The Conquest: The Story of a Negro PioneerMicheaux, Oscar
General
The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Micheaux, Oscar
African American pioneers -- Fiction; Autobiographical fiction; South Dakota -- Fiction; Western stories
My sister arrived that night from a visit to Kansas, and on hearing from
Orlean that she was all right, I sent my sister on to her claim, and
hiring more men, moved the balance of the building onto the old farm,
tore down the old buildings, loaded them onto wagons, and finally got
started again for Tipp county. That was on Saturday. The wind blew a
gale, making me feel lonely and far from home. Sunday morning I started
early out of Colone planning to get home that night, but the front axle
broke and by the time we got another it was growing late. We started
again and traveled about two miles, when the tongue broke, and by the
time that was mended it was late in the afternoon. About six o'clock we
pulled into Victor, tired and weary. The next day, when about five miles
from home, we met one of the neighbors, who informed me that he had
tried to get me over the phone all along the way; that my wife had been
awfully sick and that the baby had been born, dead. It struck me like a
hammer, and noting my frightened look, he spoke up quickly:
"But she's all right now. She had two doctors and didn't lack for
attention."
On the way home I was so nervous that I could hardly wait for the horses
to get there. I would not have been away at this time for anything in
the world. I knew Orlean would forgive me, but we had not told her
father. Orlean had told her mother and thought she would tell him. He
made so much ado about everything, we hoped to avoid the tire of his
burdensome letters, but now, with the baby born during my absence, and
it dead, when we had so many plans for its future. It was to have been
the first colored child born on the Little Crow, and we thought we were
going to make history.
When I got to the claim I was weak in every way. My wife seemed none the
worse, but my emotions were intense when I saw the little dead boy. Poor
little fellow! As he lay stiff and cold I could see the image of myself
in his features. My wife noticed my look and said:
"It is just like you, dear!"
That night we buried the baby on the west side of the draw. It should
have been on the east, where the only trees in the township, four
spreading willows, cast their shadows.
"Well, dear, we have each other," I comforted her as she cried.
Between sobs she tried to tell me how she had prayed for it to live, and
since it had looked so much like me, she thought her heart would break.
When the child was born they had sent a telegram to her father which
read:
"Baby born dead. Am well."
This was his first knowledge of it. We received a telegram that night
that he was on the way and the next day he arrived, bringing Ethel with
him. When he got out of the livery rig that brought them I could see
Satan in his face. A chance had come to him at last. It seemed to say:
"Oh, now I'll fix you. Away when the child was born, eh?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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