Hardscrabble Read online

  HARDSCRABBLE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2018 Sandra Dallas

  Cover illustration by Steve Adams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles. All inquiries should be addressed to:

  Sleeping Bear Press™

  2395 South Huron Parkway, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104

  www.sleepingbearpress.com

  © Sleeping Bear Press

  Printed and bound in the United States.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dallas, Sandra, author.

  Title: Hardscrabble / written by Sandra Dallas.

  Description: Ann Arbor, MI : Sleeping Bear Press, [2018] | Summary: Twelve-year-old Belle Martin and her family move to Mingo, Colorado, in 1910 when the U.S. government offers 320 acres of land free to homesteaders.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017029809 | ISBN 9781585363759

  Subjects: | CYAC: Frontier and pioneer life—Colorado—Fiction. | Family life—Colorado—Fiction. | Neighbors—Fiction. Colorado—History—1876-1950—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.D1644 Har 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029809

  For Forrest and his cousin, the amazing Magnolia Marie Cole.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One: Coming to Colorado

  Chapter Two: The Girl Homesteader

  Chapter Three: Visitors

  Chapter Four: Killing Bedbugs

  Chapter Five: Killing Snakes, Too

  Chapter Six: Lizzie’s Secret

  Chapter Seven: Belle Goes to Town

  Chapter Eight: A Homesteader Party

  Chapter Nine: Mrs. Spenser’s Gift

  Chapter Ten: A Colorado Christmas

  Chapter Eleven: Staying with Lizzie

  Chapter Twelve: The Intruder

  Chapter Thirteen: Becky

  Chapter Fourteen: The Blizzard

  Chapter Fifteen: The Rescue

  Chapter Sixteen: Mama

  Chapter Seventeen: Three Walnuts

  Chapter Eighteen: A Surprise Celebration

  Chapter Nineteen: Hank Comes to Mingo

  Chapter Twenty: A Hard Summer

  Chapter Twenty-One: Carrie’s Sacrifice

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Mrs. Spenser Comes Calling

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Belle Meddles

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Courting Lizzie

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Another Christmas

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Papa’s Surprise

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Coming to Colorado

  Where’s Papa?” Belle Martin asked, looking around the train station.

  Carrie shook her head. “Hush,” she whispered.

  Belle frowned. Was Carrie suggesting that if she hadn’t asked about Papa, Mama wouldn’t have noticed he wasn’t there to meet them?

  Belle searched the depot, hoping to spot her father. Perhaps he was lost in the crowd of people milling about. She saw men removing farm equipment that had come in on the train and putting it into wagons. A boy helped his father lift bags of seeds out of one of the cars and stack them on the depot platform. A woman wearing a worn shawl over her head tried to hold on to half a dozen children, talking to them in a language Belle didn’t understand. Carrie had told her they were immigrants, people who had come to America from other countries hoping for a better life. They expected to farm in Colorado. Women got off the train and stood on the metal platform and searched the crowd for their husbands, then smiled when they found them.

  Belle watched one woman as she hugged a man. As his face turned red, he removed her arms. But she would have none of it. “Six months since I’ve seen you, and I’ve the right to a little affection,” she said.

  But there was no Papa.

  One by one, as their husbands claimed them, the women left the platform, a few getting into automobiles or trucks but most into wagons. The immigrants, too, crowded into rickety wagons and drove off across the brown prairie, leaving only the Martins. A few people glanced at Mama, who looked frail and sick and leaned against Carrie for support. But they didn’t ask what was wrong or offer to help. And nobody paid attention to Belle, who stood at the edge of the rough boards, holding the hands of two little girls, Sarah, age four, and Becky, two. Belle’s brother Frank, eleven, sat on one of their trunks with another brother, Gully, five. Beside them were boxes and barrels of dishes and pots and pans and sacks of flour and sugar. There were containers of salt and spices and dozens of other items Mama thought they would need on a farm.

  “We haven’t seen Papa for six months, either. Where is he, Belle? Is he coming?” Frank asked.

  “He’ll be here. He expects us. He promised to meet us.” Then she added, “Maybe he got the day wrong. This is June 11, 1910, isn’t it? And this is Mingo, Colorado, isn’t it?”

  Frank shrugged in a How would I know? gesture.

  Belle tried not to think of the conversation she had overheard on the train. A man had been talking about a woman who had arrived in Mingo just a week earlier to meet her husband, only to discover he wasn’t there at all. He was supposed to have left the East to file for a homestead near Mingo, but instead he’d taken their money and run off. So there she was, no husband and not enough money to buy a ticket back to where she’d come from. Belle half expected to see the woman standing on the platform still, but, of course, she was gone.

  The Martins, too, didn’t have the money for return tickets to Iowa. That was why they had come here, because their money was gone. But she wasn’t worried. Papa wasn’t like that man. He loved them. He’d written home that he was counting the days until his family joined him.

  She glanced at her big sister. Carrie was fifteen, three years older than Belle, four years older than Frank. Carrie held tight to Mama, who was holding the baby in her arms. The baby was only six weeks old and didn’t have a name. Mama had said she’d wait until they got to Colorado so that Papa could name him.

  Mama had felt poorly even before the baby came. The doctor had told her she was not to go to Colorado until he was born. Then after the baby arrived, the doctor had wanted her to stay in Iowa for a few more months before moving to Mingo. She still wasn’t well. But Mama had insisted she would be fine as soon as she saw Papa. The sight of him would be better than any rest—or medicine, either, she’d claimed.

  Mama didn’t seem worried that Papa hadn’t met them, but Belle could tell that Carrie was. Carrie led Mama to a bench and told her to rest. Mama nodded and sat down, the baby in her lap. Then Carrie went to Belle. She’d forgotten she’d told Belle to hush, and she whispered, “I don’t understand where Papa is. He ought to be here. It’s not right, his making Mama wait.”

  “He’s coming,” Belle said. “You always worry.” She was right. Sometimes, Carrie acted like a grown-up. She fussed over Mama, and she often did the cooking and washing and caring for the baby when Mama was tired.

  “He’ll be here,” Belle said stubbornly. She looked out across the prairie. The grasses, gold in the late-afternoon sun, waved in the wind that blew dust and dirt onto the platform. There wasn’t a tree to block the view. There wasn’t a sign of Papa, either.

  “I don’t think Mingo’s what Mama expected it to be,” Carrie said. “She told me there’d be crops and flowers, that it would be green. I’ve never seen so much brown. It’s ugly.” Carrie glanced at her mother, who sat softly humming to the baby.

  Belle stared at her sister for a moment. Although she sometimes brooded, Carrie, like their mother, rarely complained. When trouble came, Carrie would press her lips together, then smile and say that things could be worse. “Well,” she said, smiling now at Belle, “I think this farm will be a fine one, different from Iowa. Papa’s a good farmer, and it looks like he won’t have to cut down trees.” She gave a laugh. “We won’t have a mortgage, either.” Still, she said, “I hope the house Papa built for us will be better than the dirt huts and tar-paper shacks we saw along the train tracks. I wouldn’t want Mama to live in something like that.”

  Belle agreed. They had had a nice home in Iowa, a brick house with white jigsaw trim hanging from the roof. The house was big, with four bedrooms, and there was running water in the kitchen. And an indoor bathroom. But the crops had failed over the last three years, and the bank took away the farm. And then Mama was sick long before the baby came. The doctor said she needed a change of climate. He told Papa to take her west, where the air was clear and dry. So Papa decided to try his hand at homesteading. The government promised to give a man 320 acres of land for free. All he had to do was live on it for five years and farm it. That sounded like a fine opportunity. So Papa set off for Mingo to file for a homestead, leaving his family to follow later.

  Belle looked out across the high plains once more. She believed she could almost see the earth curve. She’d learned at school that the earth was a giant ball. A dusty ball in Colorado, she thought as she watched far off on the horizon as tumbleweeds rolled across the plains. The conductor on the train had pointed out the weeds to them, saying they were Russian thistles but everybody called them tumbleweeds because of the way
the wind sent them tumbling across the fields. She stared in that direction for a long time, and then she grabbed Frank’s arm, excited. “Look. I think that’s a wagon.”

  “Papa?” Carrie said. She went to Mama and took her arm. “See over there, a wagon. It has to be Papa. We knew he’d come.”

  “Of course we did,” Mama replied, looking around her as if she hadn’t realized her children were worried. “I never doubted it for a minute.”

  The wagon moved quickly across the open ground, and in a few minutes, it was at the depot. Papa jumped out and landed on the platform with a bound. He grabbed Mama in his arms and hugged her. “I’d have been here sooner, but the wheel on the wagon broke just as I was leaving. I had to go to the neighbor’s to borrow this wagon.”

  “We knew there was a reason,” Mama said, beaming at him. “But what does it matter? Now you’re here, Beck.”

  Papa hugged her again, then turned to the others. “Carrie, what would your mother have done without you? And my little Bluebelle, sassy as ever.” He hugged both of his older daughters, then shook hands with Frank, telling him he was glad there was another man now to help with the farm. He shook hands with Gully, too. Then he picked up Sarah and Becky, one girl in each arm and said they’d grown so much, he wouldn’t have known them. “Why, last time I saw you, Becky, you couldn’t even walk.”

  Becky stared and then asked, “Are you Papa?”

  “Of course I am! I’ll never stay away from you this long again.”

  At last, he went back to Mama and peered down at the baby. “Why, who’s this button here? I believe you’ve added another little Martin to our family. He certainly seems to be a Martin. Just look at those ears.” The baby’s ears stuck out just like Papa’s and Frank’s. “What do you call him?”

  “Baby,” Carrie put in. “Mama says you’re to name him. Just like you did all of us.”

  Papa nodded. He had named Carrie and Frank after his parents. Belle was supposed to be named for Mama’s mother, but when he saw her bright blue eyes, Papa had said they were the color of bluebells. So he’d called her Bluebelle. Sarah and Gully were named after Mama’s folks and Becky after himself. “What name do you favor for this little one, Louisa?” he asked Mama.

  “He should be called something for our new home. But I don’t see any bluebells out here,” Mama replied.

  “There’s buffalo grass, but that’s not much of a name for a boy.” Papa thought a moment, and then he reached for the baby, who was so small that Papa could hold him in one hand. He peeled back the blanket and grinned at the infant. “What name would you like, young sir? What would you think of Louis? It’s a good deal like your mother’s name.” He glanced over at Mama. “What do you think of it, Louisa?”

  “I never favored it,” Mama told him. “He ought to have a western name, a Colorado name.”

  Papa looked out across the prairie, then turned to us and grinned. “What do you say to Sagebrush?” he asked. “First name will be Louis and middle name Sagebrush. We’ll call him Sage.”

  “Sage,” Mama repeated. “I think that’s a fine name.” She took back the baby and told Papa, “Now, it’s time to take Sage to his new home. We’re all of us tired out.”

  Papa, Frank, and Belle loaded the trunks and bags and boxes of foodstuffs into the wagon. Then Papa lifted Mama and the baby onto the board seat. The rest of the family climbed into the wagon bed, and they started out across the prairie. As the depot disappeared behind them, Frank said, “I like this place. I could ride a horse a hundred miles out here. Do you think Papa will let me ride one of the horses, Belle?”

  “I do. I think he’ll let me ride, too—astride. And I’ll be able to run footraces and wear short skirts and not have to worry about what people will think, because there won’t be anybody to see me,” she said. “Don’t you think Colorado’s swell, Carrie?”

  Carrie had seated herself on one of the trunks, and she, too, stared out at the land. There was a look of shock on her face, and Belle wondered what her sister thought of the prairie. Like Mama, however, she would never complain. She would make the best of things.

  “Why, I like it fine,” she replied.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Girl Homesteader

  The train had arrived at noon. It was midafternoon by the time Papa had loaded the wagon and driven the three miles from Mingo to the homestead. He stopped the wagon next to a strange building that looked like it had been carved out of the prairie. “This is your new home. Isn’t it a dinger?” he said. There was a touch of pride in his voice.

  “It’s dirt,” Carrie blurted out, and then she bit her lip. “I mean, it looks just like it’s made out of grass.”

  “Right you are,” Papa said. “It’s made of layers of sod. That’s why it’s called a soddy. I wrote you about it.”

  “I didn’t know it looked like this,” Carrie said. “Did you, Mama?”

  “It’s a fine house,” Mama said.

  “Of course it is,” Carrie said quickly. “It’s just that I’m surprised.”

  “I made it myself. Well, mostly by myself. Some of the neighbors helped. One loaned me his sod plow. You use it to break the sod, which is the prairie earth covered with buffalo grass. Then you cut it into strips. The strips are eighteen inches long and twelve inches wide.” He turned to Carrie when he said that, since she loved math.

  “Sod breaking is hard work, because the buffalo grass is tough. Sometimes I think the roots go all the way to China. A neighbor helped me load the strips onto a low sledge and haul them over here. Then I stacked them one on top of another to form walls. Our house is seven feet high,” he said.

  “Won’t the sod slip?” Belle asked.

  “The roots of each layer cling to the sod strip beneath it. These walls are so thick, they keep out the wind. A soddy is the best kind of house out here, much better than frame. It’s warm in winter and cool in summer. Look, I even put in a glass window. And a wooden door. Some people hang blankets in the doorways, but I wanted a nice, tight house for my family. I plan to put in a board floor one day.”

  “It’s a splendid house, Beck,” Mama said.

  “It’s a dinger, all right,” Frank said. He liked Papa’s new word.

  Belle went up close to the house, poking a finger between two layers of sod. Then she said, “Look, there are flowers growing out of the walls. I like it already.”

  Becky pointed at the flowers growing on the roof and began to laugh.

  “What do you think, Carrie?” Papa asked.

  Carrie was silent for a minute, and then she laughed, too. “Mama and I won’t have to sweep dirt off the floor, because the floor is dirt.”

  When the others started for the house, Belle whispered to her sister, “Is that what’s meant by dirt-poor?”

  “No, of course not. Don’t forget we have the money Aunt Susan left for me to go to college.”

  “So we’re not poor?”

  “Not poor at all,” Carrie insisted, turning to look at the family. “How could we be when we have each other? It’s just that we don’t have money.”

  Papa led them inside their new home, which was the strangest house any of them had ever seen. The inside walls were rough and grassy just like those on the outside. The house had just two rooms. The larger was the kitchen. Papa had fastened shelves to one wall, and near it stood a two-burner cookstove. A table he had made was in the center of the room, surrounded by half a dozen nail kegs and apple boxes serving as stools. There was no bureau, just one cupboard. There weren’t curtains, a rug, or a tablecloth, either. The smaller room held an iron bed. Belle looked at the dirt floor and knew that the big crocheted rug Mama had made for the bedroom would stay in the trunk.

  “Look, Louisa. I made a bed for Sage,” Papa said, pointing to a wooden box on runners.

  “A cradle! You made a cradle for Sage to sleep in,” Mama said.

  “But where are the rest of us going to sleep?” Frank asked.

  “On the floor in the big room. We’ll cover the dirt with a tarp so your quilts won’t get dirty.”

  “It will be just like camping,” Carrie said and smiled at him.

  Belle thought that was an odd remark, because her sister didn’t like to camp.

  “When you’re settled, I’ll build bunk beds,” Papa said. “What with putting in the crops and building the house, I didn’t have time.” He looked at Mama, and for the first time, there was doubt on his face.