Prairie School

  “The coal’s locked up in the storage half of the depot,” said Jacob.

  School work was forgotten in the emergency. Miss Martin and the children tried to think of ways to help the Indian woman. She ate and fed the baby soup but refused to go to bed. She sat stolidly in a chair by the Heatola, waiting patiently for her son to wake up.

  “The train, the train,” she kept saying.

  “I bet she thought that snowplow going north was a passenger train, and would soon be coming back,” said Jacob.

  “I bet she wants to go to town,” said Fernetta. “Man alive! What a trip—on foot, without even a horse! Do you suppose they walked here?”

  “I know who she is now,” said Darrell. “She’s Charlie Spotted Bear’s wife. They live on Oak Creek, up toward Fort Yates. Pop leases their land. They must have walked all the way down here to get the train.”

  “I recognize her now,” said Delores. “They’re always going through our place on their way to Bullhead—in their wagon in the summertime. Mama always gives them something to eat. They never come in winter, though.”

  “Pearl Spotted Bear, yes!” The Indian woman smiled. “Bullhead, train.”

  “She’s on her way to Bullhead,” said Delores. She turned to the woman and explained: “No trains, big storm, no trains.”

  “Going to Bullhead in a storm like this,” said Miss Martin. “No trains for the past two weeks, and no signs of let-up in the storm. Well, at least we have food here, and we’ll try to keep warm. Boys, we’ll let the furnace fire go out now, and burn what coal and dust we have left in the kitchen heater. We can all crowd into the kitchen and bedroom, I think.”

  “Let’s bring our books and papers out by the stove,” said Ruby.

  After sleeping an hour, the Indian boy woke up. He smiled happily to see his mother and baby sister safe in the kitchen. Rested and warmed through, he began to talk.

  “Big, big snow. It’s sure cold, this morning the zero is forty below. Much cold weather keeps people healthy yet.” He smiled hopefully, and no one laughed. He accepted cold weather as an inevitable thing, which one could not escape, but had to endure.

  “Spike, our dog, he found you,” said Darrell.

  “Big dog bite,” said the Indian boy. “We ’fraid.”

  “Spike only wanted to help you,” said Darrell.

  “Pretty soon old train come, we go Bullhead,” said the boy.

  “No trains running,” said Darrell, shaking his head. “You stay here.”

  “We pretty near froze up, we sleep in big snow.” The boy smiled as if he were joking, then his face turned sad, with all the tragic sadness of his race.

  “You would have frozen sure,” said Darrell. “Spike saved you.”

  “I could have told them the best way to keep from freezing is to wiggle like a worm,” said Jacob. The children laughed.

  “They can sleep here,” said Miss Martin. “We’ll find a way to make them comfortable.”

  “Us girls will give them our bed and sleep on the floor,” said Delores.

  “Sure mike!” exclaimed Fernetta. “We’re as tough as the boys. We can sleep on the floor if the boys can.”

  “The floor’s plenty hard,” laughed Jacob.

  “Especially toward morning,” added Darrell.

  “What do we care!” cried Delores

  “I just wish I had more bedding,” said Miss Martin.

  Ruby stood still, frowning. Suddenly she burst out: “They’re Indians. They’re used to sleeping on the floor. Why do we have to give them our bed?”

  “Because we want to,” said Fernetta.

  “What do you think, children?” asked Miss Martin.

  All spoke but Ruby: “They should have a good bed to sleep in.”

  Fernetta turned on Ruby. “You dumb-bell, can’t you see they’re half dead? If you’d walked ten miles in a storm and waited half-a-day in a snowbank, wouldn’t a bed feel good to you? Can’t you even feel sorry for them?”

  “Maybe my Daddy will come for me before night,” said Ruby. “Then I won’t have to sleep on the floor.” .

  “Oh you!” scolded Delores. “All you think about is yourself.”

  Suddenly a loud roaring was heard above the storm.

  “The train! The Galloping Goose!” cried the children. “The snowplow must be coming back,” shouted the boys.

  The roaring sound grew louder, louder than any train. The Indian woman rose quickly from her chair, bundled her baby up and rushed out the door, pulling the boy behind her.

  “Oh no!” cried Miss Martin. “You must not go. You can’t get over to the depot in time. The train will be gone. The snowplow won’t take passengers, I’m sure.”

  But there was no holding the Indian woman and boy. Down the teacherage steps they went, out into the storm.

  “There’s no train. That wasn’t a train at all,” cried the children, looking out the kitchen window. “I bet it’s a tractor.” They ran out on the little back porch. Now the roaring sound became louder.

  “It’s an airplane!” shouted the boys. “It’s circling around over the schoolhouse. It’s coming nearer. It’s trying to land.”

  Through the falling flakes, the form of a Piper Cub airplane could be distinctly seen. The Indian family was quickly forgotten in view of this new excitement. The boys ran in the snow, pointing upwards.

  “I bet it’s Peter Hummel’s uncle,” shouted Darrell. “He brought Peter’s father and mother and circled the schoolhouse once last year, but couldn’t land because of the drifts.”

  “Whoever it is, this fellow’s gettin’ ready to land,” said Jacob.

  “There’s three things I never rode in,” said Ruby, “a train, an airplane and a boat.”

  “Miss Martin, does it look like Paul Kruger’s plane?” asked Delores.

  “I can’t see for the snow,” said Miss Martin nervously. “I wonder what a plane would be coming here for…”

  Teacher and children stood tense and silent close to the schoolhouse, without coats or wraps, unmindful of cold and snow, watching the plane. Beside the school barn, the Indian woman and boy waited and watched too. The plane came slowly down, landing in the open windswept stretch between barn and schoolhouse. It came slowly to a dead stop. The engine purred a while, then died away.

  “It’s got skis on it!” yelled the boys. Jacob and Darrell ran over at once. The door opened and out stepped Paul Kruger.

  “Paul!” cried Miss Martin. “It’s Paul Kruger.” She rushed up to greet him.

  “You all right…?” asked Paul. His voice was tense and his face looked haggard and tired. “You and the children?”

  “Yes, we’re all right,” said Miss Martin. She burst into tears and had to hide her face in her hands. “How did you know, Paul?”

  “When I heard you had no coal,” Paul Kruger began, “I was mad as an old setting hen. I loaded up at once…”

  “You’ve brought us COAL?” Miss Martin smiled. “Who told you?”

  “Gustaf Wagner said his brother never got any hauled out to you before the storm. Everybody’s worried about Oak Leaf School. They told about you on the radio—marooned with a lot of children and no coal.”

  “And we thought we were completely forgotten,” said Miss Martin. “Oh Paul! Did you remember that other winter so long ago, when you were about ten years old, and we ran out of coal?”

  “I sure do,” said Paul, “and there weren’t any airplanes then. Here’s your mail and newspapers.” He tossed a bumpy feedsack into Miss Martin’s arms. “You might like to read about this record-breaking storm you’ve been living through—worst one in fifty years, they say.”

  “Thank you, Paul,” said Miss Martin. “For weeks I’ve had no mail, not a word from Aunt Molly…”

  “Boys, help me unload this coal quick,” said Paul. “It will be enough to last till they can get a truckload through. I’ve got to rush back to town. Everybody needs help—sick babies, people needing operations and waiting to be flown to th
e doctor, cows without hay. I’m worn out—can’t even stop to talk.”

  Soon the boys were emptying coal out of sacks through the cellar window. The sound of falling coal was a welcome one.

  “I brought groceries too,” said Paul. “Your car—where is it?”

  “There,” said Miss Martin, pointing. “You can just see the top. It’s buried in that big drift.”

  “Will it run?” asked Paul. “You got No-Freeze in the radiator?”

  Miss Martin nodded, as the girls carried paper bags full of groceries into the kitchen.

  “Yippee!” cried Ruby. “Now I’ll eat again. I’m tired of starving…”

  “Starving?” cried Delores. “What do you mean?”

  Paul waited while the boys shoveled and swept the snow off Miss Martin’s car. Darrell brought the car key and Paul soon had the engine going. “Your car’s O. K.,” he said. “Plenty of gas in the tank too. That’s good.”

  “Paul, just one more thing before you go.” Miss Martin pointed to the little Indian family, still standing by the barn. She told their story.

  “I’ll fly them back to town with me,” said Paul, “where they can find shelter and food. They can get to Bullhead from there as soon as the roads are opened up.”

  When the Piper Cub plane took off, it was minus a load of coal and two weeks’ supply of groceries, but it carried an Indian boy, woman and baby. The children waved happily as they watched the plane rise in the air and disappear from sight.

  School life seemed a little tame to come back to, afterwards. But the best part about it was the heat in the schoolroom. The boys fairly fought for a chance to shovel coal on the furnace.

  “It’s not snowing so much now, Miss Martin,” said Darrell. “But I s’pose you won’t let us go home tonight.”

  “How can I, Darrell,” answered Miss Martin, “after what Paul Kruger told me? It’s the worst storm in fifty years, coming so soon after last week’s snow—and it’s not over yet. All the roads in Corson County are blocked, no trains running, no cars, trucks, jeeps—only planes. Perhaps by tomorrow…but we’ll have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.”

  “Then we’ve got to sleep here again tonight,” growled Darrell.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I just wish I knew what’s happened to our cattle,” the boy burst out. “I bet they’re all buried deep in snow.”

  “Worrying won’t help them, Darrell,” said Miss Martin.

  “And our horses here,” the boy went on. “This is their second day with nothing to eat. If I’da let them out on the range yesterday, they woulda rustled their own food. Horses can paw the snow away and get grass.”

  “This snow’s too deep,” said Delores, “and saddle horses are not much good at rustling, you know that. Maybe we can find them something…”

  “Oh—you and your Rolled Oats!” snapped Darrell.

  “I know what!” cried Fernetta, with a giggle. “Let’s feed them the Christmas tree.”

  “Jeepers!” cried Delores. “Why didn’t we think of that before? Sugar will eat it, I bet. I saw her nibbling it once when I had her tied there by the steps.”

  Miss Martin had stuck the school tree into a large snowdrift beside the teacherage steps, when she returned after Christmas vacation. She liked to tie scraps of fat and suet to its branches to attract the winter birds. The tree relieved the bleakness of the view from the back door and gave her a measure of comfort. She hated to see the tree go, but if the horses were hungry enough to eat it, how could she deprive them of a meal?

  She said nothing. The girls pulled the Christmas tree out of the snowbank and Delores carried it to the barn. In a short time they came back and put the tree, somewhat the worse for wear, in its former place.

  “The crazy old horses thrashed it around and tramped it,” said Fernetta, “but they never took a bite.”

  “Guess they’re not very hungry,” said Ruby. “Guess they’re not half as starved as I am.”

  But the children were used to Ruby’s complaining by now, and paid no attention to it.

  “I bet the horses are thirsty,” said Delores. She brought in a dishpan of snow-water and melted it for them.

  “They don’t want water either,” she said when she came back from the barn. “They just want to go home.”

  “So do I,” said Ruby.

  CHAPTER X

  Sick of School

  THE SECOND NIGHT AT the schoolhouse wasn’t half as much fun as the first. The fact that the storm continued made the children fearful and anxious. They were all tired and ready to go to bed early. Miss Martin assembled coats for the boys to sleep on, and set up the camp cot.

  “Oh look, Miss Martin!” cried Ruby, coming out of the bedroom in her blue pajamas. “The stovepipe’s red hot.”

  “We can’t have that,” answered Miss Martin.

  “Somebody put on too much coal,” scolded Ruby.

  “It might set the chimney on fire,” said Darrell. He quickly opened the front stove door, to cool the fire off.

  “I’ll have to sit up and watch it,” said Miss Martin.

  After the girls had stopped giggling, and Jacob had gone to sleep, Darrell came out in the kitchen. “I’ll watch the stove too, Miss Martin,” he said. “I can’t sleep. That new coal sure does burn hot.”

  “When this heater gets red hot,” said Miss Martin, “it just refuses to be shut off. It keeps on burning furiously.”

  “What were you thinking about, sitting here by yourself?” asked the boy.

  “I was wondering where we would go if the building caught on fire,” said Miss Martin. “These Dakota schoolhouses often catch fire from overheated stoves. Perhaps I was borrowing trouble.”

  “We could go to the Swartz’s house,” said Darrell. “That’s the nearest place, but it’s not much in the way of shelter.”

  “It must be filled with snow, now that the windows are broken,” said Miss Martin, “but I think there’s a range in the old kitchen.”

  “The Oak Leaf depot would be better,” said Darrell. “There’s a good stove and the section men usually leave some kindling. They keep the coal locked up in the storage half. But it would be dry in the waiting room and sheltered from the wind. We’d have to take some matches in our pockets.”

  “It’s strange the Indian woman didn’t go in there,” said Miss Martin.

  “The door was shut tight,” said Darrell. “She probably thought it was locked, and never even tried it. Good old Spike—he rescued that Indian family, didn’t he? If it hadn’t been for Spike, they’d have frozen to death.”

  He patted the dog, now stretched out at his feet. The two sat quietly, watching the red glow of the stovepipe grow pale.

  “It’s twelve o’clock, Darrell,” said Miss Martin. “We’d better both turn in. We’ll need our strength…for what’s ahead tomorrow.”

  In spite of his late bedtime, Darrell was the first one up.

  “Man alive! What a storm!” he cried, staring out the window. “Is it never going to stop? Are we going to have to stay here forever? This is Wednesday, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Martin, “I’m thankful morning has come, and everyone is safe. Delores has a cold—that is all. Hurry and dress, girls, while I’m tending the furnace. I can’t reach the stove to get breakfast until the cot is folded and put away.”

  “Hey, Delores!” called Darrell. “Come look at this awful snowstorm of yours.”

  “Golly, what a dinky little kitchen,” complained Ruby. “Six people cooking and eating here, stepping on each other’s toes and bumping into each other.”

  Nobody spoke of going home. One glance out the window was enough. All morning the wind blew and the snow piled up higher and higher. Soon Miss Martin’s car was buried again, deep in huge drift. Schoolwork moved half-heartedly, as the endless day dragged on.

  At noon, everyone seemed cross. Miss Martin was too tired to cheer the children up. Nerves grew tense, and bickering began. Fernetta Sticklemeyer b
umped into Ruby Englehart and spilled the baked beans on the floor. She had to let Spike eat them up, and open two more cans. Ruby sat by the register and sulked. She refused to set the table or to help in any way.

  “I have to do housework at home,” explained Ruby. “Why should I do it at school too? I came here to visit. My Mama says I don’t have to work.”

  “Them that don’t work can’t eat,” snapped Fernetta. “You just better give me something to eat, Fernetta Sticklemeyer,” began Ruby angrily, “or I’ll…”

  “Now, children,” said Miss Martin. “Let’s not quarrel and make things worse than they are. There’s plenty of food for everybody,”

  “I’m tired of staying here,” Ruby went on. “I’m sick of school.”

  “We’re all sick of school,” said Delores. “Miss Martin’s sick of school too. She’d like to go and visit her aunt in Aberdeen.”

  “I’m sick of this mean old snowstorm,” said Darrell.

  “I’m sick of school, I said,” insisted Ruby. “I’m going home today.”

  “How you gonna get there?” asked Jacob.

  “Walk!” said Ruby. “I got two good long legs.”

  “Long legs!” repeated Fernetta. “I’ll say she has—she can run’ like a rooster!”

  “But she’s as sour as a pickle,” said Delores. The children laughed.

  “If nobody comes for me today,” Ruby went on, “I’m gonna walk home.”

  “O. K. Go ahead,” jeered Jacob. “Go pack your over-night bag. Better start now, if you want to get there before midnight. Three miles and half is a long way to go in deep snow like this.”

  “Tell us when to come and dig you out of the snowbank,” said Darrell.

  “Leave your two good long legs stickin’ out, so we can see ’em,” said Delores. The children laughed, but Ruby did not.

  When Fernetta dished the beans out, Darrell took a large bite and cried out: “Criminy! I burned a green streak all the way to my stomach!”

  The children laughed again.

  “What’s the matter, Delores? You’re not eating,” said Fernetta. “You gettin’ fussy like Ruby? I thought you liked beans.”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Delores. “I can’t eat today.”