A Prairie-Schooner Princess

by Mary K. Maule

"Which shows that you don't know anything about it, my boy. In the first place, we can't spare the timber. There is none too much of it at best, and what there is we want to save for fuel and shelter. In the second place, there is no house that is better for the hard weather of the prairies than a sod house. It is warm in winter, cool in summer, and about the only thing that will withstand the Nebraska blizzards and cyclones. Just wait until it is finished and you'll see. Don't you remember what a nice home the Wards had? Now take your spades and cut the sod as I am doing. Keep your squares even, and the edges of the sod straight and true. When we have the sod taken off this field it will be in fine condition to plow up, and perhaps we can get in a small crop of sod-corn yet this year."

The boys seized their spades and set to work manfully, and before noon had a good-sized pile of "Nebraska marble" piled up ready for use. After dinner, when they all felt somewhat refreshed, Mr. Peniman began laying the sods, which were about twelve inches square and three inches thick. They were piled one upon another, leaving open spaces for the places where the doors and windows were to go. When the walls were up to about the thickness of a couple of sods above the frames, lintels were laid across and the sod laid over them, continuing the walls right through. The vacant space above the frames was necessary to provide for the settling of the walls. When the walls were high enough, about seven feet, the gable ends were built up a few inches or a foot higher, for, to prevent the earth from washing off the sods by heavy rains, the roof was made almost flat. As the sods were laid Mr. Peniman trimmed down the walls with a sharp spade, to keep them square and trim. He shaved the top surface off each layer with a sharp hoe, and filled in the chinks between the sods with a kind of a cement made from the prairie clay and sand from the bed of the river.

All this, however, was not accomplished in one day. The work of cutting and laying the sods was hard and heavy labor, and before the day was over both the boys and their father were glad to quit for the night and go to their supper.

Here they found a glad and cheerful surprise awaiting them.

The open space between the semicircle of cottonwood trees had been cleared, and already was beginning to assume a homelike aspect. Mrs. Peniman and the girls, with Paul and little David to help them, had put in as busy a day at the camp as the boys and their father had on the sod house. When they arrived they found the table set, looking extremely neat and festive with its cloth of bright red, its dishes and silver, with a vase of wild-flowers in the centre of the table, and a great dish of fried prairie-chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and hot biscuits steaming upon it, and Mrs. Peniman flying about in a big kitchen apron unpacking cooking utensils, getting out furniture, and making a cozy resting-place under the trees.

At their exclamations of delight she laughed happily.

"There's no use waiting until the house is finished before we begin to live," she greeted them cheerily; "we're all tired of hardships, and I, for one, want some kind of comforts around me again. Wait till you come home to-morrow night, you'll see what we have done then, won't they, girls?"

Ruth and Nina, busy as bees getting the supper on the table, answered with gleeful and mysterious nods. The place already seemed so pleasant and inviting that they were loath to go to bed when the time came, but pioneer boys and girls, as well as pioneer men and women, soon found out that it was not what they wanted to do, but what they had to do that was to be considered.

With grim determination Mr. Peniman and the boys returned to the building of the sod house the next morning. They all realized that while gypsying under the trees might be very delightful now, stormy weather would materially change its aspect, and that in the unprotected wilderness in which they were living the sooner they were sheltered behind thick walls and barred doors at night the greater would be their safety.

It was hard, slow work, and many days passed, while the piles of sod grew steadily and the walls went up higher and higher. The boys worked manfully, and Mr. Peniman, like the wise father he was, did not work them too hard or too long, but often sent them off for a walk or a swim, sometimes urging them to go and catch a mess of fish for dinner, sometimes pretending that he was hungry for meat and sending them off into the woods or out on the prairies to hunt for game. They found any number of wild turkeys about the place, some quail, and plenty of prairie-chickens, and once in a while a deer or an antelope was killed, although neither of the boys liked to shoot the pretty, graceful creatures, that seemed utterly without fear, and often came up quite close about their camp.