Because we were no longer oppressed by a sense of loneliness, Ida and I came to love best of all the evenings at home in the tiny shack with its gay cushions and bright curtains; we enjoyed the good hot supper of spuds and bacon, or rabbit which some neighbor had brought; hot biscuits, chokecherry jelly and coffee simmering gently on the back of the stove. Such a feast, however, was only on rare occasions. After supper, with the world shut out, we read the mail from home. "You've done so well, girls, I'm proud of you," our father wrote. "I'll be looking to see you home next spring."
I believe Ida Mary was happier that winter than she had ever been, and her work was easier for her than mine for me, with fewer hardships, thanks to the Dunns and to Imbert who did much to make it easier for her.
During that whole winter the Randalls were the mainstay of the community. They were one of those families who are the backbone of the old West, always ready to serve their neighbors. They were like old trees standing alone on the prairie, that have weathered the storms and grown strong, with their sheltering branches outspread.
When there were signs of a blizzard in the air, it was the Randalls who sent out their sleighs to round up the women who lived alone and bring them in to shelter. When a doctor was needed, the Randalls got one. Young Mrs. Layton was having her first baby sooner than she expected. It was a black night, twenty below zero. The makeshift telephone line was out of order, as it usually was when it was needed.
Mr. Randall called his sons. "You'll have to go for Doc Newman.... Yes, I know it's a bad trip. But you boys know how to take care of yourselves. Make it—if you can." And they rode hell-for-leather.
It seemed to me there never was a time when at least one of the Randalls wasn't riding horseback over the prairie with an urgent message or errand for the homesteaders. Pay? Hell, no! Weren't these newcomers funny!
I remember one evening in January with a storm raging. I had run to the Randalls' house from the print shop. They sent the sleigh to pick up Ida Mary and Wilomene. By dark half a dozen men were marooned at the Halfway House, three of them strangers passing through, three of them plainsmen unable to get home. A little later two homestead women, who had come in from Pierre on the stage and could not go on, joined us.
Somehow there was room for all of them in the big, bare-floored living room. Chairs with an odd assortment of calico-covered cushions were scattered over the room. Crude, old-fashioned tables were set here and there, each with a coal-oil lamp. By the light from the brightly polished chimneys some read newspapers more than a week old, others looked hungrily through the mail-order catalogs which always piled up in country post offices. And Wilomene White, telling some of her homestead anecdotes, filled the room with laughter. Her most harassing experiences seemed funny to Wilomene.
In the middle of the room the big heating stove, stoked with coal, grew red hot as the wind howled and whistled down the chimney and the snow lashed against the windows of the old log house.
Opening off one end of the long room were the small cubicles that served as bedrooms where the women guests would sleep, crowded together, two or three in a bed. Cots would be put up in the living room for the Randall young ones. But the strangers? Leave that to the Randalls—always room for a few more.