The Monticellonian., 1918-02-22
CHAPTER 1.
Let Us Start at the Beginning.


 I 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 filled 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. l 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 1t greens the tiny valley and then slips between huge lava rock ledges 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 ill 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 pelled by 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. It 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 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 a 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 boy to meet her fathers need and great desire; girl child whose very name was 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 it's stern emptiness.
 When Billy Louise was twelve she wanted to do something big, though she was bazy as to the particular na- 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:
 i've been thinking I'd go ahead and write poetry, Marthy-a whole book of it with pictures. But I do love to make bread-and people have to eat bread. Which would you be, Marthy- a poet or cook?"
 Marthy looked at her 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 maw ain't healthy, and your paw likes good grub. Po'try is all foolishness. There ain't any money in it."
 Waiter Scott paid his debts writing poetry" said Billy Louise argumenta- lively She had just read all about Walter Scott in a magazine which 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 moren 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 mom- mic 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. I didn't know you had any, Marthy.'
 Well. I have got We bought some cattle, too. and they ain't done 's we'll 5 they might If l had a man that was any good n;l earth l could put up more hay But can't git nothing outa Jase but whines. Your paw oughta send you to school. Billy Louise. even if he has got debts"
 He says he wishes he could, but he don't know where the moneys coming