ndown and a long
trip back to town."

Automatically we obeyed. As Ida Mary paid him the $20 fee, he stood
there for a moment sizing us up. Homesteaders were all in his day's
work. They came. Some stayed to prove up the land. Some didn't. We
wouldn't.

"Don't 'pear to me like you gals are big enough to homestead." He took
his own filled water jug from the wagon and set it down at the door,
thus expressing his compassion. Then, as unconcerned as a taxi driver
leaving his passengers at a city door, he drove away, leaving us alone.

Ida Mary and I fought down the impulse to run after him, implore him to
take us back with him, not to leave us alone with the prairie and the
night, with nothing but the packing-box for shelter. I think we were too
overwhelmed by the magnitude of our disaster even to ask for help.

We stared after him until the sudden evening chill which comes with the
dusk of the frontier roused us to action.

Hesitantly we stepped over the low sill of the little shack, feeling
like intruders. Ida Mary, who had been so proud of finding a claim with
a house already built, stared at it without a word, her round, young
face shadowed by the brim of her straw hat drawn and tired.

It was a typical homestead shack, about 10 x 12 feet, containing only
one room, and built of rough, foot-wide boards, with a small cellar
window on either side of the room. Like the walls, the door was of wide
boards. The whole house was covered on the outside with tar paper. It
had obviously been put together with small concern for the fine points
of carpentry and none whatever for appearance. It looked as though the
first wind would pick it up and send it flying through the air.

It was as unprepossessing within as it was outside. In one corner a
homemade bunk was fastened to the wall, with ropes criss-crossed and run
through holes in the 2 x 4 inch pieces of lumber which formed the bed,
to take the place of springs. In another corner a rusty, two-hole oil
stove stood on a drygoods box; above it another box with a shelf in it
for a cupboard. Two rickety, homemade chairs completed the furnishings.

We tried to tell ourselves that we were lucky; shacks were not provided
for homesteaders, they had to build their own--but Ida Mary had
succeeded in finding one not only ready built but furnished as well. We
did not deceive ourselves or each other. We were frightened and
homesick. Whatever we had pictured in our imaginations, it bore no