went head in the class; and he said I needn’t be puttin’ on airs, for
everybody knew that my uncle had been hung.”
“Good Lord! has it come to that?” cried the great-grandmother, dropping
her knitting to the floor and clasping her withered hands over her
knees. “I’ve always told you that you’d better tell the older children
about it yourself, John.”
“No, Jean; your uncle wasn’t hung,” said the old man; “but he got into
trouble, and we all believe he is dead. He was the pride and joy of us
all. He was so promising that we gave him all the education that ought to
have been distributed evenly through the family.”
“But John and Mollie took a notion to get married young, and you know
that ended their chances,” interposed the mother.
“Your uncle’s trouble would never have come upon him and us if he had
stayed out o’ that college,” exclaimed the great-grandmother, who did not
approve of the course the family had taken with Joseph at the beginning
of his college days.
“That’s true, grannie,” replied the father; “but he ought to have kept
out o’ the scrape, college or no college.”
“Do go on,” cried Jean.
“Your Uncle Joe got mixed up in a hazing frolic, or something o’ that
sort,” resumed the grandfather. “One or two of the students got hurt,
one of ’em so bad that he died,—or it was given out that he died,—and
the blame fell on Joe. He declared he wasn’t guilty, but the college
authorities had to fix the blame somewhere, though the case was
uncertain. They never proved that the boy was dead, but we raised the
money and bailed Joe out o’ jail. When the story was started that the
fellow had died, Joe skipped his bail and left us all in a hole. That was
what made and has kept us poor.”
“Did you never hear of the other man, grandpa?”
“Oh, yes; he turned up, but too late to do Joe or the rest of us any
good.”
“Poor dear Uncle Joe!”
“You’d better say poor dear all the rest of us,” cried the
great-grandmother, who had staked and lost her little all in the great
calamity.
“But Uncle Joe was sinned against, grannie dear. How he must have
suffered!”
“Them that’s sinned against are often greater sufferers than them that
sins,” was the sad reply.
“When the bail was jumped, the hard times set in with all of us,” resumed
the grandfather. “The banks, as I was saying, went broke, the interest on
the mortgages piled up, and the notes fell due. The crops got the rust
and the weevil, and everything else went wrong. You see, Jean, when a man
starts down hill, everybody tries to give him a kick. The long and the
short of it is that mother, here, and grannie and I have been the same as
paupers for more than a dozen years.”
“I must be going, though you must first tell me how you two and dear old
grannie are going to live when we are away in Oregon. Your way seems very
uncertain,” said Jean.
“Your father has made some kind of a bargain for our support with your
Uncle Lije. But he’s sort o’ visionary, and he never has much luck. If he
loses the property, we can go to the poorhouse.”
“Are you to be allowed no stated sum to live on? Will you have no means
of your own to gratify your individual wishes or tastes?”
“No, child; not a picayune.”
“What’s a picayune?”
“A six-and-a-quarter-cent piece.”
“I’m just as wise as I was before.”
“They’re wellnigh out o’ circulation nowadays, though I used to come
across ’em frequently when I was sheriff,” said the old man.
Jean covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
“Don’t worry about us, dearie,” said the old man. “There is One above us
who heareth even the young ravens when they cry. There is not a sparrow
that falleth to the ground without His knowledge. Your Uncle Lije will
move into the old homestead when you are all gone. Your father built this
cottage for us when he assumed the mortgage, as you know. We won’t be
entirely alone, but we’ll miss you all; and we’ll try to remember that we
are of more value than many sparrows.”
“I’ve heard such talk as that all my life, grandpa. But I can’t help
thinking that it would have been better to keep the ravens from having
anything to cry about in the first place, and to save the sparrows from
falling.”
“If none o’ God’s creatures ever had any hard experiences, they’d never
know enough to enjoy their blessings, Jean. A child has to stumble and
hurt itself many times before it learns to walk steady. We’ve all got
to be purified and saved, as by fire, before we are fit to stand in the
presence of the awful God.”
“The God I love and worship isn’t an awful God,” cried Jean. “I couldn’t
love Him if He were awful. My earthly daddie whipped me once. No doubt
I deserved the punishment, but I couldn’t love him for a whole month
afterwards. And I’d have hated him for the rest of my life if I hadn’t
deserved the whipping.”
“Didn’t it do you any good?”
Jean confronted her grandfather, her eyes flashing. “No, sir!” she cried.
“I ought not to have been whipped, and I wasn’t a bit repentant after the
punishment. I was sorry beforehand, though, and said so.”
“What was your offence, Jean?”
“I dropped a pan full of dishes and broke more than half o’ the lot. They
fell to the floor with a crash, and scared me half to death.”
“Didn’t the whipping make you more careful afterwards?”.
“Not at all; it only made me mad and afraid and nervous, so I broke
more dishes. But the next time it happened, I hid the broken pieces in
the ash hopper, and when they were found, I saved myself a whipping by
telling my first lie.”
“The Lord chasteneth whom He loveth, my child.”
“I once saw a mill-hand strike his wife,” retorted Jean, “and he said, as
she rubbed her bruises, ‘I love you, Mollie. Take another kick!’ But I
must go now. Be of good cheer. And remember, when I get to Oregon and get
to making money, you shall have every cent that I can spare.”
V
_SALLY O’DOWD_
Great excitement prevailed in the rural neighborhood when it became
generally known that John Ranger, Junior, had sold the farm and was
preparing to dispose of his sawmill and all his personal belongings, with
the intention of departing to the new and far-away West in an ox-wagon
train with his family,—an undertaking that seemed to his friends as
foolhardy as would have been an attempt to reach the North Pole with his
wife and children in a balloon.
Of more than ordinary ability, enterprise, and daring, John Ranger had
long been a man of note in his bailiwick. Twice he had represented his
county in the State Legislative Assembly; but when the Old Line Whigs of
his district offered to nominate him for Congress,—“No, gentlemen!” he
exclaimed. “I started out early in life to assist my good wife in rearing
and educating a big family of young Americans. I frankly admit that we’ve
got a bigger job on hand than either of us imagined it would be when we
made the bargain; but that doesn’t lessen our mutual responsibility.
There is always a regiment, more or less, of unencumbered men in waiting
in every locality, ready and willing to wear the toga of office; so, with
thanks for the proffered honor, I must beg to be excused.”
But there was one office, that of justice of the peace, which he
never refused, and to which he had been so often re-elected that the
appellation of “Squire” had grown to belong to him as a matter of course.
One room of the great barnlike farmhouse had long been set apart as his
office; and many were the litigants who remained after office hours to be
entertained at his hospitable board.
“It’s a lot of trouble, having so much extra company on account of your
office being in the house,” his wife said at times; “but it’s better than
having you away two-thirds of your time down town, so it is all right.”
“There’s a woman going round the corner to the office,” exclaimed Mary,
one evening, just as her father had settled himself before the fire to
enjoy a frolic with the little ones.
“It’s that grass widow, Sally O’Dowd,” said Mrs. Ranger.
“She’s booked for a solid hour,” snapped Marjorie, “and we’ll have to
delay supper till nine o’clock.”
The Squire had barely time to reach his office by an inner passage and
seat himself before the fire, when Mrs. O’Dowd—an oversized, plainly
dressed, intelligent-looking woman, who was remarkably handsome,
notwithstanding the expression of pain upon her face—entered the office
and stood silent before the open fire.
“Well,” exclaimed the Squire, impatiently, motioning her to a chair,
“what can I do for you now?”
“Oh, Squire!” she cried, ignoring the proffered chair and dropping on her
knees at his feet, her wealth of rippling hair falling about her face and
over her shapely shoulders like a deluge of gold, “I want you to take me
with you to Oregon.”
“What! And leave your children to the care of others? I didn’t think that
of you, Mrs. O’Dowd.”
“But what else can I do? You know the court has assigned the custody of
all three of my babies to Sam.”
“Yes, Sally; but you can see them once in a while if you stay here.”
“The court gave them to Samuel and his mother absolutely, you know.”
“Yes, yes, child; and while in one way it is hard, if you look at it
in a practical light, you will see that it was best for the children.
You couldn’t keep them with you and go out as hired help in anybody’s
kitchen; and you have no other means of support any more.”
“If I stay here, I cannot have even the poor privilege of caring for
them, except when they’re sick. I must get entirely away from their
vicinity, or lose my senses altogether.”
“I thought that was what was the matter when you married the fellow,
Sally. You certainly had lost your senses then.”
“But love is blind, Squire—till it gets its eyes open; and then it is
generally too late to see to any advantage. Little did my dear father
think, when he made a will leaving his homestead, his bank account, and
all his belongings to me, that he was reducing my dear mother and me to
beggary.”
“But that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t married that worthless
fellow, Sally.”
“But the _if_ exists, Squire. I married the fellow. It was an awful
blunder,—I’ll admit that. But it wasn’t a crime. It should have been no
reason for robbing me. And yet this marriage was made the legal pretext
for permitting the robbery. Oh, I was so glad when my dear mother died!
I couldn’t have shed a tear at her grave if I’d been hung for my seeming
heartlessness. Poor mother! I was made an unwilling party to a robbery
that beggared her and myself. Then, when I could no longer endure the
presence of the robber and his accomplice, and live, I was doubly, yes,
trebly robbed, by being deprived of my children.”
The Squire cleared his throat and spoke huskily.
“That will was a sad mistake of your father’s, Sally. He should have left
his property to your mother. It was wrong to put her means of livelihood
in jeopardy by leaving all to you. He ought to have known you’d marry,
and that the property would accrue to your husband.”
“But mother insisted that all should be left to me. She even waived her
right of dower, in my interest—as she thought.”
“Well, Sally, you can’t say that I didn’t warn you.”
The woman laughed hysterically. “Much good that warning can do me now!”
she cried, rising to her feet and unconsciously assuming a dramatic pose.
“We hadn’t been married a week when he ordered my mother out of my house.
And then he installed his own mother in my home, and expected me to be
silent. Oh, I am so glad my dear mother is dead! I would rejoice if my
poor, defrauded children were all dead also.”
The Squire cleared his throat again and leaned forward on his hands. “The
law recognizes the husband and wife as one, and the husband as that one,
Mrs. O’Dowd.”
“Yes, yes, I know that, to my bitter sorrow,” she said with a meaning
smile, her white teeth shining through her parted lips and her eyes
flashing. The woman sank upon the hearth, looking strangely white and
calm.
John Ranger sighed helplessly. “I worked the underground railroad last
night for all it was worth, in the interest of some runaway niggers,”
he said under his breath; then audibly, “The laws of the land must be
obeyed, my child.”
“The law is a fiend,” cried Jean, who had entered the room unobserved
and had stood listening in the shadow of the chimney jamb. “I’ll never
rest till this awful one-sided power is broken. You know yourself that
it’s a monster, daddie. I know you know it, or you’d never help a run—”
He put his finger on his lips, and the girl changed the subject. The
underground railroad was a forbidden topic in the Ranger household.
“Because Sally Danover knew no better than to become the wife of an
unworthy man,—who knew what he was about, though she didn’t,—the law
declares that all the benefits resulting from the fraudulent transaction
must accrue to the villain in the case, and all the penalties must be
borne by his victim. What would you do to such a fellow, daddie, if I
should marry him?”
John Ranger did not answer, but gazed steadily into the fire, his brow
contracted and his thoughts gloomy.
“Sally, cheer up!” cried Jean, shaking the woman by the shoulder.
“Daddie’s a whole lot better man than he thinks he is. I’ve seen him
tested. You’re as good as a nigger, if you _are_ white, and he’ll help
you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, my daughter. It’s a crime to
break the law, and crime must be followed by fitting punishment.”
“If you get caught, you get punished,” cried Jean, laughing in her
father’s face. “To break such a law would be an act of heroism for which
I should be glad to be arrested and sent to jail! It would be an act
of heroism beside which the defence of the Stars and Stripes would be
cowardice!” she cried in a transport of fury.
“Come, Jean,” said her father, rising, “we must go to supper. Won’t you
join us, Mrs. O’Dowd?”
“Food would choke me,” said the visitor, bowing herself out.
“Hang the luck!” said the Squire, as the door slammed behind her.
“What are you going to do to help the poor woman, John?” asked Mrs.
Ranger, as the family sat at the belated meal.
“Ask Jean.”
“What do you know about the case, daughter?”
“She thinks she knows a lot,” interrupted her father. “She’d ’a’ made a
plaguy good lawyer if she’d only been born a boy.”
“Who knew best what I ought to be,—you or God?” asked Jean, her eyes
glowing like stars.
“I give it up,” replied her father, smiling.
“I was reading to-day,” said Mrs. Ranger, “of a man down East who lured
his runaway wife back home by stealing the babies and then warning
everybody through the papers, and by posters, not to trust or harbor her,
under penalty of the law. The woman held out quite a spell, but cold and
hunger got the better of her at last; and when the stolen children fell
sick, she went back to her lawful protector and stayed till she died, as
meek as any lamb.”
“Sally Danover won’t go back to Sam O’Dowd; she’ll die first,” cried
Mary; “and I glory in her grit.”
“You haven’t answered my question, John,” said Mrs. Ranger. “What do you
propose to do with Sally O’Dowd?”
“I s’pose I’ll have to take her to Oregon and let her take a new start.
She says she must get away from here, or go insane.”
“I’d go crazy if I had to leave my children, John.”
“You can boast, Annie; you can afford to. But if you were in Sally’s
shoes, you’d sing a different song.”
Mrs. Ranger shrugged her shoulders.
“I can’t see why women with good husbands and happy homes are so ready
to censure less fortunate women for breaking bonds that are unbearable,”
said her husband. “Women are women’s worst enemies.”
“Sam O’Dowd’s no woman,” exclaimed Jean. “There’s not a woman on top o’
dirt that’d treat any man as he’s treated Sally.”
“I guess it’s about an even stand-off,” rejoined her mother.
“No,” cried Jean. “The conditions are not equal. No woman has the power
to turn her husband out of doors. Even if it is her own house, he is its
lawful master. Women don’t stand any show at all compared with men.”
“Jean is going to-morrow to see Sam O’Dowd’s mother. She can make matters
smooth for Sally if anybody can,” said the Squire.
* * * * *
“The sale of our effects is only two weeks off, John,” said his wife,
when they were alone. “I want to reserve a few things that are sacred.
There’s Baby Jamie’s cradle, that you made from the hollow section of
that old gum-tree that stood in the back pasture. Do you remember how
nicely I lined it with the back breadths of my wedding dress?”
“Could I forget it, Annie?”
“Then there’s my mother’s little old spinning-wheel. It was my
grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s. May I keep it for Mary?”
“It won’t pay to haul such things over the plains, Annie. Better let your
mother keep ’em here till there’s a transcontinental railroad.”
“But that won’t come in my time, John.”
VI
_THE BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY_
The sale of Squire Ranger’s effects proceeded without unnecessary delay.
The sawmill, the first portable structure of its kind ever seen west of
the Wabash River, was eagerly purchased on credit by a waiting customer,
and work at the mill went on without interruption. What a primitive
affair it was! And how like a pygmy it seems as the resident on the
North Pacific’s border recalls its littleness, and contrasts it with the
mammoth mills of Oregon, the lower Columbia, and Puget Sound, which grasp
in their giant arms the dead leviathans of the primeval forest, and set
their teeth to work tearing to pieces the patient upbuilding of the ages
gone!
The motive power of John Ranger’s sawmill consisted of about a dozen
superannuated horses, some spavined, some ringboned, some wind-broken,
all more or less disabled in some way; these were regularly harnessed,
each in his turn, to a set of horizontal radiating shafts attached to a
rotating centre, above which, on a little platform, stood the driver,
with a whip.
“I know it’s wicked to kill the trees and cut them up into boards; it’s
just as wicked as it is to kill pigs and cattle,” was Mary Ranger’s
comment when she first beheld the frantic work of the raging saw, which,
screaming like a demon, ate its way through hearts of oak and hickory,
or tore the slabs from the sides of the black-walnut and sugar-maple
patriarchs with ever unsated ferocity.
But this sawmill had long been a boon to the entire country, as was
evidenced by the multiplication, since its advent, of framed houses,
barns, bridges, schoolhouses, and churches, which suddenly sprang into
vogue, not to mention the many miles of planked highways that rushed into
fashion before the railroad era in the days when “good roads conventions”
were unheard of.
Children born and reared in cities—subject, if of the tenant class, to
frequent changes of habitation, or, if their homes are permanent, to
frequent intervals of travel—can have little idea of the love which
children of the country cherish for the farms and homes to which they are
born, and in which their brief lives are spent. The very soil on which
they have trodden is dear to them, and seems instinct with sentience.
They make a boon companion of everything with which they come in contact,
whether pertaining to the earth, the water, or the air. Their little
gardens are familiar friends; the flowers of the wildwood are loving
entities; the brook that sings in summer through the tangled grass and
sleeps in winter under a bed of ice is always a communing spirit. The
sighing winds chant rhythmic lullabies in the treetops, and the language
of every insect, bird, and beast has, to them, a distinctive meaning. The
blue heavens are their delight, and the passing clouds their friends. The
sun, the moon, and the stars hold converse with them, and the changing
seasons bring to them, each in its turn, peculiar joy.
But, dearly as they loved the old home and its surroundings, the Ranger
children, who had never crossed the boundary of township number twelve,
range three west, in which they were born, looked forward eagerly to
the forthcoming journey. Once only had Mrs. Ranger ventured beyond the
township limits since leaving the Kentucky home of her childhood; and
that was many years before, when she went with her husband to the county
seat to attach her mark to the fateful mortgage, upon which the accruing
interest seemed always to be maturing at the time when she or the
children were the most in need of books or shoes or clothing.
“I wasn’t allowed to learn to write in my childhood,” she falteringly
explained to the notary, when, after affixing her mark, she watched him
as he attached his seal to the document which was to be as a millstone
about her neck forever after. “My father always thought that education
was bad for girls,” she added. “He said if they knew how to write they’d
be forging their husbands’ names and getting their money out of the bank.
And he said, too, that if girls learned to write, they’d be sending love
letters to the boys.”
“It’s never too late to learn,” was the notary’s reply. “If I were you, I
would learn to write when the children learn. You can do it if you try.”
“I’d be glad to, if I could find the time; but it’s hard to learn
anything for one’s own especial benefit with a baby always in one’s arms.
When the children get big enough to learn to write, I’ll try, though.”
And she did; with such success that she never after signed her name with
a cross.
* * * * *
“I’m glad we’ve got that mortgage off our hands at last, Annie,” said her
husband as they counted up the somewhat disappointing returns after the
sale of their personal effects was over.
“But you’re not morally free from it, John, or even legally so. If the
purchaser should fail, the load would then revert to Lije, you know.
Say, John, can’t I deed my little ten-acre farm to my father and mother?
It never cost you anything. I took care of old man Eustis for six long
years; and you know he gave the little farm to me as pay for my services,
absolutely.”
“Haven’t I paid its taxes all along, Annie?”
“And have I earned nothing all this time, my husband?”
“Oh, yes, you’ve earned a living; and you’ve got it as you went along,
haven’t you?”
Mrs. Ranger made no reply, but being silenced was not being convinced.
“Be patient,” said Jean, aside. “I’ll manage it.”
* * * * *
Several pairs of great brown-eyed oxen, with which the children had
become familiar in their days of logging about the sawmill, were easily
trained for the long journey; but others, untamed and terrified, as if
pre-sensing the trials awaiting them through untracked deserts, submitted
to the yoke only under the cruelest compulsion. New wagons, stanchly
built and covered with white canvas hoods, stretched tightly over hickory
bows, were ranged on the lawn, under the naked, creaking branches of
the big elm-tree. Provisions, resembling in quantity the supplies for
a small army, were carted to the front veranda, awaiting shipment down
the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to St. Louis, to be reshipped up the
Missouri to the final point of loading into wagons for crossing the Great
American Desert, as the Great Plains were then known.
Visitors, including friends and relatives from far and near, came to the
dismantled house in great relays, and the business of Squire Ranger’s
office as justice of the peace increased a dozen fold. All this commotion
involved increasing labor for Mrs. Ranger, who faded visibly as she
silently counted the intervening days before the hour of final separation
from her sorrowing parents. If the Squire suffered at the thought of
parting with anybody, he made no sign except to complain of a “pesky
cold” that made his eyes water, which he attributed to the “beastly
climate.”
“The spirit of adventure that inspires my husband to emigrate does not
permit him to foresee danger,” was Mrs. Ranger’s ever-ready reply to the
numerous prophets of evil who came to condole, but got only their labor
for their pains. “I will not try to interfere with his plans. I started
out as a bride to walk the road of life beside him, and I mean to do as I
agreed.”
But the good wife grew thinner and whiter as the days sped on; and when
at last the wagons were all ranged in line, with every yoke of oxen in
place; when the last farewell had been spoken; when the last audible
prayer had ascended heavenward, and the command to move on had been
given,—she sank on her feather bed in the great family wagon and closed
her eyes with a feeling of thankfulness akin to that of the sufferer from
a fatal malady who realizes that his last hour has come.
“‘He giveth His beloved sleep,’” said Mary, softly, as she covered her
mother with a heavy shawl.
* * * * *