Table of Contents

Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Chapter 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Chapter 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Chapter 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Chapter 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Chapter 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Chapter 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Chapter 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Chapter 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Chapter 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Chapter 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

1

1Katie Becker leaned forward excitedly in the jogging

seat of the westbound Santa Fe train. Her eager brown eyes glanced from one window to the next, searching the endless landscape of waving prairie grass.

Half fearfully, half hopefully, Katie wanted to see an Indian! She would not tell Father. She wouldn’t move from her seat. She would not dare to race back and forth in the train car as the English-speaking boy was doing. Father and Mother would not allow it.

“He must be twelve, just as I am,” Katie thought a little wistfully, watching him run from window to window.

Katie’s legs ached from being quiet. They were hot in the home-knit black stockings and high-topped shoes. She kept thinking of little springs bound up in a clock that snapped and jumped straight when the back

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was taken off. She might do just that if the train didn’t stop soon. The journey had been many days and many nights. Their old home in the German Mennonite settlement of southern Ukraine in Europe was boat rides and train rides away.

Katie had dreamed of America and Kansas for such a long time. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to remember if this was the way she thought it really would be: a blue sky so big she couldn’t see an end to it and fields of brown and green prairie that covered all the earth. It was greater and vaster than she had ever dreamed.

Mother sometimes gently scolded Katie and said, “You and your father dream too much. It is best to see something first. Then you are not disappointed.”

Katie looked at tall, erect Father. He sat motionless, but his dark, eager eyes pierced the great, vast landscape which shone warm and bright in the early spring sunlight. One hand stroked his full, dark beard. Katie knew that Father was in deep thought. He always stroked his beard before rising to preach a sermon in church or when trying to decide what crops to plant on their farm in the spring.

Father’s other hand folded and refolded a worn, tattered newspaper. It was a copy of Herold der

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Wahrheit, a German-language paper published in Elkhart, Indiana. Father had drawn a circle around the date of publication, January 1, 1892. It was the paper that helped their family decide to come to America.

Katie knew the newspaper story from memory. It said that Kansas farms were broad and flat like the land of the Ukraine. Kansas land was for raising wheat, the same crop that had made their fields golden and their farms bountiful in the Ukraine.

The newspaper said that in America even poor people like Katie’s family could afford to buy land.

Best of all, the newspaper said people in America had the freedom to worship God in the way they thought was right. The Mennonites could build new churches, and the government would not tell them what they had to believe or what they had to preach.

“Freedom of worship makes a country great,” Father said fervently when he read this section of the story.

Now they were actually in America and almost at the end of their journey.

Mother softly hummed a German lullaby to Baby Peter. She looked tired and frail in her black shawl. There had been tears in Mother’s eyes many times during the journey. When Father saw them, he looked sad.

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Father believed the answer for every problem could be found in the Bible. Many times during the journey he opened the small Bible he carried in his pocket and read:

“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ …Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”

Father looked out of the train window intently and then leaned forward calmly and announced, “We will soon be in Peabody, Kansas.”

Mother looked glad. She smiled down at Baby Peter asleep in her arms.

Father had said, “Peabody, Kansas!” That was the end of the trip!

The train began to lessen its speed. A whistle from the engine blew shrilly. All at once Katie didn’t know if she wanted the journey to end! Never again would they return to the quiet village and the strong frame house of the Ukraine. They must get off the train and step onto this sweeping, unending prairie.

5

2Suddenly the train lurched and the wheels

screeched along the tracks—the steady rolling of the train cars ending with a clanking jerk. A trainman shouted, “Peabody, Kansas!” The train stopped.

“We are here, Mamma—and Katie,” Father Becker said in a low voice. He grasped the handle of their largest basket and stood in the aisle of the train. Katie reached for a heavy box under the train seat. Mother turned anxiously toward her.

“Be careful with that box, Katya,” she said softly. “I don’t want it scratched.”

Father smiled at Mother’s concern. He called the box and its contents “unnecessary luggage.” Katie didn’t think it was. The box held their polished, gold samovar. In the Ukraine, it always stood on the cupboard in the kitchen. Water for tea boiled in its large urn and tiny coals burned on a tray beneath it.

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“If we must live in a house built of sod in America,” Mother had said firmly when they left their old home, “the samovar will add beauty.”

Outside the train, Katie stepped onto a dusty path beside the railroad track. It was bordered with giant yellow flowers that tossed and swayed in the wind. She looked quickly behind the flower stalks for an Indian. But the path, and even the nearby road of Peabody, Kansas, seemed almost deserted. A row of small wooden shacks was all there was of the town. To Katie, they seemed tottering and ugly against the spring-washed landscape.

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Not far down the tracks, however, Katie saw a familiar sight. A man and woman were climbing from the sides of a green farm wagon. It had flaring sides, like those used in the Ukraine. The stout man and tall woman hurried toward Katie and her family.

“It’s Aunt Marie and Uncle Simon Ratzlaff!” The springs in Katie’s legs snapped. She hurried down the path beside the train tracks and grasped Uncle Simon’s outstretched hand.

“My Katya,” Uncle Simon laughed in his clear tenor voice and then stood back to give her a studied look. “You have the same bright eyes and your father’s eager look, but you have grown so long and thin.” The wind lifted Uncle Simon’s thick yellow hair straight up, and his jolly face beamed red with sunburn.

“I am well and strong,” Katie answered quickly. She smiled and her cheeks flushed. She didn’t want jolly Uncle Simon to notice her gangly arms and legs, nor to think of her as long and thin as a green garden bean.

Mother wept as she kissed Aunt Marie, and Father’s eyes were moist as he greeted Uncle Simon with a “holy kiss” on the cheek, as was the custom with Mennonite men.

Katie shook Aunt Marie’s large hand. She always felt a little shy with this tall, big-boned woman. Aunt Marie’s kind heart made people love her, but her

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stood alone near the railroad tracks. She looked up at the bright blue sky and smiled. She was not afraid and not at all homesick. The warm, sweeping wind blew through her thick brown braids, tossing them to and fro. Katie almost thought she could see the wind. Without stopping, it swept on over the prairie