The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas

CHAPTER IX.
SETTING THE STAKES

“We mustn’t let any grass grow under our feet, boys,” was Mr. Aleck Howell’s energetic remark, next morning, when the little party had finished their first breakfast in their new home.

“That means work, I s’pose,” replied Oscar, turning a longing glance to his violin hanging on the side of the cabin, with a broken string crying for repairs.

“Yes, and hard work, too,” said his father, noting the lad’s look. “Luckily for us, Brother Aleck,” he continued, “our boys are not afraid of work. They have been brought up to it, and although I am thinking they don’t know much about the sort of work that we shall have to put in on these beautiful prairies, I guess they will buckle down to it. Eh?” and the loving father turned his look from the grassy and rolling plain to his son’s face.

Sandy answered for him. “Oh, yes, Uncle Charlie, we all like work! Afraid of work? Why, Oscar and I are so used to it that we would be willing to lie right down by the side of it, and sleep as securely as if it were as harmless as a kitten! Afraid of work? Never you fear ‘the Dixon boys who fear no noise’–what’s the rest of that song?”

Nobody knew, and, in the laugh that followed, Mr. Howell suggested that as Younkins was coming over the river to show them the stakes of their new claims, the boys might better set an extra plate at dinner-time. It was very good of Younkins to take so much trouble on their account, and the least they could do was to show him proper hospitality.

“What is all this about stakes and quarter-sections, anyway, father?” asked Sandy. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

“He doesn’t know what quarter-sections are!” shouted Charlie. “Oh, my! what an ignoramus!”

“Well, what is a quarter-section, as you are so knowing?” demanded Sandy. “I don’t believe you know yourself.”

“It is a quarter of a section of public land,” answered the lad. “Every man or single woman of mature age–I think that is what the books say–who doesn’t own several hundred acres of land elsewhere (I don’t know just how many) is entitled to enter on and take up a quarter of a section of unoccupied public land, and have it for a homestead. That’s all,” and Charlie looked to his father for approval.

“Pretty good, Charlie,” said his uncle. “How many acres are there in a quarter-section of land?”

“Yes, how many acres in a quarter of a section?” shouted Sandy, who saw that his brother hesitated. “Speak up, my little man, and don’t be afraid!”

“I don’t know,” replied the lad, frankly.

“Good for you!” said his father. “Never be afraid of saying that you don’t know when you do not know. The fear of confessing ignorance is what has wrecked many a young fellow’s chances for finding out things he should know.”

“Well, boys,” said Mr. Bryant, addressing himself to the three lads, “all the land of the United States Government that is open to settlement is laid off in townships six miles square. These, in turn, are laid off into sections of six hundred and forty acres each. Now, then, how much land should there be in a quarter-section?”

“One hundred and sixty acres!” shouted all three boys at once, breathlessly.

“Correct. The Government allows every man, or single woman of mature age, widow or unmarried, to go upon a plot of land, not more than one hundred and sixty acres nor less than forty acres, and to improve it, and live upon it. If he stays there, or ‘maintains a continuous residence,’ as the lawyers say, for a certain length of time, the Government gives him a title-deed at the end of that time, and he owns the land.”

“What?–free, gratis, and for nothing?” cried Sandy.

“Certainly,” said his uncle. “The homestead law was passed by Congress to encourage the settlement of the lands belonging to the Government. You see there is an abundance of these lands,–so much, in fact, that they have not yet been all laid off into townships and sections and quarter-sections. If a large number of homestead claims are taken up, then other settlers will be certain to come in and buy the lands that the Government has to sell; and that will make settlements grow throughout that locality.”

“Why should they buy when they can get land for nothing by entering and taking possession, just as we are going to do?” interrupted Oscar.

“Because, my son, many of the men cannot make oath that they have not taken up Government land somewhere else; and then, again, many men are going into land speculations, and they don’t care to wait five years to prove up a homestead claim. So they go upon the land, stake out their claim, and the Government sells it to them outright at the rate of a dollar and a quarter an acre.”

“Cash down?” asked Charlie.

“No, they need not pay cash down unless they choose. The Government allows them a year to pay up in. But land speculators who make a business of this sort of thing generally pay up just as soon as they are allowed to, and then, if they get a good offer to sell out, they sell and move off somewhere else, and do the same thing over again.”

“People have to pay fees, don’t they, Uncle Charlie?” said Sandy. “I know they used to talk about land-office fees, in Dixon. How much does it cost in fees to enter a piece of Government land?”

“I think it is about twenty-five dollars–twenty-six, to be exact,” replied Mr. Bryant. “There comes Younkins,” he added, looking down the trail to the river bank below.

The boys had been washing and putting away the breakfast things while this conversation was going on, and Sandy, balancing in the air a big tin pan on his fingers, asked: “How much land can we fellows enter, all told?” The two men laughed.

“Well, Alexander,” said his father, ceremoniously, “We two ‘fellows,’ that is to say, your Uncle Charlie and myself, can enter one hundred and sixty acres apiece. Charlie will be able to enter the same quantity three years from now, when he will be twenty-one; and as for you and Oscar, if you each add to your present years as many as will make you twenty-one, you can tell when you will be able to enter and own the same amount of land; provided it is not all gone by that time. Good morning, Mr. Younkins.” Sandy’s pan came down with a crash on the puncheon floor.

The land around that region of the Republican Fork had been surveyed into sections of six hundred and forty acres each; but it would be necessary to secure the services of a local surveyor to find out just where the boundaries of each quarter-section were. The stakes were set at the corner of each section, and Younkins thought that by pacing off the distance between two corners they could get at the point that would mark the middle of the section; then, by running lines across from side to side, thus: they could get at the quarter-sections nearly enough to be able to tell about where their boundaries were.

“But suppose you should build a house, or plough a field, on some other man’s quarter-section,” suggested Charlie, “wouldn’t you feel cheap when the final survey showed that you had all along been improving your neighbor’s property?”

“There isn’t any danger of that,” answered Younkins, “if you are smart enough to keep well away from your boundary line when you are putting in your improvements. Some men are not smart enough, though. There was a man over on Chapman’s Creek who wanted to have his log-cabin on a pretty rise of ground-like, that was on the upper end of his claim. He knew that the line ran somewhere about there; but he took chances-like, and when the line was run, a year after that, lo, and behold! his house and garden-like were both clean over into the next man’s claim.”

“What did he do?” asked Charlie. “Skip out of the place?”

“Sho! No, indeed! His neighbor was a white man-like, and they just took down the cabin and carried it across the boundary line and set it up again on the man’s own land. He’s livin’ there yet; but he lost his garden-like; couldn’t move that, you see”; and Younkins laughed one of his infrequent laughs.

The land open to the settlers on the south side of the Republican Fork was all before them. Nothing had been taken up within a distance as far as they could see. Chapman’s Creek, just referred to by Younkins, was eighteen or twenty miles away. From the point at which they stood and toward Chapman’s, the land was surveyed; but to the westward the surveys ran only just across the creek, which, curving from the north and west, made a complete circuit around the land and emptied into the Fork, just below the fording-place. Inside of that circuit, the land, undulating, and lying with a southern exposure, was destitute of trees. It was rich, fat land, but there was not a tree on it except where it crossed the creek, the banks of which were heavily wooded. Inside of that circuit somewhere, the two men must stake out their claim. There was nothing but rich, unshaded land, with a meandering woody creek flowing through the bottom of the two claims, provided they were laid out side by side. The corner stakes were found, and the men prepared to pace off the distance between the corners so as to find the centre.

“It is a pity there is no timber anywhere,” said Howell, discontentedly. “We shall have to go several miles for timber enough to build our cabins. We don’t want to cut down right away what little there is along the creek.”

“Timber?” said Younkins, reflectively. “Timber? Well, if one of you would put up with a quarter-section of farming land, then the other can enter some of the timber land up on the North Branch.”

Now, the North Branch was two miles and a half from the cabin in which the Dixon party were camped; and that cabin was two miles from the beautiful slopes on which the intending settlers were now looking for an opportunity to lay out their two claims. The two men looked at each other. Could they divide and settle this far apart for the sake of getting a timber lot?

It was Sandy who solved the problem. “I’ll tell you what to do, father!” he cried, eagerly: “you take up the timber claim on the North Branch, and we boys can live there; then you and Uncle Charlie can keep one of the claims here. We can build two cabins, and you old folks can live in one, and we in another.”

The fathers exchanged glances, and Mr. Howell said, “I don’t see how I could live without Sandy and Charlie.”

Younkins brightened up at Sandy’s suggestion; and he added that the two men might take up two farming claims, side by side, and let the boys try and hold the timber claim on the North Branch. Thus far, there was no rush of emigration to the south side of the Republican Fork. Most of the settlers went further to the south; or they halted further east, and fixed their stakes along the line of the Big Blue and other more accessible regions.

“We’ll chance it, won’t we, Aleck?” said Mr. Bryant.

Mr. Howell looked vaguely off over the rolling slope on which they were standing, and said: “We will chance it with the boys on the timber land, but I am not in favor of taking up two claims here. Let the timber claim be in my name or yours, and the boys can live on it. But we can’t take up two claims here and the timber besides–three in all–with only two full-grown men among the whole of us. That stands to reason.”

Younkins was a little puzzled by the strictness with which the two newcomers were disposed to regard their rights and duties as actual settlers. He argued that settlers were entitled to all they could get and hold; and he was in favor of the party’s trying to hold three claims of one hundred and sixty acres each, even if there were only two men legally entitled to enter homesteads. Wouldn’t Charlie be of age before the time came to take out a patent for the land?

“But he is not of age to enter upon and hold the land now,” said his father, stiffly.

So it was settled that the two men should enter upon the quarter-section of farming land, and build a cabin as soon as convenient, and that the claim on the North Fork, which had a fine grove of timber on it, should be set apart for the boys, and a cabin built there, too. The cabin in the timber need not be built until late in the autumn; that claim could be taken up by Mr. Howell, or by Mr. Bryant; by and by they would draw lots to decide which. Before sundown that night, they had staked out the corners of the one hundred and sixty acre lot of farming land, on which the party had arrived in the morning.

It was dark before they returned from looking over the timber land in the bend of the North Fork of the Republican.

CHAPTER X.
DRAWING THE FIRST FURROW

The good-natured Younkins was on hand bright and early the next morning, to show the new settlers where to cut the first furrow on the land which they had determined to plough. Having decided to take the northwest corner of the quarter-section selected, it was easy to find the stake set at the corner. Then, having drawn an imaginary line from the stake to that which was set in the southwest corner, the tall Charlie standing where he could he used as a sign for said landmark, his father and his uncle, assisted by Younkins, and followed by the two other boys, set the big breaking-plough as near that line as possible. The four yoke of oxen stood obediently in line. Mr. Howell firmly held the plough-handles; Younkins drove the two forward yoke of cattle, and Mr. Bryant the second two; and the two younger boys stood ready to hurrah as soon as the word was given to start. It was an impressive moment to the youngsters.

“Gee up!” shouted Younkins, as mildly as if the oxen were petted children. The long train moved; the sharp nose of the plough cut into the virgin turf, turning over a broad sod, about five inches thick; and then the plough swept onward toward the point where Charlie stood waving his red handkerchief in the air. Sandy seized a huge piece of the freshly-turned sod, and swinging it over his head with his strong young arms, he cried, “Three cheers for the first sod of Bleeding Kansas! ’Rah! ’Rah! ’Rah!” The farming of the boy settlers had begun.

Charlie, at his distant post on the other side of the creek, saw the beginning of things, and sent back an answering cheer to the two boys who were dancing around the massive and slow-moving team of cattle. The men smiled at the enthusiasm of the youngsters, but in their hearts the two new settlers felt that this was, after all, an event of much significance. The green turf now being turned over was disturbed by ploughshare for the first time since the creation of the world. Scarcely ever had this soil felt the pressure of the foot of a white man. For ages unnumbered it had been the feeding-ground of the buffalo and the deer. The American savage had chased his game over it, and possibly the sod had been wet with the blood of contending tribes. Now all was to be changed. As the black, loamy soil was turned for the first time to the light of day, so for the first time the long-neglected plain was being made useful for the support of civilized man.

No wonder the boys cheered and cheered again.

 
“We go to plant her common schools,
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.”
 

This is what was in Mr. Charles Bryant’s mind as he wielded the ox-goad over the backs of the animals that drew the great plough along the first furrow cut on the farm of the emigrants. The day was bright and fair; the sun shone down on the flower-gemmed sod; no sound broke on the still air but the slow treading of the oxen, the chirrup of the drivers, the ripping of the sod as it was turned in the furrow, and the gay shouts of the light-hearted boys.

In a line of marvellous straightness, Younkins guided the leading yoke of cattle directly toward the creek on the other side of which Charlie yet stood, a tall, but animated landmark. When, after descending the gradual slope on which the land lay, the trees that bordered the stream hid the lad from view, it was decided that the furrow was long enough to mark the westerly boundary line of the forty acres which it was intended to break up for the first corn-field on the farm. Then the oxen were turned, with some difficulty, at right angles with the line just drawn, and were driven easterly until the southern boundary of the patch was marked out. Turning, now, at right angles, and tracing another line at the north, then again to the west to the point of original departure, they had accurately defined the outer boundaries of the field on which so much in the future depended; for here was to be planted the first crop of the newcomers.

Younkins, having started the settlers in their first farming, returned across the river to his own plough, first having sat down with the Dixon party to a substantial dinner. For the boys, after the first few furrows were satisfactorily turned, had gone back to the cabin and made ready the noon meal. The ploughmen, when they came to the cabin in answer to Sandy’s whoop from the roof, had made a considerable beginning in the field. They had gone around within the outer edge of the plantation that was to be, leaving with each circuit a broader band of black and shining loam over which a flock of birds hopped and swept with eager movements, snapping up the insects and worms which, astonished at the great upheaval, wriggled in the overturned turf.

“Looks sorter homelike here,” said Younkins, with a pleased smile, as he drew his bench to the well-spread board and glanced around at the walls of the cabin, where the boys had already hung their fishing-tackle, guns, Oscar’s violin, and a few odds and ends that gave a picturesque look to the long-deserted cabin.

“Yes,” said Mr. Bryant, as he filled Younkins’s tin cup with hot coffee, “our boys have all got the knack of making themselves at home,–runs in the blood, I guess,–and if you come over here again in a day or two, you will probably find us with rugs on the floor and pictures on the walls. Sandy is a master-hand at hunting; and he intends to get a dozen buffalo-skins out of hand, so to speak, right away.” And he looked fondly at his freckled nephew as he spoke.

“A dibble and a corn-dropper will be more in his way than the rifle, for some weeks to come,” said Mr. Howell.

“What’s a dibble?” asked both of the youngsters at once.

The elder man smiled and looked at Younkins as he said, “A dibble, my lambs, is an instrument for the planting of corn. With it in one hand you punch a hole in the sod that has been turned over, and then, with the other hand, you drop in three or four grains of corn from the corn-dropper, cover it with your heel, and there you are,–planted.”

“Why, I supposed we were going to plant corn with a hoe; and we’ve got the hoes, too!” cried Oscar.

“No, my son,” said his father; “if we were to plant corn with a hoe, we shouldn’t get through planting before next fall, I am afraid. After dinner, we will make some dibbles for you boys, for you must begin to drop corn to-morrow. What ploughing we have done to-day, you can easily catch up with when you begin. And the three of you can all be on the furrow at once, if that seems worth while.”

The boys very soon understood fully what a dibble was, and what a corn-dropper was, strange though those implements were to them at first. Before the end of planting-time, they fervently wished they had never seen either of these instruments of the corn-planter.

With the aid of a few rude tools, there was fashioned a staff from the tough hickory that grew near at hand, the lower part of the stick being thick and pointed at the end. The staff was about as high as would come up to a boy’s shoulder, so that as he grasped it near the upper end, his arm being bent, the lower end was on the ground.

The upper end was whittled so as to make a convenient handle for the user. The lower end was shaped carefully into something like the convex sides of two spoons put together by their bowls, and the lower edge of this part was shaved down to a sharpness that was increased by slightly hardening it in the fire. Just above the thickest part of the dibble, a hole was bored at right angles through the wood, and into this a peg was driven so that several inches stuck out on both sides of the instrument. This completed the dibble.

“So that is a dibble, is it?” said Oscar, when the first one was shown him. “A dibble. Now let’s see how you use it.”

Thereupon his Uncle Aleck stood up, grasped the staff by the upper end, pressed his foot on the peg at the lower end of the tool, and so forced the sharp point of the dibble downward into the earth. Then, drawing it out, a convex slit was shown in the elastic turf. Shaking an imaginary grain of corn into the hole, he closed it with a stamp of his heel, stepped on and repeated the motion a few times, and then said, “That’s how they plant corn on the sod in Kansas.”

“Uncle Aleck, what a lot you know!” said Oscar, with undisguised admiration.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bryant, taking a pair of old boots, cut off the legs just above the ankles, and, fastening in the lower end of each a round bit of wood, by means of small nails, quickly made a pair of corn-droppers. Sandy’s belt, being passed through the loop-strap of one of these, was fastened around his waist. The dropper was to be filled with corn, and, thus accoutred, he was ready for doing duty in the newly ploughed field. When the lad expressed his impatience for another day to come so that he could begin corn-planting, the two elders of the family laughed outright.

“Sandy, boy, you will be glad when to-morrow night comes, so that you can rest from your labors. You remember what I tell you!” said his father.

Nevertheless, when the two boys stepped bravely out, next morning, in the wake of the breaking-team, they were not in the least dismayed by the prospect of working all day in the heavy furrows of the plough. Bryant drove the leading yoke of oxen, Charlie tried his ’prentice hand with the second yoke, and Howell held the plough.

 
“‘He that by the plough would thrive,
Must either hold the plough or drive,’”
 

commented Oscar, filling his corn-dropper and eyeing his father’s rather awkward handling of the ox-goad. Uncle Aleck had usually driven the cattle, but his hand was now required in the more difficult business of holding the plough.

“‘Plough deep while sluggards sleep,’” replied his father; “and if you don’t manage better with dropping corn than I do with driving these oxen, we shall have a short crop.”

“How many grains of corn to a hole, Uncle Aleck? and how many bushels to the acre?” asked Oscar.

“Not more than five grains nor less than three is the rule, my boy. Now then, step out lively.”

And the big team swept down the slope, leaving a broad and shining furrow behind it. The two boys followed, one about twenty feet behind the other, and when the hindermost had come up to the work of him who was ahead, he skipped the planted part and went on ahead of his comrade twenty feet, thus alternating each with the other. They were cheerily at work when, apparently from under the feet of the forward yoke of oxen, a bird somewhat bigger than a robin flew up with shrieks of alarm and went fluttering off along the ground, tumbling in the grass as if desperately wounded and unable to fly. Sandy made a rush for the bird, which barely eluded his clutches once or twice, and drew him on and on in a fruitless chase; for the timid creature soon recovered the use of its wings, and soaring aloft, disappeared in the depths of the sky.

“That’s the deceivingest bird I ever saw,” panted Sandy, out of breath with running, and looking shamefacedly at the corn that he had spilled in his haste to catch his prey. “Why, it acted just as if its right wing was broken, and then it flew off as sound as a nut, for all I could see.”

When the ploughmen met them, on the next turn of the team, Uncle Aleck said, “Did you catch the lapwing, you silly boy? That fellow fooled you nicely.”

“Lapwing?” said Sandy, puzzled. “What’s a lapwing?” But the ploughmen were already out of earshot.

“Oh, I know now,” said Oscar. “I’ve read of the lapwing; it is a bird so devoted to its young, or its nest, that when it fancies either in danger, it assumes all the distress of a wounded thing, and, fluttering along the ground, draws the sportsman away from the locality.”

“Right out of a book, Oscar!” cried Sandy. “And here’s its nest, as sure as I’m alive!” So saying, the lad stooped, and, parting the grass with his hands, disclosed a pretty nest sunk in the ground, holding five finely speckled eggs. The bird, so lately playing the cripple, cried and circled around the heads of the boys as they peered into the home of the lapwing.

“Well, here’s an actual settler that we must disturb, Sandy,” said Oscar; “for the plough will smash right through this nest on the very next turn. Suppose we take it up and put it somewhere else, out of harm’s way?”

“I’m willing,” assented Sandy; and the two boys, carefully extracting the nest from its place, carried it well over into the ploughed ground, where under the lee of a thick turf it was left in safety. But, as might have been expected, the parent lapwing never went near that nest again. The fright had been too great.

“What in the world are you two boys up to now?” shouted Uncle Aleck from the other side of the ploughing. “Do you call that dropping corn? Hurry and catch up with the team; you are ’way behind.”

“Great Scott!” cried Sandy; “I had clean forgotten the corn-dropping. A nice pair of farmers we are, Oscar!” and the lad, with might and main, began to close rapidly the long gap between him and the steadily moving ox-team.

“Leg-weary work, isn’t it, Sandy?” said his father, when they stopped at noon to take the luncheon they had brought out into the field with them.

“Yes, and I’m terribly hungry,” returned the boy, biting into a huge piece of cold corn-bread. “I shouldn’t eat this if I were at home, and I shouldn’t eat it now if I weren’t as hungry as a bear. Say, daddy, you cannot think how tired my leg is with the punching of that dibble into the sod; seems as if I couldn’t hold out till sundown; but I suppose I shall. First, I punch a hole by jamming down the dibble with my foot, and then I kick the hole again with the same foot, after I have dropped in the grains of corn. These two motions are dreadfully tiresome.”

“Yes,” said his uncle, with a short laugh, “and while I was watching you and Oscar, this forenoon, I couldn’t help thinking that you did not yet know how to make your muscles bear an equal strain. Suppose you try changing legs?”

“Changing legs?” exclaimed both boys at once. “Why, how could we exchange legs?”

“I know what Uncle Aleck means. I saw you always used the right leg to jam down the dibble with, and then you kicked the hole full with the right heel. No wonder your right legs are tired. Change hands and legs, once in a while, and use the dibble on the left side of you,” said Charlie, whose driving had tired him quite as thoroughly.

“Isn’t Charlie too awfully knowing for anything, Oscar?” said Sandy, with some sarcasm. Nevertheless, the lad got up, tried the dibble with his left hand, and saying, “Thanks, Charlie,” dropped down upon the fragrant sod and was speedily asleep, for a generous nooning was allowed the industrious lads.