CHAPTER XV

There was a great deal of suffering among the settlers. It was extremely cold. The government issued flour and beans and some army clothes left over from war days. A supply came to the Lutz store and Will took advantage of the offer of the flour, but only after some protest of pride.

“I don’t want to, Abbie,—like beggars.”

“Will Deal,—from your government, after you fought to keep it going!”

In the Lutz store, one day later, Abbie met Mrs. Tomlinson from Poor Man’s Hollow. She had on one of the blue army coats and a pair of men’s coarse army shoes.

Word came from back home that Grandpa Deal was very sick,—the disease which had caused his arm’s amputation, had broken out again.

A few weeks later in the winter, Grandpa Lutz, Henry’s and Oscar’s old father, died. Homesick for the neat Michigan farm and a sight of lake water, uncomplaining, gently, he died. And once more the settlers stood around an irregular hole in the ground on the Lutz knoll of land where little Dan lay.

With scarcely a fortnight’s passing, a letter came from Louise Deal telling of Grandpa Deal’s death, too. In a winter of intense cold, little to eat, a dubious outlook for the future, and the worry of Abbie’s pregnancy, the news of kind Grandpa Deal’s death seemed too much to bear.

“I sat by his bed and Ma was mending stockings over by the window where the light was,” Louise wrote. Yes, Grandma Deal would not want to be wasting any of the daylight, thought Abbie, as she read with tear-dimmed eyes. “He said, ‘Sis!’ . . . you know he sometimes called me that . . . ‘Sis, how do you reckon it’ll be, all gold and wings and harps and pearly gates? No meadows and lane roads and maple sap running and honey-locusts and young corn growing . . . and no jokes?’ I told him I didn’t know, and then in a little while he nodded his head over to where Ma was sitting and said, ‘Sis, it’ll be mighty lonesome sittin’ around waitin’ for her.’ And when I looked at him again he was dead.”

Abbie could not see the rest of the letter for the tears. She had loved Will’s old father.

The winter seemed nothing but snow and cold, trouble and misery. Only the children were happy. Too young to sense the desperate straits of the family, they played joyfully through the winter and worked cheerfully at the little tasks assigned them.

It was cold and rainy through March and part of April. And then spring came. Spring on the prairie, with the teal flying out of the coarse grass, with the willow and the cottonwood and the elders over by Stove Creek bursting into green joyousness, with sweet-William and blue phlox, mousetail and wild indigo nosing up through the sod, with the odor of loam and sub-soil coming over the low rolling hills on the wings of every breeze, with the white clouds scudding low with the wind, and with hope, which springs eternal.