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Dusky faces gather round her by the kitchen fire, and absolute faith is expressed by their awed looks. Old Jehu has all the chickens and "sass" he wants without working for them, and his son Huey has settled down into a steady "hand," who satisfies his former ruling passion with an occasional coon-hunt.
And always when we were down to the last drop, someone would bring us water. I never knew it to fail. One such time we looked up to see Huey Dunn coming. He had made the long trip just to bring us water two whole barrels of it, although we had not seen him since he moved us to the reservation. It was so hot he waited until evening to go back. He was in no hurry to return: it was too hot to work.
I was in a position to keep better posted on such things than they. I got out my letters and records and spread them before Ida Mary on the old square table, and with the sweat dripping down our faces from the heat of the lamp we eagerly devoured their contents. Huey Dunn's plan of mellowing, or rotting the soil, was not yet the true fallowing method.
"We'se gwine ter do better'n de hoss. If mas'r'll 'zamine his saddle- bags, reckon he'll fine dat Missy Rita hain't de leddy to sen' us off on a hunt widout a bite of suthin' good. She sez, sez she to me, in kind o' whisper like, 'Mas'r Graham'll fine suthin' you'll like, Huey;" and the boy eyed the saddle-bags like a young wolf.
The first time we heard the coyotes there seemed to be a hundred of them, though there were probably half a dozen. All Huey Dunn's assurance that they were harmless and that it was a nightly occurrence failed to calm us. When Huey got home his wife asked what he thought of their new neighbors. "Right nice girls to talk to," Huey said, "but damn poor homesteaders.
Steady, slow, furrow by furrow, man and beast dripping with sweat, they broke fields of the virgin earth. How deep to plow, how to cultivate this land, few of them knew. The more experienced farmers around the Strip, like Huey Dunn, would know. Here was a service the newspaper could perform by printing such information for the newcomers.
Huey decided on the latter way, and I rode on ahead to see that the load of printing equipment should be put on the right quarter-section, while Ida Mary came in the shack. She sat in the rocking chair, gazing placidly out of the window as it made its way slowly across the plains.
But when had Huey ever been in a hurry? We sat in the shade of the shack, talking. He had dug a well, and his method of fall plowing fallowing he called it had proved successful. Starting home toward evening, he called back, "If you girls take a notion to leave, you needn't send for me to move you not until you get your deed, anyhow." I only saw him once after that Ida Mary never again.
Having broken the drifts on the first trip, it was not hard going, but it was midnight when we reached the print shop. On cold, bad days the Dunns, getting their own children home from school, would see to it that Ida Mary got back safely, and Mrs. Dunn would insist that she stay with them on such nights. "Now you go, Huey, and bring Teacher back.
The old man was soon aroused, and his ejaculations and exclamations were innumerable. "No, missy, dars no un been roun' heah for right smart days. It's all safe, an' Jehu an' his ole ooman knows how ter keep mum when Mas'r Anderson says mum; an' so does my peart boy Huey" who, named for his father, was thus distinguished from him. "An' de hossifer is a Linkum man?
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