Lost in the Badlands

By Mrs. T.A. Arneson

From Slope Saga

At four o’clock in the morning.

We were roused by a trembling knock,

We gazed out into the darkness,

Recovering from the shock.

The night is dark and lonely,

The clouds are spreading fast.

We see the blizzard coming,

And make for the door at last.

What is it we see in the gloaming?

A woman, old tattered and torn.

She has lost her way in the Badlands,

Before the break of morn.

Nigh twenty miles she has traveled

Since the setting of the sun.

She is tired and hungry and footsore

E’re she to our house has come.

We try to persuade her to enter

But she says she must hasten on

For she keeps a country grocery 

And post office both, as one.

She has left her door unfastened

And idlers might stray in

And help themselves to the goodies

Lined up on the shelves within.

She had left to drive some horses

From her flax field not yet stacked

And had wandered away from her dwelling

And lost sight of her homeward track.

But when she rests a moment

From the terrors of the night

She finds that she is too weary

To go on without a “bite.”

So we hasten a glowing fire

And put the coffee on

To boil ere she is sleeping

And breakfast just at dawn.

And while we are sipping the coffee

She tells of the tiresome toil.

Up hill and down hill she traveled

O’er plowed and o’er prairie soil.

‘Cross creeks and the deepest gullys

Up draws both steep and mild.

O’er fences and through pastures,

Past homesteads not yet filed.

For a lonely woman traveler

These Badlands have no charm.

Peaks resemble some huge monster

That might do bodily harm.

The wolves and the coyotes howl

‘Til your ears are nearly deaf.

And you fear the bobcats clawing

Almost as a sudden death.

But let us return to the wanderer,

She is helpless, wan, sore, and weak.

She is nearly ten miles from the starting,

And has bowed herself lowly and meek.

We hasten to harness the horses

And heat a large rock for her feet.

We bundle her up in a fur coat,

So warm that it “couldn’t be beat”. 

Once more she is riding toward homeland,

With a driver both sturdy and strong.

We fear little now for her safety,

She will be in her home before long.

And as she steps over the threshold

Of her dear old home so sweet

We imagine her low voice is singing,

“Home Sweet Home,” here’s rest for my feet.