1
For days now the main topic of conversation on the Brailsford farm
had been the merits of the various makes of cars (a much more
intriguing subject than the tramp who had been discovered half dead
near Bad Pete's blind pig in Brailsford Junction). They talked
Imperials, Elcars, Cuttings, Speedwells, Marions, and the swank
new Garfords with the single headlight. They discussed pro and
con the new-fangled gas and electric self-crankers. Some members
of the family wanted Prest-O-Lites while others were eloquent for
electric. Each had his own ideas concerning which of the marvelous
creations had the most stylish lines.
Stud himself liked the notion of a big powerful White Steamer. He
said with the price of gasoline going up every month a White would
soon be a real economy. Besides you could go sixty miles an hour in
a steamer.
"Sixty miles an hour!" cried Sarah, throwing up her hands in
dismay.
"Shucks, that's nothing, Ma," Peter said. "I can go sixty on my
motorcycle."
"Yes, and you'll break your fool neck some day," said Early Ann.
"He pretty near went off the Busseyville bridge with me on behind
last night."
"Peter, you must be careful," his mother said.
"Tattle-tale," said Peter. He kicked Early Ann's shins under the
table, and she kicked back.
"Me for an Imperial," said Gus. "They're twenty years ahead of
their time and the classiest looking buggies you ever hope to see."
But in the end, of course, they bought a Ford, and a second hand
one at that, with brass braces in front and a figure that only an
owner could love. It stood up in the air like a lumber wagon, and
you could hear it coming for a mile. It boiled over at eighteen
miles an hour, but that was all right because the worse they
boiled the better they went. Stud shined the brass radiator until
it glittered like the gilded roof of Solomon's Temple. Sunday was
spent in tinkering with the magneto, the lighting system, and the
carburettor--that was what finally wrecked the Sabbath day. You
had to hold your thumb just right in cranking the thing to avoid a
broken arm, and when the engine finally decided to perambulate the
whole body shook like a dish of crab-apple jelly.
Stud had the appearance of a circus giant cramped over the steering
wheel. He had difficulty in manipulating the trio of pedals with
his large feet, and the idiosyncrasies of the spark and gas kept
him guessing, but he whooped it up and down the road like a
youngster with his first bicycle, and Sarah held on beside him,
game as a Red Cross nurse in the face of inevitable death. Sarah
purchased a linen duster and motoring veil. Stud bought himself a
pair of motor-goggles and a linen cap which he wore like Barney
Oldfield with the visor in back. The entire family grew suddenly
sensitive to Ford jokes.
Unfortunately, farming, even in those halcyon days, was not all
driving the Ford; and so despite races between Peter and Stud,--the
motorcycle versus the tin lizzy,--platonic midnight excursions by
Gus in the borrowed motorcar, and thrilling family forays about the
countryside, work went on as usual about the farm.
Crops were better than could have been expected. Some parts of the
great Middle West suffered floods in the spring of that year and
drought in the late summer, but on the Brailsford farm rains and
sunny weather were neatly interspersed. The pumpkin vines opened
their yellow flowers in corn which was waist-high by the fourth of
July. The moisture kept the tobacco from spindling up too soon; it
spread wide leaves of velvet green in rows which went as straight
as arrows across the fertile north twenty.
Stud's Jersey heifers, sleek Poland China shoats, and Shropshire
lambs looked like blue ribbon material down to the last little
orphan. A lively pair of twin kids had the family captivated with
their antics. At the age of six weeks this pair of baby billy goats
were leaping about the shed roofs like veritable young chamois.
Sarah discovered four beautiful new hybrids among her gladioli; and
her chickens--Plymouth Rocks and Leghorns--might have stepped right
out of the pages of the "Country Gentleman."
It was true that Sarah felt tired these days, and that Ulysses
S. Grant, the great Poland China boar, was acting particularly
vicious, but on the whole the farm was running like clock work.
Almost before the Brailsfords realized it the grain had all been
cut, and the thrashing crew had descended in a hungry horde upon
the farm. Some of the oats went sixty bushels to the acre, the
wheat nearly forty.
What a time they had with the thrashers! The womenfolks from all
over the country came to help with the baking and cooking. Country
kids for miles around rode Admiral Dewey and his patient wife, took
turns in carrying water to the men, slid down the hay rope, begged
for cookies, played pomp-pomp-pullaway and run-sheep-run.
The teen-aged boys, after work in the fields, wrestled and boxed,
not always in fun. The teen-aged girls, who helped their mothers as
little as possible, watched the boys and giggled.
Out in the fields and at the thrashing machine the men labored in
the hot, sticky atmosphere with barley beards in their shirts and
sweat in their burning eyes. They pitched bundles of grain onto
the wagons, pitched them off into the thrashing machine; they drew
water for the steam engine and shoveled coal in under the boiler;
they carried the great sacks of grain--which poured from the shoot,
winnowed, clean, and plump,--and dumped them into the big bins in
the granary.
They marveled at Stud's fine new red and silver thrashing machine
with its blower which could send the golden straw into a pile
at any point he wished. They looked forward to following this
beautiful machine up and down the valley.
In Sarah's kitchen the hot and perspiring women fairly tumbled over
one another in their efforts to prepare for the hungry men. They
stewed chickens by the dozen, fried thick slices of ham, made brown
ham gravy, boiled pecks of new potatoes, baked pies and cakes and
opened cans of pickles. There was nothing fancy about the fare they
served, but it was ample.
They were jovial, catty, good-natured, cross, polite, or rude as
the spirit moved them. They dropped the "sistering" and "Missusing"
of the church suppers and called each other plain Mary, Meg,
Bert, and Cissy. They had a perfectly grand time for all their
complaining.
And when the dirty men burst into the kitchen, joshing and pushing
one another over chairs, pouring well water down one another's
neck, splashing and crowding at the sink, and asking the women why
they couldn't rustle together a little food for the real workers,
the women thought of nothing but feeding and humoring the pack.
If a man proved too obstreperous, however, these Amazons were
thoroughly capable of forcing him to eat the extra food for which
he was shouting, until at last he had to cry "enough," grinning
sheepishly at his defeat, while his fellows jeered and taunted.
Against their better judgment, and in thorough contradiction to
their pre-conceived distrust of Early Ann, these women were forced
to admit some merit in the Sherman girl. They noticed how hard she
worked in Sarah Brailsford's kitchen, how, although she kidded with
their men-folks, she showed practically no inclination to lure them
into the haymow, and how, above all, she was a friendly girl and
not at all stuck up about her good looks.
Good looks she undoubtedly had, the men admitted as they lay about
the lawn during the hour of rest after their big dinner. They
complimented Stud upon his taste in hired girls, and suggested that
it was no wonder Peter took her for rides on his motorcycle.
"She'll be riding a motorcycle herself one of these days," Peter
said. "She's tomboy enough. I'll bet she could lick most of you
guys in a wrastle."
"Been wrastling her much, kid?" the men wanted to know. "She looks
like good wrastling."
Peter flushed. He had never thought of Early Ann as a sweetheart.
He had been thinking all morning about Maxine Larabee, and how he
hoped she would drive in at one of the farms where he was in charge
of the big thrashing outfit. Stud had told Peter _he_ could be
thrashing boss that year and take the fine new machine all over the
countryside. It would be wonderful to have Maxine hear him giving
orders and directing all the men.
Maybe Bud Spillman would come up with a sneer on his face right
while Maxine was there, and Peter would knock his block off.
Nothing could be sweeter.
"I'd like to wrastle that girl," one of the men was saying. "I'll
bet she'd make good wrastling."
During the past few weeks Sarah had tried to be particularly kind
to Early Ann. She had noticed how the girl had listened to her
manner of speech and tried to imitate it, how she had dropped many
of her "ain'ts" and "them theres," and was taking pains to set the
table nicely. One day Sarah had shown her some of her battered text
books left over from distant academy days. Early Ann had taken them
to her room and had painfully waded through several of them during
the long summer evenings. She had even asked Sarah to show her the
notes on the organ and had practiced faithfully at her scales.
In matters of personal appearance, however, Early Ann had a flair
which the older woman lacked. She had a way of doing her hair,
of wearing a flower or a ribbon which made her beautiful even in
an apron. But in matters of tidiness and cleanliness she learned
much from Sarah. She brushed her teeth more often now, and every
evening, to the tantalization of the hired man, bathed in the back
pantry before she went to bed.
She actually worshiped Mrs. Brailsford.
"You're ... you're wonderful, Mrs. Brailsford," the girl had told
her one afternoon when they were alone in the kitchen fixing
supper. "It just seems like you're the kindest thing in God's
world. I wish I _could_ be your daughter like you said."
2
When the bins of barley, wheat and oats were full to overflowing
and the thrashing crew had moved on to the Bussey farm, Stud found
that work was slack for a moment, and he decided to take a little
journey.
He filled the gasoline tank of his Ford from the big, red barrel
mounted on sawhorses beside the milk house, poured two quarts of
thick green oil into the engine, and emptied most of a sprinkling
can of water into the ever-thirsty radiator.
Four new tires were lashed to starboard and port. Pumps, jacks,
kits of tools, tire shoes, and extra inner tubes were stowed
beneath seats and in tool boxes. Stud had lunch enough for a
two-weeks' journey, and at Sarah's insistence a sweater, raincoat,
rubbers, and three changes of shirts and underwear. He felt as
adventurous as Daniel Boone.
Sarah waved until he was out of sight down the road, and returned
to the kitchen biting her lip to keep back the tears. While Stud,
racing along at twenty miles an hour through the dewy August
morning, felt as fit as a fiddle and as cocky as a bantam rooster.
He noticed the fine new circular barn Ed Underwood was building
upon the very site where two previous circular barns had been
struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Just flying up in the
face of providence to build another of those queer-shaped cow sheds
on the same spot. He craned his neck to look over the high board
fence at the Foote place where all the machinery stood rusting in
the front yard. He could see that Cyrus Babcock's bull wouldn't
furnish much competition for his Napoleon at the county fair that
year. Cy took too much stock in this scientific stuff his son was
learning at the University of Wisconsin. Science was all right in
its place but--
"You gotta have a feel for raising cattle same as for playing the
fiddle," Stud told the passing scenery.
He was genuinely glad to see that the Widow Morrison had a fine
stand of tobacco and that One Arm Bert Howe had the best corn in
miles. It was pretty tough about Bert and his tubercular girl.
The creek at Busseyville, meandering through its wide valley,
looked so inviting that Stud drove his car in among the willows,
kicked through a meadow of deep grass and dusty milkweed bloom on
which the big, brown butterflies were gathered, and came at last to
the deep hole at the bend where he had often gone swimming as a boy.
There was not a farm woman in sight, so Stud stripped, took a
running dive, and sported in the cool, clear water. How fine it
felt! He blew and bubbled, tried to swim to the bottom of the
twelve foot hole and pick up pebbles, opened his eyes under the
water and grabbed for the silver minnows with his big hands. Out
again with the wind and sun upon his body! Into his clothes and
back to the car where he sampled a pair of chicken sandwiches and
drank noisily from the artesian well beside the road.
Another ten miles of hard driving over wagon roads which followed
the ridge to the west of the lake, then into Fort Atkinson and on
up the Rock River Valley. On either side spread the fertile black
acres which had brought thousands of eager immigrants from across
the sea. The sons and grandsons of the pioneers were thrashing
grain and sweating in the fields.
Stud marveled when he thought how rapidly he was traversing these
miles which would have taken days by ox-cart. Not a blowout,
as yet, and not a broken spring. No trouble with the magneto,
carburettor, or the engine.
Until he was twenty miles from home Stud would not let himself
think what it was which had brought him on this wild goose chase.
It sobered him when he remembered.
From the moment on that June night when Sarah had asked if Early
Ann might be his daughter the simple mind of Stud Brailsford had
been troubled and perplexed. He wanted to ask the girl outright
what she knew about her mother but was embarrassed before her.
He tried to recall each of the girls with whom he had had secret
pleasure before he married Sarah. Suddenly it dawned upon him
that Early Ann Sherman was undoubtedly the daughter of Tess
Bedermier,--Tess, the girl with whom he had once gone swimming
naked in Lake Koshkonong in the days when to even speak of a girl's
legs was to risk an eternity in hell. It was a Sunday evening at
that. He was supposed to be driving her to the evening services at
the Methodist Episcopal church in Brailsford Junction.
Tess, the lovely and lost, the foolhardy and independent, the talk
of the Ladies' Aid and the scandal of the countryside. She had been
Doc Crandall's stylish hired girl during the last two years of the
veterinarian's life. Of an age with Temperance and Sarah, Tess had
been the most run-after girl in town during the years of 1890 and
'91.
Stud had not told Sarah of his discovery, nor why, when looking
into Early Ann's face, he was suddenly shocked (seeing the living,
breathing image of Tess).
But could she be his daughter?
Maybe she was older than she would admit. If she were twenty-one,
for instance....
He tried to analyze what it was that disturbed him and decided that
if a man sees his daughter growing up from babyhood, perhaps helps
to tend her, plays with her, teaches her to ride horseback and to
swim; if he watches her sprouting up to young womanhood, sees her
put up her hair and wear her first long skirts, then he can think
of her as his daughter and not be troubled with her pretty ways and
her fresh young body.
But if it should happen that a father did not see his daughter even
once in her life before she became a young woman, then he might be
disturbed by her prettiness, seeing in her, her mother of years
gone by.
It was not like Stud to be worrying about anything except possibly
the crops and the stock. He took the world as he found it and found
it good. He lived moment by moment and day by day and rested on
Sunday.
But here was a new and troubling element in his life; a worry,
and a dumb, sweet misery which he carried about with him, so that
sometimes Gus would have to ask him twice if he had ordered more
bran, or if he intended to send for that new belt for the gas
engine in the milk house, before Stud was aware Gus was speaking.
He thought of it as he went down into the woods with Shep to bring
home the cows, and he thought of it while he was topping the
tobacco, breaking off the budding white flowers to keep the plants
from spindling up and going to seed. He carried his troubles with
him into the barns and the haymow, to the table and to bed.
Was it likely that she was eighteen and not his daughter? Or
was she, perhaps, twenty-one, and the child he had got on Tess
Bedermier that moonlight night they had bathed in the lake and
afterwards gone back among the willows?
He did not know where Tess had gone that autumn. She had quarreled
with him and moved away from Brailsford Junction. He wondered if
she had ever married, and if she were living now. He thought he
would never be satisfied until he found her and asked about Early
Ann.
But to find her would be a job of clever sleuthing for which Stud
felt too big and clumsy. He called on his friend Timothy Halleck in
whom he placed utmost faith. Halleck went to Madison to look for a
marriage certificate. He came back puzzled and no wiser.
He wrote to the only Bedermier he knew, a second cousin of Tess's
living in Chicago, but found that this distant relative had not
heard of Tess in more than twenty years.
Then he went to Old Mrs. Crandall who seemed inclined to confide a
secret, but changed her mind and shut her mouth like a clam. At
last, having had a real inspiration, he visited Mrs. Marsden, Early
Ann's erstwhile landlady, and asked about the girl's mail.
"Don't you dare insinuate I look in other people's envelopes,"
squeaked Mrs. Marsden. "But I did notice the three letters she got
were postmarked from Horicon, Wisconsin."
This was the only clew which Halleck could offer his friend, but it
was sufficient.
As Stud followed the Rock River toward its source he watched the
stream grow smaller and smaller. He passed through Jefferson
and Watertown, neat towns in the midst of prosperous country.
On every side were the white-washed milk houses and bright red
barns of thrifty German farmers. The corn rustled, windmills
whirred, and bob-o-links scattered their liquid notes. He passed
busy creameries, a brewery, and a cross-road store, and still his
chariot wheeled on.
But as he climbed a hill giving a view of the rich valley and miles
of winding river, a tire expired with a long, soft sigh; and it was
an hour later after a mortal struggle with tire irons, pump, jack,
and obstinate valve-stems, that he was on his way again. Soon after
the engine coughed and died. He was out of gas.
Courteous drivers of that all but forgotten era when a Ford was a
fraternal emblem more binding than a Masonic button drew up with
boiling radiators and shrieking brakes to shout, "Need a lift,
friend?" It was one of these cheerful fellow motorists who drove
him three miles and back for a gallon of gasoline.
He stopped over night at a farm where the big German farmer and
his apple-dumpling wife would have been ashamed to even think of
charging for their hospitality. He was impressed by the clean barns
and white-washed trees, and spent several hours with the genial
farmer examining his Holsteins.
The next day he drove on to Horicon.
He came at last to the desolate marshes which seem to stretch
interminably across the wide valley of the upper reaches of the
Rock,--endless channels and pools, acres of billowing swamp grass,
millions of yellow pond lilies, red-wing blackbirds chattering in
hordes upon the swaying cat-tails.
Asking for Sherman, for Bedermier, and for Sherman again and
hearing this and that disturbing bit of their history until at last
he knew the whole sordid tale, he made his way along one of the
most desolate roads he had ever traversed. Huts among the gravel
hills bordering the marsh were over-run with chickens, pigs, and
dirty children. Pot-bellied women came to the door to see him pass.
He lost his way during the afternoon and had to retrace his path
over ruts and ditches which threatened at every moment to break
a spring. Toward sunset he arrived at the deserted Sherman place
and drove in through the stumps of a once generous orchard where
wheel-less wagons, overturned plows, and rusty cultivators vied
with sagging fences to make the spot as uninviting as can be
imagined.
There was scarcely an unbroken window left in the ramshackle
farmhouse; the windmill was down. Plantain and burrs had crept
into the barnyard, and the fields were giving way on every hand to
brambles, sumac and willows.
So this was where Tess Bedermier had come, pregnant with his child,
to live with the only man who would take her in, to bury that first
child in an unmarked grave, and to bear Bung Sherman three children
out of wedlock, of whom Early Ann alone had survived. Here was the
desolate farm on which Early Ann--no child of Stud's--had grown and
blossomed, and it was here that Bung Sherman had died in a drunken
brawl with a duck hunter.
After Bung's death Tess had gone off with a man who stopped at the
farm for a drink of water, a man whose name was unknown to the
neighbors and whose only distinguishing characteristic was that he
carried in the crook of his arm a large black cat. Two weeks later
Early Ann had gone to join them.
As Stud watched the sun setting over the vast marshes he thought he
felt a cold wind blow across the barn lot, and the hair stood up
on the nape of his neck. The killdeers called that a storm was at
hand. Clouds rolled up from the horizon and distant thunder rattled
like wheels on a far bridge. Then, suddenly, the sky was black
and over-cast. The lightning flashed close at hand,--jagged blue,
reflected on the dark pools and the channels. The trees bowed low,
the dust whirled, and rain came down over countless miles of marsh
land.