Their wedding tour was in a prairie schooner from Atchison to the semi-fertile region which borders on the desert belt which stretches through western Nebraska and Kansas to New Mexico. Here they made their first home. Life in that particular section must be a pastoral rather than an agricultural one: her husband accordingly devoted himself almost entirely to the raising of cattle.
We hardly need say, that next to the hunter, the cattle-herder approximates most nearly to savage life; his wife must accordingly find her position under such circumstances, a peculiarly trying one. The house in which Mrs. B——— and her husband lived was a simple hut constructed by digging away the side of a hill which formed the earthen rear and side walls of their dwelling, the top and front being of logs also covered with earth. Their kitchen, sleeping-room, dining-room, and parlor were represented by a single apartment Three men with their wives were their companions in the enterprise, and all lived in similar houses.
As most of the men's time was occupied in looking after their herds and preventing them from wandering too far or from being stamped and stolen by thievish savages, a large share of the other out-door labors fell upon the women. Cheerfully accepting these burdens Mrs. B——— and her three female companions tilled the small patches of corn and potatoes which with pickled beef formed their only food. Much of the time they were left entirely alone and were alarmed as well as annoyed by frequent visits from Indians, who, however, abstained from violence, contenting themselves with eating what was given them and pilfering whatever stray articles they could find.
Three years were passed by the little colony in this wild pastoral life. Though the heats of summer and the sudden storms of wind in winter, were severe, disease was never added to their list of ordinary discomforts and privations. Two of the men twice a year drove their cattle two hundred and fifty miles to the nearest railway station, but none of the women accompanied them on these trips, which were always looked forward to by their husbands as a relief from the monotony of their life as herders.
The third summer after their arrival was extremely sultry, and the drought so common in that region, promised to be more than usually severe. The crops were rapidly being consumed by four weeks of continuous hot, dry weather, when one day late in July, the four housewives, who were sitting together in the cabin of Mrs. B———, observed a sudden darkening of the western sky, and felt sharp eddying gusts of wind which blew fitfully from the southwest. A succession of small whirlwinds carried aloft the sand in front of their houses, which were ranged not far apart on the hillside.
These phenomena, accompanied with various other atmospheric commotions, lasted for half an hour, and ceased to attract their attention. The wind, however, continued to increase, and the ears of the four matrons anon caught the sound of a dull, steady roar, which rose above the fitful howling of the blast. They ran to the door and saw a dark cloud shaped like a monstrous funnel moving swiftly towards them from the west. The point of this funnel was scarcely more than one hundred feet from the earth, and swayed like the car of a balloon descending from a great height.
Dismayed by this extraordinary spectacle they hastened in doors. Scarcely had they gained shelter when their ears were saluted by a sound louder than the broadside of a double decker, and the next moment the roof of the house was torn away with tremendous force and almost at the same instant a flood of water twenty feet deep swept the four women with the débris of the house down the hillside and whirled them away over the plain.
Three of the women, including Mrs. B———, severely bruised and half drowned, emerged from the torrent when it spread out and spent itself upon the level; the fourth stunned by a blow from one of the house-logs, and suffocated by the rush of the waters, could not be resuscitated. The water-spout, for such was the agent of the destruction which had been wrought, had fallen on the hillside and swept away two of the other houses besides that of Mrs. B———, and for ten days, while new dwellings could be constructed and the furniture and other articles carried away could be recovered, the three houseless families were quartered partly in the remaining house, and the rest encamped under the open sky, where they suffered additional discomfort from the thunder storms in the night, which followed the water-spout.
The next summer they were visited by another disaster in the shape of grasshoppers. Often had these terrible pests of the settlers in that and the adjacent regions, flown in immense clouds over their heads during former seasons, winging their way to the richer country which lay to the east, but never before had they been attracted to the scanty patches of corn and potatoes which skirted the hovels where the herders dwelt. But early in July of that year a swarm settled down almost ancle deep on the little strip of ploughed land, and within the space between the rising and the setting of the sun, every vestige of greenness had disappeared as if burned with fire.
After a short consultation that evening, the whole party determined to take time by the forelock, and abandoning their cabins remove with their household goods and herds of cattle before the insect plunderers had prepared the way for a famine which they were certain to do before many days. Hastily loading their carts with their household goods and stores, and collecting their cattle, five hundred in number, they set out for the Missouri River, three hundred miles distant.