Virginia of Elk Creek Valley

by Mary Ellen Chase

South of Elk Creek Valley the foot-hills were less ambitious than those east and north. It was easy to climb their sloping, well-trailed sides on horseback or even afoot, and the view across the wide mesa, blue with sagebrush to the distant mountains blue with August haze, was quite reward enough.

Here was real Western country, almost unhampered by civilization, almost unbroken by that certain sign of progress, the barbed-wire fence. This was in miniature what the pioneers must have gazed upon with weary, dream-filled eyes. Virginia and Donald, who often climbed the hills together for a wild gallop through the unfenced sagebrush, liked always to imagine how those sturdy folk of half a century ago urged their tired oxen up other slopes than these; how they halted on the brow of the 50 foot-hills to rest the patient animals and to fan their hot, dusty faces with their broad-brimmed hats; and how their eager eyes, sweeping over miles of ragged prairie land to the mountains, awful with mystery, saw this great country cleared of sagebrush, intersected with ditches, reclad with homes.

Such had been the history of most of the land above and beyond Elk Creek Valley, and Donald and Virginia were loath to see this one unbroken mesa go. They wanted it as a hunting-ground for prairie chickens and pheasant in the fall, and as a wide, free, unhindered race-course for Pedro and MacDuff. Pedro and MacDuff wanted it, too. They liked to gallop, neck and neck, joyous in the sense of freedom, and in the knowledge that they were giving happiness to their respective riders. For years Donald and Virginia had loved the mesa. They loved it in the spring when the bare patches among the sagebrush grew green and gave birth to hardy spring flowers—buttercups and shooting-stars and spring beauties; they loved it in the long blue days of August and in the shorter golden ones of October; and sometimes they thought they loved it best of all 51 in winter when it lay, silent and very, very wise, beneath the snow.

But it was to be just theirs no longer. The slow, steady tide of oncoming progress had refused to let it alone. In the spring while Virginia was still at St. Helen’s, Donald, home for the Easter recess, had written her of two homesteaders’ cabins on the mesa toward the southeast, of fences being built, and of sagebrush rooted up and burned.

It was even less theirs on this August morning, for the cabin of another homesteader had risen as though by magic in the southwest corner; ten acres of freshly-plowed land were being warmed by the sun and made ready for September wheat; and rods of stout barbed-wire tacked to strong, well-made fence-poles were guarding the future wheat against all intruders. The cabin, superior in plan and workmanship to that of the average homesteader, faced the west. It was built of new spruce logs, with well-filled chinks, and boasted two large windows and a porch, in addition to its necessary door. Moreover, an outside stone chimney betokened a fire-place—an untold luxury to a homesteader. A second wire 52 fence, set at some three rods from the cabin, inclosed it on all sides, and protected a small vegetable garden and a few fruit trees, which the owner had already planted.

It was a good quarter section upon which this ambitious homesteader had filed. On the south the mesa mounted into the higher hills, and this claim included timber; the land already plowed showed the soil to be black and fertile; and a creek, tumbling from the mountains and hurrying by just back of the cabin, promised plenty of water, even in a thirsty season. With a substantial new cabin, three cows and a horse, some hens and two collie dogs, a crop nearly in, fruit trees thriving and a garden growing like wild-fire—what more could one desire? Then add to riches already possessed, the surety of a barn and corral in September, and the probability of twelve pure-bred Shropshire sheep, and what homesteader would not sing for joy?

That was precisely what Jean MacDonald was doing this sunny August morning; for it was a girl—a strong, robust girl of twenty-one—who had taken up the southwestern claim on Virginia’s and 53 Donald’s mesa. She was bustling about her little cabin, setting things to rights, and singing for joy. Her voice, clear, strong, and sweet, rang out in one good old Scotch song after another—“Robin Adair,” “Loch Lomond,” and “Up with the Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee.” Sometimes she paused in her sweeping and dusting and hurried to the porch to look away across the mesa toward the north, and to speak to Robert Bruce, her horse, who, saddled and bridled, awaited her coming outside the gate.

“Not yet, Bobby,” she called, “not yet! There’s no sign of them at all, so be patient!”

Robert Bruce was quite willing to be patient. There was nourishment in plenty between the sagebrush clumps, and he wandered at will, his dragging reins giving sure proof that he would not stray too far.

Meanwhile, his mistress continued her singing and her work. She proudly dusted her new furniture in the room which served as chamber and parlor, rearranged her few books in their wall bookcase, swept up the ashes of her last evening’s fire, and brought wood to lay another. Then she turned her attention 54 to the room which was kitchen and dining-room in one. From a neat chest of drawers she drew her best and only white table-cloth and spread it on the table. The table was a little rickety in one leg, but several folds of newspaper acted as a splendid prop, and quite removed the difficulty. Her supply of china and silver was scarce, but it would do with washing between courses. Four chairs were all she had, but they were quite enough as her guests numbered four. An empty soap-box concealed beneath the table-cloth, and drawn out only when necessary, would do for her.