Claude Wheeler opened his eyes before the sun was up and
vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half
of the same bed.
"Ralph, Ralph, get awake! Come down and help me wash the car."
"What for?"
"Why, aren't we going to the circus today?"
"Car's all right. Let me alone." The boy turned over and pulled
the sheet up to his face, to shut out the light which was
beginning to come through the curtainless windows.
Claude rose and dressed,--a simple operation which took very
little time. He crept down two flights of stairs, feeling his way
in the dusk, his red hair standing up in peaks, like a cock's
comb. He went through the kitchen into the adjoining washroom,
which held two porcelain stands with running water. Everybody had
washed before going to bed, apparently, and the bowls were ringed
with a dark sediment which the hard, alkaline water had not
dissolved. Shutting the door on this disorder, he turned back to
the kitchen, took Mahailey's tin basin, doused his face and head
in cold water, and began to plaster down his wet hair.
Old Mahailey herself came in from the yard, with her apron full
of corn-cobs to start a fire in the kitchen stove. She smiled at
him in the foolish fond way she often had with him when they were
alone.
"What air you gittin' up for a-ready, boy? You goin' to the
circus before breakfast? Don't you make no noise, else you'll
have 'em all down here before I git my fire a-goin'."
"All right, Mahailey." Claude caught up his cap and ran out of
doors, down the hillside toward the barn. The sun popped up over
the edge of the prairie like a broad, smiling face; the light
poured across the close-cropped August pastures and the hilly,
timbered windings of Lovely Creek, a clear little stream with a
sand bottom, that curled and twisted playfully about through the
south section of the big Wheeler ranch. It was a fine day to go
to the circus at Frankfort, a fine day to do anything; the sort
of day that must, somehow, turn out well.
Claude backed the little Ford car out of its shed, ran it up to
the horse-tank, and began to throw water on the mud-crusted
wheels and windshield. While he was at work the two hired men,
Dan and Jerry, came shambling down the hill to feed the stock.
Jerry was grumbling and swearing about something, but Claude
wrung out his wet rags and, beyond a nod, paid no attention to
them. Somehow his father always managed to have the roughest and
dirtiest hired men in the country working for him. Claude had a
grievance against Jerry just now, because of his treatment of one
of the horses.
Molly was a faithful old mare, the mother of many colts; Claude
and his younger brother had learned to ride on her. This man
Jerry, taking her out to work one morning, let her step on a
board with a nail sticking up in it. He pulled the nail out of
her foot, said nothing to anybody, and drove her to the
cultivator all day. Now she had been standing in her stall for
weeks, patiently suffering, her body wretchedly thin, and her leg
swollen until it looked like an elephant's. She would have to
stand there, the veterinary said, until her hoof came off and she
grew a new one, and she would always be stiff. Jerry had not been
discharged, and he exhibited the poor animal as if she were a
credit to him.
Mahailey came out on the hilltop and rang the breakfast bell.
After the hired men went up to the house, Claude slipped into the
barn to see that Molly had got her share of oats. She was eating
quietly, her head hanging, and her scaly, dead-looking foot
lifted just a little from the ground. When he stroked her neck
and talked to her she stopped grinding and gazed at him
mournfully. She knew him, and wrinkled her nose and drew her
upper lip back from her worn teeth, to show that she liked being
petted. She let him touch her foot and examine her leg.
When Claude reached the kitchen, his mother was sitting at one
end of the breakfast table, pouring weak coffee, his brother and
Dan and Jerry were in their chairs, and Mahailey was baking
griddle cakes at the stove. A moment later Mr. Wheeler came down
the enclosed stairway and walked the length of the table to his
own place. He was a very large man, taller and broader than any
of his neighbours. He seldom wore a coat in summer, and his
rumpled shirt bulged out carelessly over the belt of his
trousers. His florid face was clean shaven, likely to be a trifle
tobacco-stained about the mouth, and it was conspicuous both for
good-nature and coarse humour, and for an imperturbable physical
composure. Nobody in the county had ever seen Nat Wheeler
flustered about anything, and nobody had ever heard him speak
with complete seriousness. He kept up his easy-going, jocular
affability even with his own family.
As soon as he was seated, Mr. Wheeler reached for the two-pint
sugar bowl and began to pour sugar into his coffee. Ralph asked
him if he were going to the circus. Mr. Wheeler winked.
"I shouldn't wonder if I happened in town sometime before the
elephants get away." He spoke very deliberately, with a
State-of-Maine drawl, and his voice was smooth and agreeable.
"You boys better start in early, though. You can take the wagon
and the mules, and load in the cowhides. The butcher has agreed
to take them."
Claude put down his knife. "Can't we have the car? I've washed it
on purpose."
"And what about Dan and Jerry? They want to see the circus just
as much as you do, and I want the hides should go in; they're
bringing a good price now. I don't mind about your washing the
car; mud preserves the paint, they say, but it'll be all right
this time, Claude."
The hired men haw-hawed and Ralph giggled. Claude's freckled face
got very red. The pancake grew stiff and heavy in his mouth and
was hard to swallow. His father knew he hated to drive the mules
to town, and knew how he hated to go anywhere with Dan and Jerry.
As for the hides, they were the skins of four steers that had
perished in the blizzard last winter through the wanton
carelessness of these same hired men, and the price they would
bring would not half pay for the time his father had spent in
stripping and curing them. They had lain in a shed loft all
summer, and the wagon had been to town a dozen times. But today,
when he wanted to go to Frankfort clean and care-free, he must
take these stinking hides and two coarse-mouthed men, and drive a
pair of mules that always brayed and balked and behaved
ridiculously in a crowd. Probably his father had looked out of
the window and seen him washing the car, and had put this up on
him while he dressed. It was like his father's idea of a joke.
Mrs. Wheeler looked at Claude sympathetically, feeling that he
was disappointed. Perhaps she, too, suspected a joke. She had
learned that humour might wear almost any guise.
When Claude started for the barn after breakfast, she came
running down the path, calling to him faintly,--hurrying always
made her short of breath. Overtaking him, she looked up with
solicitude, shading her eyes with her delicately formed hand. "If
you want I should do up your linen coat, Claude, I can iron it
while you're hitching," she said wistfully.
Claude stood kicking at a bunch of mottled feathers that had once
been a young chicken. His shoulders were drawn high, his mother
saw, and his figure suggested energy and determined self-control.
"You needn't mind, mother." He spoke rapidly, muttering his
words. "I'd better wear my old clothes if I have to take the
hides. They're greasy, and in the sun they'll smell worse than
fertilizer."
"The men can handle the hides, I should think. Wouldn't you feel
better in town to be dressed?" She was still blinking up at him.
"Don't bother about it. Put me out a clean coloured shirt, if you
want to. That's all right."
He turned toward the barn, and his mother went slowly back the
path up to the house. She was so plucky and so stooped, his dear
mother! He guessed if she could stand having these men about,
could cook and wash for them, he could drive them to town!
Half an hour after the wagon left, Nat Wheeler put on an alpaca
coat and went off in the rattling buckboard in which, though he
kept two automobiles, he still drove about the country. He said
nothing to his wife; it was her business to guess whether or not
he would be home for dinner. She and Mahailey could have a good
time scrubbing and sweeping all day, with no men around to bother
them.
There were few days in the year when Wheeler did not drive off
somewhere; to an auction sale, or a political convention, or a
meeting of the Farmers' Telephone directors;--to see how his
neighbours were getting on with their work, if there was nothing
else to look after. He preferred his buckboard to a car because
it was light, went easily over heavy or rough roads, and was so
rickety that he never felt he must suggest his wife's
accompanying him. Besides he could see the country better when he
didn't have to keep his mind on the road. He had come to this
part of Nebraska when the Indians and the buffalo were still
about, remembered the grasshopper year and the big cyclone, had
watched the farms emerge one by one from the great rolling page
where once only the wind wrote its story. He had encouraged new
settlers to take up homesteads, urged on courtships, lent young
fellows the money to marry on, seen families grow and prosper;
until he felt a little as if all this were his own enterprise.
The changes, not only those the years made, but those the seasons
made, were interesting to him.
People recognized Nat Wheeler and his cart a mile away. He sat
massive and comfortable, weighing down one end of the slanting
seat, his driving hand lying on his knee. Even his German
neighbours, the Yoeders, who hated to stop work for a quarter of
an hour on any account, were glad to see him coming. The
merchants in the little towns about the county missed him if he
didn't drop in once a week or so. He was active in politics;
never ran for an office himself, but often took up the cause of a
friend and conducted his campaign for him.
The French saying, "Joy of the street, sorrow of the home," was
exemplified in Mr. Wheeler, though not at all in the French way.
His own affairs were of secondary importance to him. In the early
days he had homesteaded and bought and leased enough land to make
him rich. Now he had only to rent it out to good farmers who
liked to work--he didn't, and of that he made no secret. When he
was at home, he usually sat upstairs in the living room, reading
newspapers. He subscribed for a dozen or more--the list included
a weekly devoted to scandal--and he was well informed about what
was going on in the world. He had magnificent health, and illness
in himself or in other people struck him as humorous. To be sure,
he never suffered from anything more perplexing than toothache or
boils, or an occasional bilious attack.
Wheeler gave liberally to churches and charities, was always
ready to lend money or machinery to a neighbour who was short of
anything. He liked to tease and shock diffident people, and had
an inexhaustible supply of funny stories. Everybody marveled that
he got on so well with his oldest son, Bayliss Wheeler. Not that
Bayliss was exactly diffident, but he was a narrow gauge fellow,
the sort of prudent young man one wouldn't expect Nat Wheeler to
like.
Bayliss had a farm implement business in Frankfort, and though he
was still under thirty he had made a very considerable financial
success. Perhaps Wheeler was proud of his son's business acumen.
At any rate, he drove to town to see Bayliss several times a
week, went to sales and stock exhibits with him, and sat about
his store for hours at a stretch, joking with the farmers who
came in. Wheeler had been a heavy drinker in his day, and was
still a heavy feeder. Bayliss was thin and dyspeptic, and a
virulent Prohibitionist; he would have liked to regulate
everybody's diet by his own feeble constitution. Even Mrs.
Wheeler, who took the men God had apportioned her for granted,
wondered how Bayliss and his father could go off to conventions
together and have a good time, since their ideas of what made a
good time were so different.
Once every few years, Mr. Wheeler bought a new suit and a dozen
stiff shirts and went back to Maine to visit his brothers and
sisters, who were very quiet, conventional people. But he was
always glad to get home to his old clothes, his big farm, his
buckboard, and Bayliss.
Mrs. Wheeler had come out from Vermont to be Principal of the
High School, when Frankfort was a frontier town and Nat Wheeler
was a prosperous bachelor. He must have fancied her for the same
reason he liked his son Bayliss, because she was so different.
There was this to be said for Nat Wheeler, that he liked every
sort of human creature; he liked good people and honest people,
and he liked rascals and hypocrites almost to the point of loving
them. If he heard that a neighbour had played a sharp trick or
done something particularly mean, he was sure to drive over to
see the man at once, as if he hadn't hitherto appreciated him.
There was a large, loafing dignity about Claude's father. He
liked to provoke others to uncouth laughter, but he never laughed
immoderately himself. In telling stories about him, people often
tried to imitate his smooth, senatorial voice, robust but never
loud. Even when he was hilariously delighted by anything,--as
when poor Mahailey, undressing in the dark on a summer night, sat
down on the sticky fly-paper,--he was not boisterous. He was a
jolly, easy-going father, indeed, for a boy who was not
thin-skinned.