by mail, and their friends sent them everything from
postcards to homemade cookies and jelly, so as mail carriers we became
pack mules. But we went on carrying mail. It is easier to get into
things than to get out.

Much of the ordering of commodities by the settlers was done through the
huge mail-order catalogs issued by half a dozen large companies in the
East. Those mail-order catalogs were of enormous importance to the
homesteaders. For the women they had the interest of a vast department
store through which one could wander at will. In a country where
possessions were few and limited to essentials, those pages with their
intriguing cuts represented most of the highly desirable things in life.

From the mail-order catalogs they ordered their stoves, most of their
farming implements, and later, when the contrast between the alluring
advertisements and the bleak shacks grew too strong for the women to
endure, fancy lamps for the table, and inexpensive odds and ends which
began to transform those rough barren houses into livable homes.

Running a newspaper out here was, as Ma Wagor had predicted, a
"pestiferous" job. One day we hung the rubber roller out to dry and the
sun melted it flat. As a result Ada had to ride to McClure to borrow one
from _The Press_ before we could print the paper. There was no way to
get the ready-prints without making the long trip to Presho. Finally
every homesteader around Ammons who went to town stopped in at the
express office to get them for us. It was a multiplication of effort but
we generally got the prints.

But, hard as it was, the work did not tire me as much as the mere
mechanical grind of the hammer-and-tongs work on _The Press_ had done.
Each day was so filled with new problems and new interests, so crammed
with activity, that we were carried along by the exhilaration of it. One
cannot watch an empire shoot up around him like Jack's beanstalk
without feeling the compulsion to be a part of that movement, that
growth. And the worst barrier we had to face had vanished--the initial
prejudice against two young girls attempting to take an active part in
the forward movement of the community.

The obstacles of a raw country had no effect on Ada Long, our
fourteen-year-old helper. She came of a struggling family who had
settled on an alkali claim set back from everything until the Brule
settlers had broken a trail past it. So Ada, finding herself in a new
moving world, was happy.