or homesteader
stopped by and watched the operation in disgust.

"Where you goin' to run your scrub-water," he wanted to know, "with the
cracks and knotholes stopped up?"

In the twenty-dollar box was a 6 x 9-foot faded Brussels rug, with a
couple of rolls of cheap wallpaper. From a homesteader who was proving
up and leaving we bought an old wire cot. With cretonnes we made
pillows, stuffed with prairie grass; hung bright curtains at the little
windows, which opened by sliding back between strips of wood. In the big
wooden box we had also packed a small, light willow rocker. In one
corner we nailed up a few boards for a bookcase, painting it bright red.
Little by little the old tar-paper shack took on a homelike air.

It is curious how much value a thing has if one has put some effort into
it. We were still as disillusioned with the country as we had been the
first day, we felt as out of place on a homestead as a coyote sauntering
up Fifth Avenue, we felt the tar-paper shack to be the most unhomelike
contraption we had ever seen; but from the moment we began to make
improvements, transforming the shack, it took on an interest for us out
of all proportion to the changes we were able to make. Slowly we were
making friends, learning to find space restful and reassuring instead of
intimidating, adapting our restless natures to a country that measured
time in seasons; imperceptibly we were putting down our first roots into
that stubborn soil.

At first we read and reread the letters from home, talking of it
constantly and wistfully like exiles, drawn constantly toward the place
we had left. Almost without our being aware of it we ceased to feel
that we had left St. Louis. It was St. Louis which was receding from us,
while we turned more and more toward the new country, identified
ourselves with it.

Ida Mary and I woke up one day a few weeks after our arrival to find our
grubstake almost gone. Back home we had figured that there were ample
funds for filing fees, for transportation and food. Now we began to
figure backwards, which we found was a poor way to figure. There was no
money to take us back home. We had burned our bridges not only behind
but in front of us.

It was the incidentals which had cut into our small reserve. The expense
of my illness on the road had been heavy. The rest of the money seemed
to have evaporated like water in dry air. Fixing up the shack had been
an unexpected expense, and we had overloo