A Prairie-Schooner Princess

by Mary K. Maule

Within a short time after the opening of the school a general feeling arose in the settlement that the Sabbath should be observed, and at the general request of the settlers Joshua Peniman consented to act as leader, holding services every Sunday in the sod schoolhouse. As the settlers were of all creeds and denominations the services were necessarily non-sectarian. The services were very simple, consisting of the reading of the Bible, prayers by members of the congregation, responsive reading from the Psalms, and hymns led by the clear, sweet voice of Hannah Peniman.

In the fall of that year another great boon came to the pioneers. A stage-coach line was established, the terminal of which was the Big Sandy station on the Little Blue. This line carried mail and passengers, thus doing away with the long, lonely, dangerous ride across the prairies to get mail, and bringing a postoffice, with mail and newspapers within about six miles of the Peniman homestead. After that it was possible to get papers not more than a day or two old, and to send and receive letters without the perilous journey hitherto necessary.

Joshua Peniman had proved up on his claim, and was holding fast to the claims he had staked out next his own for Joe and Lige, with two other 160-acre tracts which he hoped to hold for Ruth and Nina as soon as they should be old enough to take them. The harvest of that year was rich and plentiful, and the winter of 1858-9 saw the family comfortably established in a home that was beginning to have the appearance of a real farm, with hay, grain and corn stored in their granaries, a cow-house and chicken-house added to the buildings, and many substantial improvements added to their dwelling.

During the winter whenever Joe could snatch time from his other duties he and Herbert James trapped beaver, mink, and otter in the river. In Beaver Creek, where a beautiful little town was springing up, they got many fine beavers, the skins of which sold for from two to three dollars a pound, many of the beavers weighing from two to three pounds apiece. With the money he made by the sale of the skins he bought law books, adding one at a time to his precious collection, and studying them so industriously that when he went to Omaha to return the books he had borrowed from Judge North he rendered to the lawyer so good an account of his reading that the Judge called him a prodigy.

"You are the kind of a boy I like," he said genially, patting Joe on the shoulder. "I'd like to take you into my office to study law. You are highly gifted, and I believe will make a great success of the profession."

Joe glowed under his praise. Nothing would have given him greater happiness than to enter Judge North's fine offices as a student. It was a great temptation. But there was much work to be done at home, his father was no longer strong, and his work much interrupted by his teaching and ministerial duties, and much of the responsibility of the farm work had fallen upon him and Lige, who was now a tall, handsome, well-set-up lad of seventeen, while Joe had grown to the full stature of a man, and was approaching his nineteenth birthday.

"I can't come into your office now, Judge North," he answered regretfully, "but I would like to come and talk with you whenever I can, and have you advise and help me. I want to be a lawyer, and even though I cannot be spared from home now I can go on preparing myself until the younger boys get old enough to take my place on the farm."

"Good lad," said Judge North; "I like you none the less for your faithfulness to your duty."

As he smiled at him again that strange sense of familiarity came over the boy. Where had he seen that man before? Who was it of whom he so reminded him?

There was something about him that was not like a stranger, that carried a subtle sense of warmth, affection, to his heart. In the gleam of his deep blue eyes there came and went an expression that eluded him like an evanescent perfume. For some reason that he could not account for to himself the lad's heart warmed to him strangely. In the long, friendly talk that followed Joe told him of his ambitions, and of how that ambition had been roused in his breast by hearing a lawyer, a man by the name of Lincoln, make a Fourth of July speech in Illinois.