With Bill, Dave rode to the settler’s house spoken of by Mrs. Cody. That was tremendously kind of Wild Bill, to go to so much trouble for just a boy; but Davy found out that this Mr. Hickok was the kind of a man who would do anything for anybody deserving it.
The new family’s name was Shields. They were from Massachusetts. Mr. Shields had taken up a homestead of 160 acres, and now he was miserable with fever and ague, so that he was unable to work steadily. He and Mrs. Shields and the baby had come by railroad to St. Louis and by steamboat from St. Louis to Leavenworth. There they had loaded their goods into a wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen and had settled on this claim where they had found a cabin already standing.
It wasn’t much of a cabin, being only twelve by eighteen feet square, and built of logs. The floor was of rough boards with wide cracks between them; torn muslin was stretched as a ceiling to keep the dirt of the sod roof from sifting down. Over the walls Mrs. Shields had pasted newspapers, right side up, so she could read them sometimes as she worked. A muslin curtain, hung on a wire, divided the room; behind the curtain was a bed, of poles laid on notched posts and a mattress stuffed with hay. Clothes were hung on wooden pegs. On the other side of the curtain was a cook stove, and a table of rough-sawed slabs, and a couple of stools.
No, it wasn’t much of a place for people like Mr. and Mrs. Shields, who were used to a comfortable house in Massachusetts; but it was home.
All this Davy found out in due time, while he worked for his board and lodging. At night he slept on the floor by the stove; and he must rise at daylight to milk the cow and feed the cow and the oxen and the few chickens, and split the wood and bring the water from the well, and make an early start for school, which was four miles away. After school and on Saturdays he had other chores waiting, and drove the oxen while Mr. Shields held the plough to break the sod for the spring sowing.
VIII
THE GOLD FEVER
Even while Davy had been herding a change had occurred in this Salt Creek Valley. The number of settlers seemed almost to have doubled, and cabins and houses and ploughed fields were everywhere. Amidst them ran the Leavenworth end of the great Overland Trail. Until after the first snows the emigrants and settlers toiled along it, down the hill into the valley and up the hill out of the valley; and all winter the bull trains plodded back and forth. Weather rarely stopped the Russell, Majors & Waddell outfits.
Mr. DeVinne was the teacher in the school. It was the best school yet, according to the Cody girls, because there were more pupils, and Mr. DeVinne seemed to know how to teach. Of course the school was not graded; it consisted of only one room, where the boys and girls sat on long benches, with other benches for desks. The scholars ranged from little Eliza Cody, who was six, up to big boys of twenty. The pupils had come from all over—from Missouri, Illinois, Vermont, Carolina, Mississippi, and the other States east and south. Davy, who had been herding for Russell, Majors & Waddell, and had proved his pluck, felt as big as any of them.