The Cross Timbers (6 page)

There were not many books in our home except George's school books and mine, after I started to school. We also had a copy of
Pilgrim's Progress
with illustrations. This was most
interesting to me and I must have read it at a very early age, for the allegory did not penetrate my skull. To me the giants Pope and Pagan as well as Giant Despair were real giants; Doubting Castle, the Slough of Despond, and the Key called “Promise” were only the names of a swamp, a castle, and a key.

My brother Henry had left us a copy of Longfellow's
Poems,
some neighbor had been kind enough to lend us a copy of “The Ancient Mariner” with illustrations by Doré, and another had given us a paperback thriller called
The Trader Spy.
There were a few others—a thick one-volume
History of the United States
and a copy of Sir Walter Scott's
Poems,
including his plays.

I also remember seeing, when very small, a novel entitled
The Eye That Never Sleeps,
and another,
Broken Links and Southern Soldiers.
Both of these and
The Trader Spy
must have been either temporary loans to Mattie or the property of one of the men my father hired from time to time to help pick cotton, for they had disappeared before I was able to read with any degree of fluency.

All the other books I read and reread many times, and I memorized many of the shorter poems of Longfellow and long passages of most of Scott's poems, including “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” “Marmion,” “Lady of the Lake,” “Lord of the Isles,” and at least a little of “Rokeby,” “Bridal of Triermain,” and “Harold the Dauntless.” In addition, I memorized most of “The Ancient Mariner” and many of the poems in McGuffey's fourth and fifth readers. In fact, I memorized some from the sixth reader, for although I never studied it in school my brother John had given me a copy, and memorizing verse was always easy for me.

For some years the only periodical which we received except
my father's
Signs of the Times
was the semimonthly publication
The Farm and Fireside,
published by Mast, Crowell, and Kirkpatrick. As the name indicates, its contents consisted chiefly of articles on farm problems and household matters, including recipes, with usually one short story or an installment of a serial story.

Because of the scarcity of reading matter George and I always looked forward to the coming of every issue and read everything it contained, including the recipes and advertisements. If the magazine happened to be running a serial, or what we called a “continued story,” we talked about it for days and each of us expressed his opinion of how it would end.

In reading the ads in the latest number of
The Farm and Fireside
we found a long list of books, any three of which could be had postpaid for a new two-year subscription or a renewal for two years by one already a subscriber. As the little journal cost only fifty cents a year this seemed such a bargain that we raked up a dollar and sent it in, naming the three books which we had selected.

Alice had chosen a cookbook, as she, like virtually all of the neighbor women, had never owned one but cooked largely “by ear.” George selected
The Swiss Family Robinson,
and I,
Dick Onslow among the Indians.
When the books at last came George and I eagerly plunged into reading our selections, while Alice began the study of her cookbook and soon tried some of the most alluring recipes.

My own volume had a strong, spicy odor that was not too agreeable. This was probably because it had been stored in a
room or box liberally treated with some insect repellent but as neither of the other two books had this scent I assumed that it was the smell of Indians!

Certainly, there were plenty of Indians in the story, which was a real thriller-diller, in which Dick and his buddy were both wounded in an Indian attack on a California-bound wagon train. The Indians were defeated but the two wounded men were inadvertently left behind when the wagon train resumed its journey. Their adventures during the next few weeks were amazing!

When each of us had finished his own book George and I exchanged volumes and for some weeks I lived with
The Swiss Family Robinson.
Interesting as were the adventures of Dick Onslow, those of Fritz, Ernest, James, Francis, and their parents were far more so. In our work and play we talked of them as though they were our close friends.

Even the animals of the Swiss family made some contribution to our daily lives. When our faithful old dog, Ring, died of old age and a neighbor gave us a pup we promptly named him “Turk” for the Swiss family's dog. Our old mother cat, originally called “Old Puss,” we had named “Madame Arles” for the chief character in a short story that we had read. When she presented us with a batch of kittens, however, we named one “Nip” for the Swiss family's monkey; another, “Bruin,” Dick Onslow's designation of a bear; and a third, “Fedora,” again from a short story.

When
The Farm and Fireside
announced that a quart glass fruit jar had been filled with corn and that a prize of one hundred dollars would be paid to the subscriber who could guess the closest to the number of grains it contained, George and I were much excited. We quickly borrowed an empty quart fruit jar
from Alice, filled it with shelled corn, and carefully counted the number of grains it held. The publishers had set the date when the jar would be opened, the grains counted, and the winner of the award announced in the columns of the magazine.

The number our jar had contained was something over 1,800. George had carefully jotted down the date when the official count was to be made and when at last the day came, gave a monologue with only Alice and me as an audience.

“Well, I guess they're counting right now. Probably old Mast is saying, ‘I've got 621 grains. How many do you have Crowell? You say 593? How about you, Kirkpatrick? 637? All right we'll add 'em up. It looks like that feller Dale down at Keller, Texas, has hit it almost exactly and will be the winner'.”

It is always fun to dream, but the official count was over 2,600 grains instead of the some 1,850 which our quart jar held! Evidently a grain of corn, like everything else in Texas, grows big!

While we continued to read
The Farm and Fireside,
we eventually subscribed to the St. Louis
Republic,
which as I recall was at first a weekly and later a semiweekly newspaper. This gave us more to read, but both George and I eagerly sought books and magazines or any other reading matter. There was no opportunity for selection because very few families in the community read much. As a result, we read what we could get, regardless of whether it was trash or a classic.

Somewhere we acquired a copy of H. Rider Haggard's
King Solomon's Mines,
which we read and reread with much pleasure. While it never could hold a place in our affections equal to that of the
Swiss Family Robinson,
we talked about it a great deal and even tried to play the story, using part of the south field as the
desert, and the corn crib as the mountains, while each of us assumed the role of two or three of the principal characters in the story.

The Taylor twins, Paul and Dow, and their sister, Miss Sally, were apparently the only other persons in our neighborhood who read much except ourselves and our brother Tom. One day when Father had gone to the Taylor home on an errand he returned with a huge pile of magazines, which Miss Sally had sent us.

This was a delightful surprise. Most of them were copies of a magazine called
Good News
devoted largely to fiction, including a number of serials. Fortunately, the file was unbroken and each “continued story” was equivalent to a book. Some of these were “Breakneck Farm or the Merriman Twins,” “Boys Will Be Boys or a Harvest of Wild Oats,” “Peter Potter the Page,” and a sequel, “Peter Potter's Pilgrimage or the Lively Vice Consul to Korea.”

Just why authors of that time should give double-barrel titles to their books is a deep dark mystery. Possibly they could not make up their minds as to which title was better, or, more likely, the practice was designed to attract the hoped-for reader's interest. Neither George nor I were concerned about this. It was enough to know that we had some rattling good yarns to read, for which we were most grateful.

Until after 1887 I had never been more than six or seven miles from home except once when Lucy and Alice took me to Fort Worth by train to spend part of a day with Lucy's sister. In the autumn of that year my sister Fannie, and her husband, Mace Hutchinson, and their two children came down from Nebraska to spend the winter with us.

About this time my brother Henry and Mattie's husband, Herbert Acers, established a general-merchandise store at the little town of Navajoe in Greer County. This village was about forty-five miles north of Vernon, Texas, and only about three miles from the North Fork of the Red River. Beyond this stream lay the great Kiowa-Comanche Indian Reservation.

The two partners in the firm of Acers and Dale hoped to sell much merchandise to the Indians, as well as to the ranchmen who leased their lands, and to sell supplies to the foremen of trail herds on the Western Trail from Texas to Dodge City, which was only three or four miles west of the little town. A few settlers were also coming in to establish homes in the area between the north and south forks of Red River and extending west to the hundredth meridian, which Texas had organized as Greer County in 1860 under the assumption that the North Fork was the main stream. This was denied by officials of the United States, who claimed that the South Fork was the principal stream and should be considered the Red River.

When Mattie learned that Fannie and her family were visiting us, she wrote urging all of us to come to visit Henry and her. Fannie and Alice thought it too much of a trip to make in the winter but Father and Mace went by train to Vernon, where they were met and taken to Navajoe. After a stay of two weeks they returned, praising with enthusiasm the beauties of this part of Greer County.

As spring approached, the Hutchinsons returned to Nebraska but Father continued to talk about Navajoe and Greer County. A born pioneer, he was always eager to go to a new land. When Jay wrote that he had resigned his job in Mexico and settled on
a claim half a mile south of Navajoe, Father decided to rent the farm for a year and spend the winter in Greer County.

We all approved of this wholeheartedly. It was now around the first of September and the cotton must be picked, the corn gathered, and livestock disposed of before we could all leave. It was therefore decided that Alice and I should go by train to Vernon, where someone would meet us, and Father and George should stay until the crops were harvested, and then come out by wagon.

Alice and I left late in October. The trip was most interesting to a nine-year-old kid who had never been on a train but once before, and then only to make the round trip from Keller to Fort Worth. The Fort-Worth-and-Denver train on which we traveled was slow, but it seemed to be moving at dizzying speeds and the day coach with red plush seats was to me most luxurious. When we saw our first prairie dogs I was certain that we had reached the real West.

When we arrived in Vernon at about 4:30
P.M.,
we were met by Jay with a wagon and team to take us to Navajoe, forty-five miles to the north. We camped on the prairie the first night and reached our destination late the following day. Mattie, Herbert, and Henry all seemed delighted to see us. The Acers-and-Dale store seemed to me very big. Mattie and Herbert and their baby daughter lived in an apartment attached to the north side of the store. Henry boarded with them but slept on a cot in the store in the part partitioned off in one corner for the Post Office, as he was postmaster.

Alice stayed with Mattie until Father and George came about the latter part of November, but I “bached” with Jay, who had
built a half dugout on his claim half a mile southwest of the Navajoe townsite. We were quite comfortable, for although halfway underground Jay's little place had a wood floor and a half window on either side. It was furnished with two beds, a couple of chairs, a small cookstove, a table, and a cupboard containing dishes and cooking utensils.

Jay was building sheds for his horses, fencing a pasture, and otherwise improving his claim. This was done in leisurely fashion and I helped as much as possible. Every evening after supper Jay would slip his forty-five Colt's revolver inside the waistband of his trousers and go “to get the mail,” though I cannot recall that we ever got any mail. Jay would usually sit on the counter and visit with other men, while I would usually go in and talk with Mattie and Alice or read, for to my delight Mattie had a great deal of wonderful reading matter.

As the arrival of Father and George created a housing problem, a large dugout room was quickly built joining Jay's half dugout, and a door was cut connecting the two rooms. Alice then came to keep house for Father, Jay, and George, while I replaced her in Mattie's home. The new dugout was finished none too soon, for about this time my brother John came in from North Dakota, where he had remained working as a cowhand when Jay left for the job in Mexico.

Probably I would have preferred staying on the claim in order to spend more time with George, but it was fun to live with Mattie too. She was a subscriber to the
Youth's Companion
and had many back numbers, which I read with much pleasure. In addition, she had a number of books which were most interesting. Among them were
Surry of Eagle's Nest
and a sequel to it called
Mohun,
both by John Esten Cooke. They were Civil War stories dealing with the campaigns of Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. I “ate them up” and from them learned a great deal.