The straddle-bug, I should explain, was composed of three boards set together in tripod form and was used as a monument, a sign of occupancy. Its presence defended a claim against the next comer. Lumber being very scarce at the moment, the building of a shanty was impossible, and so for several weeks these signs took the place of "improvements" and were fully respected. No one could honorably jump these claims within thirty days and no one did.
At last, when far beyond the last claimant, we turned and looked back upon a score of these glittering guidons of progress, banners of the army of settlement, I realized that I was a vedette in the van of civilization, and when I turned to the west where nothing was to be seen save the mysterious plain and a long low line of still more mysterious hills, I thrilled with joy at all I had won.
It seemed a true invasion, this taking possession of the virgin sod, but as I considered, there was a haunting sadness in it, for these shining pine pennons represented the inexorable plow. They prophesied the death of all wild creatures and assured the devastation of the beautiful, the destruction of all the signs and seasons of the sod.
Apparently none of my companions shared this feeling, for they all leaped from the wagon and planted their stakes, each upon his chosen quarter-section with whoops of joy, cries which sounded faint and far, like the futile voices of insects, diminished to shrillness by the echoless abysses of the unclouded sky.
As we had measured the distance from the township lines by counting the revolutions of our wagon-wheels, so now with pocket compass and a couple of laths, Charles and I laid out inner boundaries and claimed three quarter-sections, one for Frank and one each for ourselves. Level as a floor these acres were, and dotted with the bones of bison.
We ate our dinner on the bare sod while all around us the birds of spring-time moved in myriads, and over the swells to the east other wagons laden with other land-seekers crept like wingless beetles—stragglers from the main skirmish line.
Having erected our pine-board straddle-bugs with our names written thereon, we jubilantly started back toward the railway. Tired but peaceful, we reached Ordway at dark and Mrs. Wynn's supper of ham and eggs and potatoes completed our day most satisfactorily.
My father, who had planned to establish a little store on his claim, now engaged me as his representative, his clerk, and I spent the next week in hauling lumber and in helping to build the shanty and ware-room on the section line. As soon as the place was habitable, my mother and sister Jessie came out to stay with me, for in order to hold his pre-emption my father was obliged to make it his "home."
Before we were fairly settled, my mother was forced to feed and house a great many land-seekers who had no other place to stay. This brought upon her once again all the drudgery of a pioneer house-wife, and filled her with longing for the old home in Iowa. It must have seemed to her as if she were never again to find rest except beneath the sod.
Nothing that I have ever been called upon to do caused me more worry than the act of charging those land-seekers for their meals and bunks, and yet it was perfectly right that they should pay. Our buildings had been established with great trouble and at considerable expense, and my father said, "We cannot afford to feed so many people without return," and yet it seemed to me like taking an unfair advantage of poor and homeless men. It was with the greatest difficulty that I brought myself to charge them anything at all. Fortunately the prices had been fixed by my father.