At last the home was completed; just two rooms, with a board roof, the outer walls adorned with tar paper held in place with laths, and when they moved in joy reigned in this primitive home. A rough board table, two benches and a cook stove, cooking utensils, still shining with the burnish of new tin, shone upon the walls just outside the kitchen door, a shelf with new tin basin and water pail were provided. The remaining room was furnished with two beds, built of scraps of lumber, the corners of the room forming one side and the head, discarded balewire, woven across, took the place of springs; three family portraits, done in crayon, a gaudy calendar of the year before, bearing the general merchandise advertisement of the faithful old merchant at home, a nickel alarm clock upon a shelf, and the home was furnished. But it was a home of their own.
CHAPTER III.
The journey of thousands of miles, the excitement of getting settled, and cool fresh breezes that swept down from the snow capped peaks of the Cascades, made sleep easy, and no thought of the morrow disturbed the rest of this emancipated renter. Morning came, and with it the bright sunshine and oppressive silence of the desert; not a dog to bark, nor a noisy fowl to break the stillness. As the sun rose from the horizon, and before it assumed its brassy glare, a mirage formed across the level plain, magnifying the humble homes of the neighboring homesteaders into palatial mansions, and the sage brush into forests, and glistening lakes with twinkling waves upon their surfaces. Travis Gully, with his family, stood awed by the magnitude of the panorama unrolled before their gaze, and looked with feverish expectancy into the vista of possibilities the future held in store for them. The sun mounted higher into the blue dome, the mirage passed, and objects assumed their normal proportions, while the faithful wife told of the hopes for good this vision foretold.
The weeks that followed, each day of which was fraught with hours of patient toil, clearing away the brush for the first spring planting, the honest father hewing a spot in the wilderness of sand and sage brush, the eager children rushing in at each stroke of the mattock, seizing the uprooted particles of brush and bearing them triumphantly away, to be placed on one of the many piles of rubbish that marked the path of this industrious toiler; the patient mother, appearing at the doorway, looking out across the miles of unchanging gray toward the far east with that indefinable expression of homesickness depicted upon her face. Of such scenes as this is the material made of which the everlasting monument, in the form of a prosperous farming district is built. Every fruit tree that grows in the far famed Northwest should be looked upon as a sprig in the laurel wreath with which to crown the brows of the sturdy homesteaders—those departed and yet to come.
At the close of each day, and after the evening meal, huge bonfires were lit in the clearing, around which the children danced gleefully, their shadows casting fantastic shapes in the background, where the gaunt and hungry coyote lurked, and at intervals mingled its voice in discordant note with their merry laughter, as if in vain endeavor to impress upon their minds the narrowness of the space that lay between their joyous anticipations and deepest gloom.
Planting time arrived with all its hopes for a bounteous yield. Each day was devoted to preparing the ground and planting. The winter just passed had afforded sufficient snow and moisture to produce perfect planting conditions, and many were the plans made for the expenditure of the proceeds of this first harvest for a good home, farming implements, and other necessities for successful farming.
The grain was sown, and the kitchen garden planted in precise rows and nicely shaped beds. A wagon load of scabrock was hauled from a dry coulee that wended its way diagonally across this vast area of sand and sage. These were used to form the border of prim walks and flower beds, each stone being placed in position and carefully embedded in the soft sand, each a cornerstone for the castle of hope, soon to be displaced by an inexorable nature, and to allow the upper structure of dreams to fall about the builder, a pall of utter disappointment.
Just a few days of alluring sunshine, only a few balmy nights, and the tiny plants were raising their tender shoots above the surface of the sand, which through its ages of shifting now refused to remain under control of mere man, and was growing restless, rolling in fiendish glee down the sides of the nicely formed flower beds and rollicking in sparkling bits across the walks, filling, with maddening persistance, every opening made in its surface by the upspringing plants.