The Arizona copper camp., 1917-12-15
CHAPTER l.


EOUR trail worn oxen, their necks
bowed to the yoke of patient
servitude, should really begin this
story. But to follow the trail they
made would take several chapters
which you certainly would skip-unless
you like to hear the tale of how the
wilderness was tanned and can thrill
at the stern history of those who did
the tanning while they fought to keep
their stomachs fairly well filed with
food and their hard muscled bodies fit
for the fray.
There was woman, low browed,
uncombed, harsh of voice and speech
and nature, who drove the four oxen
forward over lava rock and rough
prairie and the scanty sage. 1 might
tell you great deal about Marthy,
who plodded stolidly across the desert
and the low lying hills along the Black
foot, and Of her weak souled, shiftless
husband whom she called Jase when
she did not call him worse.
They were the pioneers whose lurch-
ing wagon first forded the singing
Wolverine stream just where it green's
the tiny valley and then slips between
huge lava rock lodges to join the larger
stream. Jase would have stopped
there and called home the sheltered
little green spot in the gray barrenness.
But Marthy went ON up the farther hill
and across the upland, another full
days journey with the sweating oxen.
They camped that night on another
little, singing stream in another little
valley which was not so level or so
green or SO wholly pleasing to the eye.
And that night two of the oxen, i'm
PEELED by a surer instinct than their
human owners, strayed away down a
narrow, winding gorge and so discov-
cred the Cove and feasted upon its rich
grasses. 1t was Marthy who went
after them and who recognized the lit
tie, hidden Eden as the place of her
dreams = supposing she ever had
dreams. So Marthy and Jase and the
four oxen took possession, and with
much labor and many hard years for
the woman and with the same number
Of years and as little labor as he could
manage on the mans part they tanned
the Cove and made it a beauty spot in
that wild land. A beauty spot, though
their lives held nothing but treadmill
toll and harsh words and a mental
horizon narrowed almost to the limits
Of the grim, gray rock wall that sur
rounded them.
Another sturdy souled couple came
afterward and saw the Wolverine and
made for themselves home upon its
banks. And in the rough little log
cabin was born the girl child 1 want
you to meet-a girl child when she
should have been a boy to meet her
fathers need and great desire; a girl
child whose very name was a cOmpro-
mise between the parents. For they
called her Billy for sake of the boy
her father wanted and Louise for the
girl her mother had longed for to light
en- that terrible loneliness which the
far frontier brings to the women who
brave its stern emptiness.
When Billy Louise was twelve she
wanted to do something big, though
she was hazy as to the particular ma
ture of that big something. She tried
to talk it over with Marthy, but Marthy
could not seem to think beyond the
Cove.
When she was thirteen Billy Louise
rode over with loaf of bread she had
baked all by herself, and she put this
problem to Marthy:
1--WE been thinking I'd go ahead and
write poetry, Marthy-a whole book
of it with pictures. But 1 do love to
make bread-and people have to eat
bread. Which would you be, Marthy-
a poet or cook?"
Marthy looked at her a minute, lent
her attention briefly to the question
and gave what she considered good ad-
vice.
"You learn how to cook, Billy Lou
ise. Yuh don't want to go and get no.
tions. Your nav amt healthy, and
your paw likes good grub. Po'try is
all foolishness. There amt any money
In it."
walter Scott paid his debts writing
poetry" said Billy Louise argumenta-
lively. She had just read all about
Walter Scott in a magazine which a
passing cowboy had given her. Per-
haps that had something to do with
her new ambition
'Mebby he did and mebby he didn't
I'd like to see our debts paid off with
po'try. It'd have to be worth a hull
lot more'n what I'd give for it"
"Oh! Have you got debts, too, Mar
thy" Billy Louise at thirteen was
still ready with sympathy. 'Daddy's
got lots and piles of 'em. He bought
some cattle and now he talks to NOM
mie all the time about debts. Mommie
wants me to go to Boise to, school next
winter, to Aunt Sarah's. And daddy
says there's debts to pay. 1 didn't
know you had any, Marthy."
''Well, have got. We bought some
cattle, too, and they amt done s wells
they might. If 1 had a man that was
any good on earth could put up more
hay. But can't git nothing outa Jase