Victory

Victory By Will Dobson

Perhaps Cleome could not be called a settlement, for its homes are scattered over a hundred square miles, and most of its streets are a mile apart and ten miles long; but it is a community with a postoffice, a small store, and a neat little schoolhouse of which we are all ridiculously proud. Cleome, it may be well to explain, is one of those new dry-farming regions where every farm covers half a section and every man lives on his farm. How- ever small the dwelling on the farm, there will always be a well with a busy windmill over it, or perhaps two wells with wind- mills feeding small reservoirs which in turn keep alive a garden and an orchard. Ten years ago that plain was a waste of greasewood and white sage, where cattle and sheep grazed in winter, if enough snow fell to water them. But flock and herd have been ban- ished, and a checkerboard of velvet green or golden yellow blocked in, while the umber of fallowing loam sweeps from hor- izon to horizon. Man's comfort and safety have been won only by unceasing labor and stubborn perseverance. In the first lean years of the transformation, poverty was extreme. Many a fam- ily found the struggle too hard and were replaced by hardier spirits. There were no well-to-do, and there were degrees of destitution, from that of the Conovers up. Every other family, for instance, owned some sort of cook- stove. But Philip Conover's grey-haired mother browned their coarse bread and crisped their bit of bacon in two blackened Dutch ovens over the coals of an open fire. In fair weather this fire was outside their wind-frayed tent; but there were times when it must be built inside, most of the smoke finally finding its way out through a hole in the tent peak. Then, while every other settler managed to drive a team of some description, for at least part of the year, Philip owned only the one horse. Another man would have bought, borrowed, or rented a mate for his nag, or would have worked for some neighbor in return for the use of a team. But that was not like Conover. Not only did he do his shallow plowing with that one horse, but when he used his wagon, the horse was hitched on one side of the tongue while the master held the neckyoke up on the other side. In that strange fashion the ridiculously mated

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team hauled posts from the far foothills of the Kaibab to fence half a section. Always there will stick in my memory the picture of the thin brute and thinner man toiling together over that wind-swept plain. It pictures so well the whole stern struggle of the founding of Cleome. On the Conover claim there were just the two, Philip, the discouraged-looking son, past his youth, but not so old as his tragic face, a frail and futile farmer, but always doggedly at work; and the bent and weary but unconquerable old mother. One sensed a story of suffering and sorrow behind the brave smile on that fine old face .... tragedy but not complain- ing. It was evident that both were used to better things in a land where education and comfort were the rule. Not only was the exiled mother ever cheerful and sociable, but she seemed pathetically eager to entertain, wait on and mother any of her scattered neighbors or the chance traveler. The meals she contrived over her rude camp-fire were a surprise and delight to all who partook. Perhaps this was partly because they were seasoned with such generous hospitality. Only the gifted few can make guests feel truly welcome. The unbeliev- able neatness, too, of the rough table and crowded tent must have helped flavor the meal not a little. What infinite pains and end- less labor went to achieve that pioneer perfection only the re- cording angel can ever know. The son was silent and shy, too self-conscious to be neigh- borly. While education showed in all his ways, the rough prob- lems of our primitive life seemed to bewilder him. The odd and awkward way in which he went at his work was the source of most of our neighborhood gossip. He would lend if he had any- thing to lend, but would never borrow, being too sensitive of his lack of tools worth borrowing. Neither would he exchange labor with a neighbor, simply because he felt that he couldn't return full value. It was years before we came to understand and re- spect this aloof determination of his to keep out of our debt. The stern conditions of desert life welded the rest of us into a brotherhood where mine and thine were forgotten. The few teams and miserable machinery of the community were used practically in common. Much of the work was done by gangs of us working for each other turn and turn about. Harvest time was especially a community affair, one long table often serving the whole colony. At such times the evenings would be passed in dancing to the music of Joe Brown's accordion, or the lively reel tunes of Pap Davis's black fiddle, or in debates, matches, or programs that exercised the best talent we had. The periods of famine, common to new settlements, were tided over by us- ing supplies as one common fund. In such surroundings the

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independence of Philip Gonover was so marked as to cause no end of talk. For all the mother's efforts, the Conovers did not seem to fit in, and nobody expected them to stay long in Cleome. However, months merged into years, and still the remark- able couple stayed. Nothing seemed to prosper on the Conover farm as on our fat acres. And yet, with painful slowness, the bare farm took shape. A little shanty, gathered board by board, in time replaced the wornout tent. A little old Charter Oak stove, discarded by a neighbor and ingeniously repaired by Conover, succeeded the dingy Dutch ovens. From one futile wire, the farm fence grew to five. Then came the drought. A Fall passed and no moisture fell. We always depend on Fall rain to wet the fields enough for sowing. — So none of us sowed our wheat except Conover. There were granaries of one-year-old and two-year-old wheat everywhere. So we would not lack for bread another year. But Conover had never raised his bread, had only been able to buy a team the season before, and now had fallowed for planting three hundred acres. "Ain't that just Conover's luck!" was Joe Brown's comment. But when we saw him drilling in the seed and harrowing the dry dust, it was changed to, "Ain't that just Conover's way?" Others herded sheep or hauled freight for older settlements, or took their teams into other states to tide over the lean year. But Conover seemed to be unable to get off the farm. Never had his helplessness to plan and shift for himself been so apparent as now. The winter brought little moisture and that late. However, it was enough to start Conover's wheat, whereupon his neigh-

bors, seeing its prosperity, hurriedly sowed their fields in the hope of making spring wheat. But the drill let the moisture out of their ground, and what few kernels did sprout were burned up by the first hot days of spring. The Conover wheat, meanwhile, began to stool and thrive in the heat that seared their abortive sprouts. It was a year of slight showers with not one real rain, and only the most prompt and well calculated har- rowing could save such moisture for thirsty roots. For the first time in his farming life, Conover hired help. A force of men and teams kept the harrows going after every shower, till the day came when we knew without question that Conover's wheat crop was safe and was a big one. This time Joe Brown wagged his head dazedly and mum- bled, "The luck of a fool!" But when the county agent hap- pened that way and explained in a meaty lecture delivered in that neat little schoolhouse that it was not luck but scientific farming that had made the crop, we looked on the new Con-

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over with a vast respect. If anyone looked from the burnt acres into his yellowing Turkey-red with a pang of envy, I am sure it was lost in the thought of the brave old mother whose security was at last assured. Harvest time at Conover's and the threshing that followed were community affairs of the true Cleome pattern. There fol- lowed a social and dance in Jim Turner's new barn in honor — of the Conovers rather, celebrating their victory over the drought. There were two horse races matched for the next day to be run on a salt grass bottom in Turner's field. So we simply brought our beds and camped at the Turner place. My quilts were spread on straw in the coolness of the Turner calf pasture, and I persuaded Phil Conover to share them with me. It was hard to recognize the new Conover. That night his face seemed to radiate not only friendliness but power. A few months ago he was an apologetic failure, tonight a serene sue-' cess. "You have won a fight not only for yourself but for the whole community," I told him, as we stretched ourselves under the big, brilliant desert stars; "we shall know now how to raise wheat in bad years." "None of you know of the biggest fight I have won," was his reply. — "You can see that I feel good good all over, and you think it is because I raised seven thousand bushels of Turkey red wheat. But I have something bigger than that putting fat — on my ribs. I have won more than wheat I've won back my manhood. I'm boss of myself again, for the first time in twenty years! "When I came to Cleome it was not primarily to farm. It was to get away from a confirmed drunkard carrying the name of Philip Conover. What I was before booze got me doesn't matter here. But you could never see that old mother of mine without realizing that the Conovers are not far down in the scale of decency. All but one. "I ran away from the stuff, and my mother kept me from giving up and going back to it." As the dam of his reserve melted, the story poured forth as an impetuous stream. "Twice I had taken cures, but each time I went back to the cursed stuff. When I came here it was from a prison cell where I had spent six months for taking another man's money to buy liquor. Six months of thirst had only made me more wildly thirsty. I would have killed a man without second thought at that time if he stood between m<* and the poison my nerves were shouting for. Your friend, Joe Brown, will likely never realize how near death he was one day when he passed my tent on his

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way home from town. He showed me his assortment of extracts, a new brand he had taken a fancy to, and all the rest of that day the notion was strong on me to follow him to his cabin and get that alcohol down me. I had nothing to buy it with, and it was impossible in that condition for me to ask for anything like that. There was just that insane idea left of killing the man that owned it. "One day a stranger came along from some river settlement where wine was sometimes made. He had it to sell, and before mother found out what was happening I had traded the best horse out of my team for a forty-gallon barrel of it. Almost my next recollection is of waking in the tent where mother had dragged me and put me to bed. She was burning the staves of the barrel for firewood. I was on my other horse starting to try to catch that wine peddler, when mother stopped me by insist- ing that I take my jumper. As she handed it to me, she caught my horse's bridle rein and held on until she shamed me out of my trip. From that day on, mother went where I went—helped me farm, and let me help her cook and wash dishes. That was at the same time the most humiliating and the most comforting and strengthening thing that could have happened to me. All the decency in me was longing for freedom from the habit, and I needed just that help. Since then the thirst has died, but when that was dead I was still paralyzed with fear. I didn't dare leave the farm over night. I needed confidence, faith in myself. I plowed, harrowed and plodded about the farm more in a desperate effort to keep hold of myself than from any hope of making a farm. I sowed wheat in the dust because I didn't dare hunt work elsewhere. So my curse, losing its power, has become my strength. And at last I am a man, and can look other men in the face without flinching! "But that is not all: tonight a train is rolling up from the Kansas prairies into the Rockies, and on board is the sweetest, bravest and most patient wife God ever gave a worthless man, and with her is my boy whom I have never seen. Some spark of decency in me drove me away from her with the resolve never to see her again. "And now I have sent for them, and .they are on their way. Do you think honeysuckles will grow here if they are taken care of? I want one climbing over the porch-rail of our new house, so that mother can smell its fragrance once again." And there fell over us a silence, broken after a time by a gentle, rythmic snore. Hurricane, Utah

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