The Lone Black Pioneer: Oscar Micheaux Boxed Set. Micheaux Oscar

      CHAPTER XLI

       THE DROUTH

       Table of Contents

      A cloudy and threatening day in May, there came an inch of rainfall. I had completed sowing two hundred and fifty acres of flax a few days before, and soon everything looked beautiful and green. I felt extremely hopeful

      During the six years I had been farming in Dakota, I had raised from fair to good crops every year. The seasons had been favorable, and if a good crop had not been raised, it was not the fault of the soil or from lack of rainfall. The previous year had not been as wet as others, but I had raised a fair crop, and at this time had four hundred and ten acres in crop and one hundred and ten acres rented out, from which I was to receive one third of the crop. I had come west with hopes of bettering my financial condition and had succeeded fairly well.

      Around me at this time others had grown prosperous, land had advanced until some land adjoining Megory had brought one hundred dollars per acre, and land a few miles from town sold for fifty to eighty dollars per acre.

      Before settling in the west I had read in real estate advertisements all about the wheat land that could be bought from ten to twenty-five dollars per acre, that would raise from twenty-five to forty bushels of wheat to the acre. While all this was quite possible I had never raised over twenty-five bushels per acre, and mostly harvested from ten to twenty. I had wondered, before I left Chicago, how, at a yield of thirty bushels per acre (and for the last seven or eight years prices had ranged from seventy cents to one dollar per bushel for wheat) the farmers could spend all the money. Of course, I had learned, in six years, that twenty-five to forty or fifty bushels per acre, while possible, was far from probable, and considerably above the average.

      The average yield for all wheat raised in the United States is about fourteen bushels per acre, but crops had averaged from fair to good all over the northwest for some fifteen or sixteen years, with some exceptions, and the question I had heard asked years before, "Will the drouth come again," was about forgotten.

      During the three years previous to this time, poor people from the east, and around Megory and Calias as well, who were not able to pay the prices demanded for relinquishments and deeded lands in Megory, Tipp county, or the eastern states, had flocked by thousands to the western part of the state and taken free homesteads. At the beginning of this, my seventh season in Dakota, the agricultural report showed an exceedingly large number of acres had been seeded, and the same report which was issued June eighth, reported the condition of all growing crops to be up to the ten-year average and some above.

      It was on Sunday. I had quit breaking prairie on account of the ground being too dry, and while going along the road, I noticed a field of spelt that looked peculiar. Going into the field, I dug my fingers into the soil, and found it dry. I could not understand how it had dried out so quickly; but thinking it would rain again in a few days, it had been but ten days since the rain, I thought no more about it. The following week, although it clouded up and appeared very threatening, the clouds passed and no rain fell. On Saturday I drove into Ritten, and on the way again noticed the peculiar appearance of the growing plants. It was the topic of discussion in the town, but no one seemed willing to admit that it was from the lack of moisture. The weather had been very hot all week and the wind seemed to blow continually from the south.

      In past years, after about two days of south winds, we were almost sure to have rain. The fact that the wind had blown from the south for nearly two weeks and no rain had fallen caused everybody to be anxious. That night was cloudy, the thunder and lightning lasted for nearly two hours, but when I went to the door, I could see the stars, and the next day the heat was most intense.

      The Wesinbergers had said the heavens would be ablaze with lightning and resound with peals of thunder but that they were only solstice storms, coming up in unusual directions, and that such storms were characteristic of a dry season. Furthermore, that heavy, abnormal rains would occur in scattered localities, at the same time, but they would be few and far apart.

      June fifteenth I took my sister to Victor to make proof on her homestead, and from there drove to Megory, stopping in Calias to send my wife a telegram to the effect that I felt I was going to be sick and for her to draw a draft on the Bank of Calias, and come home. The telegram was not answered.

      Next morning my sister left for Kansas, and that afternoon a heavy downpour of rain fell all over Megory county and as far west as Victor, but north of Ritten, where I had my flax crop, there was scarcely sufficient rain to lay the dust. On that day the hot winds set in and lasted for seven weeks, the wind blowing steadily from the south all the while.

      I had never before, during the seven years, suffered to any extent from the heat, but during that time I could not find a cool place. The wind never ceased during the night, but sounded its mournful tune without a pause. Then came a day when the small grain in Tipp county was beyond redemption, and rattled as leaves in November. The atmosphere became stifling, and the scent of burning plants sickening.

      My flax on the sod, which was too small to be hurt at the beginning of the drouth, began to need rain, and reports in all daily papers told that the great heat wave and the drouth in many places were worse than in Tipp county. All over the western and northern part of the state, were localities where it had not rained that season. Potatoes, wheat, oats, flax, and corn, in the western part of the state, had not sprouted, and, it was said, in a part of Butte county, where seed had been sown four inches deep the year before, there had not been enough rain since to make it sprout.

      The government had spent several million dollars damming the Belle Fourche river for the purpose of irrigation, and the previous autumn, when it had been completed, the water in it had been run onto the land, to see how it would work, and since had been dry. No snow had fallen in the mountains during the winter, and all the rivers were as dry as the roads; while all the way from the gulf, to Canada, the now protracted drouth was burning everything in its wake.

      At Kansas City, where the treacherous Kaw empties its waters into the Missouri, and had for years wrought disaster with its notorious floods, drowning out two and sometimes three crops in a single spring, was nearly dry, and the crops were drying up throughout its valley.

      I spent the Fourth of July in Victor, where the people shook their heads gravely and said, "Tipp county will never raise a crop." The crops had dried up in Tipp county the year before. I read that the railroad men who run from Kansas City to Dodge City reported that the pastures through Kansas were so dry along the route, that a louse could be seen crawling a half mile away. In parts of Iowa the farmers commenced to put their stock in pens and fed them hay from about the middle of June, there being no feed in the pastures. Through eastern Nebraska, western Iowa and southern Minnesota, the grasshoppers began to appear by the millions, and proceeded to head the small grain. To save it, the farmers cut and fed it to stock, in pens.

      The markets were being over-run with thin cattle from the western ranges, where the grass had never started on account of lack of moisture. I watched my flax crop and early in July noticed it beginning to wilt, then millions of army worms began cutting it down. On the eleventh I left for Megory county, with my stock, to harvest the winter wheat there. It had been partially saved by the rain in June. The two hundred and eighty-five acres of flax was a brown, sickly-looking mess, and I was badly discouraged, for outside of my family trouble, I had borrowed my limit at the bank, and the flax seed, breaking, and other expenses, had amounted to eleven hundred dollars.

      About this time the settlers all over the western highlands began to desert their claims. Newspapers reported Oklahoma burned to a crisp, and Kansas scorched, from Kansas City to the Colorado line. Homesteaders to the north and west of us began passing through the county, and their appearance presented a contrast to that of a few years before. Fine horses that marched bravely to the land of promise, drawing a prairie schooner, were returning east with heads hanging low from long, stringy necks, while their alkalied hoofs beat a slow tattoo, as they wearily dragged along, drawing, in many cases, a dilapidated wagon over which was stretched a tattered tarpaulin; while others drew rickety hacks or spring wagons, with dirty bedding and filthy looking