USA > Pennsylvania > Schuylkill County > Old Schuylkill tales, a history of interesting events, traditions and anecdotes of the early settlers of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania > Part 19
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David Davidson was the Superintendent at the plane, over which in prosperous times a gigantie traffie passed. He re- eeived a good salary and oeeupied, with his young wife and sister-in-law, the pretty cottage belonging to the company, on the summit above the village. It was a responsible position, and his prospeets for advancement were good, but yet he was not a happy man.
Davidson began active life, as a boy, at the lowest round of the ladder, carrying water, marking "eoalies," waking
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the night crews at their homes, and in the bunk houses, learn- ing telegraphy, tending switches and aeting as engine hostler and brakeman in turn; step by step he advaneed to his pres- ent position. Closely affiliated with the workingman from his youth, it was not surprising that his sympathies were with the men in the impending struggle and against the great eorpora- tion.
ยท His wife, Anna, and Kate, her sister, were much alike in appearance. Kate, however, being the taller of the two and fuller in figure. Both were graceful in earriage, with that lithesome, easy stride, eommon to people who live among the mountains. Anna's hair and eyes were brown, her disposition gentle and retiring, her manner quiet even to that repression of action that denotes a deep and delieate sensibility and the refinement that is part of the natural inheritance of a woman of culture and education.
Kate was a blonde, with masses of light hair, eoiled on the top of a shapely head, her forehead was broad, her eyes a deep gray that shifted their eolor to brown and sometimes, it must be confessed, under deep provoeation, to blaek. She was viva- eious, with a vigor of manner that betokened a strong vitality with perhaps a tinge of impetuosity. They were orphans.
They were seated at their noonday meal, which Davidson had left a few minutes before almost untasted. The table daint- ily laid, with its polished glass, elean linen and bright old- fashioned silver serviee, figured ehina, and a earefully-pre- pared dinner.
"Anna, has David told you he resigned and will leave for the West next week ?" said Kate.
"Yes, he spoke of it at noon. If the plane closes perma-
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nently, he will be given charge of the lumber yards at R- --- , which I am afraid he will not accept. He is tired of the strug- gle, his sympathies are with the men, and he has decided to go West and take up one of Uncle Sam's claims and farm. As if we knew anything about farming." Anna broke down and sobbed. Kate did not reply, and the young wife walked to the window to conecal her emotion.
Gordon is built on the summit of one of the spurs of the Broad Mountains, in the castern part of the State, in the cen- ter of the anthracite coal basin. It was planned for wide, clean streets to intersect at right angles on the broad plateau, which nature had apparently formed for the site of a city of enlarged environments. From any point, on a clear day, seven distinct mountain ranges can be counted without the aid of a glass. It was a familiar scene, but her eyes eagerly followed it.
The spirals of smoke curling into the azure dome of the
gold-flecked sky above denoted the location of the different collieries. The "Bald Eagle," "Shoo Fly," "Excelsior," "Coffee Mill," and a dozen others, with the quality and output of coal from each of which she was as well informed as any of the operators. Along the mountain sides ran the branch roads from the breakers, on which could be scen moving the black box cars that at this distanec looked like toys with their tiny mnotors.
Below in the valleys were the lateral roads, that joined the main branch farther on, their rails lay like mnere threads aside of the black, sluggish waters of the river. It was early spring, nature wore its wildest dress. The gigantic rocks loomed up bare and uncovered on cvcry side. Soon the moun- tain laurel would bloom, the wild honeysuckle and mountain
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lillies burst forth, then the huge pyramids of eulm would be hidden from sight in a wilderness of beauty. The monster en- gines were still throbbing and snorting at the head of the plane, as they drew the loaded cars up the steep ineline, the ugly little "barney" in the rear looking as self-eonseious as if it alone did all the work. In the cemetery in the valley their parents were buried, how could they leave all they loved for the flat, monot- onous prairies of the West ?
"We are all alone in the world, Kate," said Anna. "How can I leave you here ? I do not like the West, and I always hated farming."
"But stoek raising and growing wheat are different from what we know of farming and I will go too," replied Kate.
"What will become of your school ? You must not leave it."
"Oh ! there are sehools everywhere, even in Kamschatka, I will get another."
They eried a little, and after the fashion of their depend- ent type of glorious womanhood thus aeeepted the deeree of destiny one of the sterner sex had forced upon them against their wills.
The strike followed. The railroad engineers went out first. The eollieries suspended, one by one, leaving men for deadwork only. Every effort was made by the Union to make it universal. The company earried its orders into effect at onee, and the ponderous machinery of the plane was removed to the city machine shops, making a deserted village in a short time of the pretty little town. The plane had always been a costly plant, and a road was already being built around the mountain to take the place of the abandoned ineline.
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"I always wanted to follow the course of the star of the empire westward, and the strike makes it easier," said Davidson.
He was a spare built man of middle height with brown curling hair and determined and yet kindly looking blue eyes. His appearance showed strength. His form was wiry, he had great knotty muscles and seemed built for endurance. Self re- liance verging on obstinacy was a strong point in his character, this allied to a naturally affectionate nature and good morals made of him a man to be not only respected but beloved by those under him, and trusted by his superiors. The question had come. The company or its employees. He chose the workingmen's issue and went out with the strikers.
Their preparations to leave were soon made. A public sale disposed of their pretty furniture with the exception of one suite, a few cots, the cabinet organ, the kitchen range, cooking utensils, dishes, linen and bedding. Transportation was too high to take much, besides there would be no room in the Kansas dugout.
Davidson left the following week, the girls expecting to spend a month with relatives until their home was in readiness. The month lengthened into two before they received the sum- mons to come. The adieus to friends were sorrowful indeed, on Anna's part, she cried bitterly wherever she went. Kate assumed the philosophic role.
"I do not want to go from the dear old mountains of Penn- sylvania; I feel as if I will never see them again."
It was a wail that even Kate's philosophy could not stand proof against, and in spite of her sternest resolution not to give away to her feelings, she, too, succumbed to tears on their de- parture.
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CHAPTER II.
It was early in May when they arrived in southwestern Kansas. The country was at its best. The prairie gently un- dulating as far as the eye could reach, the broad, flat expanse dotted with here and there a knoll that broke the dead mono- tone of the vast horizon like a speck against the deep blue sky. The spring rains had been abundant; the heather was in bloom; the prairie covered with a mass of phlox, hyacinths and pinks, and the scrub plums and wild grapes were luxuriantly blossom- ing and blowing to and fro in the stiff breezes.
Davidson met them with a team of white horses and a high, green "La Belle" wagon, of which he seemed very proud. After fastening and roping their baggage, he told them to "mount the seat and hold fast, or, better still, sit on the floor, the wind would blow them off, anyway," and the ride, Kate said, was "like a sail on an unknown sea."
The country was not yet staked in sections; there was no trail, and the girls suspected David of driving by compass or the sun, one gully being so exactly like another, and no visible landmarks. Twelve miles were slowly and painfully made when a singular figure emerged from a semi-cave in the ground, and was subsequently followed by a group of unkempt, flaxen- headed progeny, of all sizes. A woman appeared with a short woolen skirt encasing her nether limbs, huge brogans on her feet, a knit jacket on her long, lean body, a man's hat on her head, and a short pipe between her teeth at which she was drawing vigorously.
"Good morning, Mother Grimshaw," said Davidson, rein- ing up.
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"This is my wife, Mrs Davidson, and her sister, Miss Har- leigh. Mother Grimshaw is our nearest neighbor, and I am indebted to her for many comforts during my bachelorhood."
" Shure they were all paid for," said the woman, coming forward to shake hands with the ladics. Kindlincss and con- sternation spread over her somewhat comely but weatherbeaten features.
" The Saints purtcet ye! " she said, gazing at them, " and the good Lord forgive ye for ever bringing the loikes of thin to this God-forsaken country," and shaking her fist at David- son, she disappeared precipitately down the short ladder into the hole in the ground she called home.
"We are almost there," said David. He pointed with pride to the symmetrical stone posts at intervals, which he ex- plained marked his claim.
"Welcome home!" he said, assisting them to alight at the foot of the upland. The girls peered about anxiously, but he was apparently busy adjusting the harness of his horses. A long, low building jutted out from the knoll secmingly a part of the hill that formed its support on one side. It was covered on its irregular sides and roof with the brown prairie turf that sur- rounded it. The only evidences of its being a dwelling were the windows and a door, and its chimney of brick.
" Is that a sod house? " queried Kate. Anna's eyes filled with tears as she thought of the pretty eastern home with its veranda and climbing vines. Davidson twined his arms about both of them, and said:
" Never mind, it is the best I can do now, with all the stock to buy and sceding to do. Wait until our fall crops are. in, we will build a frame house for the winter."
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The interior was not as forbidding as the outside and ex- ceeded their expectations. It was floored throughout, had three windows with deep seats in the thiek sod walls, and was divided into three rooms. The eenter was a large living room with two small bedrooms off from it. The rough sides were whitewashed, and the ceiling was made by taeking white cotton eloth to the rafters and frame that formed the foundation. An attempt had been made at rude furniture, a wooden settle and shelves for the housekeeping utensils. The range, organ and roekers they had brought from home were in evidenee and great eare had evidently been taken to reproduce the home kitehen and pantry.
" How hard you must have worked, David," said Anna.
"Oh, no, the neighbors helped with the house raising, and I installed Mother Grimshaw as faetotum to do the unpaeking, whitewashing and general fixing."
He neglected, however, to add that he rode for two days to the nearest settlement for the windows and lumber and that he was lost on the prairies for twenty-four hours.
When life is young, everything is beautiful and they be- gan ranching in high spirits. The stock grazing around, floeks of white eliekens that settled like a eloud of snow to roost on the housetop, even the black pigs in the eorral were their de- light. During the early summer it rained, the draws were full of water and they laid out a garden, planting the seeds they brought with them. They would have vines and roses; the sod house should be covered with them. They also took up an adjacent timber claim, ordering trees from a persuasive tree agent to plant in the fall.
"Ye had best both stay in the house and save yer pretty
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skins from the wind, nothing will grow anyway," said Mother Grimshaw.
Davidson was mueh away from home. Farming imple- ments and high-prieed machinery were out of the question with individuals. Land was plenty and the farmers planted, ploughed and seeded together, the owner of the implements taking his pay out of the erops after harvest, and the neighbors united their forees and planted more by working in unison.
" I think it would be best to plant less and hire a hand or two. So many working together do it in suel a slipshod way," said Anna, one day.
" You are accustomed to the little patehes of the East; hoeing will be hard enough," said her husband, who was not to be argued with.
IIe had often dilated on " the freedom of living away from the call of the company's whistle to work, where a man was his own master"; but here he rose at four o'eloek in the morn- ing without any eall but the early breezes shadowing the eom- ing light. Daylight was reekoned by " Mountain Time " and was three-quarters of an hour ahead of the sun dial, making it a quarter after three in the morning.
He milked the eows, Anna attended to the milk, which in the absence of iee they kept in the eyelone eellar under the knoll, while Kate prepared breakfast for David and Tommy Grimshaw, who was now installed as their ehore boy, and also put up a substantial luncheon for them to take with them to the field. The butter, eggs and chickens were their stoek in trade, and must be attended to every morning. Twice a week the " cheeseman " gathered the milk for the creamery. He
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came from their nearest market, for their supplies, which he paid in groceries.
How they longed for fresh meat. There was no game but the Jack rabbits, which, though considered a delicacy by Eastern epicures, no settler would shoot except for sport or as a pest to his corn, much less eat.
Salt pork and an occasional chicken was their regular diet. Of the latter and eggs, they dared not use many or they must go without coffee, tea and sugar, if they had none to trade. Their home-made preserves and canned fruit were long ago exhausted, and nothing grew within a couple of hundred miles except the wild plums and grapes. They planted, but the drouth killed everything.
As midsummer came, the hot winds became insufferable. They could not venture out during the day without parched hands and face, from which the skin shriveled. "No one could take care of their complexions in this heat," said Kate.
Then the drouth came. The soil was highly productive, the wheat was thick and certainly looked beautiful, it would yield above the average this year, and their corn crop was im- mensc. Still there was no rain and Davidson looked thoughtful. The work was completed, he was much at home now, but har- vesting would soon commence. The heat increased. They had been unable to erect a windmill to draw their water, their pump had but a two-inch bore which was soon exhausted and the cattle were suffering. One lifting yielded but four pails of water and this but once an hour. Davidson pumped when not at work; during his absence the girls took turns. Tommy had all he could do to see that each of the steers got its share in the
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wild scramble for the meager supply, which did no more than wet their tongues and swollen nostrils.
The draws along the sections were dry and the fissures in them filled with hornless toads, that naturalists say exist without water.
"If we only had those non-drinking cows from France, we, too, might make Roquefort cheese for market," remarked Anna.
Everything that ought not, grew to a phenomenal size. Strange vari-colored bugs flew and crawled into everything. Spiders vied in growth with young sparrows. The cinch bug burrowed in the sod and houses that were guiltless of bedsteads were infested with bedbugs. The grasshoppers, their size a jest in the East, were a serious problem when they alighted in clouds ou an object.
The country was infested with rattlesnakes. The settlers held "bees" in the spring, in which days were spent in extermi- nating them. The drouth brought them out afresh. There were several old wells on the ranch and these were their resort. The girls never went out without a forked stick in hand. Kate could kill a rattler without a tremor, but Anna ran and shivered. Twenty were dispatched about the place in one week and still they came.
The garden was dead. What came up of the seeds, that the hot winds had not blown out of the ground, shrivelled in the heat. Each season the early settlers had planted trees, every year thicker, but only those set in the waterways that were moist, at least in spring, grew at all, and these only attained the height of a scrub bush. The corn still looked lusciously green with its tasselled tops and ripening ears. The early wheat was cut and shocked. But the listless calm that pervaded was ominous.
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Then the simoon came. "Could it ever be so hot any- where ?" The cattle hung their heads and stood motionless, wherever there was the least semblance of shelter. The south wind blew with the dawn, at first gently, and then, as the sun rose high in the heavens, fiercely, blighting everything in its course. The glare was heightened by the filmy cloud of furnace- like heat that arose out of the baked and parched earth.
"Hell is under this spot. Ye can see the smoke rising from it." said Daddy Grimshaw.
"It's six summers I have lived here and every one of thim the same. The blight comes just when the crop is ready to be tuck in," he added. For three days it blew and then there was a lull. Everything hung dead and lifeless. The corn stalks were burned as if by fire, the late wheat was crisp, the corn roasted black on the ear and the melons, which thirsty Kansians prize as a summer beverage instead of iced drinks, were as if cooked on the shrivelled vines.
Davidson, anxious to appear hopeful, said, "We have not fared so badly. I did not expect to ship much this year and the wheat in shock may turn out well."
A tornado came next, plenty of wind but-little water. It was in the evening and they spent the night in the cyclone cave. The huge chimney of their humble dwelling blew down, carry- ing ruin and devastation with it. The lowly huts of the settlers did not suffer much but the cattle in the march of destruction were killed. "Coos," one of their faithful milch cows, was found almost severed in two, a part of a sewing machine im- bedded in her vitals. This, with other debris, had blown from Ness, their distant county seat, which was almost a total ruin. Business blocks, a new fifty-thousand dollar-school building,
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hotels and dwellings, erected by Eastern speculators to force a boom, all were razed to the ground and many deaths resulted.
"I had hoped to build the frame dwelling this fall, but owing to the failure of the crops, I am afraid we will have to content ourselves with a sod house for the winter," said Davidson.
"I could do it by selling some of the stecrs."
He did not add that he feared that the steers might be needed to save them from starvation.
A new sod house was built nearer the cyclone cave. The chimney must be rebuilt in any event and the cattle have shelter during the winter, they could not live in the fierce prairie winds. The old house was dismantled of its windows, doors and floors, and made weather tight for the cattle. To the new one these with a few conveniences were added. A long low parapet of sod was built to break the force of the wind and all was secure for the winter, which soon came in all its fury.
There was little or no snow. The wind either blew it to the far off mountain peaks or it melted as it reached the ground. The sod house half burrowed under the knoll was warm. There was no wood within seventy miles and they could as well afford to burn silver as coal, but fuel was plenty of a kind. The corn on the ear was thrown into the corral for the pigs. They were of the black, long snouted, razor-back, wild breed, ready to chew up anything from a human being to an ear of corn and they cleared the cobs in their rapacious mnaws. They were fed at alternate ends of the corral. Whilst Tommy, pole in hand for defense, engaged their attention with a fresh supply at one end, Davidson would clamber in at the other and fill his bags with the cobs. These with the burnt corn fodder and "cowchips" formed
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their fuel and engaged the attention of one person constantly to feed the fire. They did not arise with or before the work- ingman's whistle now, but courted daylight no matter how many wakeful hours intervened between dusk and dawn.
There was no work to do but attend the stock, and the family needed but two mcals a day and these were painfully stereotyped, cornmeal and bacon. They seemed but to live on with no object in life but existence. Reading matter, however, from Eastern friends was plentiful, and this kept them in touch with the outer world. Twice a week Davidson went to the cross roads post office and the cheeseman still called for an exchange of supplies.
CHAPTER III
Life was not without its concomitant variety as winter went on apacc. Insurance agents, tree peddlers, and specu- lators made of their house a wayfaring hotel. They were only too pleased to have the dread monotony broken by these casual guests. An itinerant minister, not of their creed, from the Mission Church in Pueblo, preached at the ranch and among the neighbors, once in two weeks. Mrs. Davidson played the organ and led the hymns for the sparse congregation. When services were held elsewhere they took the instrument with them in the wagon to the next place. Then a Roman Catholic Missionary Priest came too. Hc put up with the Davidsons and asked if he might crect an altar and hold mass there for the three families that lived in dugouts in that vicinity. Davidson had frequently met the zealous and pious man in his travels across the prairies on a little sorrel pony with his saddle bags filled with the orders of his holy office and medicines for the sick
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and afflicted. They aequieseed. "Anything to help uplift humanity," said Anna. The Grimshaws, whom their mother deseribed as, "Worse nor South-say islanders;" not without ineipient rebellion on their part, together with a few adults and their numerous broods were thus, on stated occasions, initiated into the formula of their ehureh; and time went on.
A strange looking being eame over the prairie one evening in the twilight. A tall broad-shouldered man, with long eurl- ing ringlets and flowing beard of blonde hair. His garb was nondeseript and pieturesque; he wore no hat, simply a kerehief tied about his neck and in his hand a large shepherds' erook.
"Here comes Schlatter, the Divine healer," ealled Kate, who was at the window.
The stranger made the sign of the cross as he entered the house and held up a small tablet with pencil attached; he appar- ently was dumb. He asked "for shelter for the night."
The girls roomed together and his host took the settle behind the stove, where he slept the half of the time to replenish the fire. In the inorning the stranger invoked a blessing on the meal and all within the house. As he took his eoffee he stirred it and looked about anxiously for the sugar they could not afford to use themselves and did not offer him. After breakfast he again invoked a blessing on the house and its inmates and departed. He had not gone far before Mrs. Davidson eame hurriedly for Davison to follow him. "He has taken your full set of red flannels, chest protector and all, that hung on the line in that room," said she.
"He had them on then, he had no bundle when he left," said her husband.
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"Cannot you ride and catch him; they are all you have to change in?"
"Poor devil, it is cold, let him have them," said David- son, watching the rapidly disappearing "Healer."
Anna's healthi was not good and a new source of anxiety presented itself. One balmy, clear day, Kate said: "The wind is only fitful, let us take a walk like we used to at home. We will go over to the timber claim and see if the wind has left any trees." They dressed with extra care and took a basket with them, with a few large stones in it in case they would be needed to ballast the young trecs. On their return the spirit of frugality being strong in Kate, she piled the basket high with "cow chips" which were plentiful in that direction. A team and surrey approached and the gentleman within raised his high silk hat to the ladies.
"What shall I do with the basket ?" said Kate, "soto vocc."
"Drop it, you goose; he has not seen it," replied Anna. But Kate perverse as usual, still held on to it. "Can you tell me, ladies, where Mr. Davidson lives? I was informed at Pueblo that he might accommodate me for the night."
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