
On the way home
by
Laura Ingalls Wilder

In 1894, Laura
Ingalls Wilder, her husband, Almanzo, and their
daughter, Rose, packed their belongings into their
covered wagon and set out on a journey from De
Smet, South Dakota, to Mansfield,
Missouri. They heard that the soil there was rich and the
crops were bountiful--it was even called "the Land of the
Big Red Apple." With hopes of beginning a new
life, the Wilders made their way to the Ozarks of
Missouri. During their journey, Laura kept a
detailed diary of events: the cities they passed
through, the travelers they encountered on the way, the
changing countryside, and the trials of an often
difficult voyage. Laura's words, preserved in
this book, reveal her inner thoughts as she traveled with
her family in search of a new home in
Mansfield, where Rose would spend her
childhood, where Laura would write her Little
House books, and where she and Almanzo would remain
all the rest of their happy days together. Harper
Collins Publishers THE LITTLE HOUSE
BOOKS by Laura Ingalls Wilder
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS
LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE
FARMER Boy
ON THE BANKS OF PLUM CREEK
BY THE SHORES OF SILVER LAKE
THE LONG WINTER 
LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE
THESE HAPPY GOLDEN YEARS
THE FIRST FOUR YEARS
ON THE WAY HOME
WEST FROM HOME

Laura and Almanzo shortly after
their marriage in De Smet, Dakota
Territory. On the Way Home The Diary of a
Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield,
Missouri, in 1894 BY LAURA INGALLS
WILDER WITH A SETTING BY ROSE WILDER
LANE Harper Collins Publishers Copyright
[*copygg'1962 by Roger Lea MacBride
Copyright renewed 1990 by Roger Lea
MacBride All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews. Manufactured in the
United Kingdom by HarperCollins Publishers
Ltd. For information address HarperCol bar ins
Children's Books, a division of HarperCollins
Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New
York, NY 10022. Library of Congress
Catalog Number
ISBN 0-06-026489-6 ISBN
0-jf-jbfdij-It (lib. bdg.) ISBN
0-06-440080-8 (pbk.) First Harper Trophy
edition, 1976.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS WITH CAPTIONS BY ROSE WILDER LANE
LAURA AND ALMANZO iiROSE WILDER,
1889 viROSE WILDER, 1894 4LAURA
AND ALMANZO WILDER AT THE TIME OF
T4ES HA-T'T'ALLY GOIDN YARS 7
LAURA AND ALMANZO WILDER AT THE
TIMEOF THEIR TRIP TO MANSFIELD,
MISSOURI 9LAURA'S SEWING BOX
12THE INGALLS HOUSE 16DE SMET,
SOUTH DAKOTA 18A MAP OF THE
JOURNEY 32THE PLATTE RIVER
BRIDGE, SCHUYLEREANEBRASKA 44--
45MARYSVILLE, KANSAS
52-53TOPEKA, KANSAS 60--61FORT
SCOTT, KANSAS 68-69MANSFIELD,
MISSOURI 82-83LAURA'S LAP DESK
92THE WILDER FARM, MANSFIELD,
MISSOURIEACIRCA 1910 101ALMANZO IN
THE WILDER BUGGY 102LAURA STANDING
IN THE RAVINE 102ALMANZO AT A
NEIGHBOR'S CABIN 105PART OF THE
WILDER FARM IN MANSFIELDTD
114--115ROSE AND HER DONKEY,
SPOOKENDYKE 116-117THE WILDERS"
HOME IN MANSFIELD TODAY 119 I was 2
years 4 months old when this picture was taken in
April 1889. I remember the picture-taking
well, was pressed by the photographer's stupid
pretense that there was a little bird in the camera. The
photographer also kept putting my right hand on
top of the left, and I kept changing them back because
I wanted my carnelian ring to show. And in the end
I won out. R.w.l.

 For seven years there had
been too little rain. The prairies were dust. Day
after day, summer after summer, the scorching winds
blew the dust and the sun was brassy in a yellow
sky. Crop after crop failed. Again and again the
barren land must be mortgaged, for taxes and food and
next year's seed. The agony of hope ended when
there was no harvest and no more credit, no money to pay
interest and taxes; the banker took the land. Then the
bank failed. In the seventh year a mysterious
catastrophe was worldwide. All banks failed.
From coast to coast the factories shut down, and
business ceased. This was a Panic. It was not a
depression. The year was 1893, when no one had
heard of depressions. Everyone knew about
Panics; there had been Panics in 1797,
1820, 1835, 1857, 1873. A Panic was
nothing new to Grandpa, he had seen them before; this one
was no worse than usual, he said, and nothing like as
bad as the wartime. Now we were all safe in our
beds, nobody was rampaging but Coxey's armies.
All the way from California Coxey's Armies of
Unemployed were seizing the railroad trains,
jam-packing the cars and running them full speed,
open throttle, hell-for-leather toward Washington.
They came roaring into the towns, yelling "Justice for
the Working Man!" and stopped and swarmed out, demanding
plenty to eat and three days' rations to take with them,
or they'd burn the town. People gave them everything to
get rid of them. In all the cities Federal
troops were guarding the Government's buildings. I
was seven years old and in the Second Reader at
school but I had read the Third Reader and the
Fourth, and Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's
Travels. The Chicago Inter- Ocean came every
week and after the grownups had read it, I did. I
did not understand all of it, but I read it. It said that
east of the Miss-Issippi there were no trains on the
railroad tracks. The dispatchers had dispatched every
train to the faraway East to keep them safe from
Coxey's Armies. So now the Armies were
disbanded and walking on foot toward Washington, robbing
and raiding and stealing and begging for food as they went.
For a long time I had been living with Grandpa and
Grandma and the aunts in De Smet because nobody
knew what would become of my father and mother. Only
God knew. They had diff-theer-eeah; a hard word
and dreadful. I did not know what it was exactly,
only that it was big and black and it meant that I
might never see my father and mother again. Then my father,
man-like, would not listen to reason and stay in bed.
Grandma almost scolded about that, to the aunts. Bound and
determined to get out and take care of the stock, he
was. And for working too hard too Rose (4th from
left) in her churct just before leaving De Smet in
18! ON THE WAY HOME soon, he was
"stricken." Now he would be bed-ridden all his days,
and what would Laura do? With me on her hands, besides.
But when I saw my father again he was walking, slowly.
He limped through the rest of his ninety years and was
never as strong as he had been. We lived then in our
own house in De Smet, away from Main Street,
where only a footpath went through the short brown
grasses. It was a big rented house and empty.
Upstairs and down it was dark and full of stealthy little
sounds at night, but then the lamp was lighted in
the kitchen, where we lived. Our cookstove and table
and chairs were there; the bed was in an empty room and
at bedtime my trundle bed was brought into the warmth from
the cookstove. We were camping, my mother said;
wasn't it fun? I knew she wanted me to say
yes, so I did. To me, everything was simply what
it was. I was going to school while my father and mother
worked. Reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic,
penmanship filled days almost unbearably happy with
achievements satisfying Miss Barrows's strict
standards. "Procrastination is the thief of time," I
wrote twenty times in my penmanship book, without
error or blot; and "Evil communications corrupt
good manners," and "Sweet are the uses of
adversity," every that and do exactly twice as tall as
a vowel and every Like exactly three times as tall; every
that crossed; every i dotted. All the way home down
the long board walk in late afternoons we diligent
scholars warmly remembered our adored Miss
Barrows's grave, "Well done," and often we
sang a rollicking song. It was the song of those
days, heard more often than Ta-ra-ra
boom-de-ay. My aunt Grace, a jolly big
girl, often sang it, sometimes my mother did, and
nearly all the time you could hear some man or
boy whistling it. O Dakota land, sweet
Dakota land, As on thy burning soil I stand And
look away across the plains I wonder why it never
rains, Till Gabriel blows his trumpet sound
And says the rain has gone around. We don't
live here, we only stay "Cause we're too
poor to get away. Laura (top) and Almanzo
(bottom) at the time of These Happy Golden
Years. My mother did not have to go out to work; she was
married, my father was the provider. He got a day's
work here and there; he could drive a team, he could
carpenter, or paint, or spell a storekeeper at
dinner-time, and once he was on a jury, downtown.
My mother and I slept at Grandma's then, every
night; the jury was kept under lock and key and my
father could not come home. But he got his keep and two
dollars every day for five straight weeks and he
brought back all that money. My mother worked to save.
She sewed at the dressmaker's from six o'clock to six
o'clock every day but Sunday and then came home to get
supper. I had peeled the potatoes thin and set the
table. I was not allowed to touch the stove. One day my
mother made sixty good firm buttonholes in one
hour, sixty minutes; nobody else could work so
well, so fast. And every day, six days a
week, she earned a dollar. We were going to The Land
of the Big Red Apple when we had enough money.
Someone named Mr. Sherwin had gone there and seen it,
so the pictures that he sent back were true;
pictures of huge red apples and of rows of
Iaura (top) and Almanzo (bottom) at the time
to Mansfield, Missouri. of their trip much
smaller trees, and of buildings confusingly named
Mansfield. They were not a man's field, and the
print under them said they were The Gem City of the
Ozarks. Around and under these pictures on
beautifully shiny paper I read that The Gem City
of the Ozarks was in The Land of the Big Red Apple
in Missouri. Now I knew three Miss
States: Miss-issippi, Miss-consin, and
Missouri. Paul said, scornfully, that it
wasn't Miss-consin, it was Wis-consin, but Wis
didn't make sense to me. Paul and George
Cooley were coming with us to The Land of the Big Red
Apple. Paul was oldest, George was next,
I was only the youngest but they had to let me boss because
I was a girl. We had always known each other. Their
father had two big teams and two big covered
wagons, and Paul would be allowed to drive one of
them; he said his father said he could. I did not
want to believe this but I knew that Paul would never
lie. He was a big boy, too, going on ten
years old. My mother had saved one hundred
dollars to take to The Land of the Big Red Apple.
All those dollars were one piece of paper, named
"a hundred dollar bill." She hid it in her
writing desk, a fascinating wooden box which my father
had made and polished so shiny-smooth that stroking it was
rapture. It opened on little brass hinges to lie
spread flat and be a slanting green felt
surface to write on. At the top was a darling
wooden tray to hold my mother's pearl-handled pen, and
beside this was an inkwell. And the green felt was on a
lid that lifted up on tinier hinges to reveal the
place for writing paper, underneath it. I was allowed
to see and touch the desk only when my mother opened it.
The hundred dollar bill was a secret. My mother
locked it in the desk. Mr. and Mrs. Cooley
knew, perhaps Paul and George did, but we must not
talk about it. I must never, never, speak one word about
that hundred dollar bill, not to anyone. Never, no
matter what happened. In the shade of the big empty
house my father painted our covered wagon. It was
really better than a covered wagon; it had been a
two-seated hack though now it had only the A
sewing box made of cigar boxes by Almanzo for a
first anniversary gift to Laura. It came with us in
the hack to Mansfield. R.w.l.
front seat. My father painted it shiny black.
He made a flat top for it, of black
oilcloth, and put straight curtains of the black
oilcloth on both sides and the back. Each
curtain would roll up when he pulled a rope.
Behind the seat he fitted the bedsprings and my mother
made up the bed on them. At night she would make
my bed on the floor in front of the seat. She
baked two dozen hardtacks for the journey. They were
as large as a plate, flat and hard. Being so hard
and dry, they would not spoil as bread would. It was a
hard tack to gnaw, but it tasted almost like a cracker.
We were going to make haste, driving every day to reach The
Land of the Big Red Apple and get settled before
winter. We could not stop to look for work, but we would
need more food on the way, so my father bought a box of
asbestos fire mats to trade, or to sell for ten
cents apiece. Fire mats were a new thing,
unheard-of. They looked like round pieces of
gray-white pasteboard edged with a narrow strip of
tin. Nobody could believe that they would not burn,
till my father proved it. He would urge
doubters to make a hot fire, hotter and hotter,
then he laid one of those mats right into the flames.
It would glow red and the watchers would jeer, but that mat
came out unharmed. Put one of those fire mats under
a pot, my father would say, and the pot could boil bone-
dry, not a potato in it would so much as scorch. Every
woman alive needed one of those mats. Everything that
we were taking all the way was packed under the bedsprings
first. Next, the things that we would be using: the table and
chairs with folding legs and the sheet-iron campstove
that my father had made; the hammock that blind Aunt
Mary had netted and given to us as a parting present;
the writing desk, well wrapped; plates, cups,
frying pan, coffee pot, wash basin, water
pail, picket ropes and pegs; the hardtack in
its box. My father tied down the back curtain.
Outside it he fastened the hencoop while the hens
fluttered and squawked inside the wire netting. But
they would soon be used to traveling. In the dawn
next morning we said goodby to Grandpa and Grandma,
to the aunts Mary and Carrie and Grace, who all
stood around to watch us go, though Aunt Mary's
beautiful blue eyes could not see us. The mares were
hitched to the hack; their colts, Little Pet and
Prince, would follow them. The Cooleys"
covered wagons had gone ahead, and Paul was
driving the second one. I climbed up over our
wagon's wheel and onto the seat by myself. My mother
sat beside me; beside her my father tightened the lines;
everyone said, "Goodby, goodby!" "Don't forget to
write. I won't, I will, you be sure to.
Goodby!" and we drove away. Away from
Grandma's house with its rag- carpets and
rocking-chair, the hymn books on the organ, my
very own footstool; away from the chalky schoolroom
where angelic Miss Barrows taught Kindergarten,
Primer, First and Second Readers; away from the
summer sidewalks where grasshoppers hopped in the
dry grass and the silver-lined poplar leaves
rattled overhead; away from the gaunt gray empty
house, and from Mrs. Sherwood and her sister who
sometimes on sweltering afternoons asked me to fetch ten
cents' worth Pa and Ma Ingalls' house in De
Smet. This pictu sent to us in Mansfield some
years after we left Dak R.p of ice cream from the
far-away ice cream parlor, and shared it with me;
away from De Smet to The Land of the Big Red
Apple. My mother made daily notes of our
journey in a little 5-cent Memorandum book,
writing with pencil on both sides of the
pages, of course. Nobody then wasted paper. This
is her record. R.w.l. Calumet Avenue,
De Smet, South Dakota, around 1900.
II. July 17, 1894 So tarted at
8:40. Three miles out, Russian thistles.
Harvesters in poor wheat. Crossed the line into
Miner County at 2 o'clock. Camped by a spring that
cannot be pumped, but there is feed for the horses. Grain
about 8 inches high, will go about 1X bushels to the
acre. Hot wind. July 18 Farmers mowing the
grain for hay. At 11:30 we left Howard one
mile east. Farm work well along here. Dragging for
next year's crop is all done, without troubling
to take this year's grain off. Worst crops we have
seen yet. No grass. Standing grain 3 inches
high, burned brown and dead. Crossed the
Northwestern R.r. tracks at 2:25.
Crossed the line into McCook County at 5
o'clock, drove 2Vz miles and camped. We had
a little dust storm in the afternoon and drew the wagons up
close together for we could not see what was coming. The wind
changed from a hot south wind to a cold north wind,
both hard. Though the thermometer stood at 102dg
in the wagon. July 19 It rained in the night but
did not blow. Nothing in the wagons got wet
except one horse blanket. We had fried
chicken for breakfast and got a late start at
9:15. Weather is cool and pleasant, wind in the
north and dust laid by the rain. Groves are thick
and look so nice but farmers are mowing their grain for
hay. We found a good camping place down in a
ravine, out of the wind and nearly out of sight. Cooked
our supper and ate it. As we were washing the dishes a
man came and said if the man that owned the place saw
us he would make us trouble, and as he lived just over the
hill we thought we would move across the road and be
all right there. So we hitched up and drove across.
It was a very nice camping place. In the evening two
men came up to talk. The thermometer stood at
92dg. Mrs. Cooley and I went to a house
to buy milk. It was swarming with children and pigs; they
looked a good deal alike. July 20 Started at
1:10. One of the Cooleys' horses cut his leg
a little in a barb wire fence. We left
Bridgewater half a mile to the east. Mr.
Cooley drove into the town but we went on just south
of it with the rest of the teams, and we came to the first
piece of oats worth cutting that we have seen since
we left De Smet, and they are not very good. We
watered the teams at a public well with
windmill, by the side of the road. The water is good
all through McCook County. Wells arc 120
feet deep on the average and nearly every well has
a windmill. This is a good county. All through
McCook, this year is the first crop failure in
16 years, There are lots of groves of trees,
and nice houses, big corncribs, many hogs; but
we have not seen many cattle though there is a creamery
in Bridgewater. The people say the corn crop is very
poor but it is the best we have ever seen at this time of
year. Crossed the line into Hutchinson County at
10. Here they are mowing buffalo grass for hay.
We passed a great pile of stones that had been
cleared off the land. Saw some good wheat. Mr.
Cooley overtook us at 12 o'clock when we came
to a Russian settlement. He had not been able to
get grain or any feed in Bridgewater though there
are three mills in the town. The Russian
settlement--adobe houses, barns and chicken
houses, and piles of peat to burn. The houses are
back from the road and most of them are built long, the
house in one end and the barn in the other. We stopped
at one house for water. There was an idiot there, a
full grown man, an awful sight. We can see
timber along the Jim River. It is only
six miles away on our right hand, but 18 miles
ahead of us. This is nice country but as one
Russian said, "Nix good this year, nix good last
year." We carried water in the wagons and camped
without water, in a very good place except for that
lack. Thermometer at 100dgin the wagon. The
road has been almost perfectly level for two
days, only now and then a small ravine, no
hills. Land here is priced from $2,500. to
$3,000. a quarter section [160 acres].
July 21 Thought we would get an early start but
everything went wrong, of course. We are out of bread
so baked biscuit, and we made gravy with the chicken
we cooked last night, poured it over the biscuits
and called it chicken pie. When we were hitching up
we let go of old Pet and she started off. Manly
had the halter off Little Pet so she could not go after her
mother. I said Whoa and went toward her and as soon as
she saw I was coming she ran. I could not catch her.
Mr. Cooley chased her on his pony and they were far
away before he could head her. She was going to
Missouri without waiting for us. We finally got
started at 8:20. *Almanzo Wilder We are
going gradually down toward the river. It is only
5 miles southwest of us and there is timber
thick along its bank. Harvesting and stacking is
done here, and plowing begun. At 10:30 the bluffs
across the Jim River are in sight. At 12 we
crossed the line into Yankton County and now at
2:15 we are on the Jim River flats. And they
are flat as a floor. Some grain fields are on
them, and meadows, and beside the road are two
natural-grown trees, the first we have seen, and little
scrubs they are, too. 160 acres of corn are
in sight on one side of the road, and 80 on the
other, at 4 P.m. We have camped on the James
River, down among the trees by a water mill. It
is a very pleasant place. Only we are not far from
a family or settlement of Russians. They
all seem to be one family but Manly said he
counted 36 children all the same size and Mr.
Cooley says there are 50 all under 15 years
old. They come down to our camp and stand around and stare
at us. The man who seems to be the head of the
tribe, or commune or whatever it is, said they
came here five years ago and now they own 17
quarter sections. They have herds of cattle, good
horses, and 300 geese. Just at dusk a boy
came with a great big fish and wanted to know if we would
pay for it. The men were gone and Emma
Cooley and I did not know what it was worth. The
boy said we might have it for a dime but Emma and I
could not scrape up a dime between us. We were about to
give up, when the men came and bought the fish. In a
few minutes the boy came back with two smaller
ones and wanted 15 cents for them but finally took
ten. We are going to sleep tonight to the sound of running
water. Manly killed a snake this eve.
Sunday, July 22 We all took a bath this
morning. Mr. and Mrs. Cooley and the children went
into the river. Paul and George had a rope around
them and tried to swim. Rose went out with Mrs.
Cooley, she had a rope around her and I held
on to its end. She went out waist deep and paddled
around, and sat down up to her chin. The Russians have
hung around us all day, children and grown folks both.
They cannot talk and they understand only a little. They are
very kind, they brought milk and a great pan of
biscuits, and gave them to us, showing us that they were
presents. The biscuits are light and very good. We
got to feel a little acquainted with the folks, told
them all our names and asked theirs and let them swing in
the hammock and sit in the chairs. They are very
curious and want to examine everything, talking about it
to each other. They wanted us to come to their
houses, so Manly and I went. They showed us the
geese and we watched the milkmaids milk. They
look like the pictures of German and Russian
milkmaids and peasants. Their yellow hair is
combed smooth down each side of their faces and
hangs in long braids behind and they wear handkerchiefs
over their heads. They are all dressed alike.
There are no sleeves in the women's long blue
calico dresses but under them they wear white shirts
with long white sleeves. The men have whiskered cheeks
and long golden beards. They wear blue blouses that
hang down long, to their knees almost, with belts around
their waists. They were all very polite and smiling,
seeming to try to say they were glad we came. They
gave us another big pail of the fresh warm milk and
Manly gave them a fire mat. One man seemed
quite Americanized, Manly said to him slowly that the
mat will not burn and he said that he understood. He
may not believe it but if he tries it he will find
out. When we were leaving a woman opened the front of
her dress and took out a baking of cold biscuits
from right against her bare skin and gave them to me. The
man told me to put them in my shirt, but I
carried them in Manly's clean handkerchief instead.
The man said it was hard for people to cook when
traveling. They are very kind people. A pity to waste the
biscuits but we could not eat them. The Russians
have a great huge dog. He was higher than my belt
as we stood together and his great head looked like a
wolf's, only larger. His ears were trimmed to make
them like a wolf's ears and he was a bright brown all
over. He was very loving, he rubbed against Rose and
me and we put our arms around his big neck. There was
a little puppy just like him and Manly tried to buy it but
they would not sell. They have splendid barns and great
corn cribs and a windmill. Their land runs along
the river. Each man works his own land but all of them
together own all the stock in common. We have spent a
most pleasant Sunday and we are rested. Paul
climbed onto Little Pet's back and the colt did
not care, he was gentle. We started at 8. Hated
to leave our camping place, it seems quite like home.
We crossed the James River and in 20 minutes
we reached the top of the bluffs on the other side.
We all stopped and looked back at the scene and
I wished for an artist's hand or a poet's brain
or even to be able to tell in good plain prose how
beautiful it was. If I had been the Indians
I would have scalped more white folks before I ever would
have left it. We could see the river winding
down the valley, the water gleaming through the trees that
grow on the bank. Beyond it the bluffs rose high and
bare, browned and burned, above the lovely green of
trees and grass and the shining water. On this side the
bluffs again were gigantic brown waves tumbled and
tossed about. On this side of the James we have
passed fields of corn 8 feet high. There are
cottonwood hedges along the road, the trees
10 inches through and 35 or 40 feet tall. But it
all seems burned and bare after our camping grounds
by the river. 10 o'clock. It is 101dgin the shade
in the wagon, and hardly a breath of air. At 11
o'clock, 9 miles from Yankton, we stopped at a
windmill to water the horses. The man who owned the
house told us he paid $5,000. for three
80's, without a building. Not far from Yankton
we crossed a bone- dry creek bed with the most
desolate barren bluffs on each side. Covered
with stones and the grass dry and brown, they looked like
great drifts of sand that somehow had stopped drifting.
We reached Yankton at 4 o'clock. Drove by the
insane asylum. The buildings look nice and they
stand in the middle of a large farm of acres and acres
of corn and potatoes. Manly wanted to stop and go
through the asylum but I could not bear to, so we
did not. We passed by the Yankton College, the
buildings are very nice. I am greatly disappointed
in Yankton, it is a stick in the mud. We
drove all over the town to find a little feed for the
teams, went to the mill and the elevator and the feed
stores, and finally found a couple of sacks of ground
feed but not a bit of flax in the whole town. There were
no green vegetables, nor any figs nor dates
in the grocery stores. It would be a blessing to
Yankton if Carpenter would move down here, or
if folks in Yankton would send to De Smet for
what they need. They have a number of elevators,
2 or 3 mills, and 6 feed stores, but we
carried the most of the feed away in two sacks. I
got my revolver fixed, then we had to spend so much
time hunting for feed all over town that Mr.
Cooley got to the ferry first. Mrs. Cooley and
Paul crossed the river, then *Flaxseed was
indispensable first aid to hurts and minor ills. A
boiling-hot flaxseed poultice holds hotter
heat longer than a bread-and-milk one, and usually it
works better than layers of cold
vinegar-and-brown-paper. R.w.l. the ferry came
back and took Mr. Cooley over. It was leaving
just as we drove down to the landing at 6 o'clock and
while we were waiting for it to come back a bad-looking
storm came up. It was not rain, only wind and
dust. We had to face the river to keep the wagon's
back to the wind so that it would not be blown over. The
wind lifted the hind wheels twice before Manly could
get them roped down. The ferryman did not like to try
to cross the river in the storm. He waited on the
other side until the blow was over, and we were
afraid he would not cross again that night. But he
did.* Where we crossed the Missouri it is one
mile wide, very nasty and muddy. I do not wonder that
it is called The Big Muddy, and since I
*When the rear wheels lifted as if the wagon were
going end over end into the river, my father jumped out,
leaving the reins in my mother's hands. While she held
and gentled the nervous horses, I craned around the
edge of the side-curtain to see what my father was doing.
He was driving a picket-pin into the ground, and tying
a wheel to it with the picket rope. Behind us was a
covered wagon, behind it another, and another. As far
as I could see, covered wagons stood one beyond
another in a long, long line. Behind them and over them,
high over half the sky, a yellow wave of dust was
curling and coming. My mother said to me, "That's your last
sight of Dakota." R.w.l. A Map of the
650-mile Journey have seen the dust blowing into it
I do not think it strange that it is muddy. The
Missouri is nothing like as beautiful as the Jim.
Pet made no fuss at all at the ferry, but
drove onto it nicely, stood as quiet as could
be, and calmly drove off it. Her colt Little
Pet ran onto it loose and stood beside her as still as
a mouse. About a mile from the river we camped in
woods. Temperature 98dg. July 24
Mr. Cooley got up early and went fishing but
did not get a bite. We were all tired from being up
so late last night, and did not get started until
9 o'clock. We had taken the wrong road, so we had
to go back to the river and start again on the right one. For a
little way we followed the river and could see down it,
four or five miles across the water. It was a grand
sight, though the scenery on the banks is nothing.
What is it about water that always affects a person?
I never see a great river or lake but I think
how I would like to see a world made and watch it through
all its changes. The banks of the Missouri are
crumbling all the time and falling into the water. In one
place the road had fallen in. There on the river
flats before we reached the bluffs we saw 24 hay
stacks at one time, and mowing had only begun.
Four mowing machines were working. Hay is $9. a
ton in Yankton. Well, we have come to the bluffs.
On the side next the river they look as if they
had been cut straight down with a knife. Grass
has not grown on the face. All along the foot of
it trees are growing, sheltered from the south wind.
Plums, grapes, black currants and sweet
clover grow wild on the bottom land. Sweet
clover 8 feet high. And the first oak trees we have
seen. We have been going over the bluffs, the most
desolate bare hills I ever saw, without houses
or fields or trees and hardly any grass.
Manly said he would just as soon own the whole of
Nebraska as not, if it were fenced. Judging from all
he has ever seen of the state it might do for pasture
if he did not keep much stock. So far
Nebraska reminds me of Lydia Locket's
pocket, nothing in it, nothing on it, only the binding
round it. We meet covered wagons going north.
Manly talked to a couple of men travelin from
Kansas to South Dakota. They said there is nothing
in Kansas. The hens are laying yet.
Temperature 110dg. We spent the night
among the Nebraska hills, down in a hollow where
they shut us in, and not a house in sight. This
morning I like to look at the hills, there is something
fascinating in their loneliness. We started at
7:35. It is a nice cool morn. Went through
Hartington at 8:30. It is a nice town, I
like it much better than Yankton though it is
smaller. Passed through Coleridge at 12:30, not
much of a place. The wind is blowing and the dust flying
till we can hardly see. Talk about hard roads
in Dakota, I never saw hard roads till now.
The more I see of Nebraska the less I like it.
We have been climbing over bluffs all day. Just
south of Coleridge there are 22 families that are
going to start for Missouri in about 6 weeks, though this
country is very thinly settled. One man said he
has lived here for 6 years and has not seen a good
crop yet. We camped east of the town of Beldon
one mile, but within sight of it, by a creek. Not so
much as a bush to be seen. Manly did the chores so
Mr. Cooley could go fishing. He caught 11
fish. Temperature 109dg. The man living
near where we camped is working for a man in Sioux
City who owns 3,000 acres of land here, in a
body. 500 acres of it are in pasture and 250
in meadow. July 26 Mr. Cooley went fishing
again this morning and caught 2. We were on the
road at 8:40. There has been plenty of rain
right here and crops are good, corn, wheat and oats.
But three miles west they have nothing. Land is $25
an acre here. Met a load of emigrants at
noon. They are going north. Thermometer
110dgin shade. This afternoon we met a family of
emigrants, man, woman and two children. They had
been to Missouri and are coming back. They started from
Moody County, Dakota, the 8th of May and
went to Taney County, Missouri. They stayed
only 10 days and started back, have been on the
road ever since. They would not live in Missouri
if you gave them the whole of it. "Why, hardly any
of the houses have windows in them, just holes, and lots of
the women have never seen a railroad train nor an
organ," and the land is awful stony. They think of
stopping in Cedar County, Nebraska. Crops are
poor since noon, country about as dry as
Dakota. Went through Winside about 4 o'clock.
Roads are awfully hilly and Mr. Cooley
wishes we had kept farther west and gone to
Columbus instead of Schuyler. Crossed
Humbug Creek and camped by the first house south.
The people are Germans and very nice, they gave us
milk. Humbug Creek and Winside are
well named only they should have spelled it Windside.
We have faced a hot hard wind all day. July
27 Started at 8:15. We have gone through Cedar
County and nearly through Wayne County,
Nebraska. We cannot tell when we come to a county
line as we could in Dakota, the roads pay no
attention to section lines but wander up and down and around
the hills. The soil in Wayne County is very fine
and close, not exactly clay but clayey. The people
here claim it is the best soil on earth to stand
drought. Crossed the line into Stanton County at
9. There are large pastures and the grain fields
are all fenced. A good many sleek cattle are in
sight. Cornfields are 3 miles long and as far
back as you can see. There are a few groves.
Wind blows hard but cool this morning. At 10:20
we saw an orchard with apples. The hills are
covered with corn as far as eye can see, acres and
acres of corn. Lots of groves. Nearly all
the people are Germans. One gave Manly two large
apples off his trees. He has a large orchard
and the trees hang full. Just passed a house where the
man owns 540 acres of land and has 300 hogs.
A little farther on, a farm of 500 acres. The
owner had 450 hogs and only 50 bushels
of old corn. He says if it does not rain within
24 hours the tassels on the new crop will dry and
he will not harvest a kernel of corn. The corn
looks nice to us but I suppose the farmers here
know. Their wheat only sold for 32 cents last year
and it is 32,cents now. We came into the
Elkhorn valley at 1:45 and it is pretty,
very level, with many groves and nice houses and
natural timber along the river. An emigrant
team is behind us and every minute I expect to hear the
usual, Where did you come from? Where are you going? How
are the crops up your way? This never-- hardly
evermfails. Found an ear of corn 10 inches
long, 7andfrac12; inches around. Arrived at
Stanton at 3 p.m. It is a good looking town,
large pretty buildings, clean big houses with
trees. People mostly Germans. German signs on
the stores and German texts on the churches. Wheat
is going 16 to 20 bushels to the acre. Corn is
killed by the hot wind. Yesterday it was 126dgin the
shade here in Stanton. Crossed the Elkhorn
river on a bridge. A few miles farther on
we camped by the side of the road in the shade of some
trees. There was a gang of horse traders on the
river and we did not want to camp near them.
July 28 We washed this morning, or rather Mrs.
Cooley did out a washing and I washed 4 garments.
I wash out the most of the clothes in a pail as they
get dirty so I do not have washings. The neighbors
sent us a pailful of delicious cold milk, out of
the water where they keep it for the creamery. The washing
had to dry, so we did not start to travel until after
dinner. The roads are awful killers for the horses.
We had gone about 3 miles when we missed
Cooleys' dog. Mr. Cooley wanted to go on
but Mrs. Cooley would not. Finally it was decided that
he would go back to look for her and the rest of us would go
on. We took the ridge road, not to go up and down
the hills, so we followed along the top of the ridge
through acres and acres of corn fields. We could
see nothing of Mr. Cooley when it was time to camp,
but we camped by the side of the road on the prairie.
There was good grass for the horses and a pump in a
pasture, just through the fence. We got the hbrses
watered and picketed out, when here came Mr.
Cooley over a hill from the south. An old
Bohemian had come out and would not let him cross a
field where we had gone, so he had to go all around
to come back to us. He had found the dog where we
camped last night. The oats and wheat are good
here and the corn does not look bad but of course it
needs rain so people are blue and cross and stingy. There
are wild strawberry plants here, and
rattlesnakes. Sunday, July 29 Cooked
breakfast and bathed and lay around in the shade of the
wagons. Temperature 96dg. Rested all day
and went to bed early. July 30 Started at 8 and
crossed the line into Colfax County twenty
minutes later. Went through Leigh at 10 o'clock, a
lively little town that has not outgrown country.
Crops are still the same but roads are not so hilly.
We camped on the bank of Shell Creek in the
woods. A lovely place, even better than our
camp on the Jim River. The children and Mrs.
Cooley and I went wading. The bank was so steep
that we had to steady each other down, and pull and push
each other up. We paddled and played in the rippling
cool water. Rose sat down in it, splash! We
found two large live clams. July 3I The
wind blew terribly in the night. We were thankful
for the shelter of the trees. It must have rained hard
somewhere, for the creek raised 8 inches. Started at
9. We are following down the valley of the creek
on a nice level road. Reached Schuyler at
noon, all the way on the level road.
Here we had to get the tires set, so we did not
leave town till 3. I met an interesting
woman. She drove up to the wagon in a buggy and
began by asking if it isn't hot to be traveling.
I liked her and we talked a long time. Her
husband owns a large farm north of Schuyler but they
are going back to the West Indies in a few
weeks. They are Canadians but her husband was in
the West Indies when a boy and they have spent half
their lives there. They thought they would like to live here but
do not like it as well as they expected, so they will rent
the farm again and she thinks they will stay in the West
Indies when they get there. She said it is a
monotonous life but very pleasant, the servants do
all the work. She wanted to know all about Dakota and
everything she said was sensible. She is an elderly
lady, and I think Scotch. South of Schuyler the
land is sandy, two miles to La Platte River.
We crossed the Platte on a bridge half a
mile long, humped in the middle so we went up and
down hill on it. The river is full of sand bars
that keep shifting. Half a mile beyond it we camped
in a grove of willows. The Cooleys lingered in
town and had not arrived when we camped. Manly and
I hurried our supper and left Rose to
watch the camp while we "hit the dust" back to the
river so I could go wading in daylight.
The wooden bridge across the Platte River,
Schuyler, Nebraska, as it looked when we
crossed x.rddl.w. The water was clear, warm and
soft. The sand was soft and warm but shifting. It ran
away right under my feet while I waded, or if
I stood still it drifted over them. For fun I
stood still until my feet were covered. As Manly
said, we "hit the dust" going, but we "packed sand"
coming back. On the way back we saw a snake and
two large toads. We went into a pasture to look
at some trees. The sand had drifted away from them
until the tree trunks stood up higher than my
head, tiptoe on their bare, gnarled roots. I
could walk under those trees, between their roots, by stooping
just a little. August 1 It rained a little in the night.
We started at 8:40 and the road was level till
noon but terribly hilly all the afternoon. We
camped by Oak Creek in a little natural glade
among the oaks, the best camp yet. August 2
Started late because of a lame horse, one of Mr.
Cooley's. They had to take care of her foot.
We met a team of movers going to work out the
railroad tax.* Camped early, only a
little way from Oak Creek. August 3 Started at
9. Good level road into Lincoln, the capital
of Nebraska and a beautiful large city. It is
two miles from the first hotel to the post office. The
County Court House and the Capitol are grand
buildings, and so is the penitentiary. We saw two
prisoners in their striped clothes standing outside the
gate in the wall. A carload of new barrels was
on a sidetrack beside them, I suppose made by the
prisoners. A high stone wall surrounds several
buildings and joins the back of the main building.
Smaller buildings inside the wall look like
workshops, one like a foundry. Eight emigrant
wagons trailed our three through several streets of the
city. There are *I suppose this was a local or
state tax to pay a subsidy to a railroad
builder. Railroads were the fastest, most modern
transportation. The Lincoln administration began
to subsidize them from taxes in the 1860's.
States and localities, even small towns,
followed the example eagerly in the
1880's-90's. "Working out taxes" at $1 a
day was usual. R.w.l. motor street cars in
Lincoln. Pet and Little Pet were not afraid of them
but they scared Mrs. Cooley's team so that
they plunged up a bank and nearly upset her
wagon.* But it came out all right. We crossed
11 creeks today, or one creek 11 times, I
don't know which, and we passed Salt Lake north
west of Lincoln. We are camped about a mile from
the penitentiary. Temperature 74dg. August
4 On the road at 7:45, a nice level
road and good farms fenced with board fences. We are
following the telegraph wires to Beatrice, then do
not follow the railroad but go across country. We have
crossed Little Salt Creek and Big Salt
Creek. Orchards are as common here as houses.
Manly traded one fire mat for a whole *Paul
was not allowed to drive through cities and other dangerous
places. His mother came back to their second wagon
then and took the lines and the responsibility away from
him. He was humiliated and I felt hotly (in
silence) this injustice to him. He drove the big
team perfectly all the rest of the way. George
rode with him, but Paul was responsible for the second
team and wagon. R.w.l. bushel of large ripe
apples. Plums are nearly ripe. Crops
look splendid to us but everyone tells Manly that
they are very poor and will make no grain to mention. We
passed the best field of oats that Manly
ever saw. Made a hard long drive to get to a good
camp, and when we got there we found the creek dry
and no grass but plenty of sand burs. Camped in the
edge of a town. Sunday, August 5 Same as
last Sunday. Saw five emigrant wagons.
Lost the thermometer. August 6 Started at
8:30 and reached Beatrice at noon. Corn all
dried up and no ears on it. Oats and wheat threshed
and a great deal of plowing done. Beatrice is not as
large as Lincoln but a nice town, I think. We
saw the courthouse, it is handsome. Splendid
roads all day. We crossed Blue River just
south of Beatrice, drove through Blue Springs at
5 in the afternoon and crossed Blue River again. Did
not see much of the city because we drove along the north
edge and down the east side past a big mill run
by water-power. The river runs east of the town, a very
pretty river. I do not mention orchards any more because
they are common here, there are so many of them. We saw
8 acres of seedling apple trees about 12 inches
high near Blue Springs. Today has been quite
cool, but with a little too much wind. August 7 On
the road at 7:30, we crossed the line into
Kansas at 10:28andfrac14bbexactly.
Judging from what we have seen and heard of
Nebraska, the southeast corner is quite a good
country, but taken as a whole it is "nix good." I
don't like Nebraska. Crossed Deer Creek
at 11 o'clock. At 4 in the afternoon we came to
Marysville, the county seat of Marshall County,
on the Blue River. Here there is a watermill,
capacity 300 barrels a day. We saw many
nice houses and two palatial residences in the
town. Around one is a massive brick fence about
5 feet high, thick and strong looking. On each
side of the front gate a large granite lion
is crouching, and on each side of the side gate a
large granite dog is lying down. Beyond
Marysville we saw an acre of sweet
potatoes, large dark green leaves on vines
covering the ground. We drove 27 miles today and
camped near a house where there were two men drunk.
They had lost the bars off their wagon, wanted to
trade horses, etc. Manly had a time getting
rid of them without offense. August 8 Started at
8:30. Soon crossed Little Elm Creek and
Big Elm Creek and drove through beautiful
woods of elm, oak, ash, hickory, butternut
and walnut. Wild plums, grapes and currants
are abundant, and briars and wild flowers of
all kinds. A rich sight. Crossed Blue
River again, a lovely river, so clean always, and
fresh and cool. We crossed it on a bridge.
This bridge is about 300 feet long. Irving is
a tiny small town but it has an Opera Gordon
that bar ohn, not bar arysville, Kansas House with
a round roof, it looks like an engine boiler. Then
we crossed the Blue again. Every time we cross it,
it is lovelier than before. Improved land here is from
$15. to $25. an acre. Could buy an 80 on
the Blue bottoms, well improved, for
$3,000. The bottom land is all good farms. The
bluffs are stony. We camped near Spring
Side, well named. There are springs on every side.
I got water from a spring that boils up out of
solid rock, cool and clear. August 9 Started
at 8:30. Awfully hilly roads, and stony.
We saw a milk-house built of stone with a spring
running through it, a splendid thing. Land in
Pottawatomie County is $4. an acre up.
Camped in the edge of Westmoorland, the county seat.
At supper time we had company, some men, two
women, and children. They are regular southerners, camped
near by, traveling north. To Nebraska or
maybe Dakota, looking for work. August
10 Started at 8:30 and drove through the driest
country we have seen since leaving Dakota. Went
through Louisville, drove 3 miles farther and
camped on the bank of Vermille River, some
call it Stony Creek. August 12 Today was not
as monotonous as common. 3 emigrant wagons
passed us going south, and one going north. Manly and
Mr. Cooley took turns talking to the people.
Five wagons were going to Missouri or
Arkansas, one to Arkansas, one to Indian
Territory. We had a good camping place on a
little headland by the river. I rode Little Pet
awhile, bareback, not going anywhere she was turned
loose to feed. Two emigrants talked to me, a
young man and his mother in their wagon. They used to live
in Missouri, went to Colorado, are now going
back to Missouri to stay. August 13 Drove
through St. Mary's. A pleasant town but strange,
it is altogether southern, and Catholic. There is a
beautiful large church with a pure white marble Saint
Mary above the wide doors and two white marble
statues of Mother and Child in the yard. The houses are
neat and pretty. It is a clean town. We
drove to the top of a little bluff to look over the
Kansas River, and there on the bottom lands
we saw cornfields stretching as far as the eye could
reach. Manly said he should think there were a thousand
acres in sight. On our way Manly went to a
farmhouse to trade a fire mat for some green corn
for our supper, and we had an invitation to stay to dinner
and put our horses in the barn and feed them. The
woman came out to make me welcome. Such nice
people, and a nice place, everything well kept up. Of
course we could not stay. We could not be neighborly
to them in return and we must get to Missouri and
settled before winter. At noon we went through
Rossville, a small place, but just as we were
going by the depot the train came in. The engine
frightened Prince and he went through a barb-wire fence.
He struck it straight and went right through it, end over
end, jumped up, ran against a clothesline and broke
that and ran back to the fence. He stopped when Manly
said, "Whoa, Prince," and Manly helped him through
the wire. He had only one mark, a cut about an
inch long where a barb had struck him. How he ever
got through so well is a wonder. Watermelons are
ripe and plentiful. Manly and Mr. Cooley
bought big ones for 5 cents. We stopped by the road
in the shade of trees and all of us had all the
watermelon we could every at. We passed
Kingsley Station, 80 miles west of Kansas
City, Missouri, and 558 miles east of
Denver, Colorado. Went through Silver Lake.
The lake itself is south of the town; it is 4 miles
long and a half a mile wide, and trees are all
around it. There is a place where a man rents
boats. We camped in a schoolhouse yard. There
was a hedge all around it and a pump by the house, besides
a sycamore tree. Two families going by in
covered wagons stopped for water. They had been to
Missouri and were going back home to dispose of their
property in Nebraska, then they are moving to
Missouri. It is terribly dusty. We breathe
dust all day and everything is covered thick with it.
August 14 Started at 8:30. Dust is 3 to
5 inches deep on the road and the breeze is on
our backs so all the time we are in a smother of dust.
Along the roads are hedges of Osage Orange
trees, 20 or 30 feet high, set close
together. They are thorny. Their fruit is like green
oranges, but no good to eat nor for anything else.
We stopped to eat dinner about a mile from Topeka,
then drove on through the city. There are a great many
colored people in and around it. In North Topeka the
street cars are electric, in South
Topeka they are motor cars. The streets are
asphaltum pavement and it is lovely to drive
on, so soft and quiet that it doesn't seem real.
It gives like rubber to the horses' feet. The
caulks on their shoes make dents in it and slowly
the dents fill up till the place is smooth again.
We drove a block out of our way to see the
Capitol, where they had that war in the legis-
lature. The building is handsome but the grounds are
all unkempt, not finished at all. We crossed
the Kansas River on an iron bridge that must be
400 or 500 feet long. The river is like the
Platte, not quite as wide but full of sand bars.
South of Topeka a man gave us some late
daily papers. He has 240 acres here but his
home is in Colorado. He has mining interests
there. He told Manly that the fuss over silver in
Washington has made him lose $1,000,000.
We camped by the side of a church, in dust. August
15 Started at 7:20. Found a little
black-and-tan dog in the road, lost. He is
skin and bones, must have been starving, and is afraid of
us. We stopped at several houses to ask, but
nobody knew where he belonged so we are taking him
along. The children delight to feed him milk.
We have named him Fido. Today I saved a horse
chestnut, and we came to hazelnuts for the first time.
Went through Richland at noon. We drove past the
church. There was a Sunday School picnic on the
church grounds.
Kansas Avenue in Topeka, Kansas, as it
looked when we R.w.l. passed through. We camped
by a schoolhouse in the southwest corner of Douglas
County. There was good grass for the teams and a pump
gushed out delicious cold, clear water. This is the
best farming country we have seen yet, prairie with
natural groves here and there and timber along the
creeks. As we came along the road Manly
sold and traded a good many fire mats, and one
farmer wanted to rent him a farm for a third of the
crops. Another came to us at the schoolhouse where
we camped, and wanted us to stay here and rent. We
are going on to Missouri but may come back here if
we do not like it there. Land here is worth $20. to
$40. an acre. August 16 On our way at
7:25. Fido is quite friendly this morning, he still
seems sad but he has stopped trembling and seems
content to sit in my lap and look at the country we
are passing. The wheat crop is bountiful here and the
corn crop is pretty good. There is a
coal bank where men mine the coal and sell all they
dig for $1.25 a ton. At 5 in the afternoon we
came through Ottawa. There is a North and a South
Ottawa, separated by the Maradegene River. They
are the county seat of Franklin County. The men of
Ottawa stole the county seat in the night, from
another town, and for some time they had to guard it with the
militia, to keep it. The courthouse is quite an
imposing building. The Sante Fe Railroad
hospital is in the north edge of North
Ottawa, a large brick building. It looks very
clean. In South Ottawa there is a handsome
college building made of the native stone. In
all the towns now there are many colored people. We
camped on the bank of Rock Creek in the
suburbs of South Ottawa. Two men coming by
stopped and looked at Prince for some time and as they
went on the elderly one said to the other, "That is the
nicest colt I have seen for years." The hens are
laying yet. August 17 Fido is a good watch
dog. He growls at every stranger who comes to the
wagon, and at night at everyone that passes. We
started at 7:30. The wild morning- glories are
rioting everywhere, all colors like the tame ones.
We passed a large field of castor
beans. They are raised here as a crop, they run
10 to 15 bushels to the acre and sell for $1.25
to $1.50 a bushel. They are picked every two
weeks, piled up in the sun till they pop open,
then run through a fanning mill and sacked. We reached
Lane at 4 o'clock and had old Pet shod. The
blacksmith came from Kentucky two years ago and
looks just like the pictures of a Kentucky man.
He has 130 acres of bottom land running down
to Pottawatomie River, and a stone house as large
as any house in De Smet. It is very handsome and
perfectly finished. The house stands on Main
Street in Lane and the land lies northwest from it.
He is going back to Kentucky and wants to sell.
Asks $4300. for shop, house and land. South of
Lane we stopped at a farmhouse to ask for water
and the woman said she did not have enough to spare but we could
get a plenty "over yon way." Camped again by a
schoolhouse and pump. Washed out some things after
supper. They dry overnight. August 18 Started
at 7 this morning, went through Goodrich and came to
Parker at noon. They are both small places and
the country around them is not as good as we have been
seeing. The people say they never have the rain here that others
get farther north. Camped by Big Sugar
Creek, up on its high bank in the woods beside the
road. Sunday, August 19 Mr. Cooley's
stove had worked loose. He and Manly had to fix
it so it will ride. Mrs. Cooley and I and the children
went down to the creek and found some mussels and some
clam shells. A woman and 2 children came to see
us. They come from Missouri and they are camping near
by on their way to Nebraska. August 20 Got a
good start at 7:30 but the roads are awfully
stony. Crops are poor. Everyone tells us they
never get rain here when they need it. We went through
Wall Street, it is nothing but a little country
store. At noon we came to Mound City which is quite
a city. We bought bread and an 8-cent pie and
2 cents worth of tomatoes. Tomatoes are
30 cents a bushel. We stopped to eat dinner in
the shade of a tree beside the road. Three emigrant
wagons passed while we were eating. Two were going
to Missouri and one coming back. This afternoon we saw
three more, one going to Missouri, one coming back.
Manly did not ask the other. Water has been
scarce all day and what little we found tasted so bad
we could not get a good drink. It is clear and clean
but it feels slick and tastes bitter, it spoils
the taste of tea. The horses have to be very
thirsty to take it. Camped beside the road on the
prairie. Bought a little hay and could get only a
little water. Looks like rain. August 21 It
rained hard most of the night and was still pouring down when
time came to get up. Manly put on his rubber
coat, started the fire and put water on to heat, then
fed our horses. By that time the rain was no more than a
drizzle so I got out and made breakfast. We
ate in the wagon, out of the wet. Roads are muddy
but sky is clear overhead. We went through
Prescott, only a little station. Met a family
of emigrants who have spent the last two months
traveling in southwest Missouri. They do not like it
at all down there. The man said, "Right there is the
place to go if man wants to bury himself from the world and
live on hoecake and clabber," and the woman agreed
with him. We passed another covered wagon stopped
by the road, and those folks are on their way to
Missouri. The whole country is just full of
emigrants, going and coming. Fort Scott seemed to
be crowded with them. We reached Fort Scott at 6
o'clock, and a man there said that 15 emigrant wagons
went along that street yesterday. Fort Scott is a
bower of trees. The houses look clean and contented;
the business buildings are handsome. The country
around Fort The main so late 1880's. treet of
Fort Scott, Kansas, as it looked in the
Rddl.w.
Scott looks like it might be a very good country.
Crops are good where there are any, but there is lots
of idle land and many places are gone back. It
seems that the people are shiftless; but you never can tell.
A man said this country is worthless, and when Manly
said that it looked to him like good land, he said, Oh
yes, the land will raise anything that's planted but if
you can't sell what you raise for enough to pay back the
cost of raising it, what's the land worth? Coal is
lying around on top of the ground and cropping out of every
bank. At the coal mines, or coal banks as
they call them, the coal is worth $5. a bushel.
We received 3 letters at Fort Scott, 2 from
home. A little way south of the city we camped beside the
road. August 22 A good start at 7:15 and this
morning we are driving through pretty country.
Crops look good. Oats are running 30 to 60
bushels to the acre, wheat from 10 to 30. All the
wood you want can be had for the hauling and coal is
delivered at the house for $1.25 a ton. Land is
TO ON THE WAY HOME worth from $10. an
acre up, unimproved, and $15. to $25.
when well improved, 12 miles from Fort Scott.
Exactly at 2:24g P.m. we crossed the
line into Missouri. And the very first cornfield we
saw beat even those Kansas cornfields. We
met 7 emigrant wagons leaving Missouri.
One family had a red bird, a mockingbird, and a
lot of canaries in cages hung under the canvas in
the wagon with them. We had quite a chat and heard the
mockingbird sing. We camped by a house in the
woods. August 23 Started out at 7:30. The
country looks nice this morning. At 9:35 we
came to Pedro, a little town on one side of the
railroad tracks, and just across the tracks on the
other side is the town of Liberal. A man in
Pedro told us that one of the finest countries in the world
will be around Mansfield. In the late afternoon we went
through Lamar, the nicest small city we have seen,
2,860 inhabitants. It is all so clean and
fresh, all the streets set out to shade trees.
We camped among oak trees, not far from a camp
of emigrants from Kentucky. Beautiful sturdy
oak trees on both sides of the road. August
24 On the road bright and early, 7:20. Weather
cool and cloudy, looks like rain. Went through
Canova in the morning. It is a little
place. At noon we were going through Golden City,
a nicer little place. The country looks good, but
judging from weeds in the gardens and fields, the people are
shiftless. This is a land of many springs and clear
brooks. Some of the earth is yellow and some is red.
The road is stony often. Went through another little
town, Lockwood, at 4 o'clock, and camped by a
swift- running little creek of the clearest water. It
is most delicious water to drink, cold, with a
cool, snappy flavor. Except in the towns,
we have seen only one schoolhouse so far in
Missouri. We drove in the rain this afternoon, for the first
time since we left Dakota. It was a good steady
pouring rain, but we kept dry in the ON THE
WAY HOME wagon and the rain stopped before camping
time. August 25 Left camp at 7:35. It
rained again in the night and the road was muddy but after a
few miles we came to country where it did not rain
so the road was dry. The uplands are stony but there are
good bottomland farms. Much timber is in sight,
oaks, hickories, walnuts, and there are lots of
wild crabapples, plums and thorn apples. In
South Greenfield two land agents came out and
wanted us to stop here. One was C. C. Akin, the
man who located Mr. Sherwin. He said
Mr. Sherwin was here only a week ago, has just
gone. Mr. Sherwin looked Wright County over
thoroughly and came back to Cedar County and located
here. But finally Mr. Akin said there is just as good land
in Wright County as Mr. Sherwin bought. Well, we
are in the Ozarks at last, just in the beginning of them,
and they are beautiful. We passed along the foot of
some hills and could look up their sides. The trees
and rocks are lovely. Manly says we could almost
live on the looks of them. We stopped for dinner just
before we came to the prettiest part, by the side of a
swiftly running stream, Turnback River. We
forded it, through the shallow water all rippling and
sparkling. There was another clear stream to cross before
we came to Everton at 5 o'clock. Here we stopped
to get the horses shod but there was not time to shoe them
all today, so we camped by a creek in the edge of
town for over Sunday. Sunday, August 26 A
day for writing, reading, sleeping. We let the children
wade in the shallow creek, within our sight. I
spent almost the whole time writing to the home folks
about the country since Fort Scott and these hills and
woods. August 27 Out of camp at 7:10.
We like this country. A man tried to get us to
settle just across the road from him, said we could
buy that 40 for $700. It was good land. We forded
Little Sock River and came through Ash Grove, a
lively little town noted for its lime kiln. Two
new brick blocks are going up on Main
Street. Camped 12 miles from Springfield.
Manly was unhitching the team when a man with his wife
and daughter in a covered wagon drove up and
wanted to know where he could water his mules. They
live 14 miles east of Springfield in
Henderson County and were going to visit the woman's
brother in Ash Grove. After we had talked
awhile they said they would like to camp by us if we could
sell them a little meat to cook. They had not intended
to camp and had brought nothing to eat. We let them have
some meat and they used our camp stove, so we got quite
well acquainted. They are good, friendly folks.
Their name is Davis. After the chores were done they
brought over a large watermelon and we called the
Cooleys to come, and all of us ate the whole big
melon. You can buy a 20-lb. watermelon here for
5 cents. August 28 Left camp at 6:28.
Good road from Ash Grove all the way to
Springfield, not hilly nor very stony. This is the
Ozark plateau and the country looks much like prairie
country though there are groves and timber always
along the streams. Arrived in Springfield at
9:25. It is a thriving city with fine houses and
four business blocks stand around a town square. The
stores are well stocked and busy. Manly hitched
the horses and we bought shoes for Rose and myself, a
calico dress for me, and a new hat for Manly.
It did not take much time and we drove right along
through the city. We were out of it before noon. It has
21,850 inhabitants, and is the nicest city we
have seen yet. It is simply grand. We could see
two straight miles down Walnut street, a very
little down grade, with large shade trees on each
side, large handsome residences, and the pavement as
smooth and clean as can be. Five miles east of
Springfield is Jones Spring. The water is
clear as glass, and it comes pouring out of a cave in a
ledge of rock. At its mouth the cave is 4
feet high and 10 feet wide, and nobody knows
how far back it goes. Manly and Mr. Cooley
went quite a distance back into it and threw stones as far as
they could throw them, and the stones fell plunk into water
far back in the dark. The water pours out of the cave
14 inches deep and runs away over the stones
among the trees, a lively little creek. We were
told that 7 miles southeast of Jones spring
a stream comes out of a cave so large that you can keep
rowing a boat back into it for half a day: After
crossing Pierson's Creek we met, one day after
another, 10 emigrant wagons leaving
Missouri. We camped in the edge of Henderson,
a little inland town, on the bank of a spring brook.
August 29 Left camp at 7:10. We are
driving along a lively road through the woods, we
are shaded by oak trees. The farther we go, the more we
like this country. Parts of Nebraska and Kansas are
well enough but Missouri is simply glorious. There
Manly interrupted me to say, "This is beautiful
country." The road goes up hill and down, and it
is rutted and dusty and stony but every turn of the wheels
changes our view of the woods and the hills. The sky
seems lower here, and it is the softest blue. The
distances and the valleys are blue whenever you can see
them. It is a drowsy country that makes you feel
wide awake and alive but somehow contented. We went
through a little station on the railroad and a few miles
farther on we came to a fruit farm of 400
acres. A company owns it. There are 26,000 little
young trees already set out in rows striping the curves
of the land, and the whole 400 acres will be planted as
soon as possible. Acres of strawberries
and other small fruit arc in bearing. We stopped
to look our fill of the sight and Manly fell
into conversation with some of the company's men. They told
him of a 40 he can buy for $400., all cleared and
into grass except five acres of woods, andwitha
good ever-flowing spring, a comfortable log house and a
barn. We drove through Seymour in the late afternoon.
The Main Streets of towns here are built around
open squares, with the hitching posts surrounding the
square. In the office of the Seymour paper, the
Enterprise, a girl was setting type. A man
spoke to us, who had lived years in Dakota, near
Sioux Falls, he has a brother living there now.
He is farming near Seymour. He said the
climate here can't be beat, we never will want to
leave these hills, but it will take us some time to get
used to the stones. Oh no, we are not out of the world nor
behind the times here in the Ozarks. Why, even the cows
know "the latest." Two of them feeding along the road
were playing Ta- ra-ra Boom! de-ay! The little
cow's bell rang Ta-ra-ra, then the bigger cow's
bell clanged, Boom! de-ay. I said, "What
is that tune they are playing?, and we listened. It was
as plain as could be, tones and time and all, and so
comical. We drove on singing Ta-ra-ra
Boom! de-ay! along the road. We passed
several springs and crossed some little brooks. The
fences are snake fences of split logs and all
along them, in the corners, fruit grows wild.
There are masses of blackberries, and seedling
peaches and plums and cherries, and luscious-looking
fruits ripening in little trees that I don't
knowea* a lavishness *These were wild persimmons
and pawpaws. R.w.l. of fruit growing wild. It
seems to be free for the taking. We could not reach
Mansfield today. Camped by a spring 10 miles
short of it. In no time at all Rose and I
filled a quart pail with big juicy
blackberries. They are growing wild in big
patches in the woods, ripening and falling off and
wasting. Six more emigrant wagons camped around the
spring before dark. Seasoned oak wood, sawed,
split and delivered and corded, brings $1. a
cord here. August 30, 1894 Hitched up and
going at 7:10. The road is rough and rocky through
the ravines but not so bad between them and there are trees
all the way. We are passing through the Memphis
fruit farms, 1,500 acres, part of the way on
both sides of the road. It is a young orchard, rows
upon rows of little trees, apple and peach,
curving over the plowed hills. Some covered wagons
came up behind us and we came up behind some ahead,
all the teams going slowly, holding back down
hill and pulling up hill. At 11:30 we came
into Mansfield in a long line of 10 emigrant
wagons. Mansfield is a good town of 300 or
400 inhabitants in a good central location where it
should grow fast. The railroad runs on one side
of the square and two stagecoach lines go from the
depot, one south to the County seat of Douglas
County, the other north to the County seat of Wright
County. There is everything here already that one could want
though we must do our worshipping without a Congregational
church. There is a Methodist church and a
Presbyterian. There is a good school. Around the
Square, two general stores, two drug stores,
the bank, a Boston Racket store, livery
stable, blacksmith shop near. There are several
nice large houses in big yards with trees. South
of the tracks is as good as north of them; two or
three big houses, and a flour mill is there by a
mill pond. Camped in the woods in the western
edge of town and this afternoon Manly looked over one
place for sale but was not exactly suited.
Collection of Mrs. Gorman Freeman,
Nbled-ansfield, Mis Have ere my mother's record
ends. Fifty years later I began casually to
speak of our camp in those vanished woods and she
stopped the words in my mouth with a fierce, "I
don't want to think of it!" I do not remember how
many days my father spent hunting for land that the secret
hundred dollar bill would buy. Every morning he
rode away with some land agent to limp up and down the
hills and to come back at evening, nothing found yet.
Paul and George and I were joyous. After the long
boredom of so many dull days that we hardly
remembered De Smet, now every day was Sunday without
Sunday's clean clothes and staid behavior. The
camp was a Sunday camp; the Cooleys' wagons
on one side, ours on the other; in the grove between
them the table and chairs were set and the hammock hung in
the shade. The camp stove stood a little way apart
over cooling ashes. Farther away the horses were
tied under the trees, and behind the wagons were screened
places for our Saturday baths. We must stay within
sight or at least within hearing if our mothers called
us, but as soon as morning tasks were done we were
free to play in the woods. All day we climbed
trees, picked berries, ate unripe walnuts
and hazelnuts, cracked between two stones.
We startled rabbits that we must not chase far; we
watched squirrels and birds, beetles and
anthills. The hot air was full of good smells
of rotting logs, dusty weeds, damp underneaths of
mats of last year's oakleaves. Dandelion stems
curled bitter on my tongue's tip and the green
curls wilted over my ears. Sharp flat stones were
thick underfoot; we stubbed our toes on them and all
our big toes were wrapped in rags.
Stone-bruises on our summer-callused heels
didn't stop our running. We found toadstools and
mosses like teeny-tiniest forests, flat
greenish-gray lichen on rocks, little perfect
skins of locusts, empty, thin and brittle, clinging
with tiny claws to the bark of trees. We picked up
strange stones. When I showed my father a thin
triangular one, wavy all over and sharp-pointed,
he said it was an Indian arrowhead. We collected
dozens of them and Paul found a stone ax-head. One
day I had to stay in camp with Mrs. Cooley, I
must mind her and not go out of her sight. My father had
found a place, my mother was going with him to see it, and
they wanted no worry about me while they were gone.
There never had been such a long morning. I was
embarrassed and so was Mrs. Cooley. When
at last I saw the team coming, my father and mother coming
back, I felt like exploding; I could hardly be still
and not speak until spoken to. My father was glowing and
my mother shining. She never had talked so fast. Just
what they wanted, she told Mrs. Cooley, so
much, much more than they'd hoped for. A year- round
spring of the best water you ever drank, a snug log
house, in woods, on a hill, only a mile and a
half from town so Rose could walk to school, and to
cap all, just think! four hundred young apple
trees, heeled in, all ready to set out when the land
was cleared. They'd bought it, as soon as dinner was
over they were going to the bank to sign the papers. We
were moving out that afternoon. When he was excited my father
always held himself quiet and steady, moving and speaking
with deliberation. Sometimes my quick mother flew out at
him, but this day she was soft and warm. She left him
eating at the camp table, told me to clear it and
wash the dishes when he was through, and went into the screened
place to get ready to meet the banker. I perched
on a stump and watched her brush out her hair and
braid it. She had beautiful hair, roan-brown,
very fine and thick. ON THE WAY HOME
Unbraided, it shimmered down to her heels; it was so
long that when it was tightly braided she could
sit on the braids. Usually it hung down her
back in one wide braid but when she dressed up
she must put up her hair and endure the headache.
Now she wound the braid around and around into a big
mass on the back of her head, and fastened it with her
tortoiseshell pins. She fluffed her bangs into a
soft little mat in front, watching her comb in the
small looking glass fastened to a tree, and
suddenly I realized that she was whistling; I
remembered that I hadn't heard her whistling
lately. "Whistling girls and crowing hens always come
to some bad ends," she'd say gaily. She was
whistling always. She whistled like a bird whistling a
tune, clear and soft, clear and sweet, trilling,
chirping, or dropping notes one by one as a meadow
lark drops them from the sky. I was pleased to hear her
whistling again. Whistling, she buttoned up her new
shoes with the buttonhook. She took off her
calico dress and folded it neatly. Standing in her
bleached muslin petticoats and corset cover
trimmed with crocheted lace, she took her best
dress, her black cloth wedding dress, out of the
box in which it had traveled from Dakota. Whistling,
Oh Susanna, don't you cry for me, she put
on the skirt and smoothed the placket. I was
sorry that the skirt hid her new shoes. She
coaxed her arms into the basque's tight sleeves and
carefully buttoned all the glittery jet
buttons up its front to her chin. With her gold
pin she pinned the fold of ribbon, robin's-egg
blue, to the front of the stand-up collar. Then, the very
last thing, the climax: she pinned on her black
sailor hat with the blue ribbon around the crown and the
spray of wheat standing straight up at one side. The
braids in back tilted the hat forward just a little; in
front, the narrow brim rested on the mat of
bangs. She looked lovely; she was beautiful.
You could see my father think so, when she came out and he
looked at her. She told him to hurry or they'd
be late, but she spoke as if she were singing, not
cross at all. He went into the screened place
to change his shirt and comb his hair and mustache, and
put on his new hat. To me my mother said that I could
clear the table now, be sure to wash every dish while they
were gone and, as usual, she told me to be careful not
to break one. I never had broken a dish. I
remember all this so clearly because of what happened.
I had taken away the dishes and wiped the table.
My mother put down on it her clean handkerchief and
her little red cloth pocketbook with the
mother-of-pearl sides; she was wearing her kid
gloves. Carefully she brought the writing desk and
set it on the table. She laid back its slanted
upper half and lifted out the narrow wooden tray that
held the pen and the inkwell. The hundred dollar
bill was gone. There was a shock, like stepping in the
dark on a top step that isn't there. But it could not be
true. It was true; the place in the desk was
empty. Everything changed. In the tight strangeness
my father and mother were not like them; I did not feel like me.
They asked, Had I told someone? No. Had I
never said anything to anyone, ever, about that money? No.
Had I seen a stranger near Two views of the
lap desk that held the $100 bill.
the wagon when they were not there? No. Or in camp?
No. My mother said it wasn't possible; not the
Cooleys. My father agreed, no, not them. It must
be there. My mother had seen it last in Kansas. They
took every sheet of writing paper out of the desk and
shook it; they took each letter out of its envelope,
unfolded it, looked into the empty envelope. They
turned the desk upside down and shook it, the
felt-covered inside lids flapping. My mother said
they were losing their senses. Suddenly she thought,
hoped, asked, Had I taken it myself, to
play with? NO! I felt scalded. She asked,
Was I sure? I hadn't just opened the desk sometime,
for fun? My throat swelled shut; I shook my
head, no. "Don't cry," she said
automatically. I wouldn't cry, I never cried,
I was angry, insulted, miserable, I was not a
baby who'd play with money or open that desk for
fun, I was going on eight years old. I was little,
alone, and scared. My father and mother sat there, still. In
the long stillness I sank slowly into nothing but
terror, pure terror without cause or object, a
nightmare terror. Finally my mother said,
"Well." She meant, No use crying over
spilled milk. What can't be cured must be endured.
My father told her not to blame herself, it wasn't her
fault. Carefully she peeled off her thin kid
gloves. She turned them right-side-out finger by finger,
smoothed them. She said that he'd better go explain
to the banker. Somehow the worst was over when he tried
to put it off, saying something might turn up, and she
flared out that he knew as well as she did, "nothing
turns up that we don't turn up ourselves." Then
she told me to run away and play, and I
remembered the unwashed dishes. She had forgotten
them. For days, I don't remember how many
days, everything was the same as ever and not at all the
same. I said nothing about the disaster; I didn't
want to. My mother told Mrs. Cooley that they
thought best to take time to make up their minds. My
father looked for work in town. My mother knew nobody
there. Mr. Cooley sold one of his teams and one
wagon; and Paul and George were going to move into the
hotel and help run it. I knew we could sell the
horses, but what then? Covered wagons were going by every
day, going both ways as usual, some camping
overnight nearby. Often I tried to think what would
happen when we had nothing to eat; I couldn't.
Blackberries were fewer now and smaller. I was
deep in the briary patch, hunting them, when my mother
called, and called again before I could get out without
tearing my dress on the clutching thorns and run
over the sharp stones to the camp. My father was hitching
up, my mother was putting last things into the wagon. They
had bought the farm. She had found the hundred dollar
bill. In the writing desk. The jolting had
slipped it into a crack in the desk and I was to stop
asking questions and get into the wagon. Just as she was,
my mother had found my father and gone to sign the papers,
and just as I was, without even washing my feet, I was
to obey her and get up onto that wagon seat,
now, and no more words about it. The town began with two
small houses on a side road in the woods.
Then there were two big houses in large yards with
trees, and a cunning little low house right at the edge of
the gravel sidewalk. On the other side of the
road, opposite the little house, stairs went up the
side of the hotel where Paul and George would
live. In front of the hotel was the Square, with
trees in it and lines of hitching posts around it,
except on the far side where the railroad track
was. We were driving along Main Street, and it was
on one side of us and in front of us and behind us,
too; it went around three sides of the Square. It
was three solid rows of stores behind three high
board sidewalks. This was The Gem City of the
Ozarks. We passed a big Reynolds General
Store, with two large windows full of things, the
door between them. Men were loafing, whittling, talking and
spitting along the high board walk. There were small
stores, The Bank of Mansfield, a Boston
Racket Store with "Opera House" painted on
the windows upstairs, Hoover's Livery Stable and
horses in a feed lot, then another big house
inside a wire fence. Past a blacksmith shop the
dusty road went downhill to cross a little
bridge. The long hillside was orchard and
pasture, but houses began where the road went up again
beyond the bridge. In all there must have been a dozen
houses, in fenced yards with gates, behind paths through the
weeds on both sides of the road. All the houses
had front porches; all were painted and trimmed with
different colors and wooden lace. Behind them were
vegetable gardens and clotheslines, barns and chicken
houses; some had pigpens. Two had an upstairs;
one of these had a bay window and a cupola. Behind the
houses on our right was the railroad enbankment; behind
those on the left, two more houses and a high grassy
hill against the sky. At the top of the road's long
climb stood the schoolhouse where I would go to
school. It stood square, two stories high, with
windows all around, and its bell tower up above the
double doors. All beyond it was woods; it was in the
edge of the woods but not a single stump remained on the
ground trodden bare and hard about it. There was a well
beside it; behind it a woodshed and two privies: Boys
and Girls. I looked as long as I could, but the
road turned away from the schoolhouse to follow the
railroad track. The wheel tracks went beside the
iron rails with the row of poles holding a
telegraph wire on glass knobs above
them. There were two houses in the woods; then the road
turned into the woods and left the railroad behind us.
Now there was nothing but woods on either side, and the two
wheel tracks went straight and slowly downward.
Between them were stumps and big rocks. The wagon
jolted and lurched over rocks in the dust and the
horses' iron shoes clattered on them. From the
talk over my head I learned how lucky it was that
the last cent had been just enough to pay for the salt pork and
cornmeal. We could make out all right now, selling
wood, and do well when the apple trees were in
bearing. Paying off the mortgage would be easy then.
Three hundred dollars at twelve percent,
pounded every three months. (why would they be pounded? I
wondered.) My mother could do the arithmetic in her
head. They ought to be able to carry it if they kept their
health. Either then or later I learned from such talk
that some very foolish man had bought all those little apple
trees from a smart salesman though he had no
cleared land. When they came in their bundles, he
had no clearing to set them out in; but he had signed
papers, so he had to mortgage the land to pay for them.
Then he just gave up. Between two days, he left the
land and the cabin, the little apple trees root-buried
in a trench, and the mortgage. So my father and
mother got them from the banker. The road went up again,
it seemed to go almost vertically up a long, long
hill but my father turned the horses away from it,
onto a fainter track in a valley. Beside us now
a stream of water as clear as glass ran over
flat ledges and through shadow pools. In a little while
the wagon tracks turned to ford a pool. The
horses stopped to drink and my mother said, "Here we
are!" She asked me what I thought of it, but I
saw nothing to think about. The creek came from our own
spring, she told me. Across the creek the woods
went up a low hill in the yellow light of the sinking
sun; the wheel tracks went on down the curve of the
creek and trees hid them. My father drove up the
hill through the woods. The horses climbed
clumsily, the flat rocks slipping under their
feet. At the top of the hill we came into a tiny
clearing at the edge of a deep ravine, and there stood
a little log house. Quick as a squirrel, I was
down over the wheel and around the corner of logs'
ends. A rough, thick door stood open; I was in
the house, I was in a narrow little room, its floor
of earth and dead leaves, but beyond a doorway was a
larger room that had a wooden floor. This room was
bare and clean, it smelled like the woods, dead
leaves were blown into its corners. There was a big
fireplace and sure enough, as that woman had said,
no windows. There was a square hole in the wall of
peeled logs; an empty hole, but it had a rough
wooden door hanging open, like the house door.
Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield after
Almanzo had cleared a good deal of the land. Laura
probably took this photograph about 1910.
R.w.l.
The cabin we lived in during the first winter in
Mansfield. It was part of the barn when this picture
was taken. The horses are the team which brought us down
from Dakota. My father is sitting in a buggy for which
he traded the hack, when we were rich enough to have a
wagon and a buggy. R.w.l. This photo of Laura
was taken in the ravine just below the spring. Nothing more was
to be seen there. But I hadn't noticed that in the
narrow room the logs of the wall around the door were
papered with newspapers. Large black letters in
curleycues stopped me; I stood and read:
"Carter's Little Liver Pills," and a
philosophical question which I kept trying and failing
to answer for so long afterward that I have never forgotten it:
What is life without a liver? That problem was too
much for me; for the moment, I postponed the
struggle with it. Outside, some chunks of bark had
fallen from the house wall, and between all the logs was
yellow clay, dry and hard and cracked to bits. Not
far away the path from the door went down, steeper
than stairs, into the ravine. As usual, my mother
called to me to be careful. The ravine was shadowy,
darker in its narrow bottom. It ended in one huge
rock as big as a big house. Behind the rock was a
hollow sound of running water, and water ran from beneath
it into a little pool as round as a washtub and half as
deep. Ferns hung over the darling pool, and from a
bough above it dangled a hollowed-out gourd for dipping
up the water. I drank a delicious cold
gourdful, looking up and up the mountainside above the
spring. It was all dark woods, only the very tips
of the highest trees in sudden yellow light. All
down the dark ravine the water chuckled eerily.
Something moved stealthily in the leaves under the bushes.
I clambered up the path as fast as I could. The
horses were unhitched and picketed, the hens in their
coop on the ground. My father and mother were taking out things
over the wagon's opened endgate. We would eat
supper outdoors and sleep one more night in the
wagon. My mother meant to scrub that cabin floor from
top to bottom before we moved into it. We could
still see well enough in the shadowy daylight but inside the
wagon it was too dark to find things. My father
rummaged for the lantern. He pressed the spring that
lifted its thick glass globe, he touched the
match-flame to the wick and carefully lowered the
globe into its place, and suddenly the lantern was
shining in darkness. He held it up, looking for a
place to hang it, and there in the edge of its light
stood a strange man. The man's feet were bare,
his pants were A neighbor's cabin. My father is
pictured by it in his "buffalo coat," which was made
from the skin of a buffalo killed in Dakota.
patched over patches and torn. He was tall,
thin, bony, and his eyes glittered from a bush of
hair and whiskers. He came a step nearer and quick
as a snake my mother's hand slid into the pocket where
her revolver was. She waited, ready. Slowly
my father said, "Hello there." The man said he
wanted work, he was looking for a chance to work for something
to eat. My father answered that we were just moving in, as
he could see; we didn't have work to give anybody.
Too bad, but maybe better luck in town, just
over the next hill, not much more than a mile to the
west. "You got a good place here," the man said.
He was bony, but big. After a minute my
father said it would be a good place someday, he guessed.
Then we all stood silent as if we couldn't
move. The man began to talk quietly, slowly,
almost dreamily. They had to get something to eat, he
said. His wife and five children were down in the wagon by the
creek. They had been traveling all summer
looking for work. They could not go on any longer. This was
the third day they'd had nothing to eat. He had to get
work so he came up the wagon tracks They couldn't
go on without something to eat. He stopped, there was nothing
more to say. Nothing to do. Now I knew what happened
when you had nothing to eat. What happens is, nothing.
Suddenly, my father was talking and moving quickly, not
deliberate at all. He said he needed help
wood, provided the man would come help him tomorrow,
he'd divide what llmaking He was reaching into the
wagon. At sight of the slab of salted fat pork
my mother cried out, "Manly, no, We've got
Rose." He paid no attention. The butcher
knife in his hand cut through the white meat. He opened
a corner of the sack and poured cornmeal into the little tin
pail. He was asking, did the man have a good ax?
He said they'd start early, at sun-up, put in a
good day's work and if the wood sold he'd treat the
man right. Bring an ax if he had one. Be
sure to bring back the pail. That's all right,
don't mention it, see you tomorrow. The man was gone into the
darkness. He had not said a word. Afterward my mother always
said that she expected never to see that vagabond again,
nor her tin pail, either. At the time she said nothing.
My father made the fire under the camp stove and she
cooked supper. We had fried salt pork and
corn-dodgers, and slept in the wagon. The man
woke us in the false dawn, bringing the tin pail and
his ax. He was a better woodsman than my father.
All that day while my mother and I cleaned the house and
lugged things from the wagon to put on the dry, scrubbed
floor,, they worked in the woods. They worked as long
as they could see. Then my mother held the lantern and
they took the top and curtains off the wagon, and
stacked up high in it all the stove wood that it would
hold. Early next morning my father set out to sell
the wood in town. The man worked with a will while he was
gone. He was gone all day. At night he had not
come. The strange man went down the hill, my mother
lighted the lamp, turned low to save the kerosene.
Still it was some time before we heard the wagon jolting.
My mother lighted the lantern, then said I'd better
take it to him. I rushed out with it. The wagon box
was empty and I almost shouted, "You sold
it!" "Finally I did," my father said in
triumph. "How much did you get for it?"' I
asked. He was beginning to unharness the horses. He
bragged, "Fifty cents." I set down the
lantern and ran into the house to tell my mother,
"Fifty cents! He sold it all for fifty
cents!" Her whole face trembled and seemed to
melt into softness, she sighed a long sigh. "Aren't
you glad?"' I exulted. "Glad? Of course
I'm glad!" she snapped at me and to herself,
"Oh, thanks be!" I ran out again, I pranced
out, to tell my father how glad she was. And he said,
with a sound of crying in his voice, "Oh, why did you
tell her? I wanted to surprise her." You do
such things, little things, horrible, cruel, without thinking,
not meaning to. You have done it; nothing can undo it. This
is a thing you can never forget. How long that man worked
with my father I don't remember. I cannot remember
his name nor anything at all about his family camping
down by the creek. Surely I knew those children; they
must have been there for weeks. I remember that he and
my father were roofing the little log barn, the day I chased
the rabbit. The leaves had fallen from all the trees
but the oaks then, and the oaks wore their winter red that
day. There was light snow or frost underfoot,
so cold that it burned my bare feet, and my breath
puffed white in the air. I chased that rabbit over the
hills, up and down and back again until,
exhausted, it hid in a hollow log; I stopped
up the log's ends with rocks and fetched both men from
their work on the roof to chop out the rabbit and kill it.
The day was Saturday; I was going to school then. For
Sunday dinner we had rabbit stew, with gravy on
mashed potatoes and on our cornbread. And on
Monday I found in my lunch-pail at school one
of that rabbit's legs; my mother had saved it and
packed it with the cornbread in the little tin pail, to
surprise me. The man and his family must have gone
on west or south, early that winter. He must have
earned provisions for the trip. I remember walking
to school through the snowy woods in my shoes and
stockings, hearing the thuds of my father's ax sounding
fainter as I went; and coming home with the sunset red
behind me to hear the whirr-whirr of the crosscut saw
growing sharper in the frosty air. The ax was too
heavy for my mother; my father would not trust her with its
sharpness, but she could safely handle one end of the
crosscut saw. Winter evenings were cosy in the
cabin. The horses were warm in the little barn, the hens
in the new wooden coop. Snow banked against
the log walls and long icicles hung from the
eaves. A good fire of hickory logs burned in
the fireplace. In its heat, over a newspaper
spread on the hearth, my father worked oil into the
harness-straps between his oily-black hands. I sat
on the floor, carefully building a house of
corncobs, and my mother sat by the table, knitting
needles flashing while she knitted warm woolen
socks for my father and read to us from a book propped
under the kerosene lamp. She read us Tennyson's
poems and Scott's poems; those books were ours.
And she read us Prescott's III Conquest of
Mexico, and Conquest of Peru, and The Green
Mountain Boys, and John Halifax,
Gentleman. She read us The Leatherstocking
Tales, and another true book, the biggest of
all: Ancient, Medieval and Modern History.
I borrowed those from the shelf of lending-books in the
Fourth Reader room at school. The teachers let
me borrow them, though I wasn't in Fourth Reader
yet. I remember the Sunday afternoon when my father and
mother planned the new house. We had got the cow that
spring; I must have been ten years old, going on
eleven. On Sunday afternoons in warm weather, when
company wasn't spending the day with us or we were
not spending it in town with the Cooleys, my father and mother
in their Sunday clothes went walking sedately over
the land while I, in mine, minded the cabin. They had
cleared twenty acres and set out all the little apple
trees, and we had the cow, that Sunday afternoon when they
decided where to build the house. From my swing in the
oak tree by the cabin, Fido and I saw them standing
and talking under the huge old white-oak tree not far
away. They talked a long while. Then my father
went to lead the cow to water and change her
picket-peg, and my mother called me to see the spot
where our house would be. It would be under the great old
white-oak at the edge of the hill where we stood.
Here the ground sloped more gently down into the ravine and
rose steeply up the wooded mountain to the south. You
could see the brook running from the widening mouth of the
ravine and curving to the north and east around the base of
the rounded hill. You could hear the water rippling over
the limestone ledges. It was springtime; the hickory
trees on the hill were in young green leaves, the oak
leaves were pink, and all the flinty ground beneath them was
covered with one blue-purple mat of dog's-tooth
violets. Along the brook the sar- vice trees
were blooming misty white. The ancient white-oak was
lively with dozens of young squirrels whisking
into and out of their nests in the hollow branches. My
mother stood under it in her brown- sprigged white lawn
dress, her long braid hanging down her back.
Below the curled bangs her eyes were as
purple-blue as the
Part of Rocky Ridge Farm as it looks today.
Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association
violets. It would be a white house, she said, all
built from our farm. Everything we needed to build it
was on the land: good oak beams and boards, stones for the
foundation and the fireplace. The house would have large
windows looking west across the brook, over the gentle
little valley and up the wooded hills that hid the
town, to the sunset colors in the sky. There would be
a nice big porch to the north, cool on hot
summer afternoons. The kitchen would be big enough to hold a
wood stove for winter and one of the new kerosene
stoves that wouldn't heat up the place worse in
summer. Every window would be screened with mosquito
netting. There would be a well, with a pump, just
outside the kitchen door; no more lugging water from the
spring. And in the parlor there would be a bookcase,
no, two bookcases, big bookcases full of
books, and a hanging lamp to read them by, on winter
evenings by the fireplace. When the mortgage
is paid, in only a few more years, she said, and when
the orchard is in bearing, if prices are good then,
we will fence the whole place with wire and build the
Laura's dream realized: the house that she and
Almanzo built of materials from the farm. The
wellhouse is outside the kitchen door. The home
is now preserved as a memorial museum by the
Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association of
Mansfield, Missouri. R.w.l.
fill their water-pans, and bring in the eggs; be
careful not to break one. Oh, now that we had the cow,
we'd have a treat for Sunday supper, French toast
with that wild honey, to surprise my father. How
wonderful it was to have a cow again. While I scattered
corn for the hens, fetched water from the spring to fill
their pans, and hunted for eggs that the broody hens
hid in the haymow, in the straw stack, and even in the
wild grasses, I heard her whistling in the cabin,
getting supper. LAURA INGALLS WILDER was
born in 1867 in the log cabin described in
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS. As her
classic Little House books tell us, she and her
family traveled by covered wagon across the
Midwest. oation THE WAY HOME tells how
she and her husband, Almanzo Wilder,
made their own covered-wagon trip with their daughter,
Rose, to Mansfield, Missouri. There Laura
wrote her story in the Little House books, and
lived until she was ninety years old. For
millions of readers, however, she lives forever as the
little pioneer girl in the beloved Little House
books. ROSE WILDER LANE was born in
1886 in De Smet, South Dakota, to
Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and grew
up on the Wilder farm in Missouri. Like her mother,
she was a prolific writer, and wrote works of both
fiction and nonfiction, including the best-selling Like
ET THE HURRICANE ROAR. She died in
1968. Jacket art [*copygg'1995 t73
Suzanne lggnranceat Jacket design by Charles
Krcloff [*copygg'1995 by HarperCollins
Publishers