With her long yellow braids hanging beneath a
man's straw hat, strong capable hands, and an easy stride, she went
about singing hymns as she worked, taking upon herself many tasks that
she was not called upon to perform. And Fred Farraday was taking much of
the heavy work of the print shop off our hands.

Ma Wagor, too, was an invaluable help to us. "All my life I've wanted to
run a store," she admitted. "I like the confusement." Every morning she
came across the prairie sitting straight as a board in the old buggy
behind a spotted horse that held his head high and his neck stretched
like a giraffe. The few dollars she got for helping in the store eked
out Pa's small pension, which had been their only revenue.

The commodities handled at the store had increased from coffee and
matches to innumerable supplies. The faithful team, Fan and Bill, were
kept on the road most of the time. We made business trips to Presho and
Pierre. Help was not always available, and there could be no waste
movements in a wasteland. On some of these trips we hitched the team to
the big lumber wagon and hauled out barrels of oil, flour, printers' ink
and other supplies for all and sundry of our enterprises. It had come to
that.

"There go the Ammons sisters," people would say as the wagon started,
barrels rattling, down the little main street of Presho, off to the hard
trail home.

Slim and straight and absurdly small, in trim shirt waists, big
sombreros tilted over our heads, we bounced along on the wagon, trying
to look as mature and dignified as our position of business women
demanded.

"Those are the two Brule girls who launched an attack on the Milwaukee
railroad," Presho people remarked. "Well, I'll be damned!"

Once when I was too ill to leave Presho and we stayed for the night in a
little frame hotel, Doc Newman came in to look me over.

"Do you girls get enough nourishing food?" he asked.

"We eat up all the store profits," lamented Ida Mary.

He laughed. "Keep on eating them up. And slow down."

Pioneer women, old and new, went through many hardships and privations.
The sodbreakers' women over the Strip worked hard, but their greatest
strain was that of endurance rather than heavy labor. But refreshing
nights with the plains at rest and exhilarating morning air were the
restoratives.

Hard and unrelieved as their lives were in many respects, gallantly as
they shouldered their part of the burden of homesteading, the women