American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1875-10-23
RALLEEN,
BY ISABELLA T. BLAKE.

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RALLEEN.
BY ISABELLA T. BLAKE.
l DARE say you would have thought il
was funny little house in which little
Nels Oleson lived, away out in Minnesota,
and an odd-looking barn where Ralleen
the red COW, lived winters; but they
thought it was very nice. When the Ole
sons first came there to live they had only
shanty ten by twelve feet in size; and
what with the father and the mother and
| Nels and Ole and Hans and Hulver and
| Lars and large and Lisa and Christina
and Ingebert Nicholson, whom they took
for a bOarder while he was getting his
shanty built and his land broken, they did
not live in the house much.
The stove was out of doors and the BIZ
wagon that had brought them made bed.
room for the men and one or two boys.
The mother and the rest at night unrolled
their beds from some mysterious corner
where they had been tucked away through
the day. The box they used for table
was put out to make room for the beds.
Sweeter sleep never invited their eyes than
they enjoyed in that lonely spot, with no
neighbOrs for miles around, no markets or
stores, no doctors, schools or churches,
and no roads to reach them by if there had
been ever so many.
As for Ralleen and the oxen, they
wished for nothing better through the
lovely summer weather than to roam
about over the green, luxurious prairie,
where there was, strictly speaking, no
end of grass and plenty of delicious water
in the sIoughs to be had for the drinking.
hope you won't suppose that slough
in Minnesota is in the least like the one
in the Pilgrims Progress. That was a
wretched place, as you all remember.
These are pretty little ponds, which are
partly filled with luXuriant green grass
and rushes. The water is quite clear and
they are the homes of multitudes of wild
fowl and the delight of warm and thirsty
cattle. They are sprinkled about " as
thick as spatters" among the knobs of the
rolling prairie Slough with this mean
ing is pronounced slew, and there ought
to be another way to spell it.
Before winter the blossoms, little and
big, COW and oxen, were provided with
what seemed to them very comfortable
quarters; and SO they were. A log house
of one big room for the people, and a
barn built of sOds, two feet thick, and
covered all over the north side and top
with a great hay stack, for the cattle. In
the house they Trad bedstead in each of
two corners, made by mailing beams to
the log walls, and under each was a capa-
cious trundle-bed. l leave you to guess
how they slowed themselves away.
What clothes they couldn't wear
they hung up around the walls; and
they had a hole under the floor
that answered for a cellar. In the fall
they went with the ox-team forty-ive
miles TO the nearest mill, and brought
back flour and meal and bran to last all
winter; and they had deer and bear meat,
and wild ducks and prairie chickens, and
splendid white, mealy potatoes that they
had raised themselves from their new
land, and some other good things. There
was great deal that you would have
thought necessary that they had to go
without; but they all kept healthy and
hearty and happy and warm, even when
it was SO cold they could not have found
the mercury IN the thermometer-if they
had had one, which they hadn't.
When the snow lay on the prairie all
around, glistening white, as far as the eye
could see, the father and the big boys
would strap ON their snOw-shoes, which
were eight feet long and as wide as the
boot-sole only, and turned up in front like
skates, and scud away uphill and down at
would you like that, boys?
One warm and pleasant spring day, when
the grass was fine, Ralleen was wandering
about eating her fill and thinking how nice
it was, when all at once she raised her head
and found herself very near to large
drove of cattle.
They were scattered about feeding and
looked at her in friendly way; and she,
being sociable COW, was very glad to see
them.
She had scarcely seen a COW since she
came to her present home; so she went to
eating as closely alongside of the others
as politeness would allow. 1t wasn't long
before d great cloth-covered emigrant
wagon began to move along past them, and
then a man came on horseback, with a long
whip, and drove the cattle all together,
Ralleen with the rest, and hurried them
on after the wagon.
Ralleen hardly knew what to make of
it. A dim notion came across her brain
once in a while that she ought to go
toward home; but if she tried to leave the
others she was speedily turned back by
the man with the long whip.
SO they went ON till darkness began to
gather; and then the wagon stopped
and the cows were all glad to lie down
and rest.
Ralleen had, in fact, become mixed up
with drove Of cattle who were being
taken some hundreds of miles to the
north, to be sold at Fort Garry, in British
America.
"See here, JIM said the man with
the long whip to the other drover who
had driven the wagon, there's one crit
ter here that don't belong to u.s.
"That's SO! Where did we pick her
up?" said Jim.
Don't know. Guess likely where we
stopped for dinner" said the other.
Well, never mind" said jim, who
cared for nothing but his own interest.
Let her go on"
60 l say turn her loose to-nightand let her
find her way home" said Max, who was
a good-hearted fellow, and knew the COW
belonged to some settler who could poor
f.,rJ ~. Spar. hpr