"Along these woods in storm and sun the busy people go."
The tin-peddler has gone out of the West. Amiable gossip and sharp
trader that he was, his visits once brought a sharp business grapple to
the farmer's wife and daughters, after which, as the man of trade was
repacking his unsold wares, a moment of cheerful talk often took place.
It was his cue, if he chanced to be a tactful peddler, to drop all
attempts at sale and become distinctly human and neighborly.
His calls were not always well received, but they were at their best
pleasant breaks of a monotonous round of duties. But he is no longer a
familiar spot on the landscape. He has passed into the limbo of the
things no longer necessary. His red wagon may be rumbling and rattling
through some newer region, but the "Coolly Country" knows him no more.
"The creamery man" has taken his place. Every afternoon, rain or shine,
the wagons of the North Star Creamery in "Dutcher's Coolly" stop at the
farmers' windmills to skim the cream from the "submerged cans." His
wagon is not gay; it is generally battered and covered with mud and
filled with tall cans; but the driver himself is generally young and
sometimes attractive. The driver in Molasses Gap, which is a small
coolly leading into Dutcher's Coolly, was particularly good-looking and
amusing.
He was aware of his good looks, and his dress not only showed that he
was single, but that he hoped to be married soon. He wore brown
trousers, which fitted him very well, and a dark blue shirt, which had a
gay lacing of red cord in front, and a pair of suspenders that were a
vivid green. On his head he wore a Chinese straw helmet, which was as
ugly as anything could conceivably be, but he was as proud of it as he
was of his green suspenders. In summer he wore no coat at all, and even
in pretty cold weather he left his vest on his wagon-seat, not being
able to bring himself to the point of covering up the red and green of
his attire.
It was noticeable that the women of the neighborhood always came out,
even on wash-day, to see that Claude (his name was Claude Williams)
measured the cream properly. There was much banter about this. Mrs.
Kennedy always said she wouldn't trust him "fur's you can fling a
yearlin' bull by the tail."
"Now that's the difference between us," he would reply. "I'd trust you
anywhere. Anybody with such a daughter as your'n."
He seldom got further, for Lucindy always said (in substance), "Oh, you
go 'long."
There need be no mystery in the matter. 'Cindy was the girl for whose
delight he wore the green and red. He made no secret of his love, and
she made no secret of her scorn. She laughed at his green 'spenders and
the "red shoestring" in his shirt; but Claude considered himself very
learned in women's ways, by reason of two years' driving the creamery
wagon, and he merely winked at Mrs. Kennedy when the girl was looking,
and kissed his hand at 'Cindy when her mother was not looking.
He looked forward every afternoon to these little exchanges of wit, and
was depressed when for any reason the women folks were away. There were
other places pleasanter than the Kennedy farm--some of "the Dutchmen"
had fine big brick houses and finer and bigger barns, but their women
were mostly homely, and went around bare-footed and bare-legged, with
ugly blue dresses hanging frayed and greasy round their lank ribs and
big joints.
"Someway their big houses have a look like a stable when you get close
to 'em," Claude said to 'Cindy once. "Their women work so much in the
field they don't have any time to fix up--the way you do. I don't
believe in women workin' in the fields." He said this looking 'Cindy in
the face. "My wife needn't set her foot outdoors 'less she's a mind to."
"Oh, you can talk," replied the girl, scornfully, "but you'd be like the
rest of 'em." But she was glad that she had on a clean collar and
apron--if it was ironing-day.
What Claude would have said further 'Cindy could not divine, for her
mother called her away, as she generally did when she saw her daughter
lingering too long with the creamery man. Claude was not considered a
suitable match for Lucindy Kennedy, whose father owned one of the finest
farms in the Coolly. Worldly considerations hold in Molasses Gap as well
as in Bluff Siding and Tyre.
But Claude gave little heed to these moods in Mrs. Kennedy. If 'Cindy
sputtered, he laughed; and if she smiled, he rode on whistling till he
came to old man Haldeman's, who owned the whole lower half of Molasses
Gap, and had one ummarried daughter, who thought Claude one of the
handsomest men in the world. She was always at the gate to greet him as
he drove up, and forced sections of cake and pieces of gooseberry pie
upon him each day.
"She's good enough--for a Dutchman," Claude said of her, "but I hate to
see a woman go around looking as if her clothes would drop off if it
rained on her. And on Sundays, when she dresses up, she looks like a boy
rigged out in some girl's cast-off duds."
This was pretty hard on Nina. She was tall and lank and sandy, with
small blue eyes, her limbs were heavy, and she did wear her Sunday
clothes badly, but she was a good, generous soul, and very much in love
with the creamery man. She was not very clean, but then she could not
help that; the dust of the field is no respecter of sex. No, she was not
lovely, but she was the only daughter of old Ernest Haldeman, and the
old man was not very strong.
Claude was the daily bulletin of the Gap. He knew whose cow died the
night before, who was at the strawberry dance, and all about Abe
Anderson's night in jail up at the Siding. If his coming was welcome to
the Kennedy's, who took the Bluff Siding Gimlet and the county paper,
how much the more cordial ought his greeting to be at Haldeman's, where
they only took the Milwaukee Weekly Freiheit.
Nina in her poor way had longings and aspirations. She wanted to marry
"a Yankee," and not one of her own kind. She had a little schooling
obtained at the small brick shed under the towering cottonwood tree at
the corner of her father's farm; but her life had been one of hard work
and mighty little play. Her parents spoke in German about the farm, and
could speak English only very brokenly. Her only brother had adventured
into the foreign parts of Pine County, and had been killed in a sawmill.
Her life was lonely and hard.
She had suitors among the Germans, plenty of them, but she had a disgust
of them--considered as possible husbands--and though she went to their
beery dances occasionally, she had always in her mind the ease,
lightness, and color of Claude. She knew that the Yankee girls did not
work in the fields,--even the Norwegian girls seldom did so now, they
worked out in town,--but she had been brought up to hoe and pull weeds
from her childhood, and her father and mother considered it good for
her, and being a gentle and obedient child, she still continued to do as
she was told. Claude pitied the girl, and used to talk with her, during
his short stay, in his cheeriest manner.
"Hello, Nina! How you vass, ain't it? How much cream already you got
this morning? Did you hear the news, not?"
"No, vot hass happened?"
"Everything. Frank McVey's horse stepped through the bridge and broke
his leg, and he's going to sue the county--mean Frank is, not the
horse."
"Iss dot so?"
"Sure! and Bill Hetner had a fight, and Julia Doorflinger's got home."
"Vot wass Bill fightding apoudt?"
"Oh, drunk--fighting for exercise. Hain't got a fresh pie cut?"
Her face lighted up, and she turned so suddenly to go that her bare leg
showed below her dress. Her unstockinged feet were thrust into coarse
working shoes. Claude wrinkled his nose in disgust, but he took the
piece of green currant pie on the palm of his hand and bit the acute
angle from it.
"First rate. You do make lickin' good pies," he said, out of pure
kindness of heart; and Nina was radiant.
"She wouldn't be so bad-lookin' if they didn't work her in the fields
like a horse," he said to himself as he drove away.
The neighbors were well aware of Nina's devotion, and Mrs. Smith, who
lived two or three houses down the road, said, "Good-evening, Claude.
Seen Nina to-day?"
"Sure! and she gave me a piece of currant pie--her own make."
"Did you eat it?"
"Did I? I guess yes. I ain't refusin' pie from Nina--not while her pa
has five hundred acres of the best land in Molasses Gap."
Now, it was this innocent joking on his part that started all Claude's
trouble. Mrs. Smith called a couple of days later, and had her joke with
'Cindy.
"'Cindy, your cake's all dough."
"Why, what's the matter now?"
"Claude come along t'other day grinnin' from ear to ear, and some
currant pie in his musstache. He had jest fixed it up with Nina. He jest
as much as said he was after the old man's acres."
"Well, let him have 'em. I don't know as it interests me," replied
'Cindy, waving her head like a banner. "If he wants to sell himself to
that greasy Dutchwoman--why, let him, that's all! I don't care."
Her heated manner betrayed her to Mrs. Smith, who laughed with huge
enjoyment.
"Well, you better watch out!"
The next day was very warm, and when Claude drove up under the shade of
the big maples he was ready for a chat while his horses rested, but
'Cindy was nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Kennedy came out to get the amount
of the skimming, and started to reënter the house without talk.
"Where's the young folks?" asked Claude, carelessly.
"If you mean Lucindy, she's in the house."
"Ain't sick or nothin', is she?"
"Not that anybody knows of. Don't expect her to be here to gass with you
every time, do ye?"
"Well, I wouldn't mind," replied Claude. He was too keen not to see his
chance. "In fact, I'd like to have her with me all the time, Mrs.
Kennedy," he said, with engaging frankness.
"Well, you can't have her," the mother replied ungraciously.
"What's the matter with me?"
"Oh, I like you well enough, but 'Cindy'd be a big fool to marry a man
without a roof to cover his head."
"That's where you take your inning, sure," Claude replied. "I'm not much
better than a hired hand. Well, now, see here, I'm going to make a
strike one of these days, and then--look out for me! You don't know but
what I've invested in a gold mine. I may be a Dutch lord in disguise.
Better not be brash."
Mrs. Kennedy's sourness could not stand against such sweetness and
drollery. She smiled in wry fashion. "You'd better be moving, or you'll
be late."
"Sure enough. If I only had you for a mother-in-law--that's why I'm so
poor. Nobody to keep me moving. If I had some one to do the talking for
me, I'd work." He grinned broadly and drove out.
His irritation led him to say some things to Nina which he would not
have thought of saying the day before. She had been working in the
field, and had dropped her hoe to see him.
"Say, Nina, I wouldn't work outdoors such a day as this if I was you.
I'd tell the old man to go to thunder, and I'd go in and wash up and
look decent. Yankee women don't do that kind of work, and your old dad's
rich; no use of your sweatin' around a corn-field with a hoe in your
hands. I don't like to see a woman goin' round without stockin's, and
her hands all chapped and calloused. It ain't accordin' to Hoyle. No,
sir! I wouldn't stand it. I'd serve an injunction on the old man right
now."
A dull, slow flush crept into the girl's face and she put one hand over
the other as they rested on the fence. One looked so much less monstrous
than two.
Claude went on, "Yes, sir! I'd brace up and go to Yankee meeting instead
of Dutch; you'd pick up a Yankee beau like as not."
He gathered his cream while she stood silently by, and when he looked at
her again she was in deep thought.
"Good-day," he said cheerily.
"Good-by," she replied, and her face flushed again.
It rained that night and the roads were very bad, and he was late the
next time he arrived at Haldeman's. Nina came out in her best dress, but
he said nothing about it, supposing she was going to town or something
like that, and he hurried through with his task and had mounted his seat
before he realized that anything was wrong.
Then Mrs. Haldeman appeared at the kitchen door and hurled a lot of
unintelligible German at him. He knew she was mad, and mad at him, and
also at Nina, for she shook her fist at them alternately.
Singular to tell, Nina paid no attention to her mother's sputter. She
looked at Claude with a certain timid audacity.
"How you like me to-day?"
"That's better," he said, as he eyed her critically. "Now you're
talkin'! I'd do a little reading of the newspaper myself, if I was you.
A woman's business ain't to work out in the hot sun--it's to cook and
fix up things round the house, and then put on her clean dress and set
in the shade and read or sew on something. Stand up to 'em! doggone me
if I'd paddle round that hot corn-field with a mess o' Dutchmen--it
ain't decent!"
He drove off with a chuckle at the old man, who was seated at the back
of the house with a newspaper in his hand. He was lame, or pretended he
was, and made his wife and daughter wait upon him. Claude had no
conception of what was working in Nina's mind, but he could not help
observing the changes for the better in her appearance. Each day he
called she was neatly dressed, and wore her shoes laced up to the very
top hook.
She was passing through tribulation on his account, but she said nothing
about it. The old man, her father, no longer spoke to her, and the
mother sputtered continually, but the girl seemed sustained by some
inner power. She calmly went about doing as she pleased, and no fury of
words could check her or turn her aside.
Her hands grew smooth and supple once more, and her face lost the
parboiled look it once had.
Claude noticed all these gains, and commented on them with the freedom
of a man who had established friendly relations with a child.
"I tell you what, Nina, you're coming along, sure. Next ground hop
you'll be wearin' silk stockin's and high-heeled shoes. How's the old
man? Still mad?"
"He don't speak to me no more. My mudder says I am a big fool."
"She does? Well, you tell her I think you're just getting sensible."
She smiled again, and there was a subtle quality in the mixture of
boldness and timidity of her manner. His praise was so sweet and
stimulating.
"I sold my pigs," she said. "The old man, he wass madt, but I didn't
mind. I pought me a new dress with the money."
"That's right! I like to see a woman have plenty of new dresses," Claude
replied. He was really enjoying the girl's rebellion and growing
womanliness.
Meanwhile his own affairs with Lucindy were in a bad way. He seldom saw
her now. Mrs. Smith was careful to convey to her that Claude stopped
longer than was necessary at Haldeman's, and so Mrs. Kennedy attended to
the matter of recording the cream. Kennedy himself was always in the
field, and Claude had no opportunity for a conversation with him, as he
very much wished to have. Once, when he saw 'Cindy in the kitchen at
work, he left his team to rest in the shade and sauntered to the door
and looked in.
She was kneading out cake dough, and she looked the loveliest thing he
had ever seen. Her sleeves were rolled up. Her neat brown dress was
covered with a big apron, and her collar was open a little at the
throat, for it was warm in the kitchen. She frowned when she saw him.
He began jocularly. "Oh, thank you, I can wait till it bakes. No trouble
at all."
"Well, it's a good deal of trouble to me to have you standin' there
gappin' at me!"
"Ain't gappin' at you. I'm waitin' for the pie."
"'Tain't pie; it's cake."
"Oh, well, cake'll do for a change. Say, 'Cindy--"
"Don't call me 'Cindy!"
"Well, Lucindy. It's mighty lonesome when I don't see you on my trips."
"Oh, I guess you can stand it with Nina to talk to."
"Aha! jealous, are you?"
"Jealous of that Dutchwoman! I don't care who you talk to, and you
needn't think it."
Claude was learned in woman's ways, and this pleased him mightily.
"Well, when shall I speak to your daddy?"
"I don't know what you mean, and I don't care."
"Oh, yes, you do. I'm going to come up here next Sunday in my best bib
and tucker, and I'm going to say, 'Mr. Kennedy'--"
The sound of Mrs. Kennedy's voice and footsteps approaching made Claude
suddenly remember his duties.
"See ye later," he said, with a grin. "I'll call for the cake next
time."
"Call till you split your throat, if you want to," said 'Cindy.
Apparently this could have gone on indefinitely, but it didn't. Lucindy
went to Minneapolis for a few weeks to stay with her brother, and that
threw Claude deeper into despair than anything Mrs. Kennedy might do or
any word Lucindy might say. It was a dreadful blow to him to have her
pack up and go so suddenly, and without one backward look at him, and,
besides, he had planned taking her to Tyre on the Fourth of July.
Mr. Kennedy, much better-natured than the mother, told Claude where she
had gone.
"By mighty! That's a knock on the nose for me. When did she go?"
"Yistady. I took her down to the Siding."
"When's she coming back?"
"Oh, after the hot weather is over; four or five weeks."
"I hope I'll be alive when she returns," said Claude, gloomily.
Naturally he had a little more time to give to Nina and her remarkable
doings, which had set the whole neighborhood to wondering "what had come
over the girl."
She no longer worked in the field. She dressed better, and had taken to
going to the most fashionable church in town. She was as a woman
transformed. Nothing was able to prevent her steady progression and
bloom. She grew plumper and fairer, and became so much more attractive
that the young Germans thickened round her, and one or two Yankee boys
looked her way. Through it all Claude kept up his half-humorous banter
and altogether serious daily advice, without once realizing that
anything sentimental connected him with it all. He knew she liked him,
and sometimes he felt a little annoyed by her attempts to please him,
but that she was doing all that she did and ordering her whole life to
please him never entered his self-sufficient head.
There wasn't much room left in that head for any one else except
Lucindy, and his plans for winning her. Plan as he might, he saw no way
of making more than the two dollars a day he was earning as a cream
collector.
Things ran along thus from week to week till it was nearly time for
Lucindy to return. Claude was having his top buggy repainted, and was
preparing for a vigorous campaign when Lucindy should be at home again.
He owned his team and wagon and the buggy--nothing more.
One Saturday Mr. Kennedy said, "Lucindy's coming home. I'm going down
after her to-night."
"Let me bring her up," said Claude, with suspicious eagerness.
Mr. Kennedy hesitated. "No, I guess I'll go myself. I want to go to
town, anyway."
Claude was in high spirits as he drove into Haldeman's yard that
afternoon.
Nina was leaning over the fence singing softly to herself, but a fierce
altercation was going on inside the house. The walls resounded. It was
all Dutch to Claude, but he knew the old people were quarrelling.
Nina smiled and colored as Claude drew up at the side gate. She seemed
not to hear the eloquent discussion inside.
"What's going on?" asked Claude.
"Dey tink I am in house."
"How's that?"
"My mudder she lock me up."