The First Four Years (Little House 9)

In the starlight, in the starlight,

We will wander gay and free.”

For it was June, the roses were in bloom over the prairie lands, and lovers were abroad in the still, sweet evenings which were so quiet after the winds had hushed at sunset.

The First Year

It was a hot afternoon with a strong wind from the south, but out on the Dakota prairie in 1885 no one minded the hot sunshine or the hard winds. They were to be expected: a natural part of life. And so the swiftly trotting horses drawing the shining black-top buggy swung around the corner of Pearson’s livery barn, making the turn from the end of Main Street to the country road Monday afternoon at four o’clock. Looking from a window of the low, three-room claim shanty a half mile away, Laura saw them coming. She was basting cambric lining to the bodice pieces of her new black cashmere dress and had just time to put on her hat and pick up her gloves when the brown horses and the buggy stopped at the door.

It was a pretty picture Laura made standing at the door of the rough claim shanty, the brown August grass under her feet and the young cottonwoods standing in their square around the yard.

Her dress of pink lawn with its small sprigs of blue flowers just cleared her toes. The skirt was full, and tucked to the waist. The little tight waist with long sleeves and high neck had a bit of lace at the throat. The sage-green, rough-straw poke bonnet lined with blue silk softly framed her pink cheeks and her large blue eyes with the bangs of her brown hair above them.

Manly said nothing of all this, but he helped her into the buggy and tucked the linen lap robe carefully about her to keep off the dust. Then he tightened the reins and they dashed away for an unexpected weekday afternoon drive. South twelve miles across bare prairie to lakes Henry and Thompson, along the narrow neck of land between them where chokecherries and wild grapes grew. Then over the prairie again east and north to Spirit Lake fifteen miles away. Forty or fifty miles in all, but always “around the square” to come home.

The buggy top was up to make a shade from the heat of the sun; the horses’ manes and tails flew out on the wind; jack rabbits ran and prai

rie chickens scuttled out of sight in the grass. Striped gophers ducked into their holes and wild ducks flew overhead from one lake to another. Breaking a somewhat lengthy silence, Manly said, “Can’t we be married soon? If you don’t want a big wedding, and you would be willing, we could be married right away. When I was back in Minnesota last winter, my sister started planning a big church wedding for us. I told her we didn’t want it, and to give up the idea, but she hasn’t changed her mind. She is coming out here with my mother, to take charge of our wedding. But harvest is right on hand. It will be an awfully busy time and I’d like us to be settled first.”

Laura twisted the bright gold ring with its pearl-and-garnet setting around and around on the forefinger of her left hand. It was a pretty ring and she liked having it, but… “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I don’t want to marry a farmer. I have always said I never would. I do wish you would do something else. There are chances in town now while it is so new and growing.” Again there was a little silence; then Manly asked, “Why don’t you want to marry a farmer?” And Laura replied, “Because a farm is such a hard place for a woman. There are so many chores for her to do, and harvest help and threshers to cook for. Besides a farmer never has any money. He can never make any because the people in towns tell him what they will pay for what he has to sell and then they charge him what they please for what he has to buy. It is not fair.” Manly laughed. “Well, as the Irishman said,

‘Everything is evened up in this world. The rich have their ice in the summer but the poor get theirs in the winter.’”

Laura refused to make a joke of it. She said, “I don’t always want to be poor and work hard while the people in town take it easy and make money off us.”

“But you’ve got it all wrong,” Manly told her seriously. “Farmers are the only ones who are independent. How long would a merchant last if farmers didn’t trade with him? There is a strife between them to please the farmer. They have to take trade away from each other in order to make more money, while all a farmer has to do is to sow another field if he wants to make a little extra.

“I have fifty acres of wheat this year. It is enough for me, but if you will come live on the farm, I will break the ground this fall and sow another fifty acres next spring.

“I can raise more oats too and so raise more horses, and it pays to raise horses.

“You see, on a farm it all depends on what a man is willing to do. If he is willing to work and give his attention to his farm, he can make more money than the men in town and all the time be his own boss.”

Again there was a silence, a rather skeptical silence on Laura’s part, broken at last by Manly, who said, “If you’ll try it for three years and I haven’t made a success in farming by that time, I’ll quit and do anything you want me to do. I promise that at the end of three years we will quit farming if I have not made such a success that you are willing to keep on.”

And Laura consented to try it for three years. She liked the horses and enjoyed the freedom and spaciousness of the wide prairie land, with the wind forever waving the tall wild grass in the sloughs and rustling through the short curly buffalo grass, so green on the upland swells in spring and so silvery-gray and brown in summer. It was all so sweet and fresh. In early spring the wild violets carpeted and made fragrant the little hollows of the grassland, and in June the wild prairie roses blossomed everywhere. Two quarter sections of this land, each with 160 acres of rich black soil, would be theirs, for Manly had already proven up on a homestead and he also had a tree claim on which he was growing the ten acres of trees required by law to get title. The 3405 trees were planted about eight feet apart each way. Between the two claims lay a school section where anyone could cut the hay, first come first served.

It would be much more fun living on the land than on the town street with neighbors so close on each side, and if only Manly were right—Well, she had promised to try the farm anyway.

“The house on the tree claim will be finished in a couple of weeks,” Manly was saying. “Let’s be married the next week. It will be the last week in August and before the rush of harvest begins. Let’s just drive over to Reverend Brown’s and then go home to our new house.” But Laura objected to this because she would not be paid for the last month of her school teaching until October and needed the money for clothes.

“What’s the matter with the clothes you have?” Manly asked. “You always look nice and if we are married suddenly, that way we won’t need fine clothes.

“If we give Mother time enough, she and the girls will come out from the east and we will have to have a big wedding in the church. I can’t afford the expense and your one month’s salary would not be enough for you.”

This was a surprise, for Laura had not thought of such a thing. In the wild new country, the folks back east never seemed to be real and certainly were not considered in the making of plans, but she remembered with something of a shock that Manly’s folks back in eastern Minnesota were well off and that one sister had a homestead claim near by. They would be sure to come if they knew the wedding date, and his mother had asked for that in her latest letter.

She could not ask her Pa to go to any expense for the wedding. It was all he could do to keep up with the family expenses until there would be some return from their 160 acres of wild land. Nothing much could be expected from the raw sod the first year it was turned over, and his farmland was newly broke. There seemed no other way than to be married suddenly because of the help it would be to have a home and housekeeper in the rush of fall work coming on. Manly’s mother would understand and not be offended. It would be thought the right and sensible way to do it by the neighbors and friends, for they were all engaged in the same struggle to establish themselves in their homes on the new prairie land.

And so on Thursday, the twenty-fifth of August, at ten o’clock in the morning, the quickstepping brown horses and the buggy with the shining top flashed around the corner at Pearson’s livery barn, came swiftly over the half mile, and drew up at the door of the little claim house in its hollow square of young cottonwoods. Laura stood at the door, her Ma and Pa on either hand, her two sisters grouped behind her. They all gaily tried to help her into the buggy. Her wedding dress was the new black cashmere she had thought would be so serviceable, for a married woman should have a black dress. All her other clothing and a few girlhood treasures had been packed in a trunk and were waiting in Manly’s newly finished house. As Laura looked back, Ma, Pa, and Carrie and Grace were grouped among the young trees. They threw kisses and waved their hands. Bright green leaves of the cottonwoods waved too in the stronger wind of afternoon and there was a little choke in Laura’s throat for they seemed to be saying good-by, and she saw her Ma brush her hand quickly across her eyes.

Manly understood, for he covered Laura’s hand with one of his and pressed it strongly. The preacher lived on his homestead two miles away and it seemed to Laura the longest drive she had ever taken, and yet it was over all too soon. Once in the front room, the ceremony was quickly performed. Mr. Brown came hurriedly in, slipping on his coat. His wife and his daughter, Ida, Laura’s dearest friend, with her betrothed, were the witnesses and those present. Laura and Manly were married for better or worse, for richer or poorer.

Then back to the old home for a noon dinner, and in the midst of good wishes and cheerful good-bys, once more into the buggy and away for the new home on the other side of town. The first year was begun.

The summer wind blew softly, and sunshine was bright where it shone through the east windows that first morning. It was an early sun, but breakfast was even earlier, for Manly must not be late at the Webbs’ for the threshing. All the neighbors would be there. Since they would expect Mr. Webb to give them a good day’s work in exchange, as their turns with the threshers came, no one could afford to be late and hold up the gang at Webb’s place. So the first breakfast in the new home was a hurried affair. Then Manly drove away with the brown horses hitched to the lumber wago

n, and Laura was alone for the day.