ROWENA'S WAY OUT--THE PRAIRIE FIRE
The collapse of mind and body which I underwent in deciding the question
of marrying Rowena Fewkes or of keeping unstained and pure the great
love of my life, refusing her pitiful plea and passing by on the other
side, leaving her desolate and fordone, is a thing to which I hate to
confess; for it was a weakness. Yet, it was the directing fact of that
turning-point not only in my own life, but in the lives of many
others--of the life of Vandemark Township, of Monterey County, and of
the State of Iowa, to some extent. The excuse for it lies, as I have
said, in the way I am organized; in the bovine dumbness of my life,
bursting forth in a few crises in storms of the deepest bodily and
spiritual tempest. I could not and can not help it. I was weak as a
child, as she clasped me in her arms in gratitude when I told her I
would do as she wanted me to; and would have fallen again if she had not
held me up.
"What's the matter, Jacob?" she said, in sudden fright at my strange
behavior.
"I don't know," I gasped. "I wish I could lay down."
She was mystified. She helped me up the hill, telling me all the time
how she meant to live so as to repay me for all I had promised to do for
her. She was stronger than I, then, and helped me into the house, which
was dark, now, and lighted the lamp; but when she came to me, lying on
the bed, she gave a great scream.
"Jake, Jake!" she cried. "What's the matter! Are you dying, my darling?"
"Who, me dying?" I said, not quite understanding her. "No--I'm all
right--I'll be all right, Rowena!"
She was holding her hands up in the light. They were stained crimson
where she had pressed them to my bosom.
"What's the matter of your hands?" I asked, though I was getting drowsy,
as if I had been long broken of my sleep.
"It's blood, Jacob! You've hurt yourself!"
I drew my hand across my mouth, and it came away stained red. She gave a
cry of horror; but did not lose her presence of mind. She sponged the
blood from my clothes, wiping my mouth every little while, until there
was no more blood coming from it. Presently I dropped off to sleep with
my hand in hers. She awoke me after a while and gave me some warm milk.
As I was drowsing off again, she spoke very gently to me.
"Can you understand what I'm saying?" she asked; and I nodded a yes. "Do
you love her like that?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "I love her like that."
Presently she lifted my hand to her lips and kissed it. She was quite
calm, now, as if new light had come to her in her darkness; and I
thought that it was my consent which had quieted her spirits: but I did
not understand her.
"I can't let you do it, Jacob," said she, finally. "It's too much to
ask.... I've thought of another way, my dear.... Don't think of me or my
troubles any more.... I'll be all right.... You go on loving her, an'
bein' true to her ... and if God is good as they say, He'll make you
happy with her sometime. Do you understand, Jacob?"
"Yes," I said, "but what will you...."
"Never mind about me," said she soothingly. "I've thought of another way
out. You go to sleep, now, and don't think of me or my troubles
any more."
I lay looking at her for a while, and wondering how she could suddenly
be so quiet after her agitation of the day; and after a while, the scene
swam before my eyes, and I went off into the refreshing sleep of a tired
boy.
The sun was up when I awoke. Rowena was gone. I went out and found
that she had saddled her horse and left sometime in the night; afterward
I found out that it was in the gray of the morning. She had watched by
my bedside all night, and left only after it was plain that I was
breathing naturally and that my spasm had passed. She had come into my
life that day like a tornado, but had left it much as it had been
before, except that I wondered what was to become of her. I was
comforted by the thought that she had "thought of another way." And it
was a long time before the nobility of her action was plain to me; but
when I realized it, I never forgot it. I had offered her all I had when
she begged for it, she had taken it, and then restored it, as the dying
soldier gave the draught of water to his comrade, saying, "Thy necessity
is greater than mine."
Once or twice I made an effort to tell Magnus Thorkelson about this, as
we worked at our after-harvest haying together that week; but it was a
hard thing to do. Perhaps it would not be a secret much longer; but as
yet it was Rowena's secret, not mine. I knew, too, that Magnus had been
haunting Rowena for two years; that he had been making visits to
Blue-grass Manor often when she was there, without taking me into his
confidence; that his excuse that he went to help Surajah Fewkes with his
inventions was not the real reason for his going. I remembered, too,
that Rowena had always spoken well of Magnus, and seemed to see what
most of us did not, that Magnus was better educated in the way
foreigners are taught than the rest of us; and she did not look down on
him the way we did then on folks from other countries. I had no way of
knowing how they stood toward each other, though Magnus had looked sad
and stopped talking lately whenever I had mentioned her. I knew it would
be a shock to him to learn of her present and coming trouble; and,
strange as it may seem, I began to put it back into the dark places in
my brain as if it had not happened; and when it came to mind clearly as
it kept doing, I tried to comfort myself with the thought that Rowena
had said that she had thought of another way out.
We had frost early that year--a hard white frost sometime about the
tenth of September. Neither Magnus nor I had any sound corn, though our
wheat, oats and barley were heavy and fine; and we had oceans of hay.
The frost killed the grass early, and early in October we had a heavy
rain followed by another freeze, and then a long, calm, warm Indian
summer. The prairie was covered with a dense mat of dry grass which
rustled in the wind but furnished no feed for our stock. It was a
splendid fall for plowing, and I began to feel hope return to me as I
followed my plow around and around the lands I laid off, and watched the
black ribbon of new plowing widen and widen as the day advanced
toward night.
Nothing is so good a soil for hope as new plowing. The act of making it
is inspired by hope. The emblem of hope should be the plow; not the plow
of the Great Seal, but a plow buried to the top of the mold-board in the
soil, with the black furrow-slice falling away from it--and for heaven's
sake, let it fall to the right, as it does where they do real farming,
and not to the left as most artists depict it! I know some plows are so
made that the nigh horse walks in the furrow, but I have mighty little
respect for such plows or the farms on which they are used.
My cattle strayed off in the latter part of October; being tolled off in
this time between hay and grass by the green spears that grew up in the
wet places in the marsh and along the creek. I got uneasy about them on
the twentieth, and went hunting them on one of Magnus Thorkelson's
horses. Magnus was away from home working, and had left his team with
me. I made up my mind that I would scout along on my own side of the
marsh until I could cross below it, and then work west, looking from
every high place until I found the cattle, coming in away off toward the
Gowdy tract, and crossing the creek above the marsh on my way home. This
would take me east and west nearly twice across Vandemark Township as it
was finally established.
I expected to get back before night, but when I struck the trail of the
stock it took me away back into the region in the north part of the
township back of Vandemark's Folly, as we used to say, where it was not
settled, on account of the slew and the distance from town, until in the
'seventies. Foster Blake had it to himself all this time, and ran a herd
of the neighbors' stock there until about 1877, when the Germans came in
and hemmed him in with their improvements, making the second great
impulse in the settlement of the township.
2
There was a stiff, dry, west wind blowing, and a blue haze in the air.
As the afternoon advanced, the sun grew red as if looked at through
smoked glass, burning like a great coal of fire or a broad disk of
red-hot iron.
There was a scent of burning grass in the air when I found my herd over
on Section Eight, about where the cooperative creamery and store now
stand. The cattle seemed to be uneasy, and when I started them toward
home, they walked fast, snuffing the air, and giving once in a while an
uneasy, anxious falsetto bellow; and now and then they would break into
a trot as they drew nearer to the places they knew. The smell of smoke
grew stronger, and I knew there was a prairie fire burning to the
westward. The sun was a deeper red, now, and once in a while almost
disappeared in clouds of vaporous smoke which rolled higher and higher
into the sky. Prairie chickens, plover and curlew, with once in a while
a bittern, went hurriedly along to the eastward, and several wolves
crossed our path, trotting along and paying no attention to me or the
cows; but stopping from time to time and looking back as if pursued
from the west.
They were pursued. They were fleeing from the great prairie fire of
1859, which swept Monterey County from side to side, and never stopped
until it struck the river over in the next county. I felt a little
uneasy as I hiked my cattle down into the marsh on my own land, and saw
them picking their way across it toward my grove, which showed proudly a
mile away across the flat. I had plowed firebreaks about my buildings
and stacks, and burned off between the strips of plowing, but I felt
that I ought to be at home. So I rode on at a good trot to make my
circuit of the marsh to the west. The cattle could get through, but a
horse with a man on his back might easily get mired in Vandemark's Folly
anywhere along there; and my motto was, "The more hurry, the
less speed."
As I topped the hill to get back to the high ground, I saw great clouds
of smoke pouring into the valley at the west passage into the big flat,
and the country to the south was hidden by the smoke, except where, away
off in the southwest in the changing of the wind, I could see the line
of fire as it came over the high ground west of the old Bill Trickey
farm. It was a broad belt of red flames, from which there crept along
the ground a great blanket of smoke, black at first, and then turning to
blue as it rose and thinned. I began making haste; for it now looked as
if the fire might reach the head of the slew before I could, and thus
cut me off. I felt in my pocket for matches; for in case of need, the
only way to fight fire is with fire.
I was not scared, for I knew what to do; but not a mile from where I saw
the fire on the hilltop, a family of Indiana movers were at that moment
smothering and burning to death in the storm of flames--six people, old
and young, of the score or more lost in that fire; and the first deaths
of white people in Vandemark Township. Their name was Davis, and they
came from near Vincennes, we found out.
And within five minutes, as I looked off to the northwest, I saw a woman
walking calmly toward the marsh. She was a long way off, and much nearer
the fire than I was. I looked for the wagon to which she might belong,
but saw none, and it took only one more glance at her to show me that
she was in mortal danger. For she was walking slowly and laboriously
along like a person carrying a heavy burden. The smoke was getting so
thick that it hid her from time to time, and I felt, even at my distance
from the fire, an occasional hot blast on my cheek--a startling proof of
the rapid march of the great oncoming army of flames.
I kicked my heels into the horse's flanks and pushed him to a gallop. I
must reach her soon, or she would be lost, for it was plain that she was
paying no attention to her danger. I went down into a hollow, pounded up
the opposite hill, and over on the next rise of ground I saw her. She
was standing still, now, with her face turned to the fire: then she
walked deliberately toward it. I urged my horse to a faster gait, swung
my hat, and yelled at her, but she seemed not to hear.
The smoke swept down upon her, and when I next could see, she was
stooped with her shawl drawn around her head; or was she on her knees?
Then she rose, and turning from the fire, ran as fast as she could,
until I wheeled my horse across her path, jumped to the ground and
stopped her with my arm about her waist. I looked at her. It was
Rowena Fewkes.
"Rowena," I shouted, "what you doin' here? Don't you know you'll get
burnt up?"
"I couldn't go any closer," she said, as if excusing herself. "Would it
hurt much? I got scared, Jake. Oh, don't let me burn!"
There was no chance to make the circuit of the slew now, even if I had
not been hampered with her. I told her to do as she was told, and not
bother me. Then I gave her the horse to hold, and sternly ordered her
not to let loose of him no matter what he did.
I gathered a little armful of dry grass, and lighted it with a match to
the leeward of us. It spread fast, though I lighted it where the grass
was thin so as to avoid a hot fire; but on the side toward the wind,
where the blaze was feeble, I carefully whipped it out with my slouch
hat. In a minute, or so, I had a line two or three rods long, of little
blazes, each a circle of fire burning more and more fiercely on the
leeward side, and more feebly on the side where the blaze was fanned
away from its fuel. This side of each circle I whipped out with my hat,
some of them with difficulty. Soon, we had a fierce fire raging, leaving
in front of us a growing area of black ashes.
We were now between two fires; the great conflagration from which we
were trying to protect ourselves came on from the west like a roaring
tornado, its ashes falling all about us, its hot breath beginning to
scorch us, its snapping and crackling now reaching the ear along with
its roar; while on the east was the fire of my own kindling, growing in
speed, racing off away from us, leaving behind it our haven of refuge, a
tract swept clean of food for the flames, but hot and smoking, and as
yet all too small to be safe, for the heat and smoke might kill where
the flames could not reach. Between the two fires was the fast narrowing
strip of dry grass from which we must soon move. Our safety lay in the
following of one fire to escape the other.
The main army of the flames coming on from the west, with its power of
suction, fanned itself to a faster pace than our new line could attain,
and the heat increased, both from the racing crimson line to the west,
and the slower-moving back-fire on the other side. We sweltered and
almost suffocated. Rowena buried her face in her shawl, and swayed as if
falling. I took her by the arm, and leading the excited horse, we moved
over into our zone of safety. She was trembling like a leaf.
I was a little anxious for a few minutes for fear I had not started my
back-fire soon enough; but the fear soon passed. The fire came on with a
swelling roar. We followed our back-fire so close as to be almost
blistered by it, coughing, gasping, covering our mouths and nostrils in
such a heat and smother that I could scarcely support Rowena and keep my
own footing. Suddenly the heat and smoke grew less; I looked around, and
saw that the fire had reached our burnt area, and the line was cut for
lack of fuel. It divided as a wave is split by a rock, and went in two
great moving spouting fountains of red down the line of our back-fire,
and swept on, leaving us scorched, blackened, bloodshot of eye and sore
of lips, but safe. We turned, with great relief to me at least, and made
for the open country behind the lines. Then for the first time, I looked
at Rowena.
If I had been surprised at the way in which, considering her trouble,
she had kept her prettiness and gay actions when I had last seen her, I
was shocked at the change in her now. The poor girl seemed to have given
up all attempt to conceal her condition or to care for her looks. All
her rosy bloom was gone. Her cheeks were pale and puffy, even though
emaciated. Her limbs looked thin through her disordered and torn
clothes. She wore a dark-colored hood over her snarled hair, in which
there was chaff mixed with the tangles as if she had been sleeping in
straw. She was black with smoke and ashes. Her skirts were draggled as
if with repeated soaking with dew and rain. Her shoes were worn through
at the toes, and through the holes the bare toes stuck out of openings
in her stockings. While her clothes were really better than when I had
first seen her, she had a beggarly appearance that, coupled with her
look of dejection and misery, went to my heart--she was naturally so
bright and saucy. She looked like a girl who had gone out into the
weather and lived exposed to it until she had tanned and bleached and
weathered and worn like a storm-beaten and discouraged bird with its
plumage soiled and soaked and its spirit broken. And over it all hung
the cloud of impending maternity--a cloud which should display the
rainbow of hope. But with her there was only a lurid light which is more
awful than darkness.
I could not talk with her. I could only give her directions and lend her
aid. I tried putting her on the horse behind me, but he would not carry
double; so I put her in the saddle and walked by or ahead of the horse,
over the blackened and ashy prairie, lit up by the red glare of the
fire, and dotted here and there with little smokes which marked where
there were coals, the remains of vegetable matter which burned more
slowly than the dry grass. She said nothing; but two or three times she
gave a distressed little moan as if she were in pain; but this she
checked as if by an effort.
When we reached the end of the slew, we turned south and crossed the
creek just above the pond which we called Plum Pudd'n' Pond, from the
number of bitterns that lived there. It disappeared when I drained the
marsh in the 'eighties. Then, though, it spread over several acres of
ground, the largest body of water in Monterey County. We splashed
through the west end of it, and Rowena looked out over it as it lay
shining in the glare of the great prairie fire, which had now swept
half-way down the marsh, roaring like a tornado and sending its flames
fifty feet into the air. I could not help thinking what my condition
would have been if I had tried to cross it and been mired in the bog,
and like any good stockman, I was hoping that my cattle had got safe
across in their rush for home and safety.
"What water is that?" asked Rowena as we crossed.
"Plum Pudd'n' Pond," I told her.
"Is it deep?" she said.
"Pretty deep in the middle."
"Over your head?"
"Oh, yes!"
"I reckoned it was," said she. "I was huntin' fur it when you found me."
"That was after you saw the fire," I said.
"No," said she. "It was before."
In my slow way I pondered on why she had been hunting water over her
head, and sooner than is apt to be the case with me I understood. The
despair in her face as she turned and looked at the shining water told
me. She had refused to accept my offer to be her protector, because she
saw how it hurt me; but she was now ready to balance the books--if it
ever does that--by taking shelter in the depths of the pool! And this
all for the pleasure of that smiling scoundrel!
"I hope God will damn him," I said; and am ashamed of it now.
"What good would that do?" said she wearily. "This world's hard enough,
Jake!"
3
We got to my house, and I helped her in. I told her to wait while I went
to look at the fire to see whether my stacks were in danger, and to put
out and feed the horse. Then I went back, and found her sitting where I
had left her, and as I went in I heard again that little moan of pain.
The house was as light as day, without a lamp. The light from the fire
shone against the western wall of the room almost as strong as sunlight,
and as we sat there we could hear the roar of the fire rising in the
gusts of the wind, dying down, but with a steady undertone, like the
wind in the rigging of a ship. I got some supper, and after saying that
she couldn't eat, Rowena ate ravenously.
She had gone away from Blue-grass Manor, whipped forth by Mrs. Mobley's
abuse, days and days before, living on what she had carried with her
until it was gone, drinking from the brooks and runs of the prairie, and
then starving on rose-haws, and sleeping in stacks until I had found her
looking for the pool. If people could only have known! Presently she
moaned again, and I made her lie down on the bed.
"What will you do with me, Jacob?" she asked.
"We'll think about that in the morning," said I.
"Maybe you can bury me in the morning," she said after a while. "Oh,
Jake, I'm scared, I'm scared. My trouble is comin' on! My time is up,
Jake. Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do?"
I went out and sat on the stoop and thought about this. Finally I made
up my mind what she really meant by "her trouble," and I went back to
her side. I found her moaning louder and more agonizingly, now: and in
my turn I had my moment of panic.
"Rowena," I said, "I'm goin' out to do something that has to be done.
Will you stay here, and not move out of this room till I come back?"
"I'll have to," she said. "I guess I've walked my last."
So I went out and saddled the fresh horse, and started through that
fiery night for Monterey Centre. The fire had burned clear past the
town, and when I got there I saw what was left of one or two barns or
houses which had caught fire from the burning prairie, still blazing in
heaps of embers. The village had had a narrower escape from the rain of
ashes and sparks which had swept to the very edges of the little cluster
of dwellings. I rode to Doctor Bliven's drug store, climbed the outside
stairway which led to his living-room above, and knocked. Mrs. Bliven
came to the door. I explained that I wanted the doctor at once to come
out to my farm.
"He's not here," said she. "He is dressing some burns from the fire;
but he must be nearly through. I'll go after him."
I refused to go in and sit until she came back, but stood at the foot of
the stair on the sidewalk. The time of waiting seemed long, but I
suppose he came at once.
"Who's sick, Jake?" he asked.
"A girl," I said. "A woman."
"At your house?" asked he. "What is it?"
"It's Rowena Fewkes," said I.
"I thought they had gone to Colorado," said the doctor.
"They said they were leaving her behind," said Mrs. Bliven. "They
said.... Do you say she's at your house? Who's with her?"
"No one," said I. "She's alone. Hurry, Doctor: she needs you bad."
"Just a minute," said he. "What seems to be the matter? Is she very
bad?"
"It's a confinement case," said I. I had been thinking of the proper
word all the way.
"And she alone!" exclaimed Mrs. Bliven. "Hurry, Doctor! I'll get your
instruments and medicine-case, and you can hitch up. You stay here,
Jake. I want to speak to you."
She ran up-stairs, and down again in a few seconds, with the cases, and
wearing her bonnet and cloak. I could hear the doctor running his buggy
out of the shed, and speaking to his horses. She set the cases down on
the sidewalk, came up to me, put her hand on my arm and spoke.
"Jake," said she, "are you and Rowena married?"
"Us married!" I exclaimed. "Why, no!"
"This is bad business," said she. "I am surprised, and there's no woman
out there with the poor little thing?"
"No," I said; "as soon as I could I started for the doctor because I
thought he was needed first. But she needs a woman--a woman that won't
look down on her, I wish--I wish I knew where there was one!"
"Jake," said she, "you've done the fair thing by me, and I'll stand by
you, and by her. I'll go to her in her trouble. I'll go now with the
doctor. And when I do the fair thing, see that you do the same. I'm not
the one to throw the first stone, and I won't. I'm going with
you, Doctor."
"What for?" said he.
"Just for the ride," she said. "I'll tell you more as we go."
They outstripped me on the return trip, for my horse was winded, and I
felt that there was no place for me in what was going on at the farm,
though what that must be was very dim in my mind.
I let my horse walk. The fire was farther off, now; but the sky, now
flecked with drifting clouds, was red with its light, and the sight was
one which I shall never see again: which I suppose nobody will ever see
again; for I do not believe there will ever be seen such an expanse of
grass as that of Iowa at that time. I have seen prairie fires in Montana
and Western Canada; but they do not compare to the prairie fires of old
Iowa. None of these countries bears such a coating of grass as came up
from the black soil of Iowa; for their climate is drier. I can see that
sight as if it were before my eyes now. The roaring came no longer to my
ears as I rode on through the night, except faintly when the breeze,
which had died down, sprang up as the fire reached some swale covered
with its ten-foot high saw-grass. Then, I could see from the top of some
rising ground the flames leap up, reach over, catch in front of the
line, kindle a new fire, and again be overleaped by a new tongue of
fire, so that the whole line became a belt of flames, and appeared to be
rolling along in a huge billow of fire, three or four rods across, and
miles in length.
The advance was not in a straight line. In some places for one reason or
another, the thickness or thinness of the grass, the slope of the land,
or the varying strength of the wind, the fire gained or lost ground. In
some places great patches of land were cut off as islands by the joining
of advanced columns ahead of them, and lay burning in triangles and
circles and hollow squares of fire, like bodies of soldiers falling
behind and formed to defend themselves against pursuers. All this
unevenness of line, with the varying surface of the lovely Iowa prairie,
threw the fire into separate lines and columns and detachments more and
more like burning armies as they receded from view.
Sometimes a whole mile or so of the line disappeared as the fire burned
down into lower ground; and then with a swirl of flame and smoke, the
smoke luminous in the glare, it moved magnificently up into sight,
rolling like a breaker of fire bursting on a reef of land, buried the
hillside in flame, and then whirled on over the top, its streamers
flapping against the horizon, snapping off shreds of flame into the air,
as triumphantly as a human army taking an enemy fort. Never again, never
again! We went through some hardships, we suffered some ills to be
pioneers in Iowa; but I would rather have my grandsons see what I saw
and feel what I felt in the conquest of these prairies, than to get up
by their radiators, step into their baths, whirl themselves away in
their cars, and go to universities. I am glad I had my share in those
old, sweet, grand, beautiful things--the things which never can
be again.
An old man looks back on things passed through as sufferings, and feels
a thrill when he identifies them as among the splendors of life. Can
anything more clearly prove the vanity of human experiences? But look at
the wonders which have come out of those days. My youth has already
passed into a period as legendary as the days when King Alfred hid in
the swamp and was reproved by the peasant's wife for burning the cakes.
I have lived on my Iowa farm from times of bleak wastes, robber bands,
and savage primitiveness, to this day, when my state is almost as
completely developed as Holland. If I have a pride in it, if I look back
to those days as worthy of record, remember that I have some excuse.
There will be no other generation of human beings with a life so rich in
change and growth. And there never was such a thing in all the history
of the world before.
I knew then, dimly, that what I saw was magnificent; but I was more
pleased with the safety of my farmstead and my stacks than with the grim
glory of the scene; and even as to my own good fortune in coming through
undamaged, I was less concerned than with the tragedy being enacted in
my house. I could not see into the future for Rowena, but I felt that it
would be terrible. The words "lost," "ruined," "outcast," which were
always applied to such as she had become, ran through my mind all the
time; and yet, she seemed a better girl when I talked with her than when
she was running over the prairie like a plover following old Tom and the
little clittering wagon. Now she seemed to have grown, to have taken on
a sort of greatness, something which commanded my respect, and almost
my awe.
It was the sacredness of martyrdom. I know this now: but then I seemed
to feel that I was disgracing myself for not loathing her as
something unclean.
"It's a boy!" said Doctor Bliven, as I came to the house. "The mother
ain't in very good shape. Seems exhausted--exhausted. She'll pull
through, though--she'll pull through; but the baby is fat and lusty.
Strange, how the mother will give everything to the offspring, and bring
it forth fat when she's as thin as a rail--thin as a rail. Mystery of
nature, you know--perpetuation of the race. Instinct, you know,
instinct. This girl, now--had an outfit of baby clothes in that bundle
of hers--instinct--instinct. My wife's going to stay a day or so. I'll
take her back next time I come out."
"You must 'tend to her, Doc," said I. "I'll guarantee you your pay."
"Very well, Jake. Of course you would--of course, of course," said he.
"But between you and me there wouldn't be any trouble about pay. Old
friends, you know; old friends. Favors in the past. You've done things
for me--my wife, too. Fellow travelers, you know. Never call on us for
anything and be refused. Be out to-morrow. Ought to have a woman here
when I go. Probably be milk for the child when it needs it; but needs
woman. Can get you a mover's wife's sister--widow--experienced with her
own. Want her? Bring her out for you--bring her out to-morrow. Eh?"
I told him to bring the widow out, and was greatly relieved. I went to
Magnus's cabin that night to sleep, leaving Mrs. Bliven with Rowena. I
hoped I might not have to see Rowena before she went away; for the very
thought of seeing the girl with the child embarrassed me; but on the
third day the widow--they afterward moved on to the Fort Dodge
country--came to me, and standing afar off as if I was infected with
something malignant, told me that Mrs. Vandemark wanted to see me.
"She ain't Mrs. Vandemark," I corrected. "Her name is Rowena Fewkes."
"I make it a habit," said the widow, whose name was Mrs. Williams, "to
speak in the present tense."
Whatever she may have meant was a problem to me; but I went in. Rowena
lay in my bed, and beside her was a little bundle wrapped in a blanket
made of one of my flannel sheets. The women were making free of my
property as a matter of course.
"What are you goin' to do with me, Jake?" she asked again, looking up at
me pleadingly.
"I'm goin' to keep you here till you're able to do for yourself," I
said. "Time enough to think of that after a while."
She took my hand and pressed it, and turned her face to the pillow.
Pretty soon she turned the blanket back, and there lay the baby, red and
ugly and wrinkled.
"Ain't he purty?" said she, her face glowing with love. "Oh, Jake, I
thank God I didn't find the pond before you found me. I didn't know very
well what I was doin'. I'll have something to love an' work fur, now. I
wonder if they'll let me be a good womern. I will be, in spite of hell
an' high water--f'r his sake, Jake."
4
As I lay in Magnus's bed that night, I could see no way out for her. She
could get work, I knew, for there was always work for a woman in our
pioneer houses. The hired girl who went from place to place could find
employment most of the time; but the baby would be an incumbrance. It
would be a thing that the eye of censure could not ignore, like the
scarlet "A" on the breast of the girl in Nathaniel Hawthorne's story. I
could not foresee how the thing would work out, and lay awake pondering
on it until after midnight, and I had hardly fallen asleep, it seemed to
me, when the door was opened, and in came Magnus. He had finished his
job and come back.
"You hare, Yake?" he said, in his quiet and unmoved way. "I'm glad. Your
house bane burn up in fire?"
I told him the startling news, and as the story of poor Rowena slowly
made its way into his mind, I was startled and astonished at its effect
on him; for he has always been to me a man who would be calm in a
tornado, and who would meet shipwreck or earthquake without a tremor. I
have seen him standing in his place in the ranks with his comrades
falling all about loading and firing his musket, with no more change in
his expression than a cold light of battle in his mild buttermilk eyes.
I have seen him wipe from his face the blood of a fellow-soldier
spattered on him by a fragment of shell, as if it had been a splash of
water from a puddle. But now, he trembled. He turned pale. He raged up
and down the little room with his hands doubled into fists and beating
the air. He bit down upon his Norwegian words with clenched teeth. I was
afraid to talk to him at last. Finally, he turned to me and said:
"Ay know de man! So it vas in de ol' country! Rich fallar bane t'inking
poor girl notting but like fresh fruit for him to eat; a cup of vine for
him to drink; an' he drink it! He eat de fruit. But dis bane different
country. Ay keel dis damned Gowdy! You hare, Yake? Ay keel him!"
Of course I told him that this would never do, and talked the way we all
do when it is our duty to keep a friend from ruining himself. He sat
down while I was talking, and as far as I could see heard never a word
of what I said. Finally I talked myself out, and still he sat there as
silent as a statue.
"Ay--tank--Ay--take--a--valk," he said at last, in the jerky way of the
Norwegian; and he went out into the night.
I lay back expecting that he would come in pretty soon, when I had more
of which I had thought to talk to him about; but I went to sleep, and
having been a good deal broken of my rest, I slept late. He was still
absent when I woke up. When I got to my place, the widow told me that he
had been there and had a long talk with Rowena, and had hitched up his
team and driven away.
Rowena was asleep when I looked in, and I went out to plow. If Magnus
had gone to kill Buck Gowdy, there was nothing I could do to prevent it.
As a matter of fact, I approved of his impulse. I had felt it myself,
though not with any such wrathful bitterness. I had known for a long
time that Magnus had a tenderness toward Rowena; but he was such a
gentle fellow, and seemed to be so slow in approaching her, with his
fooling with Surajah's inventions and the like, that I set down his
feeling as a sort of sheepish drawing toward her which never would
amount to anything. But now I saw that his rage against Gowdy was of the
kind that overpowered him, stolid as he had always seemed. It rose above
mine in proportion to the passion he must have felt for her, when she
was a girl that a man could take for a wife. I pitied him; and I did not
envy Buck Gowdy, if it chanced that they should come together while
Magnus's white-hot anger was burning; but I rather hoped they would
meet. I did not believe that in any just court Magnus would be punished
if he supplied the lack in the law.
When I turned out at noon, I saw Magnus's team, and a horse hitched to a
buggy tied to my corn-crib; and when I went into the house, I half
expected to find Jim Boyd, the sheriff, there to arrest Magnus
Thorkelson for murder, at the bedside of Magnus's lady-love. I could
imagine how N. V. Creede, whom I had already resolved I would retain to
defend Magnus, would thrill the jury in his closing speech for the
prisoner as the bar.
What I found was Elder Thorndyke and grandma and the widow, all standing
by Rowena's bed. The widow was holding the baby in her arms, but as I
came in she laid it in a chair and covered it up, as much as to indicate
that on this occasion the less seen of the infant the better. Magnus was
holding Rowena's hand, and the elder was standing on the other side of
the bed holding a book. Grandma Thorndyke stood at the bed's foot
looking severely at a _Hostetter's Almanac_ I had hanging on the
head-board. The widow was twittering around from place to place. When I
came in, Magnus motioned me to stand beside him, and as I took my place
handed me a gold ring. Rowena looked up at me piteously, as if to ask
forgiveness. Sometime during the ceremony we had the usual hitch over
the ring, for I had put it in my trousers pocket and had to find it so
that Magnus could put it on Rowena's finger. I had never seen a marriage
ceremony, and was at my wit's end to know what we were doing, thinking
sometimes that it was a wedding, and sometimes that it might be
something like extreme unction; when at last the elder said, "I
pronounce you man and wife!"