts began running about like wild creatures, tearing their hair and
uttering prayers and supplications in discordant tones.
At the evening services the sisters would gather around a mourner that
showed signs of weakening and sing and babble until he or she became so
befuddled they would jump up, throw their arms wildly into the air,
kick, strike, then cry out like a dying soul, fall limp and exhausted
into the many arms outstretched to catch them. This was always
conclusive evidence of a contrite heart and a thoroughly penitent soul.
Far into the night this performance would continue, and when the
mourners' bench became empty the audience would be searched for sinners.
I would sit through it all quite unemotional, and nightly I would be
approached with "aren't you ready?" To which I would make no answer. I
noticed that several boys, who were not in good standing with the
parents of girls they wished to court, found the mourners' bench a
convenient vehicle to the homes of these girls--all of whom belonged to
church. Girls over eighteen who did not belong were subjects of much
gossip and abuse.
A report, in some inconceivable manner, soon became spread that Oscar
Devereaux had said that he wanted to die and go to hell. Such a
sensation! I was approached on all sides by men and women, regardless of
the time of day or night, by the young men who gloried in their
conversion and who urged me to "get right" with Jesus before it was too
late. I do not remember how long these meetings lasted but they suddenly
came to an end when notice was served on the church trustees by the city
council, which irreverently declared that so many converts every
afternoon and night was disturbing the white neighborhood's rest as
well as their nerves. It ordered windows and doors to be kept closed
during services, and as the church was small it was impossible to house
the congregation and all the converts, so the revival ended and the
community was restored to normal and calm once more prevailed.
That was in September. One Sunday afternoon in October, as I was walking
along the railroad track, I chanced to overhear voices coming from under
a water tank, where a space of some eight or ten feet enclosed by four
huge timbers made a small, secluded place. I stopped, listened and was
sure I recognized the voices of Douglas Brock, his brother Melvin, and
two other well known colored boys. Douglas was betting a quarter with
one of the other boys that he couldn't pass. (You who know the dice and
its vagaries will know what he meant.) This was mingled with words and
commands from Melvin to the dice in trying to make some point. It must
have been four. He would let out a sort of yowl; "Little Joe, can't you
do it?" I went my way. I didn't shoot craps nor drink neither did I
belong to church but was called a dreadful sinner while three of the
boys under the tank had, not less than six weeks before, joined church
and were now full-fledged members in good standing. Of course I did not
consider that all people who belonged to church were not Christians, but
was quite sure that many were not.
The following January a relative of mine got a job for me bailing water
in a coal mine in a little town inhabited entirely by negroes. I worked
from six o'clock P.M. to six A.M., and received two dollars and
twenty-five cents therefor. The work was rough and hard and the mine
very dark. The smoke hung like a cloud near the top of the tunnel-like
room during all the night. This was because the fans were all but shut
off at night, and just enough air was pumped in to prevent the formation
of black damp. The smoke made my head ache until I felt stupid and the
dampness made me ill, but the two dollars and twenty-five cents per day
looked good to me. After six weeks, however, I was forced to quit, and
with sixty-five dollars--more money than I had ever had--I went to see
my older sister who was teaching in a nearby town.
I had grown into a strong, husky youth of eighteen and my sister was
surprised to see that I was working and taking care of myself so well.
She shared the thought of nearly all of my acquaintances that I was too
lazy to leave home and do hard work, especially in the winter time.
After awhile she suddenly looked at me and spoke as though afraid she
would forget it, "O, Oscar! I've got a girl for you; what do you think
of that?" smiling so pleasantly, I was afraid she was joking. You see, I
had never been very successful with the girls and when she mentioned
having a girl for me my heart was all a flutter and when she hesitated I
put in eagerly.
"Aw go on--quit your kidding. On the level now, or are you just chiding
me?" But she took on a serious expression and speaking thoughtfully, she
went on.
"Yes, she lives next door and is a nice little girl, and pretty. The
prettiest colored girl in town."
Here I lost interest for I remembered my sister was foolish about
beauty and I said that I didn't care to meet her. I was suspicious when
it came to the pretty type of girls, and had observed that the prettiest
girl in town was oft times petted and spoiled and a mere butterfly.
"O why?" She spoke like one hurt. Then I confessed my suspicions. "O,
You're foolish," she exclaimed softly, appearing relieved. "Besides,"
she went on brightly "Jessie isn't a spoiled girl, you wait until you
meet her." And in spite of my protests she sent the landlady's little
girl off for Miss Rooks. She came over in about an hour and I found her
to be demure and thoughtful, as well as pretty. She was small of
stature, had dark eyes and beautiful wavy, black hair, and an olive
complexion. She wouldn't allow me to look into her eyes but continued to
cast them downward, sitting with folded hands and answering when spoken
to in a tiny voice quite in keeping with her small person.
During the afternoon I mentioned that I was going to Chicago, "Now
Oscar, you've got no business in Chicago," my sister spoke up with a
touch of authority. "You're too young, and besides," she asked "do you
know whether W.O. wants you?" W.O. was our oldest brother and was then
making Chicago his home.
"Huh!" I snorted "I'm going on my own hook," and drawing up to my full
six feet I tried to look brave, which seemed to have the desired effect
on my sister.
"Well" she said resignedly, "you must be careful and not get into bad
company--be good and try to make a man of yourself."
CHAPTER III
CHICAGO, CHASING A WILL-O-THE-WISP
That was on Sunday morning three hundred miles south of Chicago, and at
nine-forty that night I stepped off the New Orleans and Chicago fast
mail into a different world. It was, I believe, the coldest night that I
had ever experienced. The city was new and strange to me and I wandered
here and there for hours before I finally found my brother's address on
Armour Avenue. But the wandering and anxiety mattered little, for I was
in the great city where I intended beginning my career, and felt that
bigger things were in store for me.
The next day my brother's landlady appeared to take a good deal of
interest in me and encouraged me so that I became quite confidential,
and told her of my ambitions for the future and that it was my intention
to work, save my money and eventually become a property owner. I was
rather chagrined later, however, to find that she had repeated all this
to my brother and he gave me a good round scolding, accompanied by the
unsolicited advice that if I would keep my mouth shut people wouldn't
know I was so green. He had been traveling as a waiter on an eastern
railroad dining car, but in a fit of independence--which had always been
characteristic of him--had quit, and now in mid-winter, was out of a
job. He was not enthusiastic concerning my presence in the city and I
had found him broke, but with a lot of fine clothes and a diamond or
two. Most folks from the country don't value good clothes and diamonds
in the way city folks do and I, for one, didn't think much of his
finery.
I was greatly disappointed, for I had anticipated that my big brother
would have accumulated some property or become master of a bank account
during these five or six years he had been away from home. He seemed to
sense this disappointment and became more irritated at my presence and
finally wrote home to my parents--who had recently moved to
Kansas--charging me with the crime of being a big, awkward, ignorant
kid, unsophisticated in the ways of the world, and especially of the
city; that I was likely to end my "career" by running over a street car
and permitting the city to irretrievably lose me, or something equally
as bad. When I heard from my mother she was worried and begged me to
come home. I knew the folks at home shared my brother's opinion of me
and believed all he had told them, so I had a good laugh all to myself
in spite of the depressing effect it had on me. However, there was the
reaction, and when it set in I became heartsick and discouraged and then
and there became personally acquainted with the "blues", who gave me
their undivided attention for some time after that.
The following Sunday I expected him to take me to church with him, but
he didn't. He went alone, wearing his five dollar hat, fifteen dollar
made-to-measure shoes, forty-five dollar coat and vest, eleven dollar
trousers, fifty dollar tweed overcoat and his diamonds. I found my way
to church alone and when I saw him sitting reservedly in an opposite
pew, I felt snubbed and my heart sank. However, only momentarily, for a
new light dawned upon me and I saw the snobbery and folly of it all and
resolved that some day I would rise head and shoulders above that
foolish, four-flushing brother of mine in real and material success.
I finally secured irregular employment at the Union Stock Yards. The
wages at that time were not the best. Common labor a dollar-fifty per
day and the hours very irregular. Some days I was called for duty at
five in the morning and laid off at three in the afternoon or called
again at eight in the evening to work until nine the same evening. I
soon found the mere getting of jobs to be quite easy. It was getting a
desirable one that gave me trouble. However, when I first went to the
yards and looked at the crowds waiting before the office in quest of
employment, I must confess I felt rather discouraged, but my new
surroundings and that indefinable interesting feature about these crowds
with their diversity of nationalities and ambitions, made me forget my
own little disappointments. Most all new arrivals, whether skilled or
unskilled workmen, seeking "jobs" in the city find their way to the
yards. Thousands of unskilled laborers are employed here and it seems to
be the Mecca for the down-and-out who wander thither in a last effort to
obtain employment.
The people with whom I stopped belonged to the servant class and lived
neatly in their Armour Avenue flat. The different classes of people who
make up the population of a great city are segregated more by their
occupations than anything else. The laborers usually live in a laborer's
neighborhood. Tradesmen find it more agreeable among their fellow
workmen and the same is true of the servants and others. I found that
employment which soiled the clothes and face and hands was out of
keeping among the people with whom I lived, so after trying first one
job, then another, I went to Joliet, Illinois, to work out my fortune in
the steel mills of that town. I was told that at that place was an
excellent opportunity to learn a trade, but after getting only the very
roughest kind of work to do around the mills, such as wrecking and
carrying all kinds of broken iron and digging in a canal along with a
lot of jabbering foreigners whose English vocabulary consisted of but
one word--their laborer's number. It is needless to say that I saw
little chance of learning a trade at any very early date.
Pay day "happened" every two weeks with two weeks held back. If I quit
it would be three weeks before I could get my wages, but was informed of
a scheme by which I could get my money, by telling the foreman that I
was going to leave the state. Accordingly, I approached the renowned
imbecile and told him that I was going to California and would have to
quit and would like to get my pay. "Pay day is every two weeks, so be
sure to get back in time," he answered in that officious manner so
peculiar to foremen. I had only four dollars coming, so I quit anyway.
That evening I became the recipient of the illuminating information
that if I would apply at the coal chutes I would find better employment
as well as receive better wages. I sought out the fellow in charge, a
big colored man weighing about two hundred pounds, who gave me work
cracking and heaving coal into the chute at a dollar-fifty per
twenty-five tons.
"Gracious", I expostulated. "A man can't do all of that in a day".
"Pooh", and he waved his big hands depreciatingly, "I have heaved forty
tons with small effort".
I decided to go to work that day, but with many misgivings as to
cracking and shoveling twenty-five tons of coal. The first day I
managed, by dint of hard labor, to crack and heave eighteen tons out of
a box car, for which I received the munificent sum of one dollar, and
the next day I fell to sixteen tons and likewise to eighty-nine cents.
The contractor who superintended the coal business bought me a drink in
a nearby saloon, and as I drank it with a gulp he patted me on the
shoulder, saying, "Now, after the third day, son, you begin to improve
and at the end of a week you can heave thirty tons a day as easily as a
clock ticking the time". I thought he was going to add that I would be
shoveling forty tons like Big Jim, the fellow who gave me the job, but I
cut him off by telling him that I'd resign before I became so
proficient.
I had to send for more money to pay my board. My brother, being my
banker, sent a statement of my account, showing that I had to date just
twenty-five dollars, and the statement seemed to read coldly between the
lines that I would soon be broke, out of a job, and what then? I felt
very serious about the matter and when I returned to Chicago I had lost
some of my confidence regarding my future. Mrs. Nelson, the landlady,
boasted that her husband made twenty dollars per week; showed me her
diamonds and spoke so very highly of my brother, that I suspicioned that
she admired him a great deal, and that he was in no immediate danger of
losing his room even when he was out of work and unable to meet his
obligations.
My next step was to let an employment agency swindle me out of two
dollars. Their system was quite unique, and, I presume, legitimate. They
persuaded the applicant to deposit three dollars as a guarantee of good
faith, after which they were to find a position for him. A given
percentage was also to be taken from the wages for a certain length of
time. Some of these agencies may have been all right, but my old friend,
the hoodoo, led me to one that was an open fraud. After the person
seeking employment has been sent to several places for imaginary
positions that prove to be only myths, the agency offers to give back a
dollar and the disgusted applicant is usually glad to get it. I, myself,
being one of many of these unfortunates.
I then tried the newspaper ads. There is usually some particular paper
in any large city that makes a specialty of want advertisements. I was
told, as was necessary, to stand at the door when the paper came from
the press, grab a copy, choose an ad that seemed promising and run like
wild for the address given. I had no trade, so turned to the
miscellaneous column, and as I had no references I looked for a place
where none were required. If the address was near I would run as fast as
the crowded street and the speed laws would permit, but always found
upon arrival that someone had just either been accepted ahead of me, or
had been there a week. I having run down an old ad that had been
permitted to run for that time. About the only difference I found
between the newspapers and the employment agencies was that I didn't
have to pay three dollars for the experience.
I now realized the disadvantages of being an unskilled laborer, and had
grown weary of chasing a "will-o-the-wisp" and one day while talking to
a small Indian-looking negro I remarked that I wished I could find a job
in some suburb shining shoes in a barber shop or something that would
take me away from Chicago and its dilly-dally jobs for awhile.
"I know where you can get a job like that", he answered, thoughtfully.
"Where?" I asked eagerly.
"Why, out at Eaton", he went on, "a suburb about twenty-five miles west.
A fellow wanted me to go but I don't want to leave Chicago".
I found that most of the colored people with whom I had become
acquainted who lived in Chicago very long were similarly reluctant about
leaving, but I was ready to go anywhere. So my new friend took me over
to a barber supply house on Clark street, where a man gave me the name
of the barber at Eaton and told me to come by in the morning and he'd
give me a ticket to the place. When I got on the street again I felt so
happy and grateful to my friend for the information, that I gave the
little mulatto a half dollar, all the money I had with me, and had to
walk the forty blocks to my room. Here I filled my old grip and the next
morning "beat it" for Eaton, arriving there on the first of May, and a
cold, bleak, spring morning it was. I found the shop without any
trouble--a dingy little place with two chairs. The proprietor, a drawn,
unhappy looking creature, and a hawkish looking German assistant
welcomed me cordially. They seemed to need company. The proprietor led
me upstairs to a room that I could have free with an oil stove and table
where I could cook--so I made arrangements to "bach".
I received no wages, but was allowed to retain all I made "shining". I
had acquired some experience shining shoes on the streets of M--pls with
a home-made box--getting on my knees whenever I got a customer. "Shining
shoes" is not usually considered an advanced or technical occupation
requiring skill. However, if properly conducted it can be the making of
a good solicitor. While Eaton was a suburb it was also a country town
and this shop was never patronized by any of the metropolitan class who
made their homes there, but principally by the country class who do not
evidence their city pride by the polish of their shoes. Few city people
allow their shoes to go unpolished and I wasn't long in finding it out,
and when I did I had something to say to the men who went by, well
dressed but with dirty shoes. If I could argue them into stopping, if
only for a moment, I could nearly always succeed in getting them into
the chair.
Business, however, was dull and I began taking jobs in the country from
the farmers, working through the day and getting back to the shop for
the evening. This, however, was short lived, for I was unaccustomed to
farm work since leaving home and found it extremely difficult. My first
work in the country was pitching timothy hay side-by-side with a girl of
sixteen, who knew how to pitch hay. I thought it would be quite romantic
before I started, but before night came I had changed my mind. The man
on the wagon would drive alongside a big cock of sweet smelling hay and
the girl would stick her fork partly to one side of the hay cock and
show me how to put my fork into the other. I was left-handed while she
was right, and with our backs to the wagon we could make a heavy lift
and when the hay was directly overhead we'd turn and face each other and
over the load would go onto the wagon. Toward evening the loads thus
balanced seemed to me as heavy as the load of Atlas bearing the earth. I
am sure my face disclosed the fatigue and strain under which I labored,
for it was clearly reflected in the knowing grin of my companion. I drew
my pay that night on the excuse of having to get an overall suit,
promising to be back at a quarter to seven the next morning.
Then I tried shocking oats along with a boy of about twelve, a girl of
fourteen and the farmer's wife. The way those two children did
work,--Whew! I was so glad when a shower came up about noon that I
refrained from shouting with difficulty. I drew my pay this time to get
some gloves, and promised to be back as soon as it dried. The next
morning I felt so sore and stiff as the result of my two days'
experience in the harvest fields, that I forgot all about my promise to
return and decided to stay in Eaton.
It was in Eaton that I started my first bank account. The little
twenty-dollar certificate of deposit opened my mind to different things
entirely. I would look at it until I had day dreams. During the three
months I spent in Eaton I laid the foundation of a future. Simple as it
was, it led me into channels which carried me away from my race and into
a life fraught with excitement; a life that gave experiences and other
things I had never dreamed of. I had started a bank account of twenty
dollars and I found myself wanting one of thirty, and to my surprise the
desire seemed to increase. This desire fathered my plans to become a
porter on a P----n car. A position I diligently sought and applied for
between such odd jobs about town as mowing lawns, washing windows,
scrubbing floors and a variety of others that kept me quite busy. Taking
the work, if I could, by contract, thus permitting me to use my own time
and to work as hard as I desired to finish. I found that by this plan I
could make money faster and easier than by working in the country.
I was finally rewarded by being given a run on a parlor car by a road
that reached many summer resorts in southern Wisconsin. Here I skimped
along on a run that went out every Friday and Saturday, returning on
Monday morning. The regular salary was forty dollars per month, but as I
never put in more than half the time I barely made twenty dollars, and
altho' I made a little "on the side" in the way of tips I had to draw on
the money I had saved in Eaton.
CHAPTER IV
THE P----N COMPANY
The P----n Company is a big palace, dining and sleeping car company that
most American people know a great deal about. I had long desired to have
a run on one of the magnificent sleepers that operated out of Chicago to
every part of North America, that I might have an opportunity to see the
country and make money at the same time, and from Monday to Friday I had
nothing to do but report at one of the three P----n offices in my effort
to get such a position. One office where I was particularly attentive,
operated cars on four roads, so I called on this office about twice a
week, but a long, slim chief clerk whose chair guarded the entrance to
the Superintendent's office would drawl out lazily: "We don't need any
men today." I had been to the office a number of times before I left
Eaton and had heard his drawl so often that I grew nervous whenever he
looked at me. That district employed over a thousand porters and there
was no doubt that they hired them every day. One day I was telling my
troubles to a friendly porter whom I later learned to be George Cole
(former husband of the present wife of Bert Williams, the comedian). He
advised me to see Mr. Miltzow, the Superintendent.
"But I can never see him" I said despairingly, "for that long imbecile
of a clerk."
"Jump him some day when he is on the way from luncheon, talk fast, tell
him how you have been trying all summer to 'get on', the old man" he
said, referring to the superintendent, "likes big, stout youngsters like
you, so try it." The next day I watched him from the street and when he
started to descend the long stairway to his office, I gathered my
courage and stepped to his side. I told him how I had fairly haunted his
office, only to be turned away regularly by the same words; that I would
like a position if he would at any time need any men. He went into his
office, leaving me standing at the railing, where I held my grounds in
defiance of the chief clerk's insolent stare. After a few minutes he
looked up and called out "Come in here, you." As I stood before him he
looked me over searchingly and inquired as to whether I had any
references.
"No Sir," I answered quickly, "but I can get them." I was beside myself
with nervous excitement and watched him eagerly for fear he might turn
me away at the physicological moment, and that I would fail to get what
I had wanted so long.
"Well," he said in a decisive tone, "get good references, showing what
you have been doing for the last five years, bring them around and I'll
talk to you."
"Thank you Sir," I blurted out and with hopes soaring I hurried out and
down the steps. Going to my room, I wrote for references to people in
M--pls who had known me all my life. Of course they sent me the best of
letters, which I took immediately to Mr. Miltzow's office. After looking
them over carelessly he handed them to his secretary asking me whether
I was able to buy a uniform. When I answered in the affirmative he gave
me a letter to the company's tailor, and one to the instructor, who the
next day gave me my first lessons in a car called the "school" in a
nearby railroad yard placed there for that purpose. I learned all that
was required in a day, although he had some pupils who had been with him
five days before I started and who graduated with me. I now thought I
was a full-fledged porter and was given an order for equipment, combs,
brushes, etc., a letter from the instructor to the man that signed out
the runs, a very apt appearing young man with a gift for remembering
names and faces, who instructed me to report on the morrow. The thought
of my first trip the next day, perhaps to some distant city I had never
seen, caused me to lie awake the greater part of the night.
When I went into the porter's room the next day, or "down in the hole,"
as the basement was called, and looked into the place, I found it
crowded with men, and mostly old men at that and I felt sure it would be
a long time before I was sent out. However, I soon learned that the most
of them were "emergency men" or emergies, men who had been discharged
and who appeared regularly in hopes of getting a car that could not be
supplied with a regular man.
There was one by the name of Knight, a pitiable and forlorn character in
whose breast "hope sprang eternal," who came to the "hole" every day,
and in an entire year he had made one lone trip. He lived by "mooching"
a dime, quarter or fifty cents from first one porter then another and
by helping some porters make down beds in cars that went out on midnight
trains. It was said that he had been discharged on account of too strict
adherence to duty. Every member of a train crew, whether porter,
brakeman or conductor, must carry a book of rules; more as a matter of
form than to show to passengers as Knight had done. A trainman should,
and does, depend more on his judgment than on any set of rules, and
permits the rule to be stretched now and then to fit circumstances.
Knight, however, courted his rule book and when a passenger requested
some service that the rules prohibited, such for instance as an extra
pillow to a berth, and if the passenger insisted or showed
dissatisfaction Knight would get his book of rules, turn to the chapter
which dwelt on the subject and read it aloud to the already disgruntled
passenger, thereby making more or less of a nuisance to the traveling
public.
But I am digressing. Fred, the "sign-out-clerk" came along and the many
voices indulging in loud and raucous conversation so characteristic of
porters off duty, gave way to respectful silence. He looked favorably on
the regular men but seemed to pass up the emergies as he entered. The
poor fellows didn't expect to be sent out but it seemed to fascinate
them to hear the clerk assign the regular men their cars to some distant
cities in his cheerful language such as: "Hello! Brooks, where did you
come from?--From San Antonio? Well take the car 'Litchfield' to Oakland;
leaves on Number Three at eleven o'clock to-night over the B. & R.N.;
have the car all ready, eight lowers made down." And from one to the
other he would go, signing one to go east and another west. Respectfully
silent and attentive the men's eyes would follow him as he moved on,
each and every man eager to know where he would be sent.
Finally he got to me. He had an excellent memory and seemed to know all
men by name. "Well Devereaux," he said, "do you think that you can run a
car?"
"Yes Sir!" I answered quickly. He fumbled his pencil thoughtfully while
I waited nervously then went on:
"And you feel quite capable of running a car, do you?"
"Yes Sir" I replied with emphasis, "I learned thoroughly yesterday."
"Well," he spoke as one who has weighed the matter and is not quite
certain but willing to risk, and taking his pad and pencil he wrote,
speaking at the same time, "You go out to the Ft. Wayne yards and get on
the car 'Altata', goes extra to Washington D.C. at three o'clock; put
away the linen, put out combs, brushes and have the car in order when
the train backs down."
"Yes Sir," and I hurried out of the room, up the steps and onto the
street where I could give vent to my elation. To Washington, first of
all places. O Glory! and I fairly flew out to Sixteenth street where the
P.F. & W. passenger yards were located. Here not less than seven hundred
passenger and and P----n cars are cleaned and put in readiness for each
trip daily, and standing among them I found the Altata. O wonderful
name! She was a brand new observation car just out of the shops. I dared
not believe my eyes, and felt that there must be some mistake; surely
the company didn't expect to send me out with such a fine car on my
first trip. But I should have known better, for among the many thousands
of P----n cars with their picturesque names, there was not another
"Altata." I looked around the yards and finally inquired of a cleaner as
to where the Altata was. "Right there," he said, pointing to the car I
had been looking at and I boarded her nervously; found the linen and
lockers but was at a loss to know how and where to start getting the car
in order. I was more than confused and what I had learned so quickly the
day before had vanished like smoke. I was afraid too, that if I didn't
have the car in order I'd be taken off when the train backed down and
become an "emergie" myself. This shocked me so it brought me to my
senses and I got busy putting the linen somewhere and when the train
stopped in the shed the car, as well as myself, was fairly presentable
and ready to receive.
Then came the rush of passengers with all their attending requests for
attention. "Ah Poiter, put my grip in Thoiteen," and "Ah Poiter, will
you raise my window and put in a deflector?" Holy Smitherines! I rushed
back and forth like a lost calf, trying to recall what a deflector was,
and I couldn't distinguish thoiteen from three. Then--"Ah, Poiter, will
you tell me when we get to Valparaiso?" called a little blonde lady,
"You see, I have a son who is attending the Univoisity theah--now Poiter
don't forget please" she asked winsomely.
"Oh! No, Maam," I assured her confidently that I never forgot anything.
My confusion became so intense had I gotten off the car I'd probably not
have known which way to get on again.
The clerk seemed to sense my embarrassment and helped me seat the
passengers in their proper places, as well as to answer the numerous
questions directed at me. The G.A.R. encampment was on in Washington and
the rush was greater than usual on that account. By the time the train
reached Valparaiso I had gotten somewhat accustomed to the situation and
recalled my promise to the little blonde lady and filled it. She had
been asleep and it was raining to beat-the-band. With a sigh she looked
out of the window and then turned on her side and fell asleep again. At
Pittsburg I was chagrined to be turned back and sent over the P.H. & D.
to Chicago.
At Columbus, Ohio, we took on a colored preacher who had a ticket for an
upper berth over a Southerner who had the lower. The Southern gentleman
in that "holier than thou" attitude made a vigorous kick to the
conductor to have the colored "Sky-pilot," as he termed him, removed. I
heard the conductor tell him gently but firmly, that he couldn't do it.
Then after a few characteristic haughty remarks the Southerner went
forward to the chair car and sat up all night. When I got the shoes
shined and lavatory ready for the morning rush I slipped into the
Southerner's berth and had a good snooze. However, longer than it should
have been, for the conductor found me the next morning as the train was
pulling into Chicago. He threatened to report me but when I told him
that it was my first trip out, that I hadn't had any sleep the night
before and none the night before that on account of my restlessness in
anticipation of the trip, he relented and helped me to make up the beds.
I barely got to my room before I was called to go out again. This time
going through to Washington. The P.F. & W. tracks pass right through
Washington's "black belt" and it might be interesting to the reader to
know that Washington has more colored people than any other American
city. I had never seen so many colored people. In fact, the entire
population seemed to be negroes. There was an old lady from South Dakota
on my car who seemed surprised at the many colored people and after
looking quite intently for some time she touched me on the sleeve,
whispering, "Porter, aren't there anything but colored people here?" I
replied that it seemed so.
At the station a near-mob of colored boys huddled before the steps and I
thought they would fairly take the passengers off their feet by the way
they crowded around them. However, they were harmless and only wanted to
earn a dime by carrying grips. Two of them got a jui jitsu grip on that
of the old lady from South Dakota, and to say that she became frightened
would be putting it mildly. Just then a policeman came along and the
boys scattered like flies and the old lady seemed much relieved. Having
since taken up my abode in that state myself, and knowing that there
were but few negroes inhabiting it, I have often wondered since how she
must have felt on that memorable trip of hers, as well as mine.
After working some four months on various and irregular runs that took
me to all the important cities of the United States east of the
Mississippi River, I was put on a regular run to Portland, Oregon. This
was along in February and about the same time that I banked my first one
hundred dollars. If my former bank account had stirred my ambition and
become an incentive to economy and a life of modest habits, the larger
one put everything foolish and impractical entirely out of my mind, and
economy, modesty and frugality became fixed habits of my life.
At a point in Wyoming on my run to Portland my car left the main line
and went over another through Idaho and Oregon. From there no berth
tickets were sold by the station agents and the conductors collected the
cash fares, and had for many years mixed the company's money with their
own. I soon found myself in the mire along with the conductors. "Getting
in" was easy and tips were good for a hundred dollars a month and
sometimes more. "Good Conductors," a name applied to "color blind" cons,
were worth seventy-five, and with the twenty-five dollar salary from the
company, I averaged two hundred dollars a month for eighteen months.
There is something fascinating about railroading, and few men really
tire of it. In fact, most men, like myself, rather enjoy it. I never
tired of hearing the t-clack of the trucks and the general roar of the
train as it thundered over streams and crossings throughout the days and
nights across the continent to the Pacific coast. The scenery never
grew old, as it was quite varied between Chicago and North Platte.
During the summer it is one large garden farm, dotted with numerous
cities, thriving hamlets and towns, fine country homes so characteristic
of the great middle west, and is always pleasing to the eye.
Between North Platte and Julesburg, Colorado, is the heart of the
semi-arid region, where the yearly rainfall is insufficient to mature
crops, but where the short buffalo grass feeds the rancher's herds
winter and summer. As the car continues westward, climbing higher and
higher as it approaches the Rockies, the air becomes quite rare. At
Cheyenne the air is so light it blows a gale almost steadily, and the
eye can discern objects for miles away while the ear cannot hear sounds
over twenty rods. I shall not soon forget how I was wont to gaze at the
herds of cattle ten to thirty miles away grazing peacefully on the great
Laramie plains to the south, while beyond that lay the great American
Rockies, their ragged peaks towering above in great sepulchral forms,
filling me alternately with a feeling of romance or adventure, depending
somewhat on whether it was a story of the "Roundup," or some other
article typical of the west, I was reading.
Nearing the Continental divide the car pulls into Rawlins, which is
about the highest, driest and most uninviting place on the line. From
here the stage lines radiate for a hundred miles to the north and south.
Near here is Medicine Bow, where Owen Wister lays the beginning scenes
of the "Virginian"; and beyond lies Rock Springs, the home of the famous
coal that bears its name and which commands the highest price of any
bituminous coal. The coal lies in wide veins, the shafts run
horizontally and there are no deep shafts as there are in the coal
fields of Illinois and other Central states.
From here the train descends a gentle slope to Green River, Wyoming, a
division point in the U.P. South on the D. & R.G. is Green River, Utah.
Arriving at Granger one feels as though he had arrived at the jumping
off place of creation. Like most all desert stations it contains nothing
of interest and time becomes a bore. Here the traffic is divided and the
O.S.L. takes the Portland and Butte section into Idaho where the scenery
suddenly begins to get brighter. Indeed, the country seems to take on a
beautiful and cheerful appearance; civilization and beautiful farms take
the place of the wilderness, sage brush and skulking coyotes. Thanks to
the irrigation ditch.
After crossing the picturesque American Falls of Snake River, the train
soon arrives at Minidoka. This is the seat of the great Minidoka
project, in which the United States Government has taken such an active
interest and constructed a canal over seventy miles in length. This has
converted about a quarter of a million acres of Idaho's volcanic ash
soil into productive lands that bloom as the rose. It was the beautiful
valley of the Snake River, with its indescribable scenery and its many
beautiful little cities, that attracted my attention and looked as
though it had a promising future. I had contemplated investing in some
of its lands and locating, if I should happen to be compelled by stress
of circumstances to change my occupation. This came to pass shortly
thereafter.
The end came after a trip between Granger and Portland, in company with
a shrewd Irish conductor by the name of Wright, who not only "knocked
down" the company's money, but drank a good deal more whiskey than was
good for him. On this last trip, when Wright took charge of the car at
Granger, he began telling about his newly acquired "dear little wifey."
Also confiding to me that he had quit drinking and was going to quit
"knocking down"--after that trip. Oh, yes! Wright was always going to
dispense with all things dishonest and dishonorable--at some future
date. Another bad thing about Wright was that he would steal, not only
from the company, but from the porter as well, by virtue of the rule
that required the porter to take a duplicate receipt from the conductor
for each and every passenger riding on his car, whether the passenger
has a ticket or pays cash fare. These receipts are forwarded to the
Auditor of the company at the end of each run.
Wright's method of stealing from the porter was not to turn over any
duplicates or receipts until arriving at the terminus. Then he would
choose a time when the porter was very busy brushing the passengers'
clothes and getting the tips, and would then have no time to count up or
tell just how many people had ridden. I had received information from
others concerning him and was cautioned to watch. So on our first trip I
quietly checked up all the passengers as they got on and where they got
off, as well as the berth or seat they occupied. Arriving at Granger
going east he gave me the wink and taking me into the smoking room he
proceeded to give me the duplicates and divide the spoils. He gave me
six dollars, saying he had cut such and such a passenger's fare and that
was my part. I summed up and the amount "knocked down" was thirty-one
dollars. I showed him my figures and at the same time told him to hand
over nine-fifty more. How he did rage and swear about the
responsibilities being all on him, that he did all the collecting and
the "dirty work" in connection therewith, that the company didn't fire
the porter. He said before he would concede to my demands he would turn
all the money in to the company and report me for insolence. I sat
calmly through it all and when he had exhausted his vituperations I
calmly said "nine-fifty, please." I had no fear of his doing any of the
things threatened for I had dealt with grafting conductors long enough
to know that when they determined on keeping a fare they weren't likely
to turn in their portion to spite the porter, and Wright was no
exception.
But getting back to the last trip. An old lady had given me a quart of
Old Crow Whiskey bottled in bond. There had been perhaps a half pint
taken out. I thanked her profusely and put it in the locker, and since
Wright found that he could not keep any of my share of the "knocked
down" fares he was running straight--that is with me, and we were quite
friendly, so I told him of the gift and where to find it if he wanted a
"smile." In one end of the P----n where the drawing room cuts off the
main portion of the car, and at the beginning of the curved aisle and
opposite to the drawing room, is the locker. When its door is open it
completely closes the aisle, thus hiding a person from view behind it.
Before long I saw Wright open the door and a little later could hear him
ease the bottle down after taking a drink.
When we got to Portland, Wright was feeling "about right" and the bottle
was empty. As he divided the money with me he cried: "Let her run on
three wheels." It was the last time he divided any of the company's
money with a porter. When he stepped into the office at the end of that
trip he was told that they "had a message from Ager" the assistant
general superintendent, concerning him. Every employee knew that a
message from this individual meant "off goes the bean." I never saw
Wright afterwards, for they "got" me too that trip.
The little Irish conductor, who was considered the shrewdest of the
shrewd, had run a long time and "knocked down" a great amount of the
company's money but the system of "spotting" eventually got him as it
does the best of them.
I now had two thousand, three hundred and forty dollars in the bank. The
odd forty I drew out, and left the remainder on deposit, packed my trunk
and bid farewell to Armour Avenue and Chicago's Black Belt with its beer
cans, drunken men and women, and turned my face westward with the spirit
of Horace Greeley before and his words "Go west, young man, and grow up
with the country" ringing in my ears. So westward I journeyed to the
land of raw material, which my dreams had pictured to me as the land of
real beginning, and where I was soon to learn more than a mere observer
ever could by living in the realm of a great city.
CHAPTER V
"GO WEST YOUNG MAN AND GROW UP WITH THE COUNTRY"
In justice to the many thousands of P----n porters, as well as many
conductors, who were in the habit of retaining the company's money, let
it be said that they are not the hungry thieves and dishonest rogues the
general public might think them to be, dishonest as their conduct may
seem to be. They were victims of a vicious system built up and winked at
by the company itself.
Before the day of the Inter-State Commerce Commission and anti-pass and
two-cent-per-mile legislation, and when passengers paid cash fares, it
was a matter of tradition with the conductors to knockdown, and nothing
was said, although the conductors, as now, were fairly well paid and the
company fully expected to lose some of the cash fares.
In the case of the porters, however, the circumstances are far more
mitigating. At the time I was with the company there were, in round
numbers, eight thousand porters in the service on tourist and standard
sleepers who were receiving from a minimum of twenty-five dollars to not
to exceed forty dollars per month, depending on length and desirability
of service. Out of this he must furnish, for the first ten years, his
own uniforms and cap, consisting of summer and winter suits at twenty
and twenty-two dollars respectively. After ten years of continuous
service these things are furnished by the company. Then there is the
board, lodging and laundry expense. Trainmen are allowed from fifty to
sixty per cent off of the regular bill of fare, and at this price most
any kind of a meal in an a-la-carte diner comes to forty and fifty
cents. Besides, the waiters expect tips from the crew as well as from
the passengers and make it more uncomfortable for them if they do not
receive it than they usually do for the passenger.
I kept an accurate itemized account of my living expenses, including six
dollars per month for a room in Chicago, and economize as I would,
making one uniform and cap last a whole year, I could not get the
monthly expense below forty dollars--fifteen dollars more than my
salary, and surely the company must have known it and condoned any
reasonable amount of "knock down" on the side to make up the deficiency
in salary. The porter's "knock down" usually coming through the
sympathy, good will and unwritten law of "knocking down"--that the
conductor divide equally with the porter. All of which, however, is now
fast becoming a thing of the past, owing to recent legislation,
investigations and strict regulation of common carriers by Congress and
the various laws of the states of the Union, with the added result that
conductors' wages have increased accordingly. Few conductors today are
foolish enough to jeopardize their positions by indulging in the old
practice, and it leaves the porters in a sorry plight indeed.
All in all, the system, while deceptive and dishonest on its face, was
for a time a tolerated evil, apparently sanctioned by the company and
became a veritable disease among the colored employees who, without
exception, received and kept the company's money without a single qualm
of conscience. It was a part of their duty to make the job pay something
more than a part of their living expenses.
Ignorant as many of the porters were, most of them knew that from the
enormous profits made that the company could and should have paid them
better wages, and I am sure that if they received living wages for their
services it would have a great moralizing effect on that feature of the
service, and greatly add to the comfort of the traveling public.
However, the greedy and inhuman attitude of this monoply toward its
colored employees has just the opposite effect, and is demoralizing
indeed. Thousands of black porters continue to give their services in
return for starvation wages and are compelled to graft the company and
the people for a living.
Shortly before my cessation of activities in connection with the P----n
company it had a capitalization of ninety-five million dollars, paying
eight per cent dividend annually, and about two years after I was
compelled to quit, it paid its stockholders a thirty-five million dollar
surplus which had accumulated in five years. Just recently a "melon was
cut" of about a like amount and over eight thousand colored porters
helped to accumulate it, at from twenty-five to forty dollars per month.
A wonder it is that their condition does not breed such actual
dishonesty and deception that society would be forced to take notice of
it, and the traveling public should be thankful for the attentive
services given under these near-slave conditions. As for myself, the
reader has seen how I made it "pay" and I have no apologies or regrets
to offer. When that final reckoning comes, I am sure the angel clerk
will pass all porters against whom nothing more serious appears than
what I have heretofore related.
While I was considered very fortunate by my fellow employees, the whole
thing filled me with disgust. I suffered from a nervous worry and fear
of losing my position all the time, and really felt relieved when the
end came and I was free to pursue a more commendable occupation.
In going out of the Superintendent's office on my farewell leave, the
several opportunities I had seen during my experience with the P----n
company loomed up and marched in dress parade before me; the conditions
of the Snake River valley and the constructiveness of the people who had
turned the alkali desert into valuable farms worth from fifty to five
hundred dollars an acre, thrilled me so that I had no misgivings for the
future. But Destiny had other fields in view for me and did not send me
to that land of Eden of which I had become so fond, in quest of fortune.
Such a variety of scenes was surely an incentive to serious thought.
What was termed inquisitiveness at home brought me a world of
information abroad. This inquisitiveness, combined with the observation
afforded by such runs as those to Portland and around the circle and,
perhaps, coming back by Washington D.C., gave practical knowledge. Often
western sheepmen, who were ready talkers, returning on my car from
taking a shipment to Chicago, gave me some idea of farming and
sheepraising. I remember thinking that Iowa would be a fine place to own
a farm, but quickly gave up any further thought of owning one there
myself. A farmer from Tama, that state, gave me the information. He was
a beautiful decoration for a P----n berth and a neatly made bed with
three sheets, and I do not know what possessed him to ever take a
sleeper, for he slept little that night--I am sure. The next morning
about five o'clock, while gathering and shining shoes, I could not find
his, and being curious, I peeped into his berth. What I saw made me
laugh, indeed. There he lay, all bundled into his bed in his big fur
overcoat and shoes on, just as he came into the car the evening before.
He was awake and looked so uncomfortable that I suggested that he get up
if he wasn't sleepy. "What say?" he answered, leaning over and sticking
his head out of the berth as though afraid someone would grab him.
As this class of farmers like to talk, and usually in loud tones, I led
him into the smoking room as soon as he jumped out of his berth, to keep
him from annoying other passengers. Here he washed his face, still
keeping his coat on.
"Remove your coat," I suggested, "and you will be more comfortable."
"You bet," he said taking his coat off and sitting on it. Lighting his
pipe, he began talking and I immediately inquired of him how much land
he owned.
He answered that he owned a section. "Gee! but that is a lot of land," I
exclaimed, getting interested, "and what is it worth an acre?"
"The last quarter I bought I paid eighty dollars an acre" he returned.
That is over thirteen thousand and I could plainly see that my little
two thousand dollar bank account wouldn't go very far in Iowa when it
came to buying land. That was nine years ago and the same land today
will sell around one hundred and fifty dollars an acre, and the "end is
not yet."
I concluded on one thing, and that was, if one whose capital was under
eight or ten thousand dollars, desired to own a good farm in the great
central west he must go where the land was new or raw and undeveloped.
He must begin with the beginning and develop with the development of the
country. By the proper and accepted methods of conservation of the
natural resources and close application to his work, his chances for
success are good.
When I finally reached this conclusion I began searching for a suitable
location in which to try my fortune in the harrowing of the soil.
CHAPTER VI
"AND WHERE IS ORISTOWN?" THE TOWN ON THE MISSOURI
It came a few days later in a restaurant in Council Bluffs, Iowa, when I
heard the waiters, one white man and the other colored, saying, "I'm
going to Oristown." "And where is Oristown?" I inquired, taking a stool
and scrutinizing the bill of fare. "Oristown," the white man spoke up,
drawing away at a pipe which gave him the appearance of being anything
from a rover to a freight brakeman, "is about two hundred and fifty
miles northwest of here in southern South Dakota, on the edge of the
Little Crow Reservation, to be opened this summer." This is not the
right name, but the name of an Indian chief living near where this is
written.
Oristown is the present terminus of the C. & R.W. Ry. and he went on to
tell me that the land in part was valuable, while some portions were no
better than Western Nebraska. A part of the Reservation was to be opened
to settlement by lottery that summer and the registration was to take
place in July. It was now April. "And the registration is to come off at
Oristown?" I finished for him with a question. "Yes," he assented.
At Omaha the following day I chanced to meet two surveyors who had been
sent out to the reservation from Washington, D.C. and who told me to
write to the Department of the Interior for information regarding the
opening, the lay of the land, quality of the soil, rainfall, etc. I did
as they suggested and the pamphlets received stated that the land to be
opened was a deep black loam, with clay subsoil, and the rainfall in
this section averaged twenty-eight inches the last five years. I knew
that Iowa had about thirty inches and most of the time was too wet, so
concluded here at last was the place to go. This suited me better than
any of the states or projects I had previously looked into, besides, I
knew more about the mode of farming employed in that section of the
country, it being somewhat similar to that in Southern Illinois.
On the morning of July fifth, at U.P. Transfer, Iowa, I took a train
over the C.P. & St. L., which carried me to a certain town on the
Missouri in South Dakota. I did not go to Oristown to register as I had
intended but went to the town referred to, which had been designated as
a registration point also. I was told by people who were "hitting" in
the same direction and for the same purpose, that Oristown was crowded
and lawless, with no place to sleep, and was overrun with tin-horn
gamblers. It would be much better to go to the larger town on the
Missouri, where better hotel accommodation and other conveniences could
be had. So I bought a ticket to Johnstown, where I arrived late in the
afternoon of the same day. There was a large crowd, which soon found its
way to the main street, where numerous booths and offices were set up,
with a notary in each to accept applications for the drawing. This
consisted of taking oath that one was a citizen of the United States,
twenty-one years of age or over. The head of a family, a widow, or any
woman upon whom fell the support of a family, was also accepted. No
person, however, owning over one hundred and sixty acres of land, or who
had ever had a homestead before, could apply. The application was then
enclosed in an envelope and directed to the Superintendent of the
opening.
After all the applications had been taken, they were thoroughly mixed
and shuffled together. Then a blindfolded child was directed to draw one
from the pile, which became number one in the opening. The lucky person
whose oath was contained in such envelope was given the choice of all
the land thrown open for settlement. Then another envelope was drawn and
that person was given the second choice, and so on until they were all
drawn.
This system was an out and out lottery, but gave each and every
applicant an equal chance to draw a claim, but guaranteed none. Years
before, land openings were conducted in a different manner. The
applicants were held back of a line until a signal was given and then a
general rush was made for the locations and settlement rights on the
land. This worked fairly well at first but there grew to be more
applicants than land, and two or more persons often located on the same
piece of land and this brought about expensive litigation and annoying
disputes and sometimes even murder, over the settlement. This was
finally abolished in favor of the lottery system, which was at least
safer and more profitable to the railroads that were fortunate enough to
have a line to one or more of the registration points.
[Illustration: Became number one in the opening. (page 56.)]
At Johnstown, people from every part of the United States, of all ages
and descriptions, gathered in crowded masses, the greater part of them
being from Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, Kansas and
Nebraska. When I started for the registration I was under the impression
that only a few people would register, probably four or five thousand,
and as there were twenty-four hundred homesteads I had no other thought
than I would draw and later file on a quarter section. Imagine my
consternation when at the end of the first day the registration numbered
ten thousand. A colored farmer in Kansas had asked me to keep him posted
in regard to the opening. He also thought of coming up and registering
when he had completed his harvest. When the throngs of people began
pouring in from the three railroads into Johnstown (and there were two
other points of registration besides) I saw my chances of drawing a
claim dwindling, from one to two, to one to ten, fifteen and twenty and
maybe more. After three days in Johnstown I wrote my friend and told him
I believed there would be fully thirty thousand people apply for the
twenty-four hundred claims. The fifth day I wrote there would be fifty
thousand. After a week I wrote there would be seventy-five thousand
register, that it was useless to expect to draw and I was leaving for
Kansas to visit my parents. When the registration was over I read in a
Kansas City paper that one hundred and seven thousand persons had
registered, making the chance of drawing one to forty-four.
Received a card soon after from the Superintendent of the opening,
which read that my number was 6504, and as the number of claims was
approximately twenty-four hundred, my number was too high to be reached
before the land should all be taken. I think it was the same day I lost
fifty-five dollars out of my pocket. This, combined with my
disappointment in not drawing a piece of land, gave me a grouch and I
lit out for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis with the
intention of again getting into the P----n service for a time.
Ofttimes porters who had been discharged went to another city, changed
their names, furnished a different set of references and got back to
work for the same company. Now if they happened to be on a car that took
them into the district from which they were discharged, and before the
same officials, who of course recognized them, they were promptly
reported and again discharged. I pondered over the situation and came to
the conclusion that I would not attempt such deception, but avoid being
sent back to the Chicago Western District. I was at a greater
disadvantage than Johnson, Smith, Jackson, or a number of other common
names, by having the odd French name that had always to be spelled
slowly to a conductor, or any one else who had occasion to know me. Out
of curiosity I had once looked in a Chicago Directory. Of some two
million names there were just two others with the same name. But on the
other hand it was much easier to avoid the Chicago Western District, or
at least Mr. Miltzow's office and by keeping my own name, assume that I
had never been discharged, than it was to go into a half a dozen other
districts with a new name and avoid being recognized. Arriving at this
decision, I approached the St. Louis office, presented my references
which had been furnished by other M--pls business men, and was accepted.
After I had been sent out with a porter, who had been running three
months, to show me how to run a car, I was immediately put to work. I
learned in two trips, according to the report my tutor handed to the
chief clerk, and by chance fell into one of the best runs to New York on
one of the limited trains during the fair. There was not much knocking
down on this run, but the tips, including the salary were good for three
hundred dollars per month. I ran on this from September first to October
fourth and saved three hundred dollars. I had not given up getting a
Dakota Homestead, for while I was there during the summer I learned if I
did not draw a number I could buy a relinquishment.
This relates to the purchasing of a relinquishment:
An entryman has the right at any time to relinquish back to the United
States all his right, title, and interest to and in the land covered by
his filing. The land is then open to entry.
A claimholder who has filed on a quarter of land will have plenty of
opportunity to relinquish his claim, for a cash consideration, so that
another party may get a filing on it. This is called buying or selling a
relinquishment. The amount of the consideration varies with quality of
the land, and the eagerness of the buyer or seller, as the case may be.
Relinquishments are the largest stock in trade of all the real estate
dealers, in a new country. Besides, everybody from the bank president
down to the humble dish washer in the hotel, or the chore boy in the
livery, the ministers not omitted, would, with guarded secrecy, confide
in you of some choice relinquishment that could be had at a very low
figure compared with what it was really worth.
CHAPTER VII
ORISTOWN, THE "LITTLE CROW" RESERVATION
When I left St. Louis on the night of October fourth I headed for
Oristown to buy someone's relinquishment. I had two thousand, five
hundred dollars. From Omaha the journey was made on the C. & R.W.'s one
train a day that during these times was loaded from end to end, with
everybody discussing the Little Crow and the buying of relinquishments.
I was the only negro on the train and an object of many inquiries as to
where I was going. Some of those whom I told that I was going to buy a
relinquishment seemingly regarded it as a joke, judging from the meaning
glances cast at those nearest them.
An incident occurred when I arrived at Oristown which is yet considered
a good joke on a real estate man then located there, by the name of
Keeler, who was also the United States Commissioner. He could not only
sell me a relinquishment, but could also take my filing. I had a talk
with Keeler, but as he did not encourage me in my plan to make a
purchase I went to another firm, a young lawyer and a fellow by the name
of Slater, who ran a livery barn, around the corner. Watkins, the
lawyer, impressed me as having more ambition than practical business
qualities. However, Slater took the matter up and agreed to take me over
the reservation and show me some good claims. If I bought, the drive was
gratis, if not four dollars per day, and I accepted his proposition.
After we had driven a few miles he told me Keeler had said to him that
he was a fool to waste his time hauling a d---- nigger around over the
reservation; that I didn't have any money and was just "stalling." I
flushed angrily, and said "Show me what I want and I will produce the
money. What I want is something near the west end of the county. You say
the relinquishments are cheaper there and the soil is richer. I don't
want big hills or rocks nor anything I can't farm, but I want a nice
level or gently rolling quarter section of prairie near some town to be,
that has prospects of getting the railroad when it is extended west from
Oristown." By this time we had covered the three miles between Oristown
and the reservation line, and had entered the newly opened section which
stretched for thirty miles to the west. As we drove on I became
attracted by the long grass, now dead, which was of a brownish hue and
as I gazed over the miles of it lying like a mighty carpet I could seem
to feel the magnitude of the development and industry that would some
day replace this state of wildness. To the Northeast the Missouri River
wound its way, into which empties the Whetstone Creek, the breaks of
which resembled miniature mountains, falling abruptly, then rising to a
point where the dark shale sides glistened in the sunlight. It was my
longest drive in a buggy. We could go for perhaps three or four miles on
a table-like plateau, then drop suddenly into small canyon-like ditches
and rise abruptly to the other side. After driving about fifteen miles
we came to the town, as they called it, but I would have said village of
Hedrick--a collection of frame shacks with one or two houses, many
roughly constructed sod buildings, the long brown grass hanging from
between the sod, giving it a frizzled appearance. Here we listened to a
few boosters and mountebanks whose rustic eloquence was no doubt
intended to give the unwary the impression that they were on the site of
the coming metropolis of the west. A county-seat battle was to be fought
the next month and the few citizens of the sixty days declared they
would wrest it from Fairview, the present county seat situated in the
extreme east end of the county, if it cost them a million dollars, or
one-half of all they were worth. They boasted of Hedrick's prospects,
sweeping their arms around in eloquent gestures in alluding to the
territory tributary to the town, as though half the universe were
Hedrick territory.
Nine miles northwest, where the land was very sandy and full of pits,
into which the buggy wheels dropped with a grinding sound, and where
magnesia rock cropped out of the soil, was another budding town by the
name of Kirk. The few prospective citizens of this burg were not so
enthusiastic as those in Hedrick and when I asked one why they located
the town in such a sandy country he opened up with a snort about some
pinheaded engineer for the "guvment" who didn't know enough to jump
straight up "a locating the town in such an all fired sandy place"; but
he concluded with a compliment, that plenty of good water could be found
at from fifteen to fifty feet.
This sandy land continued some three miles west and we often found
springs along the streams. After ascending an unusually steep hill, we
came upon a plateau where the grass, the soil, and the lay of the land,
were entirely different from any we had as yet seen. I was struck by the
beauty of the scenery and it seemed to charm and bring me out of the
spirit of depression the sandy stretch brought upon me. Stretching for
miles to the northwest and to the south, the land would rise in a gentle
slope to a hog back, and as gently slope away to a draw, which drained
to the south. Here the small streams emptied into a larger one, winding
along like a snake's track, and thickly wooded with a growth of small
hardwood timber. It was beautiful. From each side the land rose gently
like huge wings, and spread away as far as the eye could reach. The
driver brought me back to earth, after a mile of such fascinating
observations, and pointing to the north, said: "There lays one of the
claims." I was carried away by the first sight of it. The land appeared
to slope from a point, or table, and to the north of that was a small
draw, with water. We rode along the south side and on coming upon a
slight raise, which he informed me was the highest part of the place, we
found a square white stone set equally distant from four small holes,
four or five feet apart. On one side of the stone was inscribed a row of
letters which ran like this, SWC, SWQ, Sec. 29-97-72 W. 5th P.M., and on
the other sides were some other letters similar to these. "What does all
that mean?" I asked. He said the letters were initials describing the
land and reading from the side next to the place we had come to see it,
read: "The southwest corner of the southwest quarter of section
twenty-nine, township ninety-seven, and range seventy-two, west of the
fifth principal meridian."
When we got back to Oristown I concluded I wanted the place and dreamed
of it that night. It had been drawn by a girl who lived with her parents
across the Missouri. To see her, we had to drive to their home, and here
a disagreement arose, which for a time threatened to cause a split. I
had been so enthusiastic over the place, that Slater figured on a
handsome commission, but I had been making inquiries in Oristown, and
found I could buy relinquishments much cheaper than I had anticipated. I
had expected the price to be about one thousand, eight hundred dollars
and came prepared to pay that much, but was advised to pay not over five
hundred dollars for land as far west as the town of Megory, which was
only four miles northwest of the place I was now dickering to buy. We
had agreed to give the girl three hundred and seventy-five dollars, and
I had partly agreed to give Slater two hundred dollars commission.
However, I decided this was too much, and told him I would give him only
seventy-five dollars. He was in for going right back to Oristown and
calling the deal off, but when he figured up that two and a half day's
driving would amount to only ten dollars, he offered to take one hundred
dollars. But I was obstinate and held out for seventy-five dollars,
finally giving him eighty dollars, and in due time became the proud
owner of a Little Crow homestead.
All this time I had been writing to Jessie. I had written first while I
was in Eaton, and she had answered in the same demure manner in which
she had received me at our first meeting, and had continued answering
the letters I had written from all parts of the continent, in much the
same way. For a time I had quit writing, for I felt that she was really
too young and not taking me seriously enough, but after a month, my
sister wrote me, asking why I did not write to Jessie; that she asked
about me every day. This inspired me with a new interest and I began
writing again.
I wrote her in glowing terms all about my advent in Dakota, and as she
was of a reserved disposition, I always asked her opinion as to whether
she thought it a sensible move. I wanted to hear her say something more
than: "I was at a cantata last evening and had a nice time", and so on.
Furthermore, I was skeptical. I knew that a great many colored people
considered farming a deprivation of all things essential to a good time.
In fact, to have a good time, was the first thing to be considered, and
everything else was secondary. Jessie, however, was not of this kind.
She wrote me a letter that surprised me, stating, among other things,
that she was seventeen and in her senior year high school. That she
thought I was grand and noble, as well as practical, and was sorry she
couldn't find words to tell me all she felt, but that which satisfied me
suited her also. I was delighted with her answer and wrote a cheerful
letter in return, saying I would come to see her, Christmas.
CHAPTER VIII
FAR DOWN THE PACIFIC--THE PROPOSAL
After the presidential election of that year I went to South America
with a special party, consisting mostly of New York capitalists and
millionaires. We traveled through the southwest, crossing the Rio Grand
at Eagle Pass, and on south by the way of Toreon, Zacatecas, Aguas
Calientes, Guadalajara, Puebla, Tehauntepec and to the southwest coast,
sailing from Salina Cruz down the Pacific to Valparaiso, Chile, going
inland to Santiago, thence over the Trans-Andean railway across the
Andes, and onward to the western plateau of Argentina.
Arriving at the new city of Mendoza, we visited the ruins of the ancient
city of the same name. Here, in the early part of the fifteenth century,
on a Sunday morning, when a large part of the people were at church, an
earthquake shook the city. When it passed, it left bitter ruin in its
wake, the only part that stood intact being one wall of the church. Of a
population of thirteen thousand, only sixteen hundred persons escaped
alive. The city was rebuilt later, and at the time we were there it was
a beautiful place of about twenty-five thousand population. At this
place a report of bubonic plague, in Brazil, reached us. The party
became frightened and beat it in post haste back to Valparaiso, setting
sail immediately for Salina Cruz, and spent the time that was scheduled
for a tour of Argentina, in snoopin' around the land of the Montezumas.
This is the American center of Catholic Churches; the home of many gaudy
Spanish women and begging peons; where the people, the laws, and the
customs, are two hundred years behind those of the United States. Still,
I thought Mexico very beautiful, as well as of historical interest.
One day we journeyed far into the highlands, where lay the ancient
Mexican city of Cuernavaca, the one time summer home of America's only
Emperor, Maximilian. From there we went to Puebla, where we saw the old
Cathedral which was begun in 1518, and which at that time was said to be
the second largest in the world. We saw San Louis Potosi, and Monterey,
and returned by the way of Loredo, Texas. I became well enough
acquainted with the liberal millionaires and so useful in serving their
families that I made five hundred and seventy-five dollars on the trip,
besides bringing back so many gifts and curiosities of all kinds that I
had enough to divide up with a good many of my friends.
Flushed with prosperity and success in my undertakings since leaving
Southern Illinois less than three years before, I went to M--boro to see
my sister and to see whether Miss Rooks had grown any. I was received as
a personage of much importance among the colored people of the town, who
were about the same kind that lived in M--pls; not very progressive,
excepting with their tongues when it came to curiosity and gossip. I
arrived in the evening too late to call on Miss Rooks and having become
quite anxious to see her again, the night dragged slowly away, and I
thought the conventional afternoon would never come again. Her father,
who was an important figure among the colored people, was a mail carrier
and brought the mail to the house that morning where I stopped. He
looked me over searchingly, and I tried to appear unaffected by his
scrutinizing glances.
By and by two o'clock finally arrived, and with my sister I went to make
my first call in three years. I had grown quite tall and rugged, and I
was anxious to see how she looked. We were received by her mother who
said: "Jessie saw you coming and will be out shortly." After a while she
entered and how she had changed. She, too, had grown much taller and was
a little stooped in the shoulders. She was neatly dressed and wore her
hair done up in a small knot, in keeping with the style of that time.
She came straight to me, extended her hand and seemed delighted to see
me after the years of separation.
After awhile her mother and my sister accommodatingly found an excuse to
go up town, and a few minutes later with her on the settee beside me, I
was telling of my big plans and the air castles I was building on the
great plains of the west. Finally, drawing her hand into mine and
finding that she offered no resistance, I put my arm around her waist,
drew her close and declared I loved her. Then I caught myself and dared
not go farther with so serious a subject when I recalled the wild,
rough, and lonely place out on the plains that I had selected as a home,
and finally asked that we defer anything further until the claim on the
Little Crow should develop into something more like an Illinois home.
"O, we don't know what will happen before that time," she spoke for the
first time, with a blush as I squeezed her hand.
"But nothing can happen," I defended, nonplused, "can there?"
"Well, no," she answered hesitatingly, leaning away.
"Then we will, won't we?" I urged.
"Well, yes", she answered, looking down and appearing a trifle doubtful.
I admired her the more. Love is something I had longed for more than
anything else, but my ambition to overcome the vagaries of my race by
accomplishing something worthy of note, hadn't given me much time to
seek love.
I went to my old occupation of the road for awhile and spent most of the
winter on a run to Florida, where the tipping was as good as it had been
on the run from St. Louis to New York. However, about a month before I
quit I was assigned to a run to Boston. By this time I had seen nearly
all the important cities in the United States and of them all none
interested me so much as Boston.
What always appeared odd to me, however, was the fact that the passenger
yards were right at the door of the fashionable Back Bay district on
Huntington Avenue, near the Hotel Nottingham, not three blocks from
where the intersection of Huntington Avenue and Boylston Street form an
acute angle in which stands the Public Library, and in the opposite
angle stands Trinity Church, so thickly purpled with aristocracy and the
memory big with the tradition of Philip Brooks, the last of that group
of mighty American pulpit orators, of whom I had read so much. A little
farther on stands the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The mornings I spent wandering around the city, visiting Faneuil Hall,
the old State House, Boston commons, Bunker Hill, and a thousand other
reminders of the early heroism, rugged courage, and far seeing greatness
of Boston's early citizens. Afternoons generally found me on Tremont or
Washington Street attending a matinee or hearing music. There once I
heard Caruso, Melba, and two or three other grand opera stars in the
popular Rigoletto Quartette, and another time I witnessed "Siberia" and
the gorgeous and blood-curdling reproduction of the Kishneff Massacre,
with two hundred people on the stage. On my last trip to Boston I saw
Chauncy Olcott in "Terrence the Coach Boy", a romance of old Ireland
with the scene laid in Valley Bay, which seemed to correspond to the
Back Bay a few blocks away.
Dear old Boston, when will I see you again, was my thought as the train
pulled out through the most fashionable part of America, so stately and
so grand. Even now I recall the last trip with a sigh. If the Little
Crow, with Oristown as its gateway, was a land of hope; through
Massachusetts; Worcester, with the Polytechnic Institute arising in the
back ground; Springfield, and Smith School for girls, Pittsfield,
Brookfield, and on to Albany on the Hudson, is a memory never to be
forgotten, which evolved in my mind many long years afterward, in my
shack on the homestead.
CHAPTER IX
THE RETURN--ERNEST NICHOLSON
I left St. Louis about April first with about three thousand dollars in
the bank and started again for Oristown, this time to stay. I had just
paid Jessie a visit and I felt a little lonely. With the grim reality of
the situation facing me, I now began to steel my nerves for a lot of new
experience which soon came thick and fast.
Slater met the train at Oristown, and as soon as he spied me he informed
me that I was a lucky man. That a town had been started ajoining my land
and was being promoted by his brother and the sons of a former Iowa
Governor, and gave every promise of making a good town, also, if I cared
to sell, he had a buyer who was willing to pay me a neat advance over
what I had paid. However, I had no idea of parting with the land, but I
was delighted over the news, and the next morning found me among Dad
Durpee's through stage coach passengers, for Calias, the new town
joining my homestead, via Hedrick and Kirk. As we passed through Hedrick
I noticed that several frame shacks had been put up and some better
buildings were under way. The ground had been frozen for five months, so
sod-house building had been temporarily abandoned.
It was a long ride, but I was beside myself with enthusiasm. Calias
finally loomed up, conspicuously perched on a hill, and could be seen
long before the stage arrived, and was the scene of much activity. It
had been reported that a colored man had a claim adjoining the town on
the north, so when I stepped from the stage before the postoffice, the
many knowing glances informed me that I was being looked for. A fellow
who had a claim near and whom I met in Oristown, introduced me to the
Postmaster whose name was Billinger, an individual with dry complexion
and thin, light hair. Then to the president of the Townsite Company,
second of three sons of the Iowa Governor.
My long experience with all classes of humanity had made me somewhat of
a student of human nature, and I could see at a glance that here was a
person of unusual agressiveness and great capacity for doing things. As
he looked at me his eyes seemed to bore clear through, and as he asked a
few questions his searching look would make a person tell the truth
whether he would or no. This was Ernest Nicholson, and in the following
years he had much to do with the development of the Little Crow.
CHAPTER X
THE OKLAHOMA GRAFTER
That evening at the hotel he asked me whether I wished to double my
money by selling my relinquishment. "No," I answered, "but I tell you
what I do want to do," I replied firmly. "I am not here to sell; I am
here to make good or die trying; I am here to grow up with this country
and prosper with the growth, if possible. I have a little coin back in
old 'Chi.'" (my money was still in the Chicago bank) "and when these
people begin to commute and want to sell, I am ready to buy another
place." I admired the fellow. He reminded me of "the richest man in the
world" in "The Lion and the Mouse," Otis Skinner as Colonel Phillippi
Bridau, an officer on the staff of Napoleon's Army in "The Honor of the
Family", and other characters in plays that I greatly admired, where
great courage, strength of character, and firm decision were displayed.
He seemed to have a commanding way that one found himself feeling
honored and willing to obey.
But getting back to the homestead. I looked over my claim and found it
just as I had left it the fall before, excepting that a prairie fire
during the winter had burned the grass. The next morning I returned to
Oristown and announced my intentions of buying a team. The same day I
drew a draft for five hundred dollars with which to start.
Now if there is anywhere an inexperienced man is sure to go wrong in
starting up on a homestead, it is in buying horses. Most prospective
homesteaders make the same mistake I did in buying horses, unless they
are experienced. The inefficient man reasons thus: "Well, I will start
off economically by buying a cheap team"--and he usually gets what he
thought he wanted, "a cheap team."
If I had gone into the country and bought a team of young mares for say
three hundred dollars, which would have been a very high price at that
time, I would have them yet, and the increase would have kept me fairly
well supplied with young horses, instead of scouting around town looking
for something cheaper, in the "skate" line, as I did. I looked at so
many teams around Oristown that all of them began to look alike. I am
sure I must have looked at five hundred different horses, more in an
effort to appear as a conservative buyer than to buy the best team.
Finally I ran onto an "Oklahoma" grafter by the name of Nunemaker.
He was a deceiving and unscrupulous rascal, but nevertheless possessed a
pleasing personality, which stood him in good in his schemes of
deception, and we became quite chummy. He professed to know all about
horses--no doubt he did, but he didn't put his knowledge at my disposal
in the way I thought he should, being a friend, as he claimed. He
finally persuaded me to buy a team of big plugs, one of which was so
awkward he looked as though he would fall down if he tried to trot. The
other was a powerful four-year-old gelding, that would have never been
for sale around Oristown if it hadn't been that he had two feet badly
wire cut. One was so very large that it must have been quite burdensome
for the horse to pick it up, swing it forward and put it down, as I look
back and see him now in my mind.
When I was paying the man for them I wondered why Nunemaker led him into
the private office of the bank, but I was not left long in doubt. When I
crossed the street one of the men who had tried to sell me a team jumped
me with: "Well, they got you, did they?" his voice mingled with sarcasm
and a sneer.
"Got who?" I returned question.
"Does a man have to knock you down to take a hint?" he went on in a tone
of disappointment and anger. "Don't you know that man Nunemaker is the
biggest grafter in Oristown? I would have sold you that team of mine for
twenty-five dollars less'n I offered 'em, if the gol-darn grafter hadn't
of come to me'n said, 'give me twenty-five dollars and I will see that
the coon buys the team.' I would have knocked him down with a club if
I'd had one, the low life bum." He finished with a snort and off he
went.
"Stung, by cracky," was all I could say, and feeling rather blue I went
to the barn where the team was, stroked them and hoped for the best.
I then bought lumber to build a small house and barn, an old wagon for
twenty dollars, one wheel of which the blacksmith had forgotten to
grease, worked hard all day getting loaded, and wearied, sick and
discouraged, I started at five o'clock P.M. to drive the thirty miles to
Calias. When I was out two miles the big old horse was wobbling along
like a broken-legged cow, hobbling, stumbling, and making such a
burdensome job of walking, that I felt like doing something desperate.
When I looked back the wheel that had not been greased was smoking like
a hot box on the Twentieth Century Limited.
The sun was nearly down and a cold east wind was whooping it up at about
sixty miles an hour, chilling me to the marrow. The fact that I was a
stranger in a strange land, inhabited wholly by people not my own race,
did not tend to cheer my gloomy spirits. I decided it might be all right
in July but never in April. I pulled my wagon to the side of the road,
got down and unhitched and jumped on the young horse, and such a
commotion as he did make. I am quite sure he would have bucked me off,
had it not for his big foot being so heavy, he couldn't raise it quick
enough to leap. Evidently he had never been ridden. When I got back to
Oristown and put the team in the barn and warmed up, I resolved to do
one thing and do it that night. I would sell the old horse, and I did,
for twenty-two-fifty. I considered myself lucky, too. I had paid one
hundred and ninety dollars for the team and harness the day before.
I sat down and wrote Jessie a long letter, telling her of my troubles
and that I was awfully, awfully, lonesome. There was only one other
colored person in the town, a barber who was married to a white woman,
and I didn't like him.
The next day I hired a horse, started early and arrived at Calias in
good time. At Hedrick I hired a sod mason, who was also a carpenter, at
three dollars a day and we soon put up a frame barn large enough for
three horses; a sod house sixteen by fourteen with a hip roof made of
two by fours for rafters, and plain boards with tar paper and sod with
the grass turned downward and laid side by side, the cracks being filled
with sand. The house had two small windows and one door, that was a
little short on account of my getting tired carrying sod. I ordered the
"contractor" to put the roof on as soon as I felt it was high enough to
be comfortable inside.
The fifth day I moved in. There was no floor, but the thick, short
buffalo grass made a neat carpet. In one corner I put the bed, while in
another I set the table, the one next the door I placed the stove, a
little two-hole burner gasoline, and in the other corner I made a bin
for the horses grain.
CHAPTER XI
DEALIN' IN MULES
It must have been about the twentieth of April when I finished building.
I started to "batch" and prepared to break out my claim. Having only one
horse, it became necessary to buy another team. I decided to buy mules
this time. I remembered that back on our farm in southern Illinois,
mules were thought to be capable of doing more work than horses and eat
less grain. So when some boys living west of me came one Sunday
afternoon, and said they could sell me a team of mules, I agreed to go
and see them the next day. I thought I was getting wise. As proof of
such wisdom I determined to view the mules in the field. I followed them
around the field a few times and although they were not fine looking,
they seemed to work very well. Another great advantage was, they were
cheap, only one hundred and thirty-five dollars for the team and a
fourteen-inch-rod breaking plow. This looked to me like a bargain. I
wrote him a check and took the mules home with me. Jack and Jenny were
their names, and I hadn't owned Jack two days before I began to hate
him. He was lazy, and when he went down hill, instead of holding his
head up and stepping his front feet out, he would lower the bean and
perform a sort of crow-hop. It was too exasperating for words and I used
to strike him viciously for it, but that didn't seem to help matters
any.
I shall not soon forget my first effort to break prairie. There are
different kinds of plows made for breaking the sod. Some kind that are
good for one kind of soil cannot be used in another. In the gummy soils
of the Dakotas, a long slant cut is the best. In fact, about the only
kind that can be used successfully, while in the more sandy lands found
in parts of Kansas and Nebraska, a kind is used which is called the
square cut. The share being almost at right angles with the beam instead
of slanting back from point to heel. Now in sandy soils this pulls much
easier for the grit scours off any roots, grass, or whatever else would
hang over the share. To attempt to use this kind in wet, sticky land,
such as was on my claim, would find the soil adhering to the plow share,
causing it to drag, gather roots and grass, until it is impossible to
keep the plow in the ground. When it is dry, this kind of plow can be
used with success in the gummy land; but it was not dry when I invaded
my homestead soil with my big horse, Jenny and Jack, that first day of
May, but very wet indeed.
To make matters worse, Doc, the big horse, believed in "speeding." Jenny
was fair but Jack, on the landside, was affected with "hook-worm
hustle," and believed in taking his time. I tried to help him along with
a yell that grew louder as I hopped, skipped, and jumped across the
prairie, and that plow began hitting and missing, mostly missing. It
would gouge into the soil up to the beam, and the big horse would get
down and make a mighty pull, while old Jack would swing back like the
heavy end of a ball bat when a player draws to strike, and out would
come the plow with a skip, skip, skip; the big horse nearly trotting and
dragging the two little mules, that looked like two goats beside an
elephant. Well, I sat down and gave up to a fit of the blues; for it
looked bad, mighty bad for me.
I had left St. Louis with two hundred dollars in cash, and had drawn a
draft for five hundred dollars more on the Chicago bank, where my money
was on deposit, and what did I have for it? One big horse, tall as a
giraffe; two little mules, one of which was a torment to me; a sod
house; and old wagon. As I faced the situation there seemed nothing to
do but to fight it out, and I turned wearily to another attempt, this
time with more success. Before I had started breaking I had invited
criticism. Now I was getting it on all sides. I was the only colored
homesteader on the reservation, and as an agriculturist it began to look
mighty bad for the colored race on the Little Crow.
Finally, with the assistance of dry weather, I got the plow so I could
go two or three rods without stopping, throw it out of the ground and
clear the share of roots and grass. Sometimes I managed to go farther,
but never over forty rods, the entire summer.
I took another course in horse trading or mule trading, which almost
came to be my undoing. I determined to get rid of Jack. I decided that I
would not be aggravated with his laziness and crow-hopping any longer
than it took me to find a trade. So on a Sunday, about two weeks after I
bought the team, a horse trader pulled into Calias, drew his prairie
schooner to a level spot, hobbled his horses--mostly old plugs of
diverse descriptions, and made preparation to stay awhile. He had only
one animal, according to my horse-sense (?), that was any good, and that
was a mule that he kept blanketed. His camp was so situated that I could
watch the mule, from my east window, and the more I looked at the mule,
the better he looked to me. It was Wednesday noon the following week and
old Jack had become almost unbearable. My continuing to watch a good
mule do nothing, while I continued to fret my life away trying to be
patient with a lazy brute, only added to my restlessness and eagerness
to trade. At noon I entered the barn and told old Jack I would get rid
of him. I would swap him to that horse trader for his good mule as soon
as I watered him. He was looking pretty thin and I thought it would be
to my advantage to fill him up.
During the three days the trader camped near my house he never
approached me with an offer to sell or trade, and it was with many
misgivings that I called out in a loud, breezy voice and David Harum
manner; "Hello, Governor, how will you trade mules?" "How'll I trade
mules? did you say how'll I trade mules? Huh, do you suppose I want your
old mule?" drawing up one side of his face and twisting his big red nose
until he resembled a German clown.
"O, my mule's fair", I defended weakly.
"Nothing but an old dead mule," he spit out, grabbing old Jack's tail
and giving him a yank that all but pulled him over. "Look at him, look
at him," he rattled away like an auctioneer. "Go on, Mr. Colored Man,
you can't work me that way." He continued stepping around old Jack,
making pretentions to hit him on the head. Jack may have been slow in
the field, but he was swift in dodging, and he didn't look where he
dodged either. I was standing at his side holding the reins, when the
fellow made one of his wild motions, and Jack nearly knocked my head off
as he dodged. "Naw sir, if I considered a trade, that is if I considered
a trade at all, I would have to have a lot of boot" he said with an
important air.
"How much?" I asked nervously.
"Well, sir", he spoke with slow decision; "I would have to have
twenty-five dollars."
"What!" I exclaimed, at which he seemed to weaken; but he didn't
understand that my exclamation was of surprise that he only wanted
twenty-five dollars, when I had expected to give him seventy-five
dollars. I grasped the situation, however, and leaning forward, said
hardly above a whisper, my heart was so near my throat: "I will give you
twenty," as I pulled out my roll and held a twenty before his eyes,
which he took as though afraid I would jerk it away; muttering something
about it not being enough, and that he had ought to have had
twenty-five. However, he got old Jack and the twenty, gathered his plugs
and left town immediately. I felt rather proud of my new possession, but
before I got through the field that afternoon I became suspicious.
Although I looked my new mule over and over often during the afternoon
while plowing, I could find nothing wrong. Still I had a chilly
premonition, fostered, no doubt, by past experience, that something
would show up soon, and in a few days it did show up. I learned
afterward the trader had come thirty-five miles to trade me that mule.
The mule I had traded was only lazy, while the one I had received in the
trade was not only lazy, but "ornery" and full of tricks that she took a
fiendish delight in exercising on me. One of her favorites was to watch
me out of her left eye, shirking the while, and crowding the furrow at
the same time, which would pull the plow out of the ground. I tried to
coax and cajole her into doing a decent mule's work, but it availed me
nothing. I bore up under the aggravation with patience and fortitude,
then determined to subdue the mule or become subdued myself. I would
lunge forward with my whip, and away she would rush out from under it,
brush the other horse and mule out of their places and throw things into
general confusion. Then as soon as I was again straightened out, she
would be back at her old tricks, and I am almost positive that she used
to wink at me impudently from her vantage point. Added to this, the
coloring matter with which the trader doped her head, faded, and she
turned grey headed in two weeks, leaving me with a mule of uncertain and
doubtful age, instead of one of seven going on eight as the trader
represented her to be.
I soon had the enviable reputation of being a horse trader. Whenever
anybody with horses to trade came to town, they were advised to go over
to the sod house north of town and see the colored man. He was fond of
trading horses, yes, he fairly doted on it. Nevertheless with all my
poor "horse-judgment" I continued to turn the sod over day after day and
completed ten or twelve acres each week.
CHAPTER XII
THE HOMESTEADERS
Of neighbors, I had many. There was Miss Carter from old Missouri whose
claim joined mine on the west, and another Missourian to the north of
her; a loud talking German north of him, and an English preacher to the
east of the German. A traveling man's family lived north of me; and a
big, fat, lazy barber who seemed to be taking the "rest cure," joined me
on the east. His name was Starks and he had drawn number 252. He had a
nice, level claim with only a few buffalo wallows to detract from its
value, and he held the distinction of being the most uncompromisingly
lazy man on the Little Crow. This, coupled with the unpardonable fault
of complaining about everything, made him nigh unbearable and he was
known as the "Beefer." He came from a small town, usually the home of
his ilk, in Iowa, where he had a small shop and owned three and a half
acres of garden and orchard ground on the outskirts of the town. He
would take a fiendish delight in relating and re-relating how the folks
in his house back in Iowa were having strawberries, new peas, green
beans, spring onions, and enjoying all the fruits of a tropical climate,
while he was holding down an "infernal no-account claim" on the Little
Crow, and eating out of a can.
A merchant was holding down a claim south of him, and a banker lived
south of the merchant. Thus it was a varied class of homesteaders
around Calias and Megory, the first summer on the Little Crow. Only
about one in every eight or ten was a farmer. They were of all vocations
in life and all nationalities, excepting negroes, and I controlled the
colored vote.
This was one place where being a colored man was an honorary
distinction. I remember how I once requested the stage driver to bring
me some meat from Megory, there being no meat shop in Calias, and it was
to be left at the post office. Apparently I had failed to give the stage
driver my name, for when I called for it, it was handed out to me, done
up in a neat package, and addressed "Colored Man, Calias." My neighbors
soon learned, however, that my given name was "Oscar," but it was some
time before they could all spell or pronounce the odd surname.
During the month of June it rained twenty-three days, but I was so
determined to break out one hundred and twenty acres, that after a few
days of the rainy weather I went out and worked in the rain. Starks used
to go up town about four o'clock for the mail, wearing a long, yellow
slicker, and when he saw me going around the half-mile land he remarked
to the bystanders: "Just look at that fool nigger a working in the
rain."
Being the first year of settlement in a new country, there naturally was
no hay to buy, so the settlers turned their stock out to graze, and many
valuable horses strayed away and were lost. When it rained so much and
the weather turned so warm, the mosquitoes filled the air and covered
the earth and attacked everything in their path. When I turned my
horses out after the day's work was done, they soon found their way to
town, where they stood in the shelter of some buildings and fought
mosquitoes. Their favorite place for this pastime was the post office,
where Billinger had a shed awning over the board walk, the framework
consisting of two-by-fours joined together and nailed lightly to the
building, and on top of this he had laid a few rough boards. Under this
crude shelter the homesteaders found relief from the broiling afternoon
sun, and swapped news concerning the latest offer for their claims. The
mosquitoes did not bother so much in even so slight an inclosure as
this, so every night Jenny Mule would walk on to the board walk, prick
up her ears and look in at the window. About this time the big horse
would come along and begin to scratch his neck on one of the
two-by-fours, and suddenly down would go Billinger's portable awning
with a loud crash which was augmented by Jenny Mule getting out from
under the falling boards. As the sound echoed through the slumbering
village the big horse would rush away to the middle of the street, with
a prolonged snort, and wonder what it was all about. This was the story
Billinger told when I came around the next morning to drive them home
from the storekeeper's oat bin where they had indulged in a midnight
lunch. The performance was repeated nightly and got brother Billinger
out of bed at all hours. He swore by all the Gods of Buddha and the
people of South Dakota, that he would put the beasts up and charge me a
dollar to get them.
Early one morning I came over and found that Billinger had remained true
to his oath, and the horse and mule were tied to a wagon belonging to
the storekeeper. Nearby on a pile of rock sat Billinger, nodding away,
sound asleep. I quietly untied the rope from the wagon and peaceably led
them home. Then Billinger was in a rage. He had a small, screechy
tremulo voice and it fairly sputtered as he tiraded: "If it don't beat
all; I never saw the like. I was up all last night chasing those darned
horses, caught them and tied them up; and along comes Devereaux while I
am asleep and takes horses, rope and all." The crowd roared and
Billinger decided the joke was on him.
Miss Carter, my neighbor on the west, had her trouble too. One day she
came by, distressed and almost on the verge of tears, and burst out:
"Oh, Oh, Oh, I hardly know what to do."
I could never bear seeing any one in such distress and I became touched
by her grief. Upon becoming more calm, she told me: "The banker says
that the man who is breaking prairie on my claim is ruining the ground."
She was simply heart-broken about it, and off she went into another
spasm of distress. I saw the fellow wasn't laying the sod over smoothly
because he had a sixteen-inch plow, and had it set to cut only about
eight inches, which caused the sod to push away and pile up on edges,
instead of turning and dropping into the furrow. I went with her and
explained to the fellow where the fault lay. The next day he was doing a
much better job.
Those who have always lived in the older settled parts of the country
sometimes have exaggerated ideas of life on the homestead, and the
following incident offers a partial explanation. Megory and Calias each
had a newspaper, and when they weren't roasting each other and claiming
their paper to be the only live and progressive organ in the country,
they were "building" railroads or printing romantic tales about the
brave homesteader girls. A little red-headed girl nicknamed "Jack" owned
a claim near Calias. One day it was reported that she killed a
rattlesnake in her house. The report of the great encounter reached
eastern dailies, and was published as a Sunday feature story in one of
the leading Omaha papers. It was accompanied by gorgeous pictures of the
girl in a leather skirt, riding boots, and cow-boy hat, entering a sod
house, and before her, coiled and poised to strike, lay a monster
rattlesnake. Turning on her heel and jerking the bridle from her horse's
head, she made a terrific swing at Mr. Rattlesnake, and he, of course,
"met his Waterloo." This, so the story read, was the eightieth
rattlesnake she had killed. She was described as "Rattlesnake Jack" and
thereafter went by that name. She was also credited with having spent
the previous winter alone on her claim and rather enjoyed the wintry
nights and snow blockade. Now as a matter of fact, she had spent most of
the previous winter enjoying the comforts of a front room at the Hotel
Calias, going to the claim occasionally on nice days. She had no horse,
and as to the eighty rattlesnakes, seventy-nine were myths, existing
only in the mind of a prolific feature story writer for the Sunday
edition of the great dailies. In fact she had killed one small young
rattler with a button.
CHAPTER XIII
IMAGINATIONS RUN AMUCK
I decided to utilize some of my spare time by doing a little freighting
from Oristown to Calias. Accordingly, one fair morning I started for the
former town. It began raining that evening, finally turning into a fine
snow, and by morning a genuine South Dakota blizzard was raging. How the
wind did screech across the prairie!
I was driving the big horse and Jenny Mule to a wagon loaded with two
tons of coal. They were not shod, and the hillsides had become slick and
treacherous with ice. At the foot of every hill Jenny Mule would lay her
ears back, draw herself up like a toad, when teased, and look up with a
groan, while the big horse trotted on up the next slope, pulling her
share of the load.
When the wind finally went down the mercury fell to 25 deg. below zero and
my wrists, face, feet, and ears were frost bitten when I arrived at
Calias. As is always the case during such severe weather, the hotel was
filled, and laughing, story telling, and good cheer prevailed. The
Nicholson boys asked "how I made it" and I answered disgustedly that I'd
have made it all right if that Jennie Mule hadn't got faint hearted. The
remark was received as a good joke and my suffering and annoyances of
the trip slipped away into the past. That remark also had the further
effect of giving Jennie Mule immortality. She became the topic of
conversation and jest in hotel and postoffice lobbies, and even to this
day the story of the "faint hearted mule" often affords splendid
entertainment at festive boards and banquet halls of the Little Crow,
when told by a Nicholson.
While working in the rain, the perspiration and the rain water had
caused my body to become so badly galled, that I found considerable
difficulty in getting around. To add to this discomfiture Jenny Mule was
affected with a touch of "Maudism" at times, especially while engaged in
eating grain. One night when I had wandered thoughtlessly into the barn,
she gave me such a wallop on the right shin as to impair that member
until I could hardly walk without something to hold to. As it had taken
a fourteen-hundred-mile walk to follow the plow in breaking the one
hundred and twenty acres, I was about "all in" physically when it was
done.
As a means of recuperation I took a trip to Chicago. While there, the
"call of the road" affected me; I got reinstated and ran a couple of
months to the coast. Four months of free life on the plains, however,
had changed me. After one trip I came in and found a letter from Jessie,
saying she was sick, and although she never said "come and see me" I
took it as an excuse and quit that P----n Company for good--and here it
passes out of the story--went down state to M--boro, and spent the
happiest week of my life.
After I had returned to Dakota, however, I contracted an imagination
that worked me into a state of jealously, concerning an individual who
made his home in M--boro, and with whom I suspicioned the object of my
heart to be unduly friendly. I say, this is what I suspicioned. There
was no particular proof, and I have been inclined to think, in after
years, that it was more a case of an over-energetic imagination run
amuck. I contended in my mind and in my letters to her as well, that I
should not have thought anything of it, if the "man in the case" had a
little more promising future, but since his proficiency only earned him
the munificent sum of three dollars per week, I continued to fret and
fume, until I at last resolved to suspend all communication with her.
Now what I should have done when I reached this stage of imaginary
insanity, was to have sent Miss Rooks a ticket, some money, and she
would have come to Dakota and married me, and together we would have
"lived happy ever after." As I see it now, I was affected with an
"idealism." Of course I was not aware of it at the time--no young soul
is--until they have learned by bitter experience the folly of "they
should not do thus and so", and, of course, there is the old excuse,
"good intentions." Somewhere I read that the road to--not St. Peter--is
paved with good intentions. The result of my prolific imagination was
that I carried out my resolutions, quit writing, and emotionally lived
rather unhappily thereafter, for some time at least.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SURVEYORS
The entire Little Crow reservation consisted of about two million acres
of land, four-fifths of which was unopened and lay west of Megory
County. Of the two million acres, perhaps one million, five hundred
thousand ranged from fair to the richest of loam soil, underlaid with
clay. The climatic condition is such that all kinds of crops grown in
the central west, can be grown here. Two hundred miles north, corn will
not mature; two hundred miles south, spring wheat is not grown; two
hundred west, the altitude is too high to insure sufficient rainfall to
produce a crop; but the reservation lands are in such a position that
winter wheat, spring wheat, oats, rye, corn, flax, and barley do well.
Ever since the drouth of '94, all crops had thrived, the rainfall being
abundant, and continuing so during the first year of settlement.
Oristown and other towns on the route of the railroad had waited twenty
years for the extension, and now the citizens of Oristown estimated it
would be at least ten years before it extended its line through the
reservation; while the settlers, to the number of some eight thousand,
hoped they would get the road in five years. However, no sleep was lost
in anticipation. The nearest the reservation came to getting a railroad
that summer was by the way of a newspaper in Megory, whose editor spent
most of his time building roads into Megory from the north, south, and
the east. In reality, the C. & R.W. was the only road likely to run to
the reservation, and all the towns depended on its extension to overcome
the long, burdensome freighting with teams.
With all the country's local advantages, its geographical location was
such as to exclude roads from all directions except the one taken by the
C. & R.W. To the south lay nine million acres of worthless sand hills,
through which it would require an enormous sum of money to build a road.
Even then there would be miles of track which would practically pay no
interest on the investment. At that time there was no railroad extending
the full length of the state from east to west, most lines stopping at
or near the Missouri River. Since then two or three lines have been
built into the western part of the state; but they experienced much
difficulty in crossing the river, owing to the soft bottom, which in
many places would not support a modern steel bridge. For from one to two
months in the spring, floating ice gives a great deal of trouble and
wreaks disaster to the pontoon.
A bird's eye view of the Little Crow shows it to look something like a
bottle, the neck being the Missouri River, with the C. & R.W. tracks
creeping along its west bank. This is the only feasible route to the
Reservation and the directors of this road were fully aware of their
advantageous position. The freight rates from Omaha to Oristown (a
distance of two hundred and fifty miles) being as high as from Omaha to
Chicago, a distance of five hundred miles.
But getting back to the settlers around and in the little towns on the
Little Crow. The first thing to be considered in the extension was, that
the route it took would naturally determine the future of the towns.
Hedrick, Kirk, and Megory were government townsites, strung in a
northwesterly direction across the country, ranging from eight to
fifteen miles apart, the last being about five miles and a half east of
the west line of the county. Now the county on the west was expected to
be thrown open to settlement soon, would likely be opened under the
lottery system, as was Megory county. After matters had settled this
began to be discussed, particularly by the citizens of Megory, five and
one-half miles from the Tipp County line. This placed Megory in the same
position to handle the crowds coming into the next county, as Oristown
had for Megory County, excepting Megory would have an advantage, for
Tipp County was twice as large as Megory. When this was all considered,
the people of Megory began to boost the town on the prospects of a
future boom. The only uncertain feature of the matter then to be
considered was which way the road would extend. That was where the rub
came in, which way would the road go? This became a source of continual
worry and speculation on the part of the towns, and the men who felt
inclined to put money into the towns in the way of larger, better, and
more commodious buildings; but when they were encouraged to do so, there
was always the bogy "if." If the railroad should miss us, well, the man
owning the big buildings was "stung," that was all, while the man with
the shack could load it on two or four wagons, and with a few good
horses, land his building in the town the railroad struck or started.
This was, and is yet, one of the big reasons shacks are so numerous in a
town in a new country, which expects a road but knows not which way it
will come; and the officials of the C. & R.W. were no different from the
directors of any other road. They were "mum" as dummies. They wouldn't
tell whether the road would ever extend or not.
The Oristown citizens claimed it was at one time in the same uncertainty
as the towns to the west, and for some fifteen or twenty years it had
waited for the road. With the road stopping at Oristown, they argued, it
would be fully ten years before it left, and during this time it could
be seen, Oristown would grow into an important prairie city, as it
should. Everything must be hauled into Oristown, as well as out. So it
can be seen that Oristown would naturally boom. While nothing had been
raised to the west to ship out, as yet, still there was a growing
population on the reservation and thousands of carloads of freight and
express were being hauled into and from Oristown monthly, for the
settlers on the reservation; which filled the town with railroad men and
freighters. Crops had been good, and every thing was going along
smoothly for the citizens and property owners of Oristown. Not a cloud
on her sky of prosperity, and as the trite saying goes: "Everything was
lovely, and the goose hung high," during the first year of settlement on
the Little Crow.
And now lest we forget Calias. Calias was located one and one-half miles
east, and three miles south of Megory, and five miles straight west of
Kirk. If the C. & R.W. extending its line west, should strike all the
government townsites, as was claimed by people in these towns, who knew
nothing about it, and Calias, it would have run from Kirk to Megory in a
very unusual direction. Indeed, it would have been following the section
lines and it is common knowledge even to the most ignorant, that
railroads do not follow section lines unless the section lines are
directly in its path. If the railroad struck Kirk and Megory, it was a
cinch it would miss Calias. If it struck Calias, perched on the banks of
the Monca Creek, the route the Nicholsons, as promoters of the town,
claimed it would take; the road would miss all the towns but Calias.
This would have meant glory and a fortune for the promotors and lot
holders of the town. It would also have meant that my farm, or at least
a part of it, would in time be sold for town lots.
After I got so badly overreached in dealing in horses, for a time the
opinion was general that the solitary negro from the plush cushions of a
P----n would soon see that growing up with a new country was not to his
liking, and would be glad to sell at any old figure and "beat it" back
to more ease and comfort. This is largely the opinion of most of the
white people, regarding the negro, and they are not entirely wrong in
their opinion. I was quite well aware that such an opinion existed, but
contrary to expectations, I rather appreciated it. When I broke out one
hundred and twenty acres with such an outfit as I had, as against many
other real farmers who had not broken over forty acres, with good
horses and their knowledge of breaking prairie, acquired in states they
had come from, I began to be regarded in a different light. At first I
was regarded as an object of curiosity, which changed to appreciation,
and later admiration. I was not called a free-go-easy coon, but a
genuine booster for Calias and the Little Crow. I never spent a lonesome
day after that.
The Nicholson Brothers, however, gave the settlers no rest, and created
another sensation of railroad building by their new contention that the
railroad would not be extended from Oristown, but that it would be built
from a place on the Monca bottom two stations below Oristown, where the
track climbed a four per cent grade to Fairview, then on to Oristown.
They offered as proof of their contention that the C. & R.W. maintained
considerable yardage there, and it does yet. Why it did, people did not
know, and this kept everybody guessing. Some claimed it would go up the
Monca Valley, as Nicholson claimed. This much can be said in favor of
the Nicholsons, they were good boosters, or "big liars," as their rivals
called them, and if one listened long and diligently enough they would
have him imagine he could hear the exhaust of a big locomotive coming up
the Monca Valley. While the people in the government townsites persisted
loudly that the C. & R.W. had contracted with the government before the
towns were located, to strike these three towns, and that the government
had helped to locate them; that furthermore, the railroad would never
have left the Monca Valley, which it followed for some twenty miles
after leaving the banks of the Missouri. All of which sounded
reasonable enough, but the government and the railroad had entered into
no agreement whatever, and the people in the government towns knew it,
and were uneasy.
I had been on my claim just about a year, when one day Rattlesnake
Jack's father came from his home on the Jim River and sold me her
homestead for three thousand dollars. My dreams were at last realized,
and I had become the owner of three hundred and twenty acres of land;
but my money was now gone, when I had paid the one thousand, five
hundred dollars down on the Rattlesnake Jack place, giving her back a
mortgage for the remaining one thousand, five hundred at seven per cent
interest, and it was a good thing I did, too. I bought the place early
in April and in June the Interior Department rejected the proof she had
offered the November before, on account of lack of sufficient residence
and cultivation. The proof had been accepted by the local land office,
and a final receipt for the remaining installments of the purchase
price, amounting to four hundred and eighty dollars, was issued. A final
receipt is considered to be equivalent to a patent or deed, but when
Rattlesnake Jack's proof of residence got to the General Land Office in
Washington, in quest of a patent, the commissioner looked it over,
figured up the time she actually put in on the place, and rejected the
proof, with the statement that it only showed about six month's actual
residence. At that time eight month's residence was required, with six
months within which to establish residence; but no proof could be
accepted until after the claimant had shown eight month's actual and
continuous residence.
From the time the settlers began to commute or prove up on the Little
Crow, all proofs which did not show fully eight month's residence, were
rejected. This was done mostly by the Register and Receiver of the Local
Land Office, and many were sent back on their claims to stay longer.
Many proofs were also taken by local U.S. Commissioners, County Judges,
and Clerks of Courts, but these officers rarely rejected them, for by so
doing they also rejected a four dollar and twenty-five cent fee. About
one-third of the persons who offered proof at that time had them turned
down at the Local Land Office. This gave the local Commissioners, County
Judges, and Clerks of Courts, a chance to collect twice for the same
work. It may be interesting to know that a greater percentage of proofs
rejected were those offered by women. This was perhaps not due to the
fact that the ladies did not stay on their claims, so much as it was
conscientiousness. They could not make a forcible showing by saying that
they had been there every night, like the men would claim, but would say
instead that they had stayed all night with Miss So-and-So this time and
with another that time, and by including a few weeks' visit at home or
somewhere else, they would bungle their proofs, so they were compelled
to try again.
A short time after this and evidently because so many proofs had been
sent back, the Interior Department made it compulsory for the claimant
to put in fourteen months' actual residence on the claim, before he
could offer proof. With fourteen months, they were sure to stay a full
eight months at least. This system has been very successful.
When Rattlesnake Jack was ordered back, after selling me the place, she
wanted me to sign a quit claim deed to her and accept notes for the
money I had paid, which might have been satisfactory had it not been
that she thought I had stopped to look back and failed to see the rush
of progress the Little Crow was making; that the long anticipated news
had been spread, and was now raging like a veritable prairie fire, and
stirred the people of the Little Crow as much as an active stock market
stirs the bulls on the stock exchange. The report spread and stirred the
everyday routine of the settlers and the finality of humdrum and
inactivity was abrupt. It came one day in early April. The rain had kept
the farmers from the fields a week. It had been raining for nearly a
month, and we only got a clear day once in a while. This day it was
sloppy without, and many farmers were in from the country. We were all
listening to a funny story Ernest Nicholson was telling, and "good
fellows" were listening attentively. Dr. Salter, a physician, had just
been laid on a couch in the back room of the saloon, "soused to the
gills," when in the door John M. Keely, a sort of ne'er do well popular
drummer, whose proof had been rejected some time before, and who had
come back to stay "a while longer", stumbled into the door of the local
groggery. He was greeted with sallies and calls of welcome, and like
many of the others, he was "feeling good." He sort of leaned over, and
hiccoughing during the intervals, started "I've," the words were spoken
chokingly, "got news for you." He had by now got inside and was hanging
and swinging at the same time, to the bar. Then before finishing what he
started, called "Tom," to the bar tender, "give me a whiskey before I",
and here he leaned over and sang the words "tell the boys the news."
"For the love of Jesus Keel" exclaimed the crowd in chorus "tell us what
you know." He drained the glass at a gulp and finally spit it out. "The
surveyors are in Oristown."
CHAPTER XV
"WHICH TOWN WILL THE R.R. STRIKE?"
The drummer's information soon received corroboration from other
sources, and although it seemed almost unbelievable, it was discussed
incessantly and excitement ran high. These pioneers, who had braved the
hardships of homestead life had felt that without the railroad they were
indeed cut off from civilization. To them the advent of the surveyors in
Oristown could mean only one thing--that their dreams of enjoying the
many advantages of the railroad train, would soon materialize.
They fell to enumerating these advantages--the mail daily, instead of
only once or twice a week; the ease with which they could make necessary
trips to the neighboring towns; and most of all--the increase in the
value of the land. With this last subject they became so wrought up with
excitement and anxiety as to the truth of the report, that they could
stay away from the scene of action no longer. Accordingly, buggies and
vehicles of all descriptions began coming into Oristown from all
directions. I hitched Doc and my new horse, Boliver, for which I had
paid one hundred and forty dollars, to an old ramshackle buggy I had
bought for ten dollars, and joined the procession.
Three miles west of Oristown we came upon a crowd of circus-day
proportion, and in their midst were the surveyors.
In their lead rode the chief engineer--a slender, wiry man with a black
mustache and piercing eyes, that seemed to observe every feature of
surrounding prairie. Behind came a wagon loaded with stakes, accompanied
by several men, the leader of whom was setting these stakes according to
the signal of the engineer from behind the transit. Others, on either
side, were also driving stakes. They were not only running a straight
survey, but were cross-sectioning as they went.
Even though the presence of these surveyors was now an established fact,
these were days of grave uncertainties as to just what route the road
would take. The suspense was almost equal to that of the criminal, as he
awaits the verdict of the jury. The valleys and divides lay in such a
manner that it was possible the survey would extend along the Monca,
thus passing through Calias. On the other hand, it was probable that it
would continue to the Northwest through Kirk and Megory, thus missing
Calias altogether.
When the surveyors reached a point five miles west of Hedrick, they
swerved to the northwest and advanced directly toward Kirk. This looked
bad for Calias.
When Ernest Nicholson had learned that the surveyors were in Oristown,
he had left immediately for parts unknown and had not returned. He was
in reality the founder of Calias and many of the inhabitants looked to
him as their leader, and depended upon him for advice. Although he had
many enemies who heaped abuse and epithets upon him--calling him a liar,
braggard and "wind jammer" when boasting of their own independence and
self respect--now that a calamity was about to befall them, and their
fond hopes for this priceless mistress of prairie were about to be
wrecked upon the shoals of an imaginary railroad survey, they turned
toward him for comfort, as moths turn to a flame. It was Ernest here and
Ernest there. As the inevitable progress of the surveyors proceeded in a
direct line for Hedrick, Kirk and Megory, the consternation of the
Caliasites became more intense as time went on, and the anxiety for
Ernest to return almost resolved itself into mutiny. It became so
significant, that at one time it appeared that if Ernest had only
appeared, the railroad company would have voluntarily run its survey
directly to Calias, in order to avoid the humiliation of Ernest's
seizing them by the nape of the neck and marching them, survey, cars and
all, right into the little hamlet.
Now there was one thing everybody seemed to forget or to overlook, but
which occurred to me at the time, and caused me to become skeptical as
to the possibilities of the road striking Calias, and that was, if the
railroad was to be built up the Monca Valley, then why had the surveyors
come to Oristown, and why had they not gotten off at Anona, the last
station in the Monca Valley, where the tracks climb the grade to
Fairview.
Many of the Megory and Kirk boosters had taken advantage of Ernest's
absence, and through enthusiasm attending the advent of the railroad
survey, persuaded several of Calias' business men to go into fusion in
their respective towns. The remaining handful consoled each other by
prophecies of what Ernest would do when he returned, and plied each
other for expressions of theories, and ways and means of injecting
enthusiasm into the local situation. Thousands of theories were given
expression, consideration, and rejection, and the old one that all
railroads follow valleys and streams was finally adhered to. I was
singled out to give corroborative proof of this last, by reason of my
railroad experience.
I was suddenly seized with a short memory, much to my embarrassment, as
I felt all eyes turned upon me. However, the crowd were looking for
encouragement and spoke up in chorus: "Don't the railroads always follow
valleys?" It suddenly occurred to me, that with all the thousands of
miles of travel to my credit and the many different states I had
traveled through, with all their rough and smooth territory, I had not
observed whether the tracks followed the valleys or otherwise. However,
I intimated that I thought they did. "Of course they do", my remark was
answered in chorus.
Since then I have noticed that a railway does invariably follow a
valley, if it is a large one; and small rivers make excellent routes,
but never crooked little streams like the Monca. When it comes to such
creeks, and there is a table land above, as soon as the road can get
out, it usually stays out. This was the situation of the C. & R.W. It
came some twenty-five or thirty miles up the Monca, from where it
empties into the Missouri. There are fourteen bridges across in that
many miles, which were and still are, always going out during high
water.
It came this route because there was no other way to come, but when it
got to Anona, as has been said, it climbed a four per cent grade to get
out and it stayed out.
CHAPTER XVI
MEGORY'S DAY
The first day of May was a local holiday in Megory, held in honor of the
first anniversary of the day when all settlers had to be on their
claims; and it was raining. During the first years on the Little Crow we
were deluged with rainfall, but this day the inclement weather was
disregarded. It was Settler's Day and everybody for miles around had
journeyed thither to celebrate--not only Settler's Day, but also the
advent of the railroad. Only the day before, the surveyors had pitched
their tents on the outskirts of the town, and on this day they could be
seen calmly sighting their way across the south side of the embryo city.
Megory was the scene of a continuous round of revelry. Five saloons were
crowded to overflowing, and a score of bartenders served thousands of
thirsty throats; while on the side opposite from the bar, and in the
rear, gambling was in full blast. Professionals, "tin horns", and
"pikers", in their shirt sleeves worked away feverishly drawing in and
paying money to the crowd that surged around the Roulette, the
Chuck-luck, and the Faro-bank. It seemed as though everybody drank and
gambled. "This is Megory's Day", they called between drinks, and it
would echo with "have another," "watch Megory grow."
Written in big letters and hung all along the streets were huge signs
which read "Megory, the gateway to a million acres of the richest land
in the world." "Megory, the future metropolis of the Little Crow, Watch
her grow! Watch her grow!" The board walk four feet wide could not hold
the crowd. It was a day of frenzied celebration--a day when no one dared
mention Nicholson's name unless they wanted to hear them called liars,
wind jammers, and all a bluff.
Ernest was still in the East and no one seemed to know where he was, or
what he was doing. The surveyors had passed through Megory and extended
the survey to the county line, five miles west of the town. The
right-of-way man was following and had just arrived from Hedrick and
Kirk, where he had made the same offer he was now making Megory. "If" he
said, addressing the "town dads" and he seemed to want it clearly
understood, "the C. & R.W. builds to Megory, we want you to buy the
right-of-way three miles east and four miles west of the town."
Then Governor Reulback, known as the "Squatter Governor," acting as
spokesman for the citizens, arose from his seat on the rude platform,
and before accepting the proposition--needless to say it was
accepted--called on different individuals for short talks. Among others
he called on Ernest Nicholson; but Frank, the Junior member of the firm,
arose and answered that Ernest was away engaged in purchasing the C. &
R.W. railroad and that he, answering for Ernest, had nothing to say. A
hush fell on the crowd, but Governor Reulbach, who possessed a well
defined sense of humor, responded with a joke, saying, "Mr. Nicholson's
being away purchasing the C. & R.W. railroad reminds me of the Irishman
who played poker all night, and the next morning, yawning and stretching
himself, said, 'Oi lost nine hundred dollars last night and seven and
one-half of it was cash.'"
The backbone of the town was beginning to weaken, while there were many
who continued to insist that there was hope. Others contracted
rheumatism from vigils at the surveyor's camp, in vain hope of gaining
some information as to the proposed direction of the right-of-way. The
purchasing of the right-of-way and the unloading of carload after
carload of contracting material at Oristown did little to encourage the
belief that there was a ghost of a show for Calias.
In a few days corral tents were decorating the right-of-way at intervals
of two miles, all the way from Oristown to Megory. In the early morning,
as the sound of distant thunder, could be heard the dull thud of clods
and dirt dropping into the wagon from the elevator of the excavator;
also the familiar "jup" and the thud of the "skinner's" lines as they
struck the mules, in Calias one and one-half miles away.
A very much discouraged and weary crowd met Ernest when he returned, but
even in defeat this young man's personality was pleasing. He was frank
in telling the people that he had done all that he could. He had gone to
Omaha where his father in-law joined him, thence to Des Moines, where
his father maintained his office as president of an insurance company,
that made loans on Little Crow land. Together with two capitalists,
friends of his father, they had gone into Chicago and held a conference
with Marvin Hewitt, President of the C. & R.W. who had showed them the
blue prints, and, as he put it, any reasonable man could see it would be
utterly impossible to strike Calias in the route they desired to go. The
railroad wanted to strike the Government town sites, but the president
told them that if at any time he could do them a favor to call on him,
and he would gladly do so.
In a few days a man named John Nodgen came to Calias. Towns which had
failed to get a road looked upon him in the way a sick man would an
undertaker. He was a red-haired Irishman with teeth wide apart and
wildish blue eyes, who had the reputation of moving more towns than any
other one man. He brought horses and wagons, block and tackle, and
massive steel trucks. He swore like a stranded sailor, and declared they
would hold up any two buildings in Calias.
The saloon was the first building deserted. The stock had not been
removed when the house movers arrived, and in some way they got the door
open and helped themselves to the "booze," and when full enough to be
good and noisy, began jacking up the building that had been the pride of
the hopeful Caliasites. In a few weeks a large part of what had been
Calias was in Megory and a small part in Kirk.
It had stopped raining for a while, and several large buildings were
still on the move to Megory when the rain set in again. This was the
latter part of July and how it did rain, every day and night. One store
building one hundred feet long had been cut in two so as to facilitate
moving, and the rains caught it half way on the road to Megory. After
many days of sticking and floundering around in the mud, at a cost of
over fourteen hundred dollars for the moving alone, not counting the
goods spoiled, it arrived at its new home. The building in the beginning
had cost only twenty-three hundred dollars, out of which thirty cents
per hundred had been paid for local freighting from Oristown. The
merchant paid one thousand dollars for his lot in Megory, and received
ten dollars for the one he left in Calias.
This was the reason why Rattlesnake Jack's father and I could not get
together when he came out and showed me Rattlesnake Jack's papers. It
was bad and I readily agreed with him. I also agreed to sign a quit
claim deed, thereby clearing the place, so she could complete her proof.
Everything went along all right, until it came to signing up. Then I
suggested that as I had broken eighty acres of prairie, the railroad was
in course of construction, and land had materially increased in
valuation--having sold as high as five thousand dollars a quarter
section--I should have a guarantee that he would sell the place back to
me when the matter had been cleared up.
"I will see that you get the place back"--he pretended to reassure
me--"when she proves up again."
"Then we will draw up an agreement to that effect and make it one
thousand dollars over what I paid", I suggested.
[Illustration: Everybody for miles around had journeyed thither to
celebrate. (Page 108.)]
"I will do nothing of the kind," he roared, brandishing his arms as
though he wanted to fight, "and if you will not sign a quit claim
without such an agreement, I will have Jack blow the whole thing, that
is what I will do, do you hear?" He fairly yelled, leaning forward and
pointing his finger at me in a threatening manner.
"Then we will call it off for today," I replied with decision, and we
did. I confess however, I was rather frightened. In the beginning I had
not worried, as he held a first mortgage of one thousand, five hundred
dollars, I had felt safe and thought that they had to make good to me in
order to protect their own interests. But now as I thought the matter
over it began to look different. If he should have her relinquish, then
where would I be, and the one thousand, five hundred dollars I had paid
them?
I was very much disturbed and called on Ernest Nicholson and informed
him how the matter stood. He listened carefully and when I was through
he said:
"They gave you a warranty deed, did they not?"
"Yes, I replied, it is over at the bank of Calias."
"Then let it stay there. Tell him, or the old man rather, to have the
girl complete sufficient residence, then secure you for all the place is
worth at the time; then, and not before, sign a quit claim, and if they
want to sell you the place, well and good; if not, you will have enough
to buy another." And I followed his advice.
It was fourteen months, however, before the Scotch-Irish blood in him
would submit to it. But there was nothing he could do, for the girl had
given me a deed to something she did not have title to herself, and had
accepted one thousand, five hundred dollars in cash from me in return.
As the matter stood, I was an innocent party.
About this time I became imbued with a feeling that I would like "most
awfully well" to have a little help-mate to love and cheer me. How often
I longed for company to break the awful and monotonous lonesomeness that
occasionally enveloped me. At that time, as now, I thought a darling
little colored girl, to share all my trouble and grief, would be
interesting indeed. Often my thoughts had reverted to the little town in
Illinois, and I had pictured Jessie caring for the little sod house and
cheering me when I came from the fields. For a time, such blissful
thoughts sufficed the longing in my heart, but were soon banished when I
recalled her seeming preference for the three dollar a week menial,
another attack of the blues would follow, and my day dreams became as
mist before the sun.
About this time I began what developed into a flirtatious correspondence
with a St. Louis octoroon. She was a trained nurse; very attractive, and
wrote such charming and interesting letters, that for a time they
afforded me quite as much entertainment, perhaps more, than actual
company would have done. In fact I became so enamored with her that I
nearly lost my emotional mind, and almost succumbed to her encouragement
toward a marriage proposal. The death of three of my best horses that
fall diverted my interest; she ceased the epistolary courtship, and I
continued to batch.
Doc, my big horse, got stuck in the creek and was drowned. The loss of
Doc was hardest for me to bear, for he was a young horse, full of life,
and I had grown fond of him. Jenny mule would stand for hours every
night and whinny for him.
In November, Bolivar, his mate--the horse I had paid one hundred and
forty dollars for not nine months before--got into the wheat, became
foundered, and died.
While freighting from Oristown, in December, one of a team of dapple
grays fell and killed himself. So in three months I lost three horses
that had cost over four hundred dollars, and the last had not even been
paid for. I had only three left, the other dapple gray, Jenny mule, and
"Old Grayhead," the relic of my horse-trading days. I had put in a large
crop of wheat the spring before and had threshed only a small part of it
before the cold winter set in, and the snow made it quite impossible to
complete threshing before spring.
That was one of the cold winters which usually follow a wet summer, and
I nearly froze in my little old soddy, before the warm spring days set
in. Sod houses are warm as long as the mice, rats, and gophers do not
bore them full of holes, but as they had made a good job tunneling mine,
I was left to welcome the breezy atmosphere, and I did not think the
charming nurse would be very happy in such a mess "nohow." The thought
that I was not mean enough to ask her to marry me and bring her into it,
was consoling indeed.
Since I shall have much to relate farther along concerning the curious
and many sided relations that existed between Calias, Megory, and other
contending and jealous communities, let me drop this and return to the
removal of Calias to Megory.
The Nicholson Brothers had already installed an office in the
successful town, and offered to move their interests to that place and
combine with Megory in making the town a metropolis. But the town dads,
feeling they were entirely responsible for the road striking the town,
with the flush of victory and the sensation of empire builders,
disdained the offer.
In this Megory had made the most stupid mistake of her life, and which
later became almost monumental in its proportions. It will be seen how
in the flush of apparent victory she lost her head, and looked back to
stare and reflect at the retreating and temporary triumph of her youth;
and in that instant the banner of victory was snatched from her fingers
by those who offered to make her apparent victory real, and who ran
swiftly, skillfully, and successfully to a new and impregnable retreat
of their own.
The Megory town dads were fairly bursting with rustic pride, and were
being wined and dined like kings, by the citizens of the town--who had
contributed the wherewith to pay for the seven miles of right-of-way.
Besides, the dads were puffed young roosters just beginning to crow, and
were boastful as well. So Nicholson Brothers got the horse laugh, which
implied that Megory did not need them. "We have made Megory and now
watch her grow. Haw! Haw! Haw! Watch her grow," came the cry, when the
report spread that the town dads had turned Nicholson's offer down.
Megory was the big I am of the Little Crow. Then Ernest went away on
another long trip. It was cold weather, with the ground frozen, when he
returned.
CHAPTER XVII
ERNEST NICHOLSON'S RETURN--THE BUILDING WEST OF TOWN--"WHAT'S IT ALL
ABOUT"
The big hotel from Calias had not long since been unloaded and decorated
a corner lot in Megory. All that remained in Calias were the buildings
belonging to Nicholson Brothers, consisting of an old two-story frame
hotel, a two-story bank, the saloon, drug store, their own office and a
few smaller ones. It was a hard life for the Caliasites and the
Megoryites were not inclined to soften it. On the other hand, she was
growing like a mushroom. Everything tended to make it the prairie
metropolis; land was booming, and buyers were plentiful. Capital was
also finding its way to the town, and nothing to disturb the visible
prosperity.
But a shrewd person, at that very time, had control of machinery that
would cause a radical change in this community, and in a very short time
too. This man was Ernest Nicholson, and referring to his return, I was
at the depot in Oristown the day he arrived. There he boarded an auto
and went west to Megory. On his arrival there, he ordered John Nogden to
proceed to Calias, load the bank building, get all the horses
obtainable, and proceed at once to haul the building to--no, not to
Megory--this is what the Megoryites thought, when, with seventy-six head
of horses hitched to it, they saw the bank of Calias coming toward
Megory. But when it got to within half a mile of the south side,
swerved off to the west. About six that evening, when the sun went down,
the Bank of Calias was sitting on the side of a hill that sloped to the
north, near the end of the survey.
Now what did it mean? That was the question that everybody began asking
everybody else. What was up? Why was Ernest Nicholson moving the bank of
Calias five miles west of Megory and setting it down on or near the end
of the survey? There were so many questions being asked with no one to
answer, that it amused me. Then someone suggested that it might be the
same old game, and here would come a pause, then the question, "What old
game?" "Why, another Calias?"--some bait to make money. Then, "Oh, I
see," said the wise town dads, just a hoax. That answered the question,
just a snare to catch the unwary. Tell them that the railroad would
build to the Tipp County line. Sell them some lots, for that is what the
"bluff" meant. Get their good money and then, Oh, Ha! Ha! Ha! it was too
funny when one saw the joke, and Megoryites continued to laugh. Had not
Nicholson Brothers said a whole lot about getting the railroad; and that
it was sure coming up the Monca. It had come, had it not. Haw! Haw! Haw!
Ho! Ho! Ho! just another Nicholson stall, Haw! Haw! Haw! and Nicholsons
got the laugh again. The railroad is in Megory, and here it will stop
for ten years. One hundred thousand people will come to Megory to
register for Tipp County lands, and "Watch Megory grow" was all that
could be heard.
Ernest would come to Megory, have a pleasant chat, treat the boys, tell
a funny story, and be off. Nobody was mean enough or bold enough to tell
him to his face any of the things they told to his back.
Ernest was never known to say anything about it. His scheme simply kept
John Nogden moving buildings. He wrote checks in payment, that the bank
of Calias cashed, for it was open for business the next day after it had
been moved out on the prairie, five miles west of Megory.
The court record showed six quarter sections of land west of town had
recently been transferred; the name of the receiver was unknown to
anyone in Megory, but such prices, forty to fifty dollars per acre. The
people who had sold, brought the money to the Megory banks, and
deposited it. All they seemed to know was that someone drove up to their
house and asked if they wanted to sell. Some did not, while others said
they were only five miles from Megory, and if they sold they would have
to have a big price, because Megory was the "Town of the Little Crow"
and the gateway to acres of the finest land in the world, to be opened
soon. "What is your price?" he would ask, and whether it was forty,
forty-five or fifty per acre, he bought it.
This must have gone on for sixty days with everybody wondering "what it
was all about", until it got on the nerves of the Megoryites; and even
the town dads began to get a little fearful. When Ernest was approached
he would wink wisely, hand out a cigar or buy a drink, but he never made
anybody the wiser.
A lady came out from Des Moines, bought a lot, and let a contract for a
hotel building 24 x 140, and work was begun on it immediately. This was
getting ahead of Megory, where a hotel had just been completed 25 x 100
feet, said by the Megoryites to be the "best" west of a town of six
thousand population, one hundred fifty miles down the road. Whenever
anything like a real building goes up in a little town on the prairie,
with their collection of shacks, it is always called "the best building"
between there and somewhere else.
I shall not soon forget the anxiety with which the people watched the
building which continued to go up west of Megory, and still no one there
seemed willing to admit that Nicholson Brothers were "live," but spent
their argument in trying to convince someone that they were only wind
jammers and manipulators of knavish plots, to immesh the credulous.
What actually happened was this, and Ernest told me about it afterwards
in about the following words:
"Well, Oscar, after Megory turned our offer down, I knew there were just
two things to do, and that was, to either make good or leave the
country. Megory is full of a lot of fellows that have never known
anything but Keya Paha county, and when the road missed Calias, and
struck Megory, they took the credit for displaying a superior knowledge.
I knew we were going to be the big laughing stock of the reservation,
and since I did not intend to leave the country, I got to thinking. The
more I pondered the matter, the more determined I became that something
had to be done, and I finally made up my mind to do it." Ernest
Nicholson was not the kind of a man to make idle declarations. "I went
down to Omaha and saw some business friends of mine and suggested to
them just what I intended to do, thence to Des Moines and got father,
and again we went into Chicago and secured an appointment with Hewitt,
who listened attentively to all that we had to say, and the import of
this was that Megory, being over five miles east of the Tipp County
line, it was difficult to drive range cattle that distance through a
settled country. They are so unused to anything that resembles
civilization, that ranchers hate to drive even five miles through a
settled country, besides the annoyance it would habitually cause
contrary farmers, when it comes to accommodating the ranchers. But that
is not all. With sixty-six feet open between the wire fences, the range
cattle at any time are liable to start a stampede, go right through, and
a lot of damage follows. I showed him that most of the cattle men were
still driving their stock north and shipping over the C.P. & St. L. Now
knowing that the directors had ordered the extension of the line to get
the cattle business, Hewitt looked serious, finally arose from his
chair, and went over to a map that entirely covered the side of the wall
and showed all the lines of the C. & R.W. He meditated a few minutes and
then turned around and said: 'Go back and buy the land that has been
described.'" It all seemed simple enough when it was done.
By the time that the extension had been completed to Megory, the
building that had been moved west of town had company in the way of many
new ones, and by this time comprised quite a burg, and claimed the name
of New Calias. The new was to distinguish between its old site and its
present one. After Megory turned them down, Ernest had made a
declaration or defiance that he would build a town on the Little Crow
and its name would be Calias.
CHAPTER XVIII
COMES STANLEY, THE CHIEF ENGINEER
Megory was still on the boom, not quite as much as the summer before,
but more than it was some time later, for as yet New Calias was still
regarded as a joke, until one day Stanley, the same wiry-looking
individual with the black mustache and the piercing eyes, got off the
stage at Megory and began to do the same work he had started west of
Oristown the year before.
Oh, it was a shame to thus wreck the selfish dreams of these Megoryites
upon the rocks of their own shortsightedness. Stanley was followed a few
days later by a grade contractor, who had been to Megory the summer
before and who had became popular around town, and was known to be a
good spender. They had bidden him good-bye along in December, and
although nothing was said about it, the truth was, Megory did not wish
to see any more railroad contractors, for a while, not for five or ten
years anyway.
It is a peculiar thing that when a railroad stops at some little western
burg, that it is always going to stay ten or twenty years. This has
always been the case before, according to the towns at the end of the
line, and at this time Megory was of the same opinion as regarded the
extension to New Calias. So Oristown had been in regard to the extension
to Megory. But Trelway built the road to New Calias, and built it the
quickest I ever saw a road built. The first train came to Megory on a
Sunday in June--(Schedules always commence on Sunday) and September
found the same train in Calias, the "New" having been dropped.
Megoryites admitted very grudgingly, a short time before, that the train
would go on to Calias but would return to Megory to stay over night,
where it left at six o'clock the following morning. Now at Megory the
road had a "Y" that ran onto a pasture on a two years lease, while at
Calias coal chutes, a "Y", a turning table, a round house, and a large
freight depot were erected.
And then began one of the most bitter fights between towns that I ever
saw or even read about.
Five miles apart, with Calias perched on another hill, and like the old
site, could be seen from miles around. Now the terminus, it loomed
conspicuously. It was a foregone conclusion that when the reservation to
the west opened, Calias was in the right position to handle the crowds
that came to the territory to the west, instead of Megory. Megory
contended, however, that Calias, located on such a hill, could never
hope for an abundance of good water and therefore could not compete with
Megory, with her natural advantages, such as an abundance of good soft
water, which was obtainable anywhere in town.
There are certain things concrete in the future growth of a prairie
town; the first is, has it a railroad; the next is, is the agricultural
territory sufficient to support a good live town (a fair sized town in
either one of the Dakotas has from one thousand to three thousand
inhabitants); and last, are the business men of the town modern,
progressive, and up to date. In this respect Calias had the advantage
over Megory, as will be seen later.
Megory became my postoffice address after Calias had moved to its new
location, and about that time the first rural mail route was established
on the reservation. Megory boasted of this. The other things it boasted
of, was its great farming territory. For miles in every direction
tributary to the town, the land was ideal for farming purposes, and at
the beginning of the bitter rivalry between the two towns, Megory had
the big end of the farm trade. They could see nothing else but Megory,
which helped the town's business considerably.
CHAPTER XIX
IN THE VALLEY OF THE KEYA PAHA. THE RIVALS. THE VIGILANTS
Nothing is more essential to the upbuilding of the small western town,
than a good agricultural territory, and this was where Calias found its
first handicap. When it had moved to its new location, scores of
investors had flocked to the town, paying the highest prices that had
ever been paid for lots in a new country town, of its kind, in the
central west.
Twenty-five miles south of the two towns, where a sand stream known as
the Keya Paha wends its way, is a fertile valley. It had been settled
thirty years before by eastern people, who hauled their hogs and drove
their cattle and sheep fifty miles in a southerly direction, to a
railroad. Although the valley could not be surpassed in the production
of corn, wheat, oats, and alfalfa, the highlands on either side are
great mountains of sand, which produce nothing but a long reddish grass,
that stock will not eat after it reaches maturity, and which stands in
bunches, with the sand blown from around its roots, to such an extent
that riding or driving over it is very difficult.
These hills rise to heights until they resemble the Sierras, and near
the top, on the northwest slope of each, are cave-like holes where the
strong winds have blown a squeegee.
The wagon road to the railway on the south was sandy and made traveling
over it slow and hazardous by the many pits and dunes. Therefore, it is
to be seen, when the C. & R.W. pushed its line through Megory County,
everything that had been going to the road on the south began
immediately to come to the road on the north--where good hard roads made
the traveling much easier, and furthermore, it was only half the
distance.
Keya Paha County was about as lonely a place as I had ever seen. After
the sun went down, the coyotes from the adjacent sand hills, in a series
of mournful howls, filled the air with a noise which echoed and
re-echoed throughout the valley, like the music of so many far-away
steam calliopes and filled me with a cold, creepy feeling. For thirty
years these people had heard no other sound save the same monotonous
howls and saw only each other. The men went to Omaha occasionally with
cattle, but the women and children knew little else but Keya Paha
County.
During a trip into this valley the first winter I spent on the
homestead, in quest of seed wheat, I met and talked with families who
had children, in some instances twenty years of age, who had never seen
a colored man. Sometimes the little tads would run from me, screaming as
though they had met a lion or some other wild beast of the forest. At
one place where I stopped over night, a little girl about nine years of
age, looked at me with so much curiosity that I became amused, finally
coaxing her onto my knee. She continued to look hard at me, then meekly
reached up and touched my chin, looked into my eyes, and said: "Why
don't you wash your face?" When supper was ready went to the sink and
washed my face and hands; she watched me closely in the meanwhile, and
when I was through, appeared to be vexed and with an expression as if to
say: "He has cleaned it thoroughly, but it is dirty still."
About twenty years previous to this time, or about ten years after
settlement in this valley, the pioneers were continually robbed of much
of their young stock. Thieving outlaws kept up a continuous raid on the
young cattle and colts, driving them onto the reservation, where they
disappeared. This continued for years, and it was said many of the
county officials encouraged it, in a way, by delaying a trial, and
inasmuch as the law and its procedure was very inadequate, on account of
the county's remote location, the criminals were rarely punished.
After submitting to such until all reasonable patience had been
exhausted, the settlers formed "a vigilant committee," and meted out
punishment to the evil doers, who had become over-bold and were well
known. After hanging a few, as well as whipping many, the vigilanters
ridded the county of rustlers, and lived in peace thereafter.
At the time the railroad was built to Megory there was little activity
other than the common routine attending their existence. But with Megory
twenty-five miles to the north, and many of her former active and
prosperous citizens living there; and while board walks and "shack"
buildings still represented the Main Street, Megory was considered by
the people of the valley very much of a city, and a great place to pay a
visit. Many had never seen or ridden on a railroad train, so Megory
sounded in Keya Paha County as Chicago does to the down state people
of Illinois.
[Illustration: Made a declaration that he would build a town. (page
122.)]
The people of Keya Paha County had grown prosperous, however, and the
stock shipments comprised many train loads, during an active market.
Practically all this was coming to Megory when Calias began to loom
prominent as a model little city.
I could see two distinct classes, or personages, in the leaders of the
two towns. Beginning with Ernest Nicholson, the head of the firm of
Nicholson Brothers and called by Megoryites "chief," "high mogul," the
"big it" and "I am," in absolute control of Calias affairs; and the
former Keya Paha County sand rats--as they are sometimes called--running
Megory. The two contesting parties presented a contrast which interested
me.
The Nicholson Brothers were all college-bred boys, with a higher
conception of things in general; were modern, free and up-to-date. While
Megory's leaders were as modern as could be expected, but were simply
outclassed in the style and perfection that the Calias bunch presented.
Besides, the merchants and business men--in the "stock yards west of
Megory," as Calias was cartooned by a Megory editor, were much of the
same ilk. And referring to the cartoon, it pictured the editor of the
Calias News as a braying jackass in a stock pen, which brought a great
laugh from Megoryites, but who got it back, however, the next week by
being pictured as a stagnant pond, with two Megory editors as a couple
of big bull-frogs. This had the effect of causing the town to begin
grading the streets, putting in cement walks and gutters, for Megory
had located in the beginning in an extremely bad place. The town was
located in a low place, full of alkali spots, buffalo wallows underlaid
with hardpan, which caused the surface to hold water to such an extent,
that, when rain continued to fall any length of time, the cellars and
streets stood in water.
But Megory had the start, with the largest and best territory, which had
by this time been developed into improved farms; the real farmer was
fast replacing the homesteader. It had the biggest and best banks.
Regardless of all the efficiency of Calias, it appeared weak in its
banking. Now a farmer could go to Nicholson Brothers, and get the
largest farm loan because the boys' father was president of an insurance
company that made the loan, but the banks there were short in the supply
of time loans on stock security, but Calias' greatest disadvantage was,
that directly west in Tipp County the Indians had taken their allotments
within seven or eight miles of the town, and there was hardly a quarter
section to be homesteaded.
Now there was no doubt but that in the course of time the Indian
allotments would be bought, whenever the government felt disposed to
grant the Indian a patent; which under the laws is not supposed to be
issued until the expiration of twenty-five years. People, however, would
probably lease the land, break it up and farm it; but that would not
occur until some future date, and Calias needed it at the present time.
A western town, in most instances, gets its boom in the beginning, for
later a dry rot seems an inevitable condition, and is likely to
overtake it after the first excitement wears away. Resurrection is rare.
These were the conditions that faced the town on the Little Crow, at the
beginning of the third year of settlement.
CHAPTER XX
THE OUTLAW'S LAST STAND
After the vigilants had frightened the outlaws into abandoning their
operations in the valley, the thieves skulked across the reservation to
a strip of country some twenty-five miles northeast of where Megory now
stands. Here, on the east, the murky waters of the Missouri seek their
level; to the north the White River runs like a cow-path through the
foot hills--twisting and turning into innumerable bends, with its
lime-like waters lapping the sides, bringing tons of shale from the
gorgeous, dark banks, into its current; while on the south runs the
Whetstone, inclosed by many rough, ragged brown hills, and to the west
are the breaks of Landing Creek. In an angle between these creeks and
rivers, lies a perfect table land known as Yully Flats, which is the
most perfectly laying land and has the richest soil of any spot on the
Little Crow. It took its name from a famous outlaw and squaw-man, by the
name of Jack Yully. With him the thieves from the Keya Paha Valley found
co-operation, and together had, a few years previously operated as the
most notorious band of cattle rustlers the state had known. For a
hundred miles in every direction this band plundered, stole, and ran the
cattle and horses onto the flats, where they were protected by the
breaks of the creeks and rivers, referred to. Mixed with half, quarter,
eighth and sixteenth breeds, they knew every nook and crook of the
country. These operations had lasted until the year of the Little Crow
opening, and it was there that Jack Yully made his last stand.
[Illustration: Although the valley could not be surpassed in the
production of grain and alfalfa, the highlands on either side were great
mountains of sand. (Page 126.)]
He had for many years defied the laws of the county and state, and had
built a magnificent residence near a spring that pours its sparkling
waters into a small lake, where now stands a sanitarium. Yully had been
chief overseer, dictator, and arbitrator of the combined forces of
Little Crow and Keya Paha County outlaws and mixed bloods. The end came
when, on a bright day in June, a posse led by the United States Marshal
sneaked across the Whetstone and secreted themselves in a cache between
Yully's corral and the house. Yully was seen to enter the corral and
having laid a trap, a part of the men, came in from another direction
and made as if to advance when Yully made a run for his house, which
took him alongside the men hidden. Before he could change his course he
was halted and asked to surrender. He answered by dropping to the
opposite side of the horse and began firing. In the skirmish that
followed the horse was shot and fell on Yully, but in the shot's
exchange two of the posse and Yully were killed.
CHAPTER XXI
THE BOOM
This valuable tract of land comprising about fifty thousand acres had
been entered after the opening, by settlers, and lay about as near to
Kirk as it did to Megory, hence its trade was sought by both towns, but
with Kirk getting the larger part until Megory established a mill, which
paid two cents more for wheat, and the farmers took advantage by hauling
most of their produce to the former town. This included another strip of
rich territory to the north of Megory and west of Landing Creek, where
the soil is a rich gumbo, and the township thickly settled so it is
readily seen that Megory was advantageously situated to draw from all
directions. This soon brought such a volume of business into the town as
to make the most fastidious envy it, and the Megoryites were well aware
of their enviable position. The town continued to grow in a sound,
substantial way.
Nicholson Brothers began leading booster trade excursions to the north,
south, and east, with Ernest at the head in a big "Packard" making
clever speeches and inviting all the farmers to come to Calias, where a
meal at the best hotel was given free. A good, live, and effective
commercial club was organized, which guaranteed to pay all a hog, cow,
or calf would bring on the Omaha market, minus the freight and expenses.
Ernest would explain with deep sincerity which impressed the farmers of
the valley, as well as the settlers on the Little Crow, that Calias
wanted a share of their business, and was willing to sacrifice profit
for two years in order to have the farmers come to the town and get
acquainted, to see what the merchants, bankers and real estate dealers
had to offer. In making this offer the people of Calias had the
advantage over Megory, in that it derived profits from other sources,
chiefly from great numbers of transients who were beginning to fill the
hotels, restaurants, saloons, and boarding houses of the town. Being the
end of the road and the place where practically every settler coming to
Tipp County must stay at least one night, it stood to reason they could
make such an inducement and stick to it.
However, this was countered immediately by Megoryites who promptly
organized a commercial club and began the same kind of bid for trade.
Thus the small ranchmen of the valley found themselves an object of much
importance and began to awaken a little.
Now the land of the reservation had taken on a boom such as had never
been realized, or dreamed of. Land in the states of Iowa, Minnesota,
Illinois, and Nebraska had doubled in valuation in the previous ten
years, and was still on the increase in value. Crops had been good and
money was plentiful; with a number of years of unbroken prosperity, the
farmers had paid off mortgages and had a good surplus in the bank. Their
sons and daughters were looking for newer fields. Retired farmers with
their land to rent now, instead of the customary one-third delivered,
demanded and received from two-fifths to one-half, or cash, from three
to five and six dollars per acre. And with the prices in these states
ranging from ninety to one hundred and fifty dollars per acre, which
meant from fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars to buy a quarter
section, which the renters felt was too high to ever be paid for by
farming it. Therefore, western lands held an attraction, where with a
few thousand dollars, some stock, and machinery a man could establish a
good home. As this land in southern South Dakota is in the Corn Belt,
the erstwhile investor and home-seeker found a haven.
There is always more or less gossip as regards insufficient moisture in
a new country. The only thing to kill this bogy is to have plenty of
rain, and plenty of rain had fallen on the Little Crow, too much at
times. Large crops of everything had been harvested, but if the first
three years had been wet, this fourth was one of almost continual
rainfall.
In the eastern states the corn crop had been badly drowned out on the
low lands, and rust had cut the yield of small grain considerably, while
on the rolling land of the Little Crow the season was just right and
everything grew so rank, thick and green that it gave the country, a raw
prairie until less than four years before, the appearance of an old
settled country. It looked good to the buyers and they bought. Farms
were sold as soon as they were listed. The price at the beginning of the
year had been from twenty-five to forty dollars per acre, some places
more, but after the first six months of the year it began to climb to
forty-five and then to fifty dollars per acre. Those who owned Little
Crow farms became objects of much importance. If they desired to sell
they had only to let it be known, and a buyer was soon on hand.
The atmosphere seemed charged with drunken enthusiasm. Everybody had it.
There was nothing to fear. Little Crow land was the best property to be
had, better, they would declare, than government bonds, for its value
was increasing in leaps and bounds. Choice farms close to town, if
bought at fifty dollars per acre, could be sold at a good profit in a
short time.
This was done, and good old eastern capital continued to be paid for the
land.
The spirit of unrest that seem to pervade the atmosphere of the
community was not altogether the desire to have and to hold, but more,
to buy and to sell. Homesteads were sold in Megory county and the
proceeds were immediately reinvested in Tipp, where considerable dead
Indian land could be purchased at half the price.
At about that time the auto fever began to infect the restless and
over-prosperous settlers, and business men alike. That was the day of
the many two-cylinder cars. They made a dreadful noise but they moved
and moved faster than horses. They sailed over the country, the exhaust
of the engine making a cracking noise. The motion, added to the speed,
seemed to thrill and enthuse the investor until he bought whether he
cared to or not.
In previous years, when capital was not so plentiful, and when land was
much cheaper and slower to sell, the agent drove the buyer over the land
from corner to corner, cross-wise and angling, and the buyer would get
out here and there and with a spade dig into the ground, and be
convinced as to the quality of the soil. He then pondered the matter
over for days, weeks, and sometimes months. Then maybe he would go back
and bring "the woman." The land dealers seriously object to buyers
bringing "the woman" along, especially if the farm he has to sell has
any serious drawbacks, such, for instance, as a lack of water. There
were numerous farms on the high lands of the Little Crow where water
could not be found, but they were invariably perfect in every other
respect. The perfection in the laying of the land and quality of the
soil was severely offset by the inability to get water. While on the
rougher and less desirable farms water can be easily obtained in the
draws and the hills. But the high lands were the more attractive and
were sold at higher prices and much quicker, regardless of the obvious
defects.
Now if "the woman" was brought to look it over one of the first inquires
she made would be, "Now is there plenty of water?" furthermore she was
liable to steal a march on the dealer by having her husband hire a
livery team, and with the eastern farmer and his wife drive out to the
place and look the farm over without the agent to steer them clear of
the bad places. They not only looked it over, but make inquiries of the
neighbors as to its merits. Now country people have the unpardonable
habit of gossip, and have complicated many deals of the real-estate men
by this weakness, even caused many to fall through, until, the land
sharks are usually careful to prevent a buyer from having a conversation
with "Si."
In my case, however, this was quite different. I was known as "a
booster", and since my land was located between the Monca and
Megory--this was considered the cream of the county as to location soil,
and other advantages--instead of being nervous over meeting me, the
dealers would drive into the yard or into the fields, and as I liked to
talk, introduce the prospective buyers to me and we would engage in a
long conversation at times. I might add that exaggerated tales were
current, which related how I had run as P----n porter, saved my money,
come to the Little Crow, bought a half section, and was getting rich.
The most of the buyers from Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska were
unused to seeing colored farmers, and my presence all alone on the
former reserve added to their interest. In my favor was the fact that my
service in the employ of the P----n Company had taken me through nearly
every county in the central states and therefore, always given to
observation, I could talk with them concerning the counties they had
come from.
Land prices continued to soar. Higher and higher they went and to boost
them still higher, as well as to substantiate the values, the bogy
concerning insufficient moisture was drowned in the excessive rainfall.
From April until August it poured, and the effect on the growing crops
in the east became greater still in the way of drowned out corn-fields
and over-rank stems of small grain that grew to abnormal heights and
with the least winds lodged and then fell to the ground. The crops on
the reservation could not have been better and prices were high.
CHAPTER XXII
THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION
Coincident with the expectation came the president's proclamation
throwing four thousand claims in Tipp county open to settlement under
the lottery system at six dollars per acre. Among the towns designated
in the proclamation where the people could make application for a claim,
Megory and Calias were nearest to the land. These were the places where
the largest crowds were expected. Therefore, the citizens of these two
vigorous municipalities began extensive preparations to "entertain the
crowds." Megory, being more on the country order, made more homelike
preparations. Among the many "conveniences" prepared were a ladies' rest
room and information bureau, which were located in a large barn
previously used for storing hay.
Calias, under the criticism that as soon as the road extended farther
west it would be as dead as Oristown--now all but forgotten--prepared to
"get theirs" while the crowds were in town. And they did, but that is
ahead of the story.
The time for the opening approached. People seemingly from every part of
the universe, and from every vocation in life, drifted into the towns.
Among these were included the investors, who stated that in the event of
a failure to draw they would buy deeded land. Next in order were the
gamblers, from the "tin horn" and "piker" class to the "fat"
professionals. Although every precaution was taken to keep out the
characters of the city's underworld, who had characterized former
openings, both towns were fully represented with a large share of
pickpockets, con-men, lewd women and their consorts.
[Illustration: On the east the murky waters of the Missouri seek their
level. (page 132.)]
The many vacant lots on Main street of both the towns were decorated
with the typical scene at land openings. There were little tents with
notaries assisted by
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