Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1890-04-04
HER STORY Il SAD ONE.
IN Illinois Girl's Terrible Experience im a
Dakota DMg-oWt.

Dakota Dmg-out.
As the Sioux City passenger train
came to a standstill in front of the
Webster street depot the other
day a bright intelligent-looking young
woman with a pretty, girlish face, sur
rounded by a mass of dark clustering
hair, descended from the platform of the
rear coach. She was about the medium
height, and rather slight, but the nat
ural comeliness of herown form was con
cealed in a sort of jacket made of un-
tanned sheepskins, which she wore over
a dress of some dark material. Her
head was covered by a jaunty little fox
skin cap, while her feet were encased
in coarse leather m%occasins.
Notwithstanding her uncouth exte-
rior, there wa an air of culture and re-
| fnement-a certain indescribable some
thing about her walk and manner
which spoke of better days and showed
she was not in harmony with her attire.
A gentleman and mis- wife who live on
! Thirteenth street Glanced to be in the
room at the time, and to them the
stranger told this pitiful story-a tale
so full of rare dramatic incidents as to
read almost like q romance.
Her name, she said, was Margaret
! Conner, and her home was at Rockford,
ILL.,, where she had lived from child
hood. Her father was dead and she
had supported her mother, her little
brother, and herself by teaching in the
public schools. About o year ago her
mother died, and Miss Conner and her
brother, Willie, who was now q lad of
l6, finding themselves alone in the
world, sold their little homestead, and
with their worldly effects emigrated to
Dakota, with a view to taking up a tim
Der claim and going to farming. They
settled on Turtle Creek, in Sphinx
County, about twenty miles south of
Redfeld.
Going into a new country, and being
ignorant of its ways, they found it nec-
essary to buy many things, the need of
which they had not anticipated, and
they saw with alarm their little stock of
money dwindlipg rapidly away under
these repeated drains. The neighbors
were kind, in their rough way, and lent
willing hands to give the young people
a start. A warm sod house for them
selves. and outhouses for the stock were
built, the requisite number of trees
were planted, the stubborn prairie
broken, and the spring sowing done.
The story, at this point, is SO full of
startling incidents that it is best told in
Miss Corners wv words.
The crops" said she, "as every one
knows, on account of the prolonged
droughts in the South and West, were
a total failure, and all that we had to
show for our hard summers work was a
few bushels of wheat and corn, hardly
enough to furnish us for the winter.
well, the fall dragged on into win
ter, and Christmas, the season of glad
tidings and good cheer, found us re-
da1ced to our last bushel of grain.
What we should do when that was gone
was a problem beyond power to
solve. Oh, the gloom and terror of
those long winter nights, without fuel
and without light! For hours and
hours we would lay, huddled in each
others arms, listening to the bowling of
the wolves and the shrieks of the tenn
pest as it whirled about our cabin door.
about this time" she continued,
her voice choking with a sob, "poor
Willie took sick and died, and then it
seemed as if my cup of sorrow was full
to the brim, and 1 thought for a time I
should go mad, from the very horror of
my situation. There l was, alone with
my dead brother, in the midst of a des-
olate Dakota prairie, without the barest
necessities of life and not a friend or
neighbor within ten miles. I clearly
saw that [ could no longer remain
where l was, for to do so was to perish,
and my only hope was to get to Red
field, and there by interesting the rail-
road officials in my story obtain trans
portation to my friends in Illinois.
Slowly and sadly I dug a hole in the
hard ground of our cabin floor and laid
poor Willie away, aud after kissing his
sweet pale face many times I covered
the body with the cold frosty earth and
left him.
Then collecting a few things in a
little hand bag, l babe a long farewell
to the home which had been the scene
OF so much sorrow, and started on NV
journey for Redfeld, in the face of q
bowling blizzard. The wind blew
against me and buffeted me SO
that I could hardly walk; the snow beat
with binding force into my eyes and
ears, so that often l could not see the
road at all.
Nevertheless, I headed on, plunging
through snow drifts up to my waist,
| now falling, bruised and blee1inp on