The Other Truth About the Dakotas

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

RATS! No rats in Dakota ! Our native kangaroo rats and prairie mice do not domesticate readily, but the omnipresent rat of civilization follows close upon the heels of the settler. He does not tell how he gets here, but here he is ; and, like our Poland-Chinas, fatter, plumper, larger, and healthier than in other climes. I got tired of nailing bits of old tin over the holes the rats made through my back-shed floor. They were there at all hours of the day and night. Before sitting down to breakfast I set a “ dead-fall,” made of a rough board. After breakfast I looked in. The fall was down, but nowhere touched the floor. Under it were three immense rats, dead for want of breath. Before noon six more were added to the pile. But the supply seems never to diminish, although often a whole brood of young chickens will disappear in a few days.

Cocks do not crow in Dakota ! No ? Well, in twenty-two years’ experience I have seen some lovely birds silenced, at least temporarily. I had one that spent his time crowing and bullying everything in sight. But one morning an irreverent son rebelled, and the fight continued till noon, with varying success. At last, however, youth triumphed, and the old bird was mute for days, and I think never crowed again without first satisfying himself that his conqueror was not near. He hung around at a safe distance from the flock, looking tired and dejected, — “driven out of the herd,” like many a mangy, stiff old buffalo bull I have seen on the plains ; a picture so human and sad that one never forgets it, and when he sees his fellow-man at his lowest the thought comes to him, “driven out of the herd.” It sometimes happens, too, that fowls are poorly housed in winter, and lose their toes and combs by freezing. This may have been the case with the bird that figured in the Club for March. A cock does not crow while his toes and comb are sloughing off ; but after they have dropped, and he is well again, he will strut around on his stumps and crow as lustily as ever. He crows just the same here as in Georgia, where I lived when a boy. He even observes the same seasons, crowing at all hours of the night towards Christmas, which I used then to consider a matter of much religious significance. Finally, wherever eggs can be had the year round at from seven to twenty cents per dozen, cocks will grow and crow, and hens will lay and cackle, precisely as they do here.

People coming to the Dakotas from the eastern Atlantic lake regions rarely tire of praising our climate for its invigorating and healthgiving qualities. During our brief summers the afternoon sun is often uncomfortably warm, but the nights are always cool and refreshing. I have never experienced a hot night in Dakota ; and if there is hot air, it is air shut up in a thin, heated cabin. One is rarely able to sit out long after nightfall without a wrap, even in the warmest weather. But no climate can please all. Even our 157° of temperature variation cannot do that, but 105° F. here is less depressing than 90° in New Orleans or Savannah. I have found horseback riding very enjoyable at 20° below zero, and even at 52° below I have not found it necessary to neglect any duty ; for we rarely have wind at these low temperatures. As for the heat, you can seldom pass a full calendar month without feeling the need of a little fire in the morning, “ to take the chill off.” On the Fourth of July I sat through hours of sport with my overcoat buttoned to the neck, and at eleven P. M. saw the fireworks touched off by a man in a buffalo coat. When it comes to autumn, we can boast three months of the most charming weather known to man.

I have sometimes thought the neighing of the horse I was riding something of a nuisance, but the wind is my only real grievance, and even that is moderating with the settlement of the country, the growth of shade trees, and the increase of moisture, which, for some reason or other, has followed settlement in all our prairie States. I have sometimes wondered why people were not made insane by the long-continued gales which prevail at certain times, particularly in North Dakota but as I have not known any one to be made insane thereby, and do not know that insanity is more frequent there than elsewhere, I infer that wind does not cause insanity. The fact that I, who hate it so, have so long endured it without becoming noticeably insane is valuable from a scientific standpoint.

It is a fact generally admitted “ out West ” that a man who has crossed the Rocky Mountains will lie, and I have sometimes feared that stopping in Dakota was but a limited safeguard, since I read in an Eastern paper of a settler here who reported his cellar blown away and lodged upon a tree in the Missouri River bottom ! But one thing I hope the Club will accept as true : the people of South Dakota represent perhaps every State in the Union and every nation in Europe, and no community is more united in the belief that it possesses the “garden, spot of the earth.”