The Biography of a Prairie Girl

by Eleanor Gates

The little girl had dived under the canopied bed, where she stayed, holding her breath, while the eldest brother looked for her high and low. When he went out, calling the youngest brother to take her place, she yet remained discreetly hidden. At dinner-time a plate of food and a glass of milk mysteriously made their appearance at the edge of the bed, so that she was able to stay in seclusion and wait for the storm to pass. But even "David Copperfield," which arrived with her meal, did not aid her in whiling away the hours. So the biggest brother's suggestion came as a welcome relief.

When the buckboard rolled along the corn road, the little girl stepped out of the field and climbed to the seat on the driver's side. Neither she nor the biggest brother spoke, but, as the blue mare jogged on, she took the reins from him and chirruped gaily to the horse, with an inward wish that, instead of being in the buckboard, she were free of it and on the blue mare's back. The mare made poor progress when she was hitched between shafts, since she was not a trotter, and reached her best gait under a blanket. But this was known to the little girl alone, for the big brothers never went faster than a canter, and would have punished her if they had guessed how rapidly, on each trip to the station, the horse was ridden.

The little girl usually started for town in the early afternoon, as the biggest brother had that day. In this way the local passed her, going east, when the trip was half over. As the engine came in sight, the little girl urged the mare to a slow gallop, and, as the cow-catcher got abreast, gave her a sharp cut that sent her forward beside the train. And so swift was the high-strung horse that she was never left behind until a long stretch of road had been covered. The little girl liked best, however, to start the race at the outer edge of the broad meadow that lay west of the station, because, by acquiring speed before the engine came on a line with her, she could ride up to the depot with the rear car.

The almost daily brush with the train was seemingly as much enjoyed by the blue mare as by her rider. With the engine's roar in her ears and its smoke in her nostrils, she sped on, neck and neck with the iron horse. When the local was still far behind she would begin to curvet and take the bit between her teeth. After the first few contests, she needed no whip. The little girl had only to slacken the reins and let her go, and she would scamper into the station, covered with dust and foam from her flashing eyes to her flying feet.

While the little girl was thinking over her exciting rides, the biggest brother was mournfully looking around at the farm. The year had been a disastrous one. A chinook had swept the prairies in the late winter, thawing all the drifts except those in sheltered gullies, and giving a false message to the sleeping ground; so that, long before their time, the grass and flowers had sprung up, only to be cut down by a heavy frost that was succeeded by snow. Again a hot wind had come, and again the grass had sprouted prematurely and been blighted. When spring opened, the winds veered to the south and drove back, and what green things had survived the cold died early in a hot, blowy May.

Lack of moisture had stunted the growing crops, the sun had baked the ground under them, and every stem and blade had been scorched. Where, in former years, the oats had nodded heavy-headed stood a straight, scanty growth. The wheat showed naked spots on its western side, the Vermillion having overflowed after the sowing and lain so long that the seed rotted in the wet. The flax stems turned up their blue faces and shriveled into a thin cover on the sod. And in the corn-field, that promised nubbins instead of the usual husking, there shone too soon a glimmer of gold.

Around the fields the brittle grass sloped down to the shrinking sloughs, where the muskrat houses stood high and dry, stranded on the cracked swamp-beds like beached boats. The river, for weeks a wide-spread, muddy stream, was now but a chain of trickling pools. Drought was abroad with its burning hand, and the landscape lay bared and brown.

But frost, sun, and winds had not been the only scourges. Potato-bugs had settled upon the long patch that was bordered by the reservation road. The youngest brother had painted the riddled vines green with poison, and the little girl had gone along the rows with a stick, knocking thousands of the pests into an oyster-can; but their labor had been in vain. Cutworms had destroyed the melons; cabbage-lice and squash-bugs had besieged the garden, attended by caterpillars; and grasshoppers by the millions had hopped across the farm, devouring as they went and leaving disaster behind them.

The hot wind that bent the stunted grass beside the road reminded the biggest brother of every catastrophe of the year, and he cried out angrily to it. "Oh, blow! blow! blow!" he scolded, and, reaching over, gave the blue mare a slap with the reins to relieve his feelings. It started her into a smart trot, and she soon topped the ridge along which the track ran. Then the little girl headed her toward the station.

"It only needs a fire to finish the whole thing up," went on the biggest brother, ruefully eying the prairie. "The country's as dry as tinder. And our place ain't plowed around half well enough. If a blaze should happen to come down on us"—he shook his head gravely.