Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1884 — A DAKOTA BLIZZARD. [ARTICLE]

A DAKOTA BLIZZARD.

Carrie Welton locked the schoolhouse door and walked down the dusty highway towards the farm-house she called home. She was very tired, and the long mile before her seemed interminable. Just then there was the sound of .wheels, and a span of bay horses were reined up close beside her. “Would you like to ride home, Miss Welton ?” some one said. Carrie looked up in the sun-browned face of Alexander Hall. There was no smile in his grave eyes, and the shadow of a frown was visible on his brow. “I thank von—no. I would prefer to walk.” Carrie responded. “Very well. Get up, ponies.” And the span and buggy whirled past her, leaving a cloud of settle upon her linen dress and straw hat ae she trudged along the highway, looking very flushed and angry. “The idea of his thinking I would make up with him in this way!” she said, mentally. “No, indeed! He will have to apologize before I ride with him again. I could see that he was just as set and stubborn as ever. No doubt he intended to give me another lecture, and thought this would be a splendid opportunity. He will learn that I have some dignity, I can tell him.” Carrie was so tired she ate but little supper that night, and retired early to her room to think over matters in solitude, away from the clattering tongue of good Mrs. Smith, who felt it her solemn duty to “entertain” her boarders —said entertainment consisting in recitations of the neighborhood affairs, past and present. When Carrie felt well and happy, and was not yorn out with her day’s work, she bore it very heroically. But to-night she was too nervous to endure the ordeal Mrs. Smith’s voice grated upon her nerves like the filing of a saw, and she flew to her room for protection, pleading a headache. In tfuth it was a heartache which troubled the girl. During the last six months she and Alexander Hall had been very good friends—such very good friend that they were, in fact, lovers, and needed only a few words to belong to each other for all time; words which would have been spoken ere this but for an unexpected event Smithtown boasted of two stores which, of course, were visited at certain periods by drummers. One of them, a handsome, dashing fellow, had recently made it in his way to pass Sunday in Smithtown. Every one in the little town knew why he had remained. He had chanced to see Carrie Welton one evening at the store making some purchases, and he was not at all slow to express his admiration for the teacher. He begged the favor of an introduction, which, owing to the somewhat informal manner of Smithtown society, it was not difficult to obtain, since everybody knew everybody there, and the handsome agent seemed a very nice fellow indeed, one whom all the young ladies would be glad to consider an acquaintance. Mr. Parker attended church the following Sabbath, and walked home with Carrie, much to the indignation of Alexander Hall. He took it upon himself to say some very cutting things to Carrie when they next met, to rebuke her for her readiness to receive attention from a clothier’s “dummy,” as he called Mr. Parker, and they had parted in anger. Their next meeting was that on the dusty road. Carrie congratulated herself upon her behavior, and then cried herself to sleep. But she was sure he would come again in a day or two, and then she;would be a little mtnegracious, sad take him back into her favor, for really Smithtown was very dull without him. But Alex, did not come to her the next day or the next, and a whole week went by without her seeing him. Then a strange report came to her ears. “Alex. Hall has an auction to-day,” one of her pupils remarked. “An auction. What for?” Carrie asked wonderingly. “Why, he's going away—going to take up a claim in Dakota. He’s sold his farm to Mr. Roberts, and to-day he sells off his horses and machinery.” “Does his mother go with’him?” asked Carrie, with a dull- pain at her “No; she is going to lowa to her daughter. Of course the farm belongs to her and the money will be hers; and she says she does not want to go into a new country. But Alex, is wild to go, and pa says he will be a rich man in a few years—that the land out there will sell for a big price." It was not a very orderly school the remainder of that day. Carrie seemed to be in a sort of nightpare. Could it be true ? And was he going away without coming to say good-bye to her, and this shadow between them ? But he did, all the same. Three horrible days and nights went by,and then

she saw him pass the school-house on the afternoon train which wpujd bear him from Smithtown. It was the noon hour, and she and several of the larger girls were sitting under a spreading oak, watching the smaller children play “ring around the roses.” .. 1 As he passed by he swung his hat to the children, with whom he was a favorite, and said: “Good-bye, girls! good-bye. boys! lam off for Dakota!” And then he was gone. How the dreadful weeks wore by Carrie could never telL But they did go by and the end of th? term came at last—in August. It was three months since Alex. Hall had gone. /Mr. Parker had visited Smithtown once during that time, and' had been astonished to have Miss Welton turn her back, upon him very deliberately when she met him at the village store. He was not accustomed to this kind of treatment from pretty girls in small villages; for Mr. Parker was one of the young men who had “a sweetheart in every port," and he fully resolved to make Miss Welton his Smithtown sweetheart; and now all his plans were upset by the very disdainful manner of that young lady herself. He sought an explanation by post, but his billet-doux was never noticed, and he was obliged to look elsewhere for a sweetheart to make his number good. The very day that school closed Carrie received a letter from her uncle Tom.

Uncle Tom was her only near relative, a roving man of Bohemian tastes, a sort of jack-at-all-trades, and good at none. But now he seemed to have found a new location where he would be liable to remain some time. “Pm in Dakota,” he wrote, “and Tve taken up the nicest claim you ever saw —one hundred and sixty acres. I have built me a little house, and I keep old bachelor’s hall. Igo where I please in the day. I’m only five miles from the railroad, and people are coming in and villages going up fast. I have plenty to do and see—odd jobs of carpenter work, to keep me in living expenses, and then I go back to my shanty and sleep nights. You know I was a soldier two years in the late war. Well, that counts just so much time on my land, and when I once own it, I can sell it or keep it for a homestead, as I choose. Lots of women are taking up claims. Now, I’ve been thinking of you, Carrie. There is a splendid quarter section a little way from mine. It will be picked up soon, if you want to make money, and have the grit to stand roughing it, you’d better be the girl to pick it up. You must have saved up something, teaching so steadily as you have for five years. It would cost you but little to come out here on a landholder’s ticket, but a little more to put up a small cabin, and but little more to keep you for six months, and then you just about own your land—at least you’ve only got to make periodical visits to it after that And you can find enough to do in the meantime. And you can wear your old clothes and dress as well as the best of them. And in a few years you'll be a rich womanCarrie, for this land will sell at a good price, it is so admirably located and fertile.” Carrie had no sooner finished the letter than her decision was formed to go. She hated Smithtown and everybody in it, and the further she could got away, the better,' She wrote her uncle that she would

arrive within the next three weeks, and she was with him in less than two. “I have the lumber ready for your little house,” he said, as he drove. her from the station to his “bachelor” hall. Soinehoyv she was lighter-hearted and happy since she knew she was in Dakota than she had been for months. She knew why—she did not cheat herself. It was because she was in the same country with Alex. Hall. It gave her a sense of companionship—this very knowledge. “In the morning I will take you out and show you your claim,” continued her uncle. And I’ve chosen this site for your cabin. It’ll be about a mile from mine—just a nice walk for you when you get lonesome.” The next morning was bright and sunny, but of course windy. “What a wind! Does it blow often like this?” asked Carrie,'as they rolled along over the smooth prairie. “Wind? Why, this is a calm day, my dear,” said Uncle Tom. “Just wait till you have seen a Dakota blizzard, my dear, before you talk of wind.” By-and-by they came to Carrie’s “quarter section,” as Unde Tom called it. Carrie could not see where it “began” or “left off," she told Unde Tom. It was like all the rest of the country—just land, and nothing more; prairie melting into prairie as far as the eye could reah. “Well, but I know where the invisible lines lie,” responded Uncle Tom. “Now every under on thatknoll your cabin will be built after we have attended to the legal formalities, and that is the extreme southern limit of your claim. A little south of it there is a slight ravine, and then another knolL The ravine is the dividing line between two quarter sections.” “Who owns the other one?"asked Carrie, anxious to know who might be her neighbor. “I don’t believe it is taken, though I heard something about it the other day. Some fellow was looking it up I believe. There are some dozen of them around almost daily. That was the reason that I was in a hurry for you to come."

A few days later, after the legal formalities had been attended to, Uncle Tom drowe Carrie out again to look at the cabin that was in process of erection on the opposite knoll. “Why, that claim has Been taken, too! I wonder who will be my neighbor?” queried Carrie. “I can find out at the land office,” Uncle Tom replied. He did eo and gave Carrie the desired information the next day. “It’s some fellow named Hall —AHall,” he said, j “He’s just sold out his interest in some claim about fifty miles north of here, and now he’s taken up this, which he intends to keep as a

homestead. They often sell out at a nice figure after staying a few months on a claim. SomeT’eflow pays them a good sum for their chanoe, and they go elsewhere.” ’ “A. Hall.” , r

Carrie felt a sudden leaping of hey heart and a curious excitement. But it was not likely that this was Alex. It would be too wonderful to be true. Yet it was Alex! She saw him at the postoffice the next day, and passed him without so much as a glance. Alex, looked as if he had seen an apparition and took a step forward and then stood s£Ul, chilled by her cold glance in which there was no recognition. After all, it was his own fault. He knew he had conducted himself like a brute and an idiot when he left Smithtown. He had realized it a dozen times since—realized it constantly, in fact—with a dull heartache whenever he was alone with himself. But he had never been quite brave or manly enough to write and ask her pardon, believing ere this Mr. Parker had the first place in her heart And now she was here in Dakota. How strange!

A greater surprise awaited him in the knowledge that Carrie’s claim and cabin were’just own. The two cabins were completed and furnished, and the occupanta jnoved in. Alex.’s was the more pretentious of the two in the exterior, and Carrie’s the mere sumptuous within. For she had brought her books and had a few plants, and with those indescribable feminine knick-knacks, which some women seem to create by a turn of their hand, her rooms were very cosy. Yet she was not very much at home. She passed a great deal of her time at Uncle Tom’s, setting his “bachelor hall” to rights, and mending and darning sot him. But she went to her desolate little house to sleep. She was not timid—she knew that no harm could come to her there. ' She knew that the law of kindness prevailed in this new country, which was better tlmn any law, “to keep the peace,” to bind the people together. She occasionally saw Alex., but they never recognized each other; yet there was to her a sense of protection in the knowledge that he was so near. “Got acquainted with your neighbor yet, Carrie?” asked Uncle Tom, after a month had passed. “No, and I don’t want his acquaintance,” answered Carrie, rather icily. “Nice fellow, I think,” said Uncle Tom. “He’s got business in him, and will make a successful man. He’s taken up a tree claim now. I was talking with him to-day.” “What’s a tree claim?” asked Carrie. “Oh, you plant so many trees and leave ’em growing at a certain stated time—say two years—and the land is yours. He said you might do that, and be worth just so much more. It would cost you but a trifle to have the trees planted.”

“He is taking an interest in my affairs, is he? Well, nobody thanks him for his advice," snapped Carrie, in a voice very unusual to her. Uncle Tom wondered what had come over the girl, usually so sweet tempered. The v eeks went by, and November came. Carrie was on the third month of her six. She had made a great many friends, and had read, and sewed, and made her uncle’s cabin and her own very tasty, and comfortable, and neat with her handiwork. She felt that her time had been well employed and the days had not been long. And yet she and Alex, had never exchanged a word. No one—not even Uncle Tom—knew that they had ever been friends. One November day Carrie was “tacking a comforter,” which she had pieced together out of bits of calico. The wind had been blowing with increasing fury from the northwest all day. Toward evening it became terrible, and a sleety snow began to fall. It seemed to shakSthe little cabin to its foundation. Carrie felt her heart sink with fear. It was something beyond any of her former experience, and she remembered what Uncle Tom had said about a “blizzard,” “This must surely be a blizzard,” she thought Higher and higher rose the wind, louder and louder it shrieked. The walls of the house shook, trembled, and then— tr

Carrie was conscious of being lifted up into the air by some unseen force, and whirled through the-darkness and then falling. After that she knew nothing for a brief space. She was only stunned, and when she opened her eyes she found herself still in her own room, but with everything still in a confused mass of ruin about hex, and Alex. Hall kneeling by her, rubbing her hands and calling her name. " “It was not necessary 40-eome over,” she said. “Pm not hurt in the least.” Alex, broke into a laugh. . “Come over ?” he repeated, “Its you who have come over, Miss Carrie; you made the first call in spite of yourself. And very glad I am to see you, even in this unceremOnius manner. “What do you mean ?” she asked. “I mean, that you came, house and all, and planted yourself right in my dooryard with a thunderous clatter. I thought the whole village had arrived. It is a wonder your neck was not broken, my dear. Are you sure you are not injured?” he asked with a tender concern.

“Do you reaHy mean, Alex., that my house blew over into your yard?” “I mean just that, Carrie. I always thought your cabin rather shaky—mine is twice as substantial—and now you will be obliged to accept my hospitality for the present Fortunately, I have a man and wife stopping with me this week—friends of mine from Northern Dakota, whom I am entertaining until they get a house built They have slept soundly through aM this blizzard. They are used to the country. But I will wake the good woman now, and she will'attend to you." The next day Alex, said to het; . “Since you unbent sufficiently to call on me in sueh an uncermonious manner,

Carrie, before I beg you portion for my old disagreeable meanness, can’t you stoop still further and marry me, now that I do most humbly crave your forgiveness? I have always loved you.” Of course Carrie could not refuse.

“Pon my soul!" said Uncle Tom, when he had heard the whole story. “It’s better than a magazine yarn! You’re the heroine, Carrie, and Alex, is the hero, and I am the sort of good angel, you know, that fixes up things.” “You are the blizzard,” laughed Carrib.