She had to read about her sister.
CHAPTER 30
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THE HEROINE OF THE PRAIRIE
In the midst of such unspeakable horror when words have sometimes failed us, one shining example of Glorious Womanhood has come to light to this reporter. Raina Olsen, a young schoolteacher only sixteen years of age, was one of those quick-thinking pioneer women we herald in song and poem. Unable to keep her pupils safe when the Savage Storm gnashed its teeth and blew in the window of her one-room schoolhouse, she was tasked with getting them all to safety in the middle of the Most Ferocious Blizzard ever recorded in Nebraska. This courageous young woman tied her pupils together using all the little girls’ apron strings and led them to the safety of a nearby farmhouse. The way was full of danger, and all nearly perished while crossing a treacherous bridge over a raging river. But this brave daughter of pioneers managed to get her flock to safety.
The courage and wisdom displayed by this pretty young woman has touched the hearts of all involved, and she has been the recipient of much gratitude in the tiny community of Newman Grove, where she saved so many young lives.
Her ambition, she states modestly, is to return to the schoolhouse as soon as it is repaired. A chance to study further, perhaps even at the university in Lincoln, would not be dismissed outright. When asked about plans to marry, the modest young lady blushes and demurs, although there is many a young man in the area who has lost his heart to this Heroine of the Prairie.
“EXCELLENT WORK, WOODSON,” ROSEWATER SAID with undisguised surprise that rankled. He peered at Gavin over the top of the latest edition. Gavin was seated in the great man’s office, while Forsythe cooled his heels outside. “We were desperate for something like this. We need to keep circulation up, but God Almighty it was getting dreary, day after day some new tragedy. Christ, they all begin to blur together don’t they? Amputations, frozen babies, trains stuck for days with no food, dead farmers, all those children, on and on and on. People get tired of constant bad news, they shut it out after a while, become immune to it. It takes something new to excite them and get them buying papers again. And, by God, man, you’ve done it! This is wonderful. We need to find some other young women—the prettier the better—like this Olsen girl.”
“We also need to find a way to spin this whole disaster so as not to scare people out of the state.” Jonas Munchin, one of the town’s boosters and thus Gavin’s actual boss, spoke gravely. “The eastern papers are still reporting high casualties—one of them said nearly a thousand have perished. We can’t have that kind of thing reported. There’ve been some angry citizens out here who keep writing to those papers back East with figures that won’t help us at all. Some quack in Dakota said about a hundred died in the southern part of that territory alone. Now, how he can know that, I can’t comprehend—did he go out and count them all himself? Maybe he included some of the Natives on the reservation, but really, who cares about them? Still, the papers are running with those figures. We have to counterattack.”
“We can do some opinion pieces,” Rosewater mused, drumming his ink-stained fingers on his desk. “To contradict those kinds of figures, talk about the benefits of the storm—you know, how snow is welcome; it means we’re assured a good crop this summer, all that water. Something like that. Something about the freshness of the air after a blizzard, compared to the smoke-filled cities back East—keep that kind of thing up. You know what to do, Woodson—that’s what you’re paid for. Forget the facts of the matter, concentrate on the distracting stuff that people want to believe in, like the heroines. I think there’s something in it for you if you do, don’t you, Munchin?”
“Of course.” Munchin threw his arms open expansively, as if the state’s coffers were his very own to do whatever he wanted with, and that was probably the simple truth, Gavin thought wryly. “All that tragedy was good for a while, but we have to be careful. Whatever the actual death toll is, report only about a third of it, if you even have to do that. Maybe forget the facts entirely and just do those puff opinion pieces—people think those are the news, anyway, especially if they’re printed in a newspaper. And soon enough the eastern newspapers will move on to something else. They sit in judgment back there, they criticize us in the West at every turn, they make fun of us, but what do they really know? They only send someone out here when he’s in disgrace.” And the man looked pointedly at Gavin. “We’re the end of the road, the flophouse, for those eastern elites. They don’t care about us unless something like this happens, then they have a field day at our expense.”